It's Christmas Time....Capitalism's ruin of children by sex trafficking

It's Christmas time....Capitalism ruin of children by sex trafficking

by Mark Maxey

"Capitalism ruins lives, as seen in the documentary on child sex trafficking, I AM JANE DOE," Mark  Maxey, Movement 4 People's Democracy National Coordinator states. "Backpage owners make $71 Million in 2012, $112.7 Million in 2013, $134.9 Million in 2014, and $153 Million in 2015, the documentary states."

$471.6 Million in 4 years, almost half a billion dollars. Some of that profit was made by pimps selling 12-year-olds - 17-year-old abducted girls. "Don't tell me capitalism and the lure of wealth does not ruin peoples lives," Maxey reiterated. "The owners of Backpage got wealthy beyond imagination while the lives of the little girls were drugged, raped (some 20 times a day), through online sex ads." 

Tonya spent night after night in different hotel rooms, with different men, all at the command of someone she once trusted. She was held against her will, beaten and made to feel like she had no other option at the time, all by the man she thought she loved.

When Tonya was 13, she met Eddie (a pseudonym) at the apartment she was living in with her mother in the Dallas, Texas, area. His estranged wife was the property manager. Tonya was classmates with Eddie’s stepdaughter, so the two would often see each other at the apartment and in the local grocery store. It was there that the two first exchanged numbers. This is how Tonya was first recruited for sex trafficking.

Rebecca Fairley Raney states in her story, Unseen Victims of Sex Trafficking, she says...
"A few years ago, social worker Steven Procopio was listening to a discussion among a group of middle-aged homeless men at a Boston health-care agency when he recognized that his group had a terrible secret in common: Many of these men, at some point in their lives, had been trafficked. For Procopio, the realization led to a wholesale shift in context for working with men and boys who suffer from complex trauma."

"Capitalism kills, and the by-products from Capitalism ruins people's lives," Maxey says. "We must in 2019 begin a revolution by CRUSHING CAPITALISM!"

Backpage at one time was owned by Village Voice Media. VVM had a long history of progressive anti-establishment reporting. When the owners of VVM were exposed as owners of Backpage what they did next, was typical of how capitalism corrupts people. 

The owners sold VVM but kept Backpage. No wonder, making $471 Million profit in 4 years, while destroying the lives of young girls. 

CRUSH CAPITALISM!

SUPPORT & RESEARCH below

https://www.newsweek.com/sex-ads-website-backpagecom-co-founder-charged-after-fbi-raid-876333 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2018/04/13/backpage-ceo-carl-ferrer-pleads-guilty-in-three-states-agrees-to-testify-against-other-website-officials/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f07d0ba33194

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backpage

It's Capitalism Part 2

It’s Capitalism – Part 2

by Mark Maxey

(PADEN, Okla.) Michael Roberts reports, the top 1% own 48% of all global personal wealth; 10% own 85%. He goes on to say, “This year’s report showed some interesting variations.  In the report, personal wealth is measured by the value of the property and financial assets after deducting any debt held by adults. During the 12 months to mid-2018, aggregate global wealth rose by $14 trillion to $317 trillion, representing a growth rate of 4.6%. This was sufficient to outpace population growth, so that wealth per adult grew by 3.2%, raising the global mean average wealth to $63,100 per adult, a record high (but remember this in nominal dollar terms, before inflation).”

Now, honestly, do you as an adult have $63,100 at your hands to spend right now?

Probably like many working class citizen, you do not. This is wealth inequality. At the hands of the capitalists.

What does the term capitalist mean? In the past, it was synonymous with Industrial Owner, Elitist, Robber Barons.  A definition of Robber Baron is a person who has become rich through ruthless and unscrupulous business practices. Remember the term in the 1920’s Shantytowns or Company towns.

One must watch the CORPORATION video to fully understand the negative impact corporations have on individual working class folks. You can listen also to the False Flag podcast on the same subject. Some research notes with links can be found here also.

