What Is New About the USA Economy

Ivo Mosely is serializing his next book over at the Cobden Center.  It just keeps getting better.  I fraternally criticized earlier chapters for lack of precision in definitions, and in this chapter Mosely included, at least in a footnote, a quote for economic great JK Galbraith:

 ‘The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is the one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.’

Just so.  What is wonderful about Moseley's work here is showing that all we are criticizing has been noted before, but along with the "victors write the history books". I have been reinventing the wheel while everything I am discovering has been well explicated 100, 200, 300 years ago.  So we did not go off track with the "Great Society" of the 1960s, or the "new Deal of the 1930s, or the "Roaring '20s" or the Robber Barons of the "Gay (18)90s" or the Civil War of the Revolutionary War, it goes back to about 1700, when promissory notes could be traded as an asset and interest have largely moved from defined as recovering an unexpected loss on a charitable loan to contracting an obligation to pay a gain on an uncharitable loan.

The USA was formed to escape the horrors of the European economic system, only to have Alexander Hamilton lead the USA into simply the most efficient player of the game.

Walker’s The Science of Wealth (1866) was published a hundred years after Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Walker saw the United States dominated by an integrated system of banking, taxes and national debt, designed to take wealth from productive workers and relocate it with an equally integrated power of government, corporations and plutocrats. Building on the last chapter of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Walker points out that the National Debt is a great gift to the wealthy: they lose nothing by lending, because they get government bonds in return. Meanwhile the interest on the debt – on money that the government spends – is met by those who produce. It is a tax on the productive.[xx]

Hamilton was never a president, but a banker.  He died a slow death after a dual with the sitting vice-president, Burr, and Hamilton died a hero and martyr.  Violence never turns out well.  See subsequent USA history.

Now I have been jerry-rigging terms attempting to be clear, but it appears others already did this.  I came up with bene-credit and malcredit to describe what is going on in USA, and the world.  Read here:

The subject of how money-as-credit, and money-as-property interact with each other was subsequently almost completely ignored in mainstream economics. Knut Wicksell, many years later, caused a stir in economics circles by noticing that there were two kinds of economy, a ‘credit economy’ and a ‘cash economy’; but as far as I know he never followed up his observation with thorough analysis.[xxiii] Keynes made the same observation in his Treatise on Money (1930) but he, too, pursued the matter no further.[xxiv]

Wicksell and Keynes both addressed this, but let it go?  Then this topic is an excellent career-maker for some young PhD candidate who wants a career in academia.  Stand on the shoulders of those greats and fill in the blanks they left.  In the meantime, I think my terms, bene-credit and malcredit are clear, which is the first rule of writing.

There is so much more in this essay, so you should read it.  Yes, the last 300 years, especially the last, has been an era of mass death, war and poverty (unless you are one of the lucky few) but so what?  I got mine jack, and if nothing has changed, who cares>

But there is something new:

Fast-forwarding to today, once the independent poor have been robbed into penury they must depend upon a ‘welfare state’ to stay alive. This gives the super-rich plenty of reason to complain at the prospect of some of their money being diverted to supply those they have previously robbed with the bare ‘necessities of life’. In reality, the super-rich mostly avoid paying taxes and the burden falls on the working and middle classes.

That is Mosely's take, here is mine:

What was once reserved for the well-connected, the elite, or a politically connected few, is now down to the lowest person in society.  With an EBT card, a welfare recipient can walk into a gas station generate credit from nothing to pay for a meal.  He can also buy a car, rent a home, clothe the kids, all from nothing.   No Hegemon ever extended the rot so thoroughly through out society. it is an experiment. It works until it no longer works.

There is no fixing this problem, because those on welfare vote, adn overwhelm those who actually produce something.  Boeing, Walmart, Amazon, Google, GE and all the other welfare queens and their impoverished co-indolents at the bottom of the econ ladder all make sure the welfare/warfare state is in power.  Democracy does that.

Europe is experiencing an immigration crisis as people head for the borders, not their borders to escape, but to european borders where they will be issued such credit facility, for nothing.  Islam prohibits this kind of welfare, so one must get to putatively Christian countries (where it is also expressly forbidden by religion) to join in.

There is no rational limit to lending nothing for something, for there is no rational basis for the activity.  So when it ends, it will end for some nonrational event.  Religion advises us sins only last until the third or fourth generation, and surely the debts have now reached the point where repayment will be onto the fourth generation.

The only way to escape this disaster is to not be in it.  It's possible, the Amish have effectively avoided the horrors of the last 300 years (after a shakey start.)  But it is possible to also live in society buy not be integrated in its excesses.  In a country of 300 million, a market of 5000 is plenty to create personal surfeit, as long as you are working toward wealth defined as a collection of goods and services affordable to people with their own earnings.

We call it self-employment, but a better definition is customer-employed.

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Ocean Freight Rates Tumble

Ocean freight rates don't matter much in small business int'l trade, but falling rates mean the big boys are shipping less, in other words, no hiding the economy that is failing, the big boys' economy.

Shipping is a strong indication on the health or weakness of the global economy. So let's take a look at what's happening.

So, while this does not mean much directly, as in lower costs for small business, indirectly it does because as those big boys contract, there is some vacuum into which we sell, a theme I have been demonstrating here.

An informal study I have done is how many longstanding businesses started in times of economic distress.  Someone ought to study this as a master thesis or a Phd dissertation; small business renaissance after rents fall in a capitalist economic crack-up.

We cannot have an economic recovery until rents fall (disastrously for the capitalists) and free marketers can build from a "place" ... where they do business.  It would be an interesting study.

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A&P Goes All Hostess Twinkie

Even in Seattle as a kid  I shopped at A&P, the first supermarket chain in the USA which began to go downhill in the 1970s.  Now it is going into bankruptcy for the second time, following the steps of hostess twinkie,  including blaming the unions.

A regular reader will know this blog honors labor, as any self-employed free-marketer would do, and in fact I've been a teamster and am a B Longshoreman.  (I also busted a longshore local house, so I am not above a bit of mercenary hire).

Blaming the unions for management failure is typical, and useful in liquidating assets while burning the unions.  To be sure when A&P is liquidated almost none of the workers will find similarly paying jobs. This is deflation now.  That is life, but when Burkle bought A&P, the malcredit he used to acquire also covered any A&P pension obligations to the workers.  So the first question is, what is the size and nature of A&P obligations to the employees and retirees.  It goes away, in a bankruptcy, and the liquidation price can go a lot lower.  See Twinkie.

