It hit me when I was reading an article about Italy “refinancing” its debt by selling bonds. Bonds are debt.
The definition of a Ponzi Scheme, as I’m sure we all know ever since Madoff ran away with $50 billion that never existed, is paying investors off with money from other investors.
In financial newspapers and other smart guy publications with articles written by people with $100,000 MBA’s that aren’t worth 50 cents, they’ll call it refinancing, or restructuring, or recombobulating, or whatever. Doesn’t make a difference. When a country like Italy sells bonds in order to pay off other maturing bonds, they are by definition engaging in a Ponzi Scheme. They are taking money from new investors – the buyers of the new bonds – to pay off old investors – the holders of the old bonds.
The reason the financial magazines and websites and newspapers call it “refinancing” is that they don’t want us to freak out and pull our money out of Europe by calling it what it is, because this would mean the reset button would have to pushed all the sooner.
It’s not just Europe. America pays off interest it owes to China and Japan with money that it borrows from somewhere else. It pays off old treasury bills by selling new ones. There’s no real genius to it.
Why can’t they pay off with real money? Because they’re busy using that to blow up rocks in Afghanistan and Iraq with billion dollar precision missiles.
The entire Western economy is nothing but selling bonds to pay off bonds. Paying off investors with other investors’ money. The clock stops when they can no longer attract new investors.
That’s when 1.5 quadrillion dollars in global derivatives gets wiped off the books in one shot.
This is what we'll see in September on Wall Street.
In this post I make certain specific predictions that I do think will come true, but if they don’t, keep in mind that I am not a prophet. I’m just a guy trying to be intellectually honest with how I see things. Yes, I could be wrong, but hear me out.
If you’ve been following the blog so far, you get the pattern. I take one piece of news and interpret it through a Nationalist Jewish faith-based lens. Today was such a flurry of activity that I can’t possibly analyze it all, but we’ll take one story and I’ll build a prediction around it.
I caught this in Ma’ariv, which is the newspaper I prefer to read since they pubish Moshe Feiglin and I figure they deserve my traffic at least. That and I like their layout. And most of all they’re in deep debt and are about to go bankrupt along with the rest of the Israeli media, so I give them a pity read.
Here’s a link to the story in Hebrew for those who want to read it. The basic gist of it is that the Likud playmakers got together and told Netanyahu to annex Judea and Samaria if the Arabs next door declare a State.
I’m in favor of this not for tactical reasons. Tactically it will fail because no one on the globe would recognize such an annexation, as they don’t even recognize the annexation of the Golan or of Jerusalem. So it won’t accomplish the goal of taking back the momentum in the international arena. The only thing that would do that is speaking in the name of God to the world from the Temple Mount and broadcasting a massive Jewish prayer rally on the Mount live, telling the rest of the West that their founders, the Jews, are back and ready to take the lead. But that won’t happen yet.
The importance of this story is rather the flickering flame it represents, the whisperings of Jewishness that are left in the nation devoid of true Jewish leadership. The voices are there, and while powerless, we should draw strength from them and know that all they need is the right leader to give them power.
What I heard today on the radio, 95.5, Reshet Bet, live broadcast from the Knesset of Netanyahu’s speech and opposition leader Livni’s “rebuttal,” made me laugh and cry simultaneously. We have a clueless leader who has no idea what is about to happen, repeating the same exact nonsense about “true peace,” with a “partner” that everyone’s been talking about since 1991. Rebutted by a clueless opposition leader that represents absolutely nothing different whatsoever, complaining about how Netanyahu has no vision when she doesn’t either. We’re like a bunch of blinded Samsons armed with a huge army feeling around for the pillars of the building. We just need a Philistinian to show us the way.
Livni quoted Herzl about Zionism, who said that Zionism needs the support of the world to succeed. Blind Livni was yelling at blind Netanyahu that he’s losing the support of the world and Zionism is dying. She’s right. It’s dying and it’s gonna go out with a blaze in September to be replaced by something more in tune with reality: A Zionism that doesn’t need “the world,” but rather needs God. We tend to call this Judaism.
Anyway, back in the Knesset full of blind Samsons, both sides were arguing about how to win the world back, because we need the world, because we have to survive as a people. A people of what? Panderers to the world whining about our need to survive? Nowhere in that literally Godforsaken Knesset did anyone mention a word about God. Only how much we need the world. God’s people yelling at each other about how we’re going to win the world back on our side and survive, while the world looks at us and laughs.
I always say that we will not win the world over until we lead them. Right now we’re leading them whether we want to or not. They are paying attention to everything we do because we lead them. And right now we’re leading them, unbeknownst to them, to oblivion, because the West is about to commit a crime no one in the history of the world has ever committed.
The West is about to forcibly give God’s land to someone other than the Jewish people. Something tells me He (The Big He) won’t stand for it, since He promised us that no nation would ever have a political foothold in Israel except for us, ever, and so it has been throughout history since Moses left us and Joshua conquered this place. That’s not about to change any time soon. Just an educated guess from a man who really believes in the God of the Bible.
As we all know, the Palestinians are going to declare a “State” through the UN in 4 months. Call me gutsy, but this, as far as I can tell, banking on the fact that God doesn’t break his promises to the Jewish People ever, is what is going to happen immediately following:
A few days after the UN vote and declaration, the Western financial system will suddenly collapse. First the EU, triggered by Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal, all falling, dragging the rest of Europe with them. The next few days will see the rest of the West refusing to buy up American debt because they have no money, and the bond markets will collapse.
The New York Stock exchange will be in complete disarray, the United States government will have to default, and the DJIA will go down to about 5,000 in a matter of a few weeks.
While all this is happening, the Arabs will be crowding Israel’s border as we thrash around, alone, the Western World suddenly not giving a tweet about what’s going on in Israel because they’re busy catching falling traders from the roofs of buildings on Wall Street.
