Monday, March 11, 2013
Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Blowing Bubbles into Housing, Bonds, Stock Market, Bank Reserves
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Root Cause Analysis: Is The Federal Reserve the Top of the Vampire Pyramid Known as the New World Order?
Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, 100 years ago after 3, repeat THREE Senators passed the law on December 24, 1913.
So what was he warning about? The Vampire Squid banking cartels and their organized crime syndicates. Not only was the threat real and deadly in 1913, it is real and deadly now.
So who is talking about this credit and debt based ponzi scheme? Keep watching.
Think currency wars is an overstatement by a bunch of bloggers and Internet losers? How about the Pentagon?
Hypothetical and extreme but real world events are not far from this now. Don't you think it is about time the Federal Reserve is audited, investigated, and shutdown?
Friday, March 8, 2013
Confessions of George H. W. Bush, 50 Years After the Kennedy Assassination
In the year 2013, we are "celebrating" the 50th anniversary of the assassination and government cover up of John F. Kennedy. |
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered."
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies..."
- Thomas Jefferson
“The bold effort the present bank has made to control the government, the distress it had wantonly produced...are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American people should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like it.”
“If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution by morning.”
- Andrew Jackson
Isn't it about time we understand and acknowledge the truth behind both of these crimes? What is the connection with the Bush dynasty? Or should we wait for another scientifically engineered economic crisis or another false flag event such as the 9/11 attacks? It's up to you.
DARK LEGACY (film) from NM on Vimeo.
George Sr. recently got out of the hospital and had a reunion. The Twisted Times Daily sat down with the family and asked a few questions.
<Add Bush Jr. audio-video here>
Thursday, March 7, 2013
More Hope Than Tragedy? Warren Grills Treasury About HSBC Drug Cartel Money Laundering
Start here.
Now, let's look back in time to the Opium Wars with China in the 1600's.
Now watch this news show about financial fraud and scandal. Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert BRILLIANTLY describe parts of the Fourth Riech that is taking over the world economies. He describes part of the conspiracy to drive our globe into war and depression. Have patience, they like to tell funny stories along with their news commentary. Kind of like Bill Maher or Jon Stewart, only more focused on the financial fraud.
So who is on top of the financial house of cards that Warren is investigating? That's what you need to find out.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
TwistedPolitix: You Vote With Your Dollars and Your Time, Not Your Ballot
You Vote With Your Dollars and Your Time, Not Your Ballot
Don't you think it would make more sense for each of us to look at where we spend our hard earned time and money as consumers, citizens, employees, and parents.
If you are taxes are going up is it because you live in a broke municipality or because yours is willing to pay more to the bankers via subsidies and bailouts?
If the Federal Reserve and its charter members have been managing the quality of our economic lives by heavily influencing the money supply, redlining some while bankrolling others, don't you think it's time for there to be some competitive data and education about what the statistics mean?
How else can you make informed decisions? Keen observation via the propaganda machine owned by the same individuals and institutions? Ha ha.
Get an education. Get a life. Join the Peace Revolution.
Can data and statistics solve this crisis?
Last time we learned after the fact that banks had an inside scoop on the crash and made out like bandits and not a single ringleader went to jail. Now many of the people, cities, municipalities, states, and countries around the world are hurting economically and psychologically. This is not a time of peace. It is a time of war and if we do not stop what is going on, it will continue another 100 years.
Our current economic system runs on data and a set of lies. Most of us are not aware of the lies and aren't educated enough to see through the lies, let alone to do the math, propose solutions, debate them, and take action.
So we get pummeled every cycle and life gets harder and harder.
With better population data, visual demographics, visual census, economic, weather data etc, we can see what is really wrong with our economy. Local citizens should see how their communities look from a data perspective and they should learn why, as well as who makes the decisions about how their life is socially engineered.