Now Bravo to Stockman for rejecting the "union problem" as the problem leading to bankruptcy.  he demonstrates how poor management and financial shenanigans have led to yet another pension plan being busted.  But in his piece he mentions legacy "vendor agreements" that could not be changed to save A&P.

I wonder: what products, what vendors, what agreements?  Wild guess: the vendors are the "get big or get out" welfare beneficiaries like General Foods, General Mills, Kraft, etc. The products are the 80% of the revenue, 20% of the profits type velveeta cheese and other frankenfoods that one necessarily must be big in which to trade.  The agreements are fine tuned already, and assume ever-inflation, something not the case any more.

If so, are those vendors allowing a customer to go under so they can better serve the stronger few?  For a time?

This would be a good MBA masters thesis.

As an aside, an advertising campaign failed to bring in teh customers.  I wonder how much of that advertising was done online, and what was learned form that component.   Another thesis.

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Business Masters Thesis or Phd Dissertation Topic Suggestion

Let's go back to Stockman's graph:



Again, he red line is the production of USA as a nation, the output of the means of production, since 1981.  You may click on it to make it larger.

Now the nature of what we produced has certainly changed since 1981, we now produce much more in services and far less by manufacturing.  In any event, the blue line represents the claims on the productive capacity of the USA.  In my earlier post I note there is no way the assets themselves can ever satisfy the claims.  The coming bust will to some degree adjust the claims, and politicians will pick winners and losers, as usual.

People desiring topics upon which to write masters theses and phd dissertations ought to consider a few possibilities:

1. To what degree did the mal-credit introduced in the 1970s lead to malinvestment and misallocation resulting in what changes in the red line asset allocation?

2.  To what degree did the tax-avoidance Roth IRA and other retirement plans that require investment funds be dragooned into an extremely narrow range of assets help blow up the bubble the blue line represents?

3.  How much of the space between the blue line and the red line might have funded small business expansion absent mal-credit and dragoon investment options?

4. A scary thought, but how much is the nominal obligations of the welfare/warfare state is in addition to the claims represented by the blue line on the red line?  For all claims of any sort relating to USA as a country are against the red line, ultimately.

We currently borrow 1/2 of what we spend to keep this going, demonstrating clearly the red line cannot support even the tax burden of the nation.  What cannot continue will eventually stop.

What starting up your own business does is makes YOUR blue line even lower than your red line as you extend credit to customers, and legally escape the confiscations coming while simple sidestepping the fight of all those claims on those dwindling assets.

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LsC & BPO Trade Finance and Payments

For the life of me I cannot tell the difference between a Letter of Credit and a Bank Payment Obligation, The New Thing in trade finance.  Here JP Morgan explains...  The ICC, a private law entity which promulgates rules and regs for banking, has this to say...

The "mismatch acceptance" is noted, and therein is the nonsense of banks selling letters of credit as security in international trade.  Some 80% of letters of credit fail, and the buyer "accepts the exceptions."  Here the banks refer to the buyer "accepts the mismatch."  With an LC, we always did, since we knew our suppliers, so a difference in terminology fails to signify new.  Credit risk mitigation starts and ends with relationship between buyer and seller, there is nothing the bank can contribute to amelioration, since neither by policy or law will they take responsibility to payment or delivery failure.

The BPO does seem to be limited to what is known as a confirmed letter of credit, the highest grade of letter of credit.

I suspect the fact they are introducing defined electronic data sets to be matched by computers, rather than humans checking paperwork, will on the one hand reduce the errors of input, but on the other hand increase the accuracy of checking for document compliance.  I'd expect a net improvement in matching documents to terms.

I can see how switching from humans checking paperwork (I got to the point of being able to tell the native language of the clerk who did the checking by the check marks made) might increase efficiency and lower cost, but the requirement of underlying assets has not changed in the least.  And I wonder with the lower costs, if there will be a lowering of fees, I expect not, since we are talking banks.

Banks take an abundance of caution when extending lines of credit to customers, and there is I am sure nothing new with the BPO.  But who knows?  Credit is being created at a breathtaking pace, banks are not lending it very fast, and given that nothing regarding the BPO seems to be new, perhaps the "new" is just a lowering of credit standards, that is to say, the banks are no longer taking an abundance of caution, and this is all "standby LC" grade credit being lent.   A good masters thesis would be to study the BPO on this point.

The FEDS are jumping back in with both feet right now pushing subprime loans to the masses, again lowering standards, to bring back the good old days that resulted in the 2008 bust... and so we can expect that bad ideas are being pushed.

Right now the BPO is optional, I see a time coming when it is mandatory.

Another generation will no longer how to process a manual transaction Letter of Credit transactions.  What to do when a virus brings down the electronic clearance systems?

I recall in the 1980s when the power went out, stores continued to sell and ring up customers.  They did manually.  Imprinted credit card transactions.  Cash till transactions...  business went on.  Now they have to shooo customers out and lock the doors.

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UK Reports Small Business Recovery & Challenges

Here is a study done on UK businesses, which brings up issues not well addressed.

When asked about the cost of credit/financing their business, 29% said the costs had increased, compared to 24% in the previous quarter. Despite this, 82% of businesses claimed they will either freeze or reduce prices in the next 6-12 months in order to remain competitive. By contrast, just 18% will raise prices.
Continuing, Hamilton said: “It is worrying that more than half of SMEs are concerned about late payments and cash flow, two issues that are intrinsically linked. Despite the ongoing media spotlight on late payments, this seems to be an issue that continues to grow without any resolution on the horizon.
“Further exacerbated with rising costs of credit and greater competition from a global marketplace, being able to find a solution to these issues could either make or break a UK business.
“SMEs are in a Catch-22 situation; they are unable to access credit to improve cash flow, inhibiting their ability to grow, which in turn further prevents their ability to access credit. It means SMEs are struggling to find funding to grow and stay competitive in the global marketplace.

Do you know what cost of financing was for businesses 50 years ago?  Near zero.  To this day I recall the meeting in which it was decided we would charge our customers interest if they went over 30 days as agreed on payment.  USA had gone off gold-standard lite, banks were mailing live credit cards out without an application, getting rid of all this credit to lend made (at interest) infected small business by scandalizing us into charging our customers interest.  As borrowing EZ credit from banks with nearly no standards (but at interest) became on balance a preference to maintaining standards with suppliers and no interest.  Where zero-usury guardrails kept many more people on the straight and narrow and within community constraints, countless people jumped the rails and crashed.