Some may ask what a capitalist is. It is a wealthy person who uses the money to invest in trade and industry for profit in accordance with the principles of capitalism. True capitalism needs a competitive market. Without competition, monopolies exist, and instead of the market setting the prices, the seller is the price setter, which is against the conditions of capitalism.

Sounds good huh? But consider the report by Michael Roberts. If the top 1% own 48% of all global personal wealth; 10% own 85%, then obviously the “free” competitive market is held by either the top 1% or the top 10%.  Not the working class.

Who are the working class you may ask. The working class (or labouring class) comprises the people employed for wages, especially in manual-labour occupations and industrial work. So the owners only desire profit. They do not even consider the risk to the environment for their profit. They easily move American Union held jobs overseas where the pay is much cheaper. And the “working class” especially the Union workers, are left with no jobs. The company owner does not care.

The wealth inequality gap has grown so much wider in the past forty years. CNN in 2017 reported, “while wages for low- and middle-income workers have begun to recover, wealth inequality has still climbed to new heights, according to a new survey from the Federal Reserve which conducts a checkup of the nation’s finances every three years.”

The income inequality gap is higher now in our society than any other generation in history. Jaffe says, “Of course, as Rebecca Burns writes, “it’s much easier to predict the future when you have the power and money to shape it.”” As long as this gap is huge, the worker remains in slavery with their CEO. Michael J. Moore in the Winter 2016 NEW POLITICS magazine speaks of this. “Of course, economic inequality raises concern among liberals, social democrats, and socialists alike. For all see in it an ethical problem, one of unfairness, of greed, of unequal control and power. But the new explosion of wealth inequality is much larger in scale than in the previous Gilded Age. It poses different questions with respect to the transformation of capitalism and the classical models and assumptions within which left politics typically operate.”

Economic inequality leads to broader, more general forms of power and control. Despite the dynamic nature of capitalism, the persistence of oligarchy and elite control should still be seen as the central, salient feature of modern society. To successfully fight this oligarchy is to move more LEFT, such as Democratic Socialism. As well common workers have an ally with one of the original workers union in America. The International Workers of the World, IWW (www.iww.org ) can assist in organizing, As well grassroots organizations, Our Revolution (Sen. Bernie Sanders spin off group) Our Democracy, The Young Turks, Black Lives Matter, and MPD (www.movement4peoplesdemocracy.org ) are all groups which can help amass and organize with breaking up these oligarchies,  The early muckrakers left a formidable change for investigative journalists,

The model for current work places has changed from my own understanding as I learned in the mid to late 1970’s. The whole workplace model has evolved with a concise plan that has taken over 40 years to implement. Many younger so-called knowledge workers no longer toil nine to five in a regular office but spend days and nights in front of their laptops at home or in co-working spaces. Part of the economics of the business model began to change in the 1970’s with the work done by Milton Freidman.  Milton was the new father of a new economic model in the 60’s through the 80’s which in turn set in motion a drastic change that totally tilted workers rights.  You can read more on Milton here.

The America I knew, back in the late sixties and early seventies is not the America of today.  “The change took place in the 1970s. There are a lot of reasons for it,” Noam Chomsky says. “One of the underlying factors, discussed mainly by economic historian Robert Brenner, was the falling rate of profit in manufacturing. There were other factors. It led to major changes in the economy — a reversal of several hundred years of progress towards industrialization and development that turned into a process of de-industrialization and de-development. Of course, manufacturing production continued overseas very profitably, but it’s no good for the workforce.”