Who Will Be Your Next Dictator? Ask the Illuminati It's a new version of an old game.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
How Can Hemp Restore America? New Farm Bill May Spark Hemp for Energy
Federal Farm Bill Includes Provision Allowing Research on Hemp http://t.co/O7YodrHzyv
— Cannabis Culture (@CannabisCulture) January 29, 2014
Whether you are a liberal Democrat, or a moderate Republican, a progressive independent, an Occupy protester, a social security recipient, a US veteran, a farmer, a work from home mom, an unemployed dad, or a Silicon Valley software developer, you should be behind the movement to legalize or decriminalize non-narcotic industrial hemp.
If you are against hydraulic fracking, you should be for Hemp for Energy.
If you are against BigOil and their energy wars, you should be for Hemp for Energy.
If you are against the Keystone XL pipeline deal, you should be for Hemp for Energy.
If you are against polluting the earth, you should be for Hemp for Energy.
If you are against big government, you should be for Hemp for Energy.
If you are against the United Nations Agenda 21, you should be for Hemp for Energy.
If you are against the high cost of medical treatment, you should be for Hemp for Energy.
If you are against the high cost of gasoline, you should be for Hemp for Energy.
Hemp biomass, biofuels, and plastics could be produced to run our diesel trains, our internal combustion cars, diesel cargo trucks, and some airplanes.
Domestically grown hemp could be used to produce many of the products that are currently fabricated from imported petroleum. Reducing the import of foreign oil would improve the economic equation for calculating GDP whereas Imports would decrease.
Domestically grown hemp would reduce the need to import oil from more and more expensive and dangerous locations, such as the Arctic circle, Nigeria, the Middle East, or from Canada's tar sands.
That would mean fewer wars and fewer deaths due to military conflict. It would mean a reduction in pollution caused by oil spills, such as that of BP in the Gulf of Mexico.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
70 Years After World War II, The New York Times Still Denies Banking and Industrial Involvement in Holocaust
Read this article from the NYT. Then ask yourself, who funded the killing camps? Where did the money come from to fund Hitler? Were these camps setup in secrecy like the FEMA camps built in the US between 1980-2012? Are there any connections between the 9/11 attacks, the 2008 financial crisis, and the Holocaust?
Perhaps you can begin your investigation by looking at the lawsuits in Europe against the insurance companies that are mentioned below.
THE NEW YORK TIMES NEWS ANALYSIS The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/Collection of Eugenia Hochberg Lanceter A group of Jewish women at the entrance to the Brody ghetto in Eastern Galicia, 1942. The sign is written in German, Ukrainian and Polish.
2 more images
By ERIC LICHTBLAU Published: March 03, 2013
THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe.
What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.
The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler's reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.
The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.
"The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought," Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data.
"We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was," he said, "but the numbers are unbelievable."
The documented camps include not only "killing centers" but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named "care" centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel.
Auschwitz and a handful of other concentration camps have come to symbolize the Nazi killing machine in the public consciousness. Likewise, the Nazi system for imprisoning Jewish families in hometown ghettos has become associated with a single site - the Warsaw Ghetto, famous for the 1943 uprising. But these sites, infamous though they are, represent only a minuscule fraction of the entire German network, the new research makes painfully clear.
The maps the researchers have created to identify the camps and ghettos turn wide sections of wartime Europe into black clusters of death, torture and slavery -centered in Germany and Poland, but reaching in all directions.
The lead editors on the project, Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean, estimate that 15 million to 20 million people died or were imprisoned in the sites that they have identified as part of a multivolume encyclopedia. (The Holocaust museum has published the first two, with five more planned by 2025.)
The existence of many individual camps and ghettos was previously known only on a fragmented, region-by-region basis. But the researchers, using data from some 400 contributors, have been documenting the entire scale for the first time, studying where they were located, how they were run, and what their purpose was.
The brutal experience of Henry Greenbaum, an 84-year-old Holocaust survivor who lives outside Washington, typifies the wide range of Nazi sites.