Yes, letters of credit encumbered a line of credit that was drawn upon at the point of payment, and the money drawn on that line was at interest, except...  USA interest rates at anywhere from 3 to 21% never mattered since importers secured 60, 90, 120 day sight LsC, meaning the seller agreed to delay payment for that time.   Yes, you escape USA interest, but you do cover, one way or another, the seller's carrying cost of your delayed payment.  So what is the difference?  Just about every country does the crazy EXIM Bank wealth transfer thing, and say, Japanese export interest rates are subsidized so a USA importer pays probably 1/2 the going USA rate.

There are no guardrails any longer, but one can still know what works and drive along the right road anyway.  Just because there are no guardrails does not mean you must crash.

Slow pay is a problem of discipline which can be managed.  The degree to which this problem is growing is the degree to which SMEs have lost the tradition of knowing their customers credit and managing the relationship.

So how to deal with this Catch 22 problem of SMEs finding less credit and what is there at higher rates?  Tack into this wind!  There is credit pitch perfect to your operations at zero costs if SMES simply stop using this unnecessary credit, which is degenerate anyway, and begin to extend credit, with what goes around comes around.

Yes, you'll lose customers, but the ones you have will be all the stronger.  Yes, you'll lose customers, but what is that segment that you are losing costing you in interest payments necessary for the funding to carry that segment?

Will checking credit and managing payment discipline bring added costs?  i don't think so, I think it would be simply a shift of resources from degenerate activity of false economy EZCredit  management to the same people simply managing generative good customers.

A great master's thesis study, that.

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Forbes Covers & Russia/China Gas Analysis Wrong

The world billion is on the June 16 cover.  I suppose it is an element they discovered must be on a cover to get optimum sales.  If so it is promoting personal accumulation as opposed to commonwealth.

This edition has some puzzling stories... A safer cigarette.  Oh.

And how a woman became the head of General Motors.  Well, we know how, General Motors is run by the government and a woman was put in charge.  There has never been a woman in charge before because opportunities are restricted in capitalism.  Putting a woman in charge just means a bit of theatre before it is run into the ground.

Forbes should do a story on how both the Mustang car and Marlboro cigarette were designed by men to be targeted to women.  And imagine that.  Women were not attracted to either.

In a free market there would be the optimum amount of women running whatever companies, because there would be no bar to women running car companies.  And then perhaps we'd see women designed cars.

Another very odd piece is Steve Forbes steps put of character to mock the Putin/China gas deal.

Putin is naturally spinning the pact as an “epochal event,” but in truth it’s really no big deal. Divide that $400 billion by 30 years and you get an annual average of $13 billion. The size of the global economy today is almost $80 trillion. Seen in that context the contract rates barely a footnote. AT&T’s proposed acquisition of DirecTV merits more attention.

Whew, the head spins.  Let’s see if we can find some borders:  we are comparing one deal to the entire earth's economy...  how is that enlightening?  And then comparing an early stage industrial material input (gas) to a final stage consumer service output (TV shows.)  Somehow, we are to equate a $400 billion gas deal with a $50 billion TV deal.  This is good analysis?

Let’s do a more sensible analysis.  Instead of comparing the presumed productivity of couch potatoes watching Seinfeld re-runs to Russian energy in China, let’s get some sort of benchmark by looking at what USA does with energy inputs.  So we head over to the go-to guys on energy, the American Petroleum Institute, with its headquarters in hell, but has pretty accurate records, and we find as to its studies...

They do not capture any forward linkages (i.e., the economic impact on production in sectors that use oil and natural gas as an input). 

Man, we need that info.  Someone should do it.  Sounds like a masters or Phd thesis.   But what this API report does have is this...

The industry’s total impact on US GDP was $1.2 trillion, accounting for 8.0 percent of the national total in 2011. 

So the USA national total was about 15 tril in 2011.  Given the 8% figure above, the multiplier effect for energy usage in USA is roughly 12.5 times.

So let’t take 400 billion Russia/China deal and see what that is worth in supporting economic activity over thirty years...I get five trillion dollars.

OK, let’s take it yearly, like Steve does.  13 billion times 12.5 equals $162.5 billion, per year.

China’s GDP in 2013 was about nine trillion in dollars, so using a USA benchmark,  this single deal adds $162.5 billion, or roughly 2 % to the economy in terms of productive value.  OK, does not seem like much, but 2% of an economy is no small thing.  And one deal out of how many?  Out of what trend?  And then reverse the impact, take that same amount away from Europe, to where the gas was earmarked before the stupid "sanctions", and ask how is Europe going to maintain its welfare state obligations with yet another input source lost?

  But we need to find a Chinese benchmark for how much leverage China gets out of energy.  I suspect China applies energy more directly, with less wastage in USA, getting more bang for the buck. This is another thesis for a masters degree.  I won't do it, but Forbes should have, instead of comparing Russian gas to China as opposed to people watching TV in USA.  

And for those 2014 graduates who are now heading into unemployment with a crushing debt, here is Steen Jakobsen - 

After close to 30 years of doing this job I am realizing that energy is everything in explaining growth, investment, sentiment and market returns.
Understand energy and its marginal price of production and its delivery and you have the keys to predicting the world.

That means top analyst Steen got his start in the mid-1980s, and he is just coming, end-of-career, to this realization about oil and energy.  I was already informed on this while in high school in the 1960s, as the anti-fascists made clear the American war in Vietnam was about the oil in the Spratly and Paracel Islands (over which Vietnam and China are contending today.)  With the switch to the poverty draft for the military, and the destruction of the labor unions by gutting the manufacturing base,   USA no longer has any pro-freedom, anti-fascist movement.  So the word does not get out at the beginning of one's career.  One advantage of taking down the capitalist patterns and practices would be to revive manufacturing and a labor movement in USA.  