Many of my peers nowhere come close to where their parents were financially at the same age. The economy has depleted their savings, no retirement funds. No vacation or weekend getaway property. Today’s Generation X and the Millennials are faced with a stark reality of being broke. It was in the 1970’s when Milton Friedman’s economic plan was put into place by the extreme fascist right-wing. This is the context I use fascism. Benito Mussolini consolidated control over the Fascist movement in 1919 with the founding of the Fasci italiani di combattimento, whose opposition to socialism he declared: We declare war against socialism, not because it is socialism, but because it has opposed nationalism.” Fascism further means a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism. Does this sound familiar? “But Friedman was more than an academic. He was an advocate for, and popularizer of, a radical right-wing economic ideology,” Bernie Sander said.   “With all due respect to the late Milton Friedman, his economic program is nothing more than a wish list for the greediest, the most monied interests in our society. At the same time that this ideology is supported by the rich and powerful–except when they’re lining up in Washington for their welfare checks–this same ideology is almost unanimously opposed to working families and middle-class people across this country.”

The Republican right wing establishment has been dismantling our American dream. This has been going on for over forty years. Cold calculated robbing the working class of any opportunities. All the while lining their pockets from their corporate sponsors. Representing the corporations, capitalists, and not the citizens, the workers. Neither parties are the answer. It will have to be something new.

The lyrics from Jimmy Lafave poignantly says it best, a Worn Out American Dream. The changes to corporate America has caused this nightmare. Union busting tactics is another nightmare. The conglomeration of big business has caused it too. Toss in offshore accounts and overseas industrialization is a culprit too. Loss of jobs, reduced pay and diminishing benefits has decimated the working class.  When the top Ten companies represent the retail market, I can tell you the workers don’t share in the profits.

Michael Yates, in Monthly Review said, “Wages have changed considerably along with the cost of living in the past forty years. Others are not so fortunate. In 2010, more than 7 million people had incomes less than 50 percent of the official poverty level of income, an amount equal to $11,245, which in hourly terms (2,000 hours of work per year) is $5.62. About one-quarter of all jobs in the United States pay an hourly wage rate that would not support a family of four at the official poverty level of income.”

Michael D. Yates wrote for Monthly Review: It is by now well known that significant and growing economic inequality is a central feature of the U.S. economy, as previous articles in Monthly Review have shown.  However, the same is also the case for much of the rest of the world. Inequality arises in other countries for reasons similar to those in the United States, but each nation has its own history, along with widely divergent economic and political structures.

TO BE CONTINUED…Part 3 next….

It's Capitalism

by Mark Maxey

(PADEN, OK) “If everyone who identifies as a leftist, were to receive a call today that the revolution started tomorrow, 9 am, no one would know what to do,” Mark Maxey, National Coordinator for Movement 4 People’s Democracy (MPD) said. “The left is fractionated, too broad with no clear plan.”

The answer lies with Crush Capitalism, Maxey reflected. The root cause of 100% of our global issues is a direct path to capitalism.

“War, lack of world peace, wage disparity, union busting, denying human rights, environmental ills, class dividing are all products of capitalism," Maxey stated.

“In the 1970s as a 13-year-old middle school student, in California, at that time the Chicano Moratorium was happening, Joseph Hancock, Director of Labor Today said. “The Moratorium, also progressed by our teachers and students rallying against the Vietnam War.” The protests were to bring to awareness that military recruiting/drafting was affecting more persons of color than the whites.”

Socialist Review article by Sally Campbell looks directly into this issue. In the article, it states, “The century since the slaughter in the First World War has been littered with endless more bloody wars. Sally Campbell argues the drive to war is not accidental but inherent in the logic of capitalism.” Sally goes on to say, “This minority of the capitalist class, according to Kautsky [Karl Kautsky, a leading member of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD)], had managed to convince the majority of industrial capitalists that they could only defend their interests in the colonies — raw materials and labor — through war and empire-building. In fact, said Kautsky, the capitalists of different nations could agree peacefully to divide up the world and exploit it.”

The only men who benefit from wars are those with a political agenda.

Divide and Conquer, or the American form, Colonization, is a tool to divide the classes as well as wedge a potential threat of extinction within the races.