When Mr. Greenbaum, a volunteer at the Holocaust museum, tells visitors today about his wartime odyssey, listeners inevitably focus on his confinement of months at Auschwitz, the most notorious of all the camps.
But the images of the other camps where the Nazis imprisoned him are ingrained in his memory as deeply as the concentration camp number - A188991 - tattooed on his left forearm.
In an interview, he ticked off the locations in rapid fire, the details still vivid.
First came the Starachowice ghetto in his hometown in Poland, where the Germans herded his family and other local Jews in 1940, when he was just 12.
Next came a slave labor camp with six-foot-high fences outside the town, where he and a sister were moved while the rest of the family was sent to die at Treblinka. After his regular work shift at a factory, the Germans would force him and other prisoners to dig trenches that were used for dumping the bodies of victims. He was sent to Auschwitz, then removed to work at a chemical manufacturing plant in Poland known as Buna Monowitz, where he and some 50 other prisoners who had been held at the main camp at Auschwitz were taken to manufacture rubber and synthetic oil. And last was another slave labor camp at Flossenbürg, near the Czech border, where food was so scarce that the weight on his 5-foot-8-inch frame fell away to less than 100 pounds.
By the age of 17, Mr. Greenbaum had been enslaved in five camps in five years, and was on his way to a sixth, when American soldiers freed him in 1945. "Nobody even knows about these places," Mr. Greenbaum said. "Everything should be documented. That's very important. We try to tell the youngsters so that they know, and they'll remember."
The research could have legal implications as well by helping a small number of survivors document their continuing claims over unpaid insurance policies, looted property, seized land and other financial matters.
"HOW many claims have been rejected because the victims were in a camp that we didn't even know about?" asked Sam Dubbin, a Florida lawyer who represents a group of survivors who are seeking to bring claims against European insurance companies.
Dr. Megargee, the lead researcher, said the project was changing the understanding among Holocaust scholars of how the camps and ghettos evolved.
As early as 1933, at the start of Hitler's reign, the Third Reich established about 110 camps specifically designed to imprison some 10,000 political opponents and others, the researchers found. As Germany invaded and began occupying European neighbors, the use of camps and ghettos was expanded to confine and sometimes kill not only Jews but also homosexuals, Gypsies, Poles, Russians and many other ethnic groups in Eastern Europe. The camps and ghettos varied enormously in their mission, organization and size, depending on the Nazis' needs, the researchers have found.
The biggest site identified is the infamous Warsaw Ghetto, which held about 500,000 people at its height. But as few as a dozen prisoners worked at one of the smallest camps, the München-Schwabing site in Germany. Small groups of prisoners were sent there from the Dachau concentration camp under armed guard. They were reportedly whipped and ordered to do manual labor at the home of a fervent Nazi patron known as "Sister Pia," cleaning her house, tending her garden and even building children's toys for her.
When the research began in 2000, Dr. Megargee said he expected to find perhaps 7,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, based on postwar estimates. But the numbers kept climbing - first to 11,500, then 20,000, then 30,000, and now 42,500.
The numbers astound: 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm, performing forced abortions, "Germanizing" prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers.
In Berlin alone, researchers have documented some 3,000 camps and so-called Jew houses, while Hamburg held 1,300 sites.
Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.
"You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps," he said. "They were everywhere."
Eric Lichtblau is a reporter for The New York Times in Washington and a visiting fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Argo, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and the Iranian Revolution
Global Research Editor’s Note
The Real Iranian Hostage Story from the Files of Fara Mansoor
By Harry V. Martin
- To keep Iran intact and communist-free by putting Khomeini in full control.
- To destablize the Carter Administration and put George Bush in the White House.
“The private Alliance was the logical result of the intricate Iranian political reality of the mid-70s, and a complex network of powerful U.S.-Iranian ‘business’ relationships,” Mansoor states. “I first met Khomeini in 1963 during the failed coup attempt against the Shah. Since that time I have been intimately involved with Iranian politics. I knew in 1979 that the whole, phoney ‘Islamic Revolution’ was ‘mission implausible’.” Mansoor was frank. “There is simply no way that those guys with the beards and turbans could have pulled off such a brilliantly planned operation without very sophisticated help.”