So graduates, ask questions, take take the "truth" apart.  When Peter Drucker was in his youth before WWII in Austria, he had read all about the struggles to create the Panama Canal, to shorten northern hemisphere shipping times.  In all those histories, he did not ever read whether it paid off.  Did it have the intended economic result? The purpose was an economic result, but no one had ever bothered to see if it was achieved.  So he studied that and wrote it up.  Look at the facts, and ask the most obvious question.  This will most likely get you into trouble, especially if no one has answered it.  If an obvious question has not been asked, expect some powers that be do not want the answer out there.

But ask and answer the question, and way you go.  Drucker was no one special in his youth, indeed, he considered himself a bystander.  But his questions got him in front of all sorts of top people last century, including Sloan at General Motors, for which he did an efficiency study.  His questions turned Drucker into the premier biz thinker of the 20h century, and Drucker a mere sociologist.

And people who had him in class thought he was ever so boring.  He probably was.  Most of his books are dreadully so, but two I liked a lot, Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Adventures of a Bystander. Very readable and enlightening.

And incidentally, in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Drucker lays out why entrepreneurs NEVER take risks. His argument is perfectly sound, which sent me off on the trail leading to banks lending off-sheet credit, and now with unlimited credit, needed to introduce the idea of risk to trap people into debt, which is how we got to where we are today.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Adventures of a Bystander



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Quality Control In China

The task given to regulators in USA is pure theatre, they simply cannot perform that with which they are charged, and when politics is thrown in, forget about it.  This has lead to the relentless failures in food and medicine quality in USA.  People who believe effective inspection is taking place have their faculties of defense atrophy.  Happily there is the chef and the pharmacist, who are necessary and almost sufficient to the task.  Free market insurance companies would fulfill safety requirements.

In China there are no illusions about QC.  So free market QC firms emerge.  At very reasonable rates, paid by the merchants themselves, QC is effected.

We, here at V-Trust, hope that through our inspection services, through every defect we find and correct, by our day-to-day reliability, fairness and hard work, we can attract the attention of manufacturers, buyers and sellers of quality products and make "Made in China" mean "Well Made in China". 

Nose around the site, http://www.v-trust.com  See some of the big names that employ their services.  In USA, those firms own the regulators and inspectors, in spite of the fact that you and I are taxed to pay for the street theatre inspections.  If these firms, and mine, can pay for our own QC, then why do we in USA insist on expensive theatre in which we don't even get to watch the show?

Clearly, these companies are happy to pay for their own inspections themselves.

Anticipating cries of "China quality is horrible" I say look through those companies listed, and tell me one that has had a QC problem with its Chinese products in USA.  Then compare that with their USA domestic production.  I think that would be a fine MBA thesis.  Private QC moved "Made in China" from a warning label to mean "Well Made..."

Chinese quality problems are largely a myth in USA.  We love to point fingers at others, when we have our own problems to solve.  Maybe we can learn from China.

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Exporting Water to China?

It's a stretch, but the article makes the point we divert so much water to grow alfalfa for Chinese livestock that in effect the water goes to China.

It would be interesting to see an accounting of what water is used for now during the California draught, and if selling alfalfa in China makes our meals more expensive.  Sounds like a good masters thesis.

This law professor makes some interesting points, especially how the energy solutions use too much water.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

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Burke On Change

This television series greatly influenced me as to competing on design....  this episode in particular was a revelation.  When you have 50 minutes, give it a view



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Kissinger on the Ukraine

Well, this is why I never liked him...

In my life, I have seen four wars begun with great enthusiasm and public support, all of which we did not know how to end and from three of which we withdrew unilaterally. The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins.

No Hank, it matters how you get into a war.  And here is where I disagree with him and Putin:

4. It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea. But it should be possible to put Crimea’s relationship to Ukraine on a less fraught basis. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea. Ukraine should reinforce Crimea’s autonomy in elections held in the presence of international observers. The process would include removing any ambiguities about the status of the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol.

Too late, a snap election has the Crimeans voting themselves back into Russia after 50 years.  Putin should have had them vote themselves into independence, which would have confounded his opponents.  He could have then fashioned a Hong Kong on the Black Sea, and buried the Ukraine, with its ardent desire for bailouts, and the West in its ardent desire to steal more territory.

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India & USA Trade

At a recent seminar I had an edifying conversation over a fruit juice lunch with a fellow from India, who was lamenting the widespread preference in India for what is modern to the detriment of what is good and true and beautiful in traditional Indian culture.  His idea was to do his part, and preserve the traditional spice blends and market those (and with a billion people, each preserving something, traditional India would be safe from extinction.)

For my part I lamented that to my mind, and trade statistics bear this out, India is not participating in the world economy commensurate with its size.  If India is 1/5th of the world population, it should be 1/5th of the economy.  I compared my experiences in trading with China and attempting to trade with India.  We agreed it was the fault of the British super-structure in place, whose colonial style is still the power structure in India, although changing.

When China liberalized on the Hong Kong model, first to 12, then 20 SEZs, India saw the result and copied it, but to a too limited degree.  The results were dramatic, but not revolutionary as in China.

Another time I was conversing at a seminar with a couple of fellows form India, and after a while one fellow pointed to the other and said, "In India, he could not talk to me, he's Brahmin and I am an untouchable."  Now for the life of me, I could not tell the difference.  And neither seemed bothered by this fact or status. "... and what is also strange is we both work for a Muslim."  He went on to explain what would not be in India is common in USA.  All bets are off if and when they get here.

What a good thing, what a vestige of what the USA was supposed to be, but is rather overwhelmed by the fascist system we have in place that is bringing USA down.  When it goes down, those vestiges will leave with the people who experienced them, and what is good and true and beautiful will grow somewhere else.  Here is a quick summary of where things went wrong:

There is one final choice: to say that Jefferson was great until 1809, but then he went goofy. That theory, however, would be very difficult to support. The older Jefferson became, the better he became.

There is another view, and that was Jefferson was good except for the eight years he was president.  It is not possible to take all that power and be good.  But we knew that.

In another conversation another time with another fellow from India, he was explaining "competing on design" was not going to work for people whose income was improving did not want a designer pyrex measuring cup, they wanted the original pyrex measuring cup.  Having what what they could not have until now was more important than having new.  This is why I say I know nothing about foreign markets, and always rely on the importers overseas to deal with that end of the game.

The good news is India will decide how India will change.

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It Gets Down To Gold

The economic crisis in Europe has gotten to the point where the players have asked Germany to put up its gold as collateral for Greece.  This must be curious to those who wonder at why gold might be important.