Journalist, and National Coordinator for MPD, Mark Maxey, wrote on this very subject late fall of 2018. “Early reformers used their religious beliefs to justify their Manifest Destiny perspective. It overflowed into Congress, which passed Manifest Destiny-themed bills. Indigenous people, meanwhile, were on the receiving end of this religious zealotry. Rape, abuse, kidnap, murder, and genocide were the end results for them. The recent quoting of Biblical scripture by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to justify the stealing of immigrant children from their parents shows that this ideology is still very much alive among at least some sectors of the U.S. government.”

As the long-time U.S. Indian Service teacher and agent Albert H. Kneale noted in his 1950 autobiography Indian Agent, the U.S. Government “went on the assumption that any Indian custom was, per se, objectionable, whereas the customs of whites were the ways of civilization.”

Capitalism is still playing into the mythology of white Manifest Destiny, which goes back to the earliest colonial settlements. Trump’s policies are aimed at stoking the racist anger and resentment of his mass base, but they reflect the interests of the same oligarchy that Sen. Bernie Sanders assailed in his bid for the presidency. In every way, the current administration’s policies show favoritism to those at the top and seek any way possible to divide those outside the ranks of the super-wealthy.

Trump and his team’s “law and order” framework is the same one articulated by President Richard Nixon in the late 1960s and more subtly invoked by Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton as they ramped up the drug war and fueled massive prison expansions during their times in office. We jail and separate families at the border to deter illegal immigration just as we jail and separate poor families within our country because they can’t afford bail or proper legal representation.

It is through the inequalities of power and wealth, capitalism nurtures economic inequality alongside equality under the law.

TruthOut, published a similar story in 2018.  Richard Wolff stated Economic Update: Capitalism Breeds Inequality, in his article. The audio article stated, This week’s episode discusses how globalization has worsened inequality and injustice, how Quebec’s doctors are rejecting pay increases, the significance of the YMCA workers’ strike in Chicago, and the growing Japanese co-op movement.

Paul Farrell’s 2015 article for Market Watch, said, Capitalism is killing America’s morals, our future. In 2013 Six theses were written on the same subject of how capitalism quashes human rights.

In a 1999 class presentation, from a Sociology class at the University of Regina,  says the class division is one of the exponents of capitalism. For Marx, the analysis of social class, class structures and changes in those structures are key to understanding capitalism and other social systems or modes of production. In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels comment that the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Tithi Bhattacharya and Lance Selfa reported in International Socialist Review. They stated, “This conversation about race, class, and capitalism obviously needs to develop more broadly…”

So capitalism seems to be the ONE item that the left can rally around to crush to bring about a more socialist world. Crush capitalism is the ROUTE for any true revolution for the left.

If the left, rallied around crushing capitalism, then most of our societal problems would disappear completely. Start the new year, 2019 by crushing capitalism, then the left is truly leading the RIGHT revolution.

THE CAPITALIST MANIFESTO: LET POOR PEOPLE DIE

Above Photo: From Nationofchange.org

THE CAPITALIST MANIFESTO: LET POOR PEOPLE DIE

By Paul Buchheit, Nationofchange.org

Market-happy illusionists keep spouting nonsense about a healthy economy built on today’s capitalism.

The original Capitalist Manifesto was a 1958 book by economist Louis O. Kelso and philosopher Mortimer J. Adler. In their view of a properly conducted democratic capitalist society, a sort of modern-day Homestead Act was envisioned, in which all Americans would participate in the “capitalist revolution” of growing stock portfolios. This would be possible because of great technologies (energy in the 1950s, AI now) that would allow all of us, in Aristotelian and Jeffersonian property-owning ways, to become ‘free’ to pursue the arts & sciences and to enjoy more leisure time. Today, this form of democratic capitalism could be realized through the Employee Stock Ownership Plan promoted by the “Just Third Way” movement.

Just one problem. Apparently, in 1958, economists and philosophers were not able to foresee the unlimited greed of the relatively few people with the power to manipulate the strings of the capitalist state. They thought the newly productive post-war capitalists were being cheated by workers who depended on socialist strategies to even the score. But the opposite has happened. Average Americans have been cheated out of the gains from technological productivity. Just in the past ten years in our world of big business, over $30 trillion – nearly a third of our nation’s TOTAL current wealth – has gone to the richest 10% of Americans. Yet market-happy illusionists like the Wall Street Journal keep spouting nonsense about a healthy economy built on today’s capitalism.