“I have collected enough data to yield a very clear picture. Mr. Bush’s lieutenants removed the Shah, brought Khomeini back to Iran, and guided his rise to power, sticking it to President Carter, the American people (52 in particular), and the Iranian people.”
“My extensive research has revealed the heretofore untold truth about this episode. This is not another ‘October Surprise’ theory purporting how the hostage crisis resulted in some Khomeini-Republic better deal. That theory puts the cart before the horse. Its absurd premise is that a major international deal was initiated and consummated in three weeks. Give me a break! Bill Casey didn’t have to go to Paris to play lets-make-deal. The ‘deal’ had been in operation for at least two years. This game of blind-man’s-bluff around Casey’s gravestone was more disinformation, damage control.”
“As you know I am very weary of conspiracy theories. But, despite my preconceived bias, I must admit I found your manuscript to be thoroughly researched, well documented, and, of course extremely relevant to the present. You have done an first-class job of interviewing participants, collecting data from scattered sources, and putting them together like a highly complicated puzzle.”
“Have there been any changes in the personality pattern of the Shah; what are their implication pattern for political behavior? Identification of top military officers that most likely play key roles in any transference of power if the Shah were killed…who will be the leading actors? How will the Shah’s pet projects, including the economic development program, be effected by his departure?”
“A ten page analysis of the opposition written by the embassy’s political section in July 1977 correctly identified Bakhiar, Bazargan, Khomeini and Behesti as major actors in the drama that begin unfolding a year later.”
“The Shah will be an active participant in Iranian life well into the 1980s…and there will be no radical changes in Iranian political behavior in the near future.”
“Though based on incomplete evidence, our best assessment to date is that the Shia Islamic movement dominated by Ayatollah Khomeini is far better organized, enlighten and able to resist Communism than its detractors would lead us to believe. It is rooted in the Iranian people more than any western ideology, including Communism.”
“The nationalist movement in Iran lacks a popular base. The choice is between Islam and Communism…close ties between the Liberation Movement of Iran and the religious movement was necessary. Iran was becoming split by Marxist and the religious.”
- In Aberdeen, Fundamentalist supporters burned down a theater killing the innocent occupants, blaming it on the SAVAK and the Shah.
- There were riots in Isfahan that resulted in martial law.
- On August 27, one of Khomeini’s rivals among the Shia Islamic faithful outside of Iran, Ayatollah Mosa Sadr mysteriously disppeared. According to an intelligence source he was killed and buried in Libya.
“he said the pattern was widespread and that it was like an outbreak of a sudden rash in the country…it gave evidence of sophisticated planning and was not the work of spontaneous oppositionists…the Shah presented that it was the work of foreign intrigue…this intrigue went beyond the capabilities of the Soviet KGB and must, therefore, also involve British and American CIA. The Shah went on to ask ‘Why was the CIA suddenly turning against him? What had he done to deserve this sort of action from the United States?”
Monday, February 25, 2013
The HORROR of the Sequester
Yes, this is how much the sequester is in relation to everything else. Didly. Yet, Congressmen worried about votes from the future unemployed, make a lot of noise. Remember the deficit is over $1 TRILLION dollars.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Blame Game Starts as the Countdown to Martial Law Continues
Divide and conquer is an age old military strategy for defeating your enemies. I believe that Sun Tsu, who wrote the Art of War gets credit for describing it in writing.
The following is from the New York Times, Sunday edition.
"Are Republicans in Congress really willing to let these cuts fall on our kids' schools and mental health care just to protect tax loopholes for corporate jet owners? Are they really willing to slash military health care and the Border Patrol just because they refuse to eliminate tax breaks for big oil companies?"