Most market transactions in the history of mankind are free will offerings, as when your neighbor gives you a pie.  Think of all the hunter gatherer societies in history where the men brought in a mastodon and shared it out.  No money involved.

Money strictly defined is a medium of exchange.  Yes, it could be anything, but in most instances it has been gold and silver, gold for kings, silver for peasants. It emerged to facilitate trade when division of labor made more better cheaper faster of new things, and the problem of coincidence of wants needed to be solved.  I have a lamb for sale, you have knives.  You don't want a whole lamb, and I want only one knife.  If we cut up the lamb for a fair trade of leg or lamb for one knife, I now have rotting lamb for sale.  If my apple crop comes off the tree in October, and your winter wheat in April, my fruit rots before your wheat is available to trade.

For these more advanced economies, tallies were kept.  Various means were maintained to account for who got what and who owns what to whom.  Tallies would be made to show I got the knife from Bob, and Jim got the lamb, and I owe Bob some lamb, which Jim will give him when he finds enough people who want lamb to slaughter the animal.  Tallies will show Steve got apples in October and in April I'll use those tallies as a claim to collect some winter wheat.  Still no need for gold and silver.

As the economy got more complex and distances goods moved got farther, something better than tallies was needed.  Gold and silver have these benefits: universally recognized, dense (high value to weight and measure), easily divisible, does not rot, relatively stable value, and a value not realized until recently, antibiotic.  This last one is important as gold actually exchanged had to hand, and gold suppressed disease as it traded.  It may be just coincidence, but the plague spread in Europe at the same time paper money began to replace gold.  It would be an interesting masters thesis to track the plague and the introduction to paper money, so see how tight the correlation is.  At any rate, gold and silver foots the bill as a medium of exchange.

The reason this medium of exchange is important for these farther distances is that the traders may very well never see each other again.  Tallies will not work, so there needs to be a way to settle up that is a final accounting.  This is how gold and silver work throughout history.

When Germany and USA/UK were at war, there was still plenty of trade going on between the two warring nations.  The British needed German ball-bearings for their aircraft, the Germans needed oil.  These trades were settled up in Switzerland in gold. When the outcome is in doubt, people want to settle up in gold and silver.

When the US Armed forces wanted to mountain fighters of the Northern Alliance to liquidate Osama Bin Laden at Tora Bora, the USA forces presented the $25 million fee in USA currency.  The Northern Alliance demanded gold.  The assault was delayed (and OBL escaped) as the USA forces scared up the fee in gold.

I went to a lecture at UW a week or so ago in which the professor traced the history of Egyptian gold coins.  It seems at times of change, or disaster, gold coins emerge.  The last pharaoh before the Ptolemys conquered the country, was obliged to mint gold coins to pay the mercenaries to defend Egypt.  Tallies would not work.  A soldier can take gold anywhere, but a tally depends on the Pharaoh winning and Pharaoh then honoring his promises.  Gold is better.

Spooner noted the amount of gold in coins in circulation is perfectly matched to demand since with the price of gold drops, coins are melted down and made into "decoration, plate and jewelry."  When the price of gold rises (crisis times) that decoration plate and jewelry is melted down and made into coins.  Where are in a meltdown mode right now.

We largely stay put because of our vast resources in tallies.  Even if you are unemployed, you will not move to China where you can get a job teaching English (some do, but almost nobody as a percentage of the unemployed).  You stay put, unemployed because of all of the family connections, help, support etc, that you will get, that is owed you, that you would lose if you go to China.  Most of our resources are in tallies and connections, not in "money."

Another observation from the audience at the lecture was a correlation between freedom and gold.  Gold is suppressed as freedom is suppressed.  As USA converted to socialist country back in the 1930s, gold was outlawed.  It was legalized again in the 1970s, but we are returning to restrictions and taxes on gold, a forerunner of suppression.

So how does gold relate to money, that folding stuff in our wallets and what is in our bank accounts and retirement funds.  Well, none of that is money, it is all tallies.  And at any point Pharaoh can say what value it has, and do as he wills.

We are in a time of crisis, and we do not know if Pharaoh can settle up.  bankers are asking that the bailout of Greece be backed by German gold. In times of crisis, the mercenary knows to say "pay me in gold."  You should know this.

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How Government Works

There are plenty of doctors out there who dissent from what is being passed off as medicine.  They warned against treating people like Buicks, with standardized maintenance.  You will be treted like a buick by people with all the integrity of an auto repair joint.

A designer friend of mine, and native american with full "free" medical care experienced internal pains that her free doctor diagnosed as a pulled muscle and loaded her up with free steroids.  Ooops.  Stomach cancer that accelerated with steroids to all systems...  she was dead within months.  What pro-single payer health care people do not understand is government health care is necessarily inappropriate, rare, expensive and slow.  In a free market it would be more better cheaper faster.  It is government intervention that made it so bad, government intervention that gives cover to the bad guys who charge too much for the wrong things.

One of the big anti-Obamacare scares is the death panels who decide who lives and dies based on secret rationing systems.  Ridiculous!  Never! Say pro-govt health care people.  Too late.  Obama already has a death panel that can button US citizens for murder.  They got the black guy to do it so the next president can have it without controversy.  After Obama is defeated in a few months, they will still blame the black guy.  Elijah Muhammed seems to be right, blacks need to be separate but equal to get a fair shake in USA.


Just as government intervention in the rating agencies did so much to advance the economic crisis, so government backing of med associations does so much to ruin medicine.  Lemme see, hormone replacement therapy... pap smears, breast cancer screening... now all are inadvisable... and o yeah... prostrate exams, bad idea...

Colonoscopy appears to be a waste of money...

But it is free...  I'd love to see a health comparison between those who have employer-paid health care and those who do not... a great masters thesis, or even phd work in public health.  It would not surprise me if those with no health care are better off than those with it.

It is a standard operating procedure of government to solve problems that do not exist.  In this way you cannot lose.  In this way they can make up problems, scare people, and then always declare improvement or worsening as political and funding requirements demand.  

There was no health care problem in America before the govt got involved.  And all of this "health care" activity is crowding out cure activity.

The same thing applies to law enforcement.  Go after am innocent Martha Stewart since it is easier to get a conviction when you make up evidence against and innocent person that it is to prosecute a guilty person.  A guilty person knows what they did wrong and how to fight it.  An innocent person believes in the system, and has no idea why they are targeted or what they are supposed to be guilty of.  Why go after a Bernie Madoff while he is stealing billions and many people know it when you can nail a Martha Stewart, quick and easy and make a name for yourself?