The root of the problem is the condemnation of anything ‘social’ as un-American, which has helped modern-day capitalists to justify their belief in individual gain by any means. Wealthy conservatives know that social responsibility might take away some of their riches by providing opportunities and jobs and a decent standard of living for all Americans. In their minds, the poor have only themselves to blame for being poor, and for dying. But it is capitalism that is killing them. The Capitalist Manifesto has been twisted into an assault on poor people.

Politicians And Plutocrats Stand By As People Are Poisoned

What is the capitalist incentive to clean the water in Flint, Michigan? Little money is to be made, so little effort is made to save lives. People are DYING because there’s no market for profit-making.

From a global perspective, the dangers of poisoning and death from pollution are magnified many times over. There were 1.5 billion people in 1900, there are 7.6 billion now, and 11 billion are anticipated by the year 2100. Scientists predict dangerous increases in respiratory and infectious diseases, malaria, meningitis, typhus, and cholera. And global food shortages. Instead of working in a cooperative manner to encourage self-sufficient small farms around the globe, industrial behemoths like Monsanto and DuPont are positioning themselves for a chemical assault on our food supplies.

Millions Are Without Health Care – For Many Americans That Means Death

Over 30 million Americans are without health insurance in our business-driven, capitalist society. The American Journal of Public Health flatly states, “Numerous investigators have found an association between uninsurance and death…Our estimate for annual deaths attributable to uninsurance among working-age Americans is more than 140% larger than [the Institute of Medicine’s 2002 study].”

One of the most disturbing examples of individual disdain for society is the opioid epidemic. Purdue Pharmaceutical executives admitted to the felony charge of lying about their product’s addictive qualities, but no one went to jail. In a six-year period to follow, other Big Pharma dealers, including AmerisourceBergen and McKesson, distributed nearly a billion pills to West Virginia alone.

Social responsibility especially implies caring for our young people and the elderly. For the latter, see below. For young adults, one of every five deaths in 2016 involved opioid addiction. The great majority of heroin users started with prescription painkillers. But our social responsibility seems to dissipate under the cloud of individual-centered capitalism. Despite a doubling of opioid overdose deaths in six years, millions of people live in counties without a licensed provider of the drugs needed for treatment.

As social beings, we empathize with the opioid sufferers, but in a profit-driven world in which the victims rather than the predators are blamed for their own bitter misfortunes, the empathy is muted. Social consciousness would correct that. But that won’t happen as long as the media is promoting individual (human and corporate) gains over collective, cooperative efforts to restore our country to health.

Bankruptcies Are Surging, And So Are Suicides

The percentage of elderly Americans filing for bankruptcy is three times what it was in 1991. Individualism over social consciousness is much to blame. A study by the Social Science Research Network found that the shift from employer and government pensions to individuals has increased risk while exacerbating stress. Meanwhile, much of the stress for working people comes from the 40-year stagnation in wages. “Deaths of despair” from drugs and alcohol and suicide are on the rise. For those who make up the poorest 60% of America, premature deaths are up 20 percent since the turn of the century, and the economic suicide rate has risen dramatically.

Life expectancy for the poorest classes in America is now equivalent to that of Sudan or Pakistan.

Yet business-minded conservatives are trying to make it harder for these most vulnerable of Americans to survive. Medicaid work requirements and drug testing are two of the proposed or implemented hardships reserved just for poor people.

The True Meaning Of Socialism

In the worst moments of the hurricanes that keep hitting American cities, members of government and business and military and especially the public abandon thoughts of personal gain and dedicate themselves to the needs of fellow human beings. People around the nation pitch in, through their labors and donations; neighbors and first responders rescue trapped victims; the Red Cross and other charitable organizations, including many local churches, deliver food and supplies and medicine; GoFundMe initiatives are set up; the business community donates their goods and services; government officials remain focused on the people they were elected to represent; even the military contributes with rescue helicopters. No one seems to care about the skin color or religion or politics of those in need.