For Republicans, who oppose any tax increases, Mr. Hoeven countered: "He blames Congress for the sequester, but Bob Woodward, in his book 'The Price of Politics' sets the record straight. Woodward says it was President Obama who proposed - and promoted - the sequester."
What makes this debate over blame so odd is that both sides' fingerprints - and votes -are all over the sequestration concept. The point of sequestration, in fact, was to define cuts that were so arbitrary and widespread that they would be unpalatable to both sides and force a deal.
That won Republicans' support for increasing the government's debt limit in 2011, and averted the nation's first default. The Republican-led House and Democratic-led Senate each passed the accord overwhelmingly, and Mr. Obama gladly signed it.
It appears the US national government is finally out of money, out of credit, and out of time. The can kicking is over. Apparently we should all care because our hard earned tax dollars have been used up paying the interest on the loans our government pays to fund its activities. That money goes from your pocket to that of the Federal Reserve, a private banking cartel, and its charter members, foreign and domestic.
With the passage of the Federal Reserve Act December 24, 1913, with 3 congressmen voting, and President Woodrow's final signature, our own government privatized the exclusive right to coin money, explicitly defying the US constitution.
100 years later we are facing bankruptcy for at least the third time, not the first as the New York Times suggests.
The first was in 1933-1934 when then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took us off the full gold standard after the our economy was in shambles. If you recall it was loose monetary policy characterized by excessive money printing, excessive lending, and excessive speculation, across the board. When the insiders popped the stock market bubble and took their profits, the market tumbled, and the rest is history.
The second time America went bankrupt was in August 1971 when the Saudi Arabian oil company, ARAMCO, a US joint venture demanded gold in exchange for the dollars they held. Nixon declared a suspension of redemption of gold for US dollars. The Vietnam War and the ever expanding military industrial congressional complex had bankrupted the government.
Now, the US government is once again facing bankruptcy after all of us have fallen for the same con.
It's the charter memebers of the Federal Reserve that have manipulated, bribed, coerced, cajoled, and blackmailed us into this mess.
They are the ones we should be furious with, not our fellow citizens or congress. A reasonable man could not possibly be aware of this conspiracy without exceptional study as the junk food for the brain that Hollywood and corporate mass media spew out is deceptive.
The article goes on to say
"The idea for sequestration did come from the White House, as news accounts made clear at the time. Jacob J. Lew, then Mr. Obama's budget director and now his nominee for Treasury secretary, was the main proponent."
So maybe we should also blame Lee and Obama for at least committing treason by conspiring to bankrupt the country and / or provoke a civil war and impose a heightened police state.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F Kennedy. A thorough investigation, albeit well after the trail has run cool, would reveal that the very same money powers behind the Federal Reserve and behind his death.
The question is, what are you going to do about it?
Thursday, February 21, 2013
The Return of Imperialism in Germany, Germany Rearms
Let's hope this is nonsense. The source is The World Socialist Website and I have seen that their conclusions are to blame capitalism and call for socialism. Generally the Global Research site typically exposes and elaborates on the conspiracy of the high cabal, who are wealthy collectivists that privatize the gains and socialize the losses while attempting to bring about a New World Order of totalitarian rule under their control.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-return-of-german-imperialism/5323719
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Currency War is MORE Than Economic Policy, It's TRADE WAR!
What is Russia doing in this Currency War?
The following article if from the New York Times and as always, supporting their agenda, which is to support the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve continue to hollow out the American economy and debase the currency. It's a long story but the point I would like to investigate here is as follows:
When the US, Japan, the ECB, or BOE print money and increase the money supply and suppress interest rates, how does the inflation get "exported" to smaller economies, what happens to those economies when there is an influx of foreign money chasing domestic goods and services, corporate, and government bonds, etc? And lastly, how do foreign governments fight the inflation?