Why take on a tough case of stomach cancer when you can just pass out steroids like you do for everyone else and get another oldster, native american off the rolls?

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Money and the Plague

Money is the one commodity that emerges from all commodities to act as a medium of exchange.  Not everyone will take fatback in change in a transaction, but everyone will take gold.  All commodities, more or less, will be used as a store of value given some circumstances, with gold the most likely commodity to be so employed.  Hence, money is not a store of value, but gold is and when gold is proffered as money, it retains its commodity faculty as well.  So, money is a medium of exchange. And gold is a store of value. When gold is money it is a medium of exchange and a store of value.

Of the many attributes that recommend a commodity as money, rarely listed for gold is gold's antibiotic properties.  Silver is used as money, and so is copper, and they both have antibiotic properties.  Before refrigeration, a silver coin might be dropped in milk to keep it fresh longer, although raw milk need never be refrigerated.  Your fear of raw dairy is a conditioned reflex, brought to you by the dairy board, who desires you fear independent dairies, or a preference for wholesome food, which is often one and the same. The longer it stays out, the more different foods it becomes.  If it happens to spoil, then throw it away.  Otherwise eat the curds, whey, sour cream, or cheese, depending where in the process you dive in.  But I digress.  Do check out the link above, and see the man who turned blue treating himself with silver.  It is permanent.  Makes one wonder if the Buddha is depicted as blue-skinned is accurate.

As new metals are discovered, the ones that are antibiotic by non-toxic also become in demand as bullion, that is money.  Rhodium, palladium, platinum are all examples.

When world trade was a matter of merchants arriving in Baghdad with silk-laden camels, the goods were exchanged, moved from camel to cart or boat, and gold and silver in payment.  These coins were antibiotic.  Nothing could live on them.  Disease could not be spread.

There was also world trade along the mediterranean, with Phoenicians trading English nickel for Levant commodities. We are told the plague showed up when an expansion of world trade brought ship-borne rates with plague carrying fleas into new markets, so Europe experienced what the American Indian experienced 300 years later.

Perhaps there was another venue as well.  The plague showed up at the same time and place paper currency began to show up.  it would be an interesting master's thesis in economics to research this.  There are plenty of records in plague areas of both currency introduction and the plague.  Coincidence or cause and effect?

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Thailand and Port Congestion

Maybe 50 years ago when raid industrialization was all the rage worldwide, and with an noxious war next door as a result of this economic power struggle (or power struggle masquerading and economic struggle), the King of Thailand expressly deigned that Thailand would stick with light industry.

Thailand is the only Asian country never conquered by a foreign power.  The elderly beloved King is to be followed by an heir who is controversial, perhaps learning his ways from the Western military programs he attended. (Parents should remember that violence pornography and dope are a big part of the standing military.)  People are concerned for the direction of Thailand.

And excellent master's thesis for some graduate student in business might be a study of Thailand, it's economic policies and resultant economic polity.  One item demonstrating the robustness of the Thai economy is the fact the Port of Bangkok is so congested the govt is levying fees (which will get people to pick other ports from which to ship.)

From: Global Container Line and Global Transportation Services, Inc.
Re: Bangkok Congestion Surcharge (Effective July 6, 2011 as applied by carriers)

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Please be advised that we have been notified by our steamship partners of upcoming amendments to:

Bangkok Port Congestion Surcharge   (increase)

Surcharge changes have been filed in our GCL tariff to become effective on July 6, 2008.

These amendments are due to changes in costs and current market conditions.  

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Unless otherwise indicated in individual rate items a Bangkok Port Congestion Surcharge will be assessed on all containers as follows:

Loaded containers

$50.00/ 20’ container

$100.00/ 40’

$100.00/ 40’ H

$100.00/ 45’

for all shipments from and to the following Bangkok Port Terminals:

Port Authority of Thailand (PAT)

Thai Prosperity Terminal (TPT)

BMT Pacific

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Why We Need To End Charity Foundation Exemption

News out of a legal newspaper tells us Paul Allen has finished a ten year commitment to Radio Station KEXP, as agreed.  KEXP was once a UW student station called KCMU.  For a few million, they moved off UW campus, got free rent from Allen, and changed their name to KEXP to tie in with Allen's Experience Music Project theatre at the Seattle Center.  With deca-billionaire Allen's support, KEXP gained a 4 times increase in listeners at a cost of 16 times the budget.  Read the article, do the math.  Now, isn't is supposed to be you increase the budget 4 times to get 16 times the listeners?

I do not think there has been a single enterprise since Microsoft that Allen has succeeded at, except buying an election, literally, to overcome taxpayer resistance to funding a stadium where the taxpayers pay the billionaires, and Allen takes the profit.  Next, he managed to get the taxpayers to pay outrageous sums to build a little trolley car from his properties north of downtown to the retail core.

With his untouchable Charity Foundation, he can pay off the powers that be and have his wealth unmolested, protected at taxpayers expense, as long as the billions are invested in securities blessed by the powers that be. If tax exemption of the 501c3 and such innovations were eliminated, the foundations would disappear, their political influence evaporate, and soon their wealth would be spread around to those who are better at providing benefits to customers.  We would rebalance to that degree in favor of business covering consumers needs, instead of "charities" advancing political ends.

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Microsoft: How To Become a Billionare

Take a look at the growth of Microsoft, prox 1980 forward in dollars. Click to enlarge.

Take a look at growth of government employees, rough same time period. Click to enlarge, but consider from 1982 on.

Check out Apple as well, in the first chart, from the source.

So what do we see.  We see a coincidence, wherein the growth of government and growth in sales of Microsoft, track hand-in-hand from 1980 on.  Coincidence is not science, but I think it would not be too hard for someone in microsoft to report on how close microsoft sales track the growth of government.  A microsoft employee once told me the company gets 70% of its sales out of one box (microsoft works, and the majority of sales from government sources. What was happening?  As government grew exponentially, they handed every employee a legal copy of microsoft whatever.  Although these hires really had nothing to do, they must be kept busy.  Microsoft is most excellent make-work sandbox, especially since the internet.  See microsoft grow with windows, and again with MSIE.