It takes a tragedy to reveal the true meaning of socialism. It’s not government control, but rather people controlling their own lives through empathy and cooperation.

So, You Want To End Capitalism? Here's How.

SO, YOU WANT TO END CAPITALISM? HERE’S HOW.

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG Radio.

There is a rising awareness that capitalism is at the root of many of the crises that we face, from the economy to the environment and climate change to the absence of democracy. We need to end capitalism to solve these crises. We speak with Emily Kawano, coordinator of the United States Solidarity Economy Network, about how we are changing the economy right now, what the end of capitalism (as a dominant part of the economy) would look like and how to answer those who worry that it can’t or shouldn’t be done. Plus, we cover current news. 

For an in-depth discussion of why we can no longer afford a fossil fuel economy, subscribe to Clearing the FOG on Patreon and receive our bonus show, Thinking it Through. Visit Patreon.com/ClearingtheFOG.

Guest:
Emily Kawano is Co-Director of the Wellspring Cooperative Corporation, which is seeking to create an engine for new, community-based job creation in Springfield, Massachusetts. Wellspring’s goal is to use anchor institution purchases to create a network of worker-owned businesses located in the inner city that will provide job training and entry-level jobs to unemployed and underemployed residents through worker-owned cooperatives. Kawano also serves as Coordinator of the United States Solidarity Economy Network. An economist by training, Kawano served as the Director of the Center for Popular Economics from 2004 to 2013. Prior to that, Kawano taught economics at Smith College, worked as the National Economic Justice Representative for the American Friends Service Committee and, in Northern Ireland, founded a popular economics program with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

Crashing currency chaos spreads across the Global South

Cryptocurrencies show promise as economies stumble under sanctions and other pressures

Cryptocurrencies show promise as economies stumble under sanctions and other pressures

By PEPE ESCOBAR

The Iranian rial: crash. The Turkish lira: crash. The Argentine peso: crash. The Brazilian real: crash. There are multiple, complex, parallel vectors at play in this wilderness of crashing currencies. Turkey’s case is heavily influenced by the bubble of easy credit created by European banks.

Argentina’s problem is mostly to do with the neoliberal austerity of President Mauricio Macri’s government admitting it won’t be able to fulfill payment targets agreed with the IMF less than three months ago.

Iran’s has to do with harsh United States sanctions imposed after the Trump administration’s unilateral pullout from the Iran nuclear deal.

Brazil’s has to do with what the Goddess of the Market considers anathema: a victory by the imprisoned Lula (former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva) or his appointed candidate in the presidential election next October.

This is a serious currency crisis affecting key emerging markets. Three of these – Brazil, Argentina and Turkey – are G20 members, and Iran, absent external pressure, would have everything to qualify as a member. Two – Iran and Turkey – are under US sanctions while the other two, at least for the moment, are firmly within Washington’s orbit.

Now, compare it with currencies that are gaining against the US dollar: the Ukrainian hryvnia, the Georgian lari and the Colombian peso. Not exactly G20 heavyweights – and all of them also inside Washington’s influence.

Behold the axis of gold

Independent analysts from Russia and Turkey to Brazil and Iran largely agree that the overwhelming factor in the current currency crisis is a reversing of the US Federal Reserve quantitative easing (QE) policy.

As investment banker and risk manager Jim Rickards noted, QE for all practical purposes represented the Fed declaring a currency war against the whole planet – printing US dollars at will on a trillion-dollar scale. That meant mounting US debt was devalued so foreign creditors were paid back with cheaper US dollars.

Now, the Fed has dramatically reversed course and is all-out invested in quantitative tightening (QT).