LEGAL/REGULATORY| DEAL PROFESSOR FEBRUARY 19, 2013, 6:17 PM 3 Comments ‘Currency War’ Is Less a Battle Than a Debate on Economic Policy
BY STEVEN M. DAVIDOFF
...the talk in some quarters is that the biggest threat to Asia and the rest of the world today may very well be a “currency war,” in which countries race to devalue their currencies in a desperate attempt to stimulate growth...It is really a debate about how industrialized countries will grow out of their economic malaise.
...Instead, Mr. Mantega was really talking about the United States. The huge quantitative easing undertaken by the Federal Reserve has created an environment of low interest rates and put downward pressure on the dollar while pushing the currencies of other countries up.
... the Fed’s actions have pushed hot money into countries, mostly emerging markets like Brazil, with higher interest rates. This creates bubblelike asset prices and spurs inflation.
Normally, the response of Brazil or another such country would be to ease its monetary policy and possibly also lower interest rates in an effort to tamp down demand for its currency. The problem is that Brazil has stubbornly high inflation at 6 percent and can’t respond the way the United States could.
...Bigger, more mature countries are responding to their own economic downturns by adopting easy money policies. But the problem is that the emerging market economies can’t respond with similar effectiveness because of their own economic or political issues.
...the Japanese yen, which is down more than 20 percent against the dollar since November...has reaped billions of dollars for hedge funds betting against the currency.
The slide in the yen is a product of an effort by Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to revive the no-growth, no-inflation Japanese economy that has been mired in stagnation for more than two decades.
Mr. Abe is not only openly advocating an inflationary policy with a 2 percent target, and more stimulus, he is talking down the yen. And this week, Japan is expected to appoint a new head of the Bank of Japan. Whoever that may be is expected to be on board with Mr. Abe’s plan for further stimulus and inflation, a course that is likely to result in further yen depreciation.
As a result, Japanese exports have suddenly become significantly cheaper. And when an exporting powerhouse like Japan devalues its currency that quickly, other nations suddenly find that their goods are much less competitive on the global marketplace.
And once again, the issue is not that every country will depreciate, but how emerging market economies respond. These countries could respond in the easiest manner by letting their currencies appreciate. Many economists would say this is the ideal. Both the United States and Japan would benefit by having a cheaper currency and more growth, while developing nations would benefit by having a stronger currency and ability to buy more goods for consumption.
For many emerging market countries, this is hard to do politically, because it will mean that in the short term, their goods will be less competitive and their manufacturing bases will decline, meaning lost jobs.
Instead, these countries are more likely to try to deal with the yen’s depreciation by doing the exact opposite. They will try to halt the appreciation of their currency. Obviously, economic policy is complicated and economists love to disagree, so the responses of each country may vary, but there are three common policy ways to lower a currency rate: do a round of quantitative easing to expand the balance sheet of the central bank; lower interest rates; or impose capital controls.
The various possible responses show that the currency war is really about genuine policy disagreements between economies over how to address the easy money policies of the bigger industrialized countries, in light of the fact that many emerging market companies cannot respond with the same policies. The European Union has chosen another path by declining to adopt a stimulus approach.
This explains why the world’s financial officials and central bankers have not taken much of a stand.
After Lael Brainard, an under secretary for the Treasury, decried the “loose talk about currencies” and said that the United States supported “efforts to reinvigorate growth and to end deflation in Japan,” financial ministers of the Group of 20 nations released a communiqué.
It stated that their policy was not “to target our exchange rates for competitive purposes” and that “excess volatility of financial flows and disorderly movements in exchange rates have adverse implications for economic and financial stability.”
This followed a slightly different statement from the Group of 7 nations saying that the countries “have been and will remain oriented toward meeting our respective domestic objectives using domestic instruments, and that we will not target exchange rates.”
Bland prose like this is typical of these gatherings, yet the Group of 7 appeared to endorse Japan’s efforts. But if you look at the statement from the Group of 20, which includes Brazil and South Korea, it was less favorable, saying merely that there would not be a competitive devaluation