So what?  Well, as microsoft became the govt OS of choice, those who ever more had to report to govt bought the software.  There was a downward spiral of necessity yet impracticality.  Microsoft was not working in a free market since the market was wildly distorted by its exponentially important customer: Uncle Sam.

Microsoft is notorious for poor security, and spam.  (Apple is not, more later.)  Since uncle Sam is MS #1 customer, the cost of security is borne by the taxpayers when US law enforcement is obliged to protect government interests against hackers.  What would have happened in the free market?

Apple is much more free market.  Look at the graph.  Although superior product in every way, their margins are narrower, since they have plenty of people who compete against them.   Although not perfect, Apple products are more secure, relative to microsoft.

Now, Bill Gate has made tens of billions from microsoft. Gates has put that money into a "charity" so it will be protected from taxes, and for his family, in perpetuity, at the expense of taxpayers who pay for "law enforcement.". At the same time, his father campaigns tirelessly for people with a mere 2 or 3 million to pass on to their kids to be taxed at 50% or more, destroying family businesses. He spends some of the protected "charity" money on putting chemicals in people brown and darker, and this is important as people around the world no longer trust US Govt to do so, since it was purposely poisoning US citizens in Tuskegee and Guatemala, two places they were caught red-handed..  His business partner, Paul Allen, is putting his "charity" money into putting chemicals into those peoples animals.

Never mind all that, their targets are on to them.  Let's go back to where they got their money in the first place.  By not having a free market to sell into, Gates never had to bother making his software secure.  Look at the profits of Apple, and the sales, and the profit margins: not so good if you actually make the software secure.  Resolved: Gate's billions that he has pocketed represents the money he conserved by making his software secure. Since his "customers" did not care, and others were obliged to buy the product, he harvested a tidy sum putting out a shoddy product. Some business phd candidate should study this, and get the facts. I suspect we would see, overall, Microsoft has been a net deficit on business in America. Excess wealth is always a function of working either with or against government policy.  It cannot be formed without market distortion from government policy, backed up by violence.

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Competition is Not Elimination

Competition is to "strive with" and combat is to "fight with."  Competition leads to more excellent division of labor, were people ever more specialize for the benefit of consumers.  Combat leads to destruction.  In a boom and bust economy, the distorted market signals sent by currency and interest manipulation result in mis-allocation of resources and malinvestment, for which there is no adjustment except bankruptcy and re-purposing assets on what excess capacity is formed.  In a free market there is rarely creative destructionism.

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Dead Aid

There is one of those celebrity-focused entertainment shows on TV called Charlie Rose. I was watching last night when a beautiful young African woman was discussing her book with the host.

Dambisa Moyo: Dead Aid: Why aid is not working and how there is another way for Africa, 208 pages, Allen Lane. www.deadaid.org

I am not here reviewing her book because I have not read it. I am reviewing the ideas from the book I heard on the show.

In essence she says we must end aid to Africa, and let markets do their work. She herself says she “plagiarizes” her ideas from Peter Bauer, indeed she dedicates the book to him.

Along with ending aid, Africa’s hope she avers are the free markets enjoyed by so many other countries wherein the population rose from poverty, China being the most recent and remarkable.

End aid and free markets, so far so good. But this puts her up against entertainers such as Bono, Peter Singer - the clown prince of Malthusianism holding a chair at Princeton, and emo-entrepreneur Jeffrey Sachs (he has the look down to the hairstyle. Sachs and emo both owe their beginnings in Washington DC in the late 1980’s, but most followers grew out of it).. All have been guests on Charlie Rose’s variety show.

Ms. Moyo dismisses the lot of them with the question: “Why should Bono be setting policy for Africa?” A most wonderful question. Indeed, Rose proposed to have her and those others on the show to work through precisely that question.

I’ll bet the show never happens. Charlie Rose has had all of those people on over the years when there have been others saying what Moyo says now. A google search shows Moyo being the first to present such ideas on the Charlie Rose show, yesterday. These ideas have been around for years, but entertainment shows want a comely Dambisa Moyo to present the ideas, not some Njoroge Wachai. And even more so, Njoroge Wachai has ideas that will never be aired.

Dambisa Moyo is a Zambian who worked at Goldman Sachs for eight years. Previously she consulted at the World Bank, and has a doctorate in economics from Oxford University and holds an MA from Harvard’s School of Government.

She questions why policies for the rest of the world are not applied to Africa? One of her Harvard professors was Jeffrey Sachs who ever proposes raising aid to Africa.

Moyo wondered to Rose how come at Harvard Sachs was always saying that Russia, Poland and Bolivia had to adapt to the free market, but when it comes to Africa, he advocates aid? Why is there a policy difference when it comes to Africa? She repeats questions from other interviews: Is he saying that Africa is fundamentally different from the rest of the world? Is he saying that Africa will never get it together? Is he saying there is something terribly wrong with this continent?

Well, I’d say not for all of Africa, because such policy prescriptions were never suggested to apartheid South Africa or white dominated Rhodesia. There are a different set of policies for black Africa. Aid is for Africans, not Afrikaaner. Could it just be racism? Probably. Most of the reviewers of her book say things like her prescriptions are optimistic. No problem for Russia, but optimistic when it comes to black Africans.

Now here is my problem with Moyo’s ideas: of course Bono ought not be setting policy for Africa, but neither should Peter Bauer, to whom her book is dedicated, also a white man.

Against aid Moyo is clear, but when Moyo says free markets, she means welfare-queen Goldman Sachs versions of the free market. Certainly this is a step up from the kleptocracy imposed and embraced in Africa, but Africans can do better than that. If they are going to make wrenching changes, then go to something good.

Do not adapt the Goldman Sachs/WorldBank method and deny us the good of African genius that would emerge in a true free market. Let the legal structure be formed in Africa by Africans and let the genius of Africa offer the rest of the world what Africa can offer. Moyo to my mind is not optimistic enough. Grounded in natural law, the free market would unleash African people to contribute what the world needs while relieving themselves of the burden of poverty.

Moyo is all for debt-relief. Debts assigned fraudulently are void. Relief leaves the imperialists in power. Repudiation is the solution to African debt crisis. We already know the imperialist game of getting third world kleptocrats to agree to electrification projects a country can never afford, then foreclosing on the country and tying up its wealth for exploitation and extraction.(Exactly the same process is use in USA by Americans on Americans with mortgages and student loans.) When African courts restore the rule of law and decree African debt is really the obligation of the few thousand Africans, educated at elite western schools, who betrayed their countries, the imperialism will stop. Let the IMF collect the billions from the likes of Ms Moyo and her cohort who got Africa into trouble in the first place.