No more liquid dollars flooding emerging markets such as Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia or India. US interest rates are up. The Fed stopped buying new bonds. The US Treasury is issuing new bond debt. Thus QT, combined with a global, targeted trade war against major emerging markets, spells out the new normal: the weaponization of the US dollar.

It’s no wonder that Russia, China, Turkey, Iran – nearly every major regional player invested in Eurasia integration – is buying gold with the aim of progressively getting out of US dollar hegemony. As JP Morgan himself coined it over a century ago, “Gold is money. All else is credit.”

Every currency war though is not about gold; it’s about the US dollar. Yet the US dollar now is like an inscrutable visitor from outer space, dependent on massive leverage; a galaxy of dodgy derivatives; the QE printing scheme; and gold not being awarded its true importance.

That is about to change. Russia and China are heavily invested in buying gold. Russia has dumped US Treasuries en masse. And what the BRICS had been discussing since the mid-2000s is now in motion; the drive to build alternative payment systems to the US dollar-subordinated SWIFT.

Germany appears to be coming around to the idea. If that does happen, it could possibly lead the way towards Europe redefining itself geopolitically in terms of its military and strategic independence.

When and if that happens, arguably at some point in the next decade, US foreign policy configured as an avalanche of sanctions may be effectively neutralized.

It will be a long, protracted affair – but some elements are already visible, as in China using US trading markets to help the emergence of a wider platform transference. After all key emerging markets cannot wiggle out of the US dollar system without full yuan convertibility.

And then there are nations contemplating the creation of their own cryptocurrencies. Digital finance is the way to go.

Some nations, for instance, could use a cryptocurrency denominated in SDRs (special drawing rights) – which is, in practice, the world money as designated by the IMF. They could back their new digital coins with gold.

Mired-in-crisis Venezuela is at least showing the way. The “sovereign bolivar” started circulating last week – pegged to a new cryptocurrency, the petro, which is worth 3,600 sovereign bolivars.

The new cryptocurrency is already posing a fascinating question: “Is the petro a forward sale of oil or an external debt backed by oil?” After all, BRICS members are buying a large chunk of the 100 million petros – confident that they are backed by a surefire reserve, the Ayacucho block of the Orinoco Oil Belt.

Venezuelan economist Tony Boza nailed it when he stressed the peg between the petro and international oil prices: “We are not going to be subject to the value of our currency being determined by a website, the oil market will determine it.”

A Persian cryptocurrency?

And that brings us to the key question of the US economic war on Iran. Persian Gulf traders are virtually unanimous: the global oil market is tightening, fast, and it will run short in the next two months.

Iran oil exports will likely drop to just over 2 million barrels a day in August. Compare it to a peak of 3.1 million barrels a day in April.

It looks like a lot of players are folding even before Trump’s oil sanctions kick in.

It also looks like the mood in Tehran is “we will survive,” but it’s not exactly clear the Iranian leadership is really aware of the nature of the incoming tempest.

The latest Oxford Economics report seems pretty realistic: “We expect the sanctions to tip the economy back into recession, with GDP now seen contracting by 3.7% in 2019, the worst economic performance in six years. For 2020, we see growth of 0.5%, driven by a modest recovery in private consumption and net exports.”

 The authors of the report, Mohamed Bardastani and Maya Senussi, say “the other signatories to the original deal [the JCPOA, especially the EU-3] have yet to spell out a clear strategy that would allow them to circumvent US sanctions and continue importing Iranian oil.”

The report also admits the obvious: there will be no internal push in Iran for regime change (that’s a thing only happening in warped US neocon minds) while “both reformers and conservatives are united in defying the sanctions.”

But defying how? Tehran has not come up with a win-win roadmap capable of being sold to anyone – from JCPOA members to energy importers such as Japan, South Korea and Turkey. That would represent true Eurasia integration. Just having Ayatollah Khamenei saying Iran is ready to pull out of the JCPOA is not good enough.

What about a Persian cryptocurrency?

http://www.atimes.com/article/crashing-currency-chaos-spreads-across-the-global-south/