Some may see this as a “dark” prediction. But what it really is, is the beginning of a new world. A better one I believe.
So we’ll have to figure out what to do over here while the Old World leaves us and the new one takes form, with us as the only surviving “Western” country on the planet with any money whatsoever. We have 4 months to prepare. I’ll start by buying inverse financial ETF’s and put my money where my mouth is.
Two news pieces to review today from a faith based perspective. One is former Shabak (Israel Security Agency) head Yuval Diskin whining about how he’s scared for September, and that Israel will be in trouble if there is no movement on the diplomatic front. September, of course, is when the Arabs in Judea and Samaria will ask the UN General Assembly to recognize them as a State. Diskin is very worried about this, and so were the people in the room he was speaking to. Here’s why.
He was speaking to a group of enlightened people who all believe that we live in Israel to be a beacon of Western Civilization to the world, while in the meantime the rest of Western Civilization collapses all around us in a gluttony of debt and confusion. As the West collapses, they are unsure of how they will survive, of who will support Israel, because beyond enlightened Westernism, he and everyone else in that room have nothing.
The other piece of news I just saw today is that the American Postal service is collapsing and will need a taxpayer bailout above and beyond the $700 billion that was given to failing banks. This is just another rotting branch of what is the buckling American financial system.
Back to Diskin, he also said during his harrowing speech that Jewish terrorism is even worse than Palestinian terrorism, in his words. You can find this quote on page 3 of Thursday’s Israel Hayom newspaper in Hebrew. The question is, what Jewish terrorism is he talking about? The time when those two Jewish terrorists broke into that Arab home in Itamar and slit the throats of two parents, two children and a 3 month old baby, wanting to die holy deaths as martyrs?
Somehow I think he’s remembering his stories incorrectly. But seriously, he may be referring to the Jews who have prostrated themselves at the Temple Mount in a terroristic attempt to ignite a holy war. That’s just as bad I guess.
Why is Diskin and everyone in Tel Aviv University terrified about September? Because they know in their gut as we know in our minds that the West is just about bankrupt and losing its power to support itself, let alone support Israel. Israel may be the only financially sound Western Style democracy left on the planet, but that won’t stop a national collapse when what’s left of the Western World converges on Israel and recognizes Arab Palestine. When that happens, and America stops being a superpower, no one will support Israel, our little “Western Proxy,” and we’ll be doomed. That’s why they’re afraid.
The Jewish Perspective – Why we need not Fear September
I was listening to a lecture by Rabbi Uri Sherki the other day. I have a deep mistrust of almost all Rabbis of all shapes and sizes, because I believe that almost all of them are so stuck in the world of religion that they no longer understand that we are a nation. But Rabbi Sherki I trust because he understands history. He speaks like a national leader, not a religious one.
He interpreted Deuteronomy 32:21 in a way that made a lot of objective sense. The verse reads: “They angered me with non-Gods, riled me with nonsense. I will anger with with a non-Nation, rile them with a sickening People.”
For those who don’t know the context, this is Moses’s good bye poem to the Israelites. Rabbi Sherki interpreted it this way: A non-God is not an idol. Hebrew has a specific word for that. It’s “elil”. The word here, however, is lo-El, a phrase that is extremely rare in the Bible. “Lo-El” says Rabbi Sherki, is not an idol, but a philosophy of non-Godism. Not necessarily Atheism, but the philosophy that one’s opinion about God doesn’t really matter, as long as you play nice.
This is how the Jews see themselves as of right now. God is a nice thing to believe in, but the main thing is that you should be pragmatic, practical. It doesn’t matter if Gaza is yours. If it’s pragmatic, leave. If you say God gave it me, then you’re one of those religious zealots, a danger to society. In response to this non-God rhetoric, says God, I’m going to rile you with a non-Nation – not necessarily a nation that doesn’t exist, but a nation that exists insofar as you do not.
In other words, a nation that only exists to get rid of the Jews. A nation that plugs up the holes in our own national identity. The Palestinians don’t care about a State. They care about getting rid of the Jewish one. They are not a Nation. They are an anti-Nation. They only exist insofar as we are confused.
There is no need to fear September. When the non-State of Palestine is declared, the West will continue its freefall. With no one to protect us, we will have to fill the national void that the Palestinians are now occupying inside of us. The only thing to fill it with is ourselves, and of course, the Guider or our national history, God. The only One we need to Support Israel is the God of Israel.
When we all realize that we did not come back to Israel to be a Western enclave, but rather a Jewish one (not religious, but National), the void will be filled. When we realize that how we see God in our history does indeed matter, then we will be filled. When we realize who we are, the Palestinians will simply melt away. In all honesty, they will probably just leave voluntarily.
In order to come back to ourselves, we will need to be alone. We need not fear it, but embrace it. Bring on Palestinian Statehood. It’s just a name. An anti-nation can’t really accomplish anything, especially given the fact that two thirds of its budget is comprised of tax revenues that Israel actually gives it, and the other third is financial aid from the West.
Don’t fear being alone. When it happens, we’ll feel the pressure. When we do, we’ll realize that we’re not here to be the West. We’re here to lead the West. We don’t need the West to support Israel. We don’t need their aid, we don’t need their money, and we don’t need their vote in the UN. We don’t even need to BE in the UN. It’s not that without them, we’re doomed. Its the other way around. They’re collapsing. We’re growing. Without us, the West is doomed. Soon Europe and the US will be asking for loans from the Jewish people.
Spiritual and national growth, especially for the Jewish people who are the most stiff necked of any people on the planet, can only happen in isolation. But worry not. God is with us in our isolation. Better to be alone with Him than to be surrounded with friends like Barack Obama.
The Jewish Libertarian 