I’d like to see Ms. Moyo, as a Zambian, tell the WorldBank she is personally responsible for Zambia’s debt, and they should collect the billions from her. But as she does not have it she will not pay, so they may write it off. If they wish to press the case in court, her defense should be there was fraud on both parties part, therefore the obligation is null and void. Imperialism could not stand it.

As Rose was winding up the interview he mentioned Peter Singer as one to have on a roundtable if Ms. Moyo were to return to Rose’s variety show. Peter Singer? The neo-Malthusian? (Now I know people will object, but the heart of Malthus is utilitarianism, and Singer is self-described as such.) Singer’s policies ostensibly would help Africa, but realistically would lead to much more misery.

Let's look at parts of an essay regarding foreign aid by Singer, and his salient question:

***In the end, what is the ethical distinction between a Brazilian who sells a homeless child to organ peddlers and an American who already has a TV and upgrades to a better one — knowing that the money could be donated to an organization that would use it to save the lives of kids in need?***

The answer of course is none. So Singer twists the knife:

***You shouldn't take that cruise, redecorate the house or get that pricey new suit. After all, a $1,000 suit could save five children's lives.***

Now Singer makes his call to action:

*** We can give to organizations like Unicef or Oxfam America. How much would we have to give one of these organizations to have a high probability of saving the life of a child threatened by easily preventable diseases?***

Well, here is the problem: Unicef, Oxfam, Save the Children have been at it for decades and are yet to save a child or inoculate against a preventable disease, in any meaningful way. Giving money does not good whatsoever.

Diseases outbreak from war, if smallpox does not get you because you are inoculated, then dysentery will. It is not a lack of inoculation, it is the presence of war. Countless inoculated children a dying because of imperialism. Countless of well fed recipients of aid are dying in refugee camps. Michael Maren outlined in his book the Road to Hell what many people intuit, donating to charity in Africa does no good. Singer addresses this point obliquely:

***Is it the practical uncertainties about whether aid will really reach the people who need it? Nobody who knows the world of overseas aid can doubt that such uncertainties exist. But Unger's figure of $200 to save a child's life was reached after he had made conservative assumptions about the proportion of the money donated that will actually reach its target.***

OK, send $200, and $20 gets to the starving child who gets properly fed, $180 to the Harvard educated Africans who steal the rest, or the warlords. Who cares about this $180 “tax” when the starving child is saved? The problem remains, the child dies anyway in a conflict. The wars are over control of the $180 to be stolen. It is the aid itself that is motivating the killing.

Moyo is on the right track saying "we Africans can compete with the rest of the world” and she is right to criticize African leaders who embrace the aid as much as the Western leaders who offer it. She says Africans can feed and inoculate their own kids without aid, and with Goldman Sachs style capitalism. This is no doubt true. But again, she sells Africans short when she does not go the next step: skip full integration into the Goldman Sachs capitalism, and go straight into free markets. Her model should be Hong Kong, not Iceland.

But let’s finish off Singer, not a serious thinker. Here is his payoff, making white liberals squirm at not sending more aid to Africa:

*** if we value the life of a child more than going to fancy restaurants, the next time we dine out we will know that we could have done something better with our money. If that makes living a morally decent life extremely arduous, well, then that is the way things are. If we don't do it, then we should at least know that we are failing to live a morally decent life — not because it is good to wallow in guilt but because knowing where we should be going is the first step toward heading in that direction.***

Singer is notorious for advocating infanticide. It is demonstrated aid leads to infant mortality in Africa. So his concern for dying children is bogus. Making white liberals squirm may lead to more aid to Africa. Singer specifically recommends a family of four with $50,000 income ought to send $20,000 to Africa.

That indeed would end the lives of many Africans.

Africans fed and medicated themselves before the white man showed up. Certainly a portion of the wealth I have is derived from empire, and specifically some at the expense of Africans. But African starvation and war is not from an African inability to make themselves wealthy, but from the all too human problem of elite's betraying their presumed inferiors, and the human frailty of following "leaders."

Me sending money back to Africa will lead to more starvation in Africa. Africans tiring of being betrayed by the elite, and insisting on self-rule (I recommend Gandhian nonviolence movements) will at once cut off any benefit I personally get from empire, and at the same time make all Africans more wealthy as they introduce new additions to the good, the true and the beautiful the world has to offer.

I am motivated here by greed: as Africans get more wealthy, I will get far more wealthy trading with Africans than empire ever delivered to me. I dislike empire because it delivers far too little to me.

Moyo recommends bond markets and the type of financial instruments that are the acid now melting down our economy. Njoroge Wachai says trade not aid. Wacha has the better argument. Moyo still wants to take advice from white men who have no interest in free markets. Africans are capable of so much more.

So the prescription is first do no harm. End aid. Second replace kleptocracy with a better system. Moyo’s recommendation for Goldman Sachs/ WorldBank capitalism will do no more good for Africa than it has done for us in the west. Repudiate the debt, do not beg for debt relief when you owe nothing to begin with. (In this way, also, I’ll personally end up paying for what empire delivered to me.)

Free markets provide innovation and deliver commodified goods and services more. better, cheaper, and faster, and only require whatever rule of law be grounded in natural law. Natural law of course belongs to mankind, so Africa needs no one’s permission or advice to adopt it, and being natural whatever legal system develops in the various parts of Africa will be as natural as curly hair on black Africans. And Africans will produce what the world is missing, what we are currently denied and do not yet see, those benefits suppressed by capitalism and aid. Those things free market advocate Bastiat said remain unseen until markets become free.

The evil that overwhelmed China and Russia last century was driven out and moved to the United States and Western Europe. The slogans of “workers in a workers state” and “perpetual struggle against capitalism” are replaced by “end global warming” and “global war on terror” (the latter being introduced by the neocons, Trotsky’s own children.) Africa should move up not follow us down.

Do not prescribe a system that failed in the West for Africa. Moyo may have gained many benefits in the Goldman Sachs capitalism, but she is arguing from the narrow basis of comparison. Give Africa back to the Africans. www.deadaid.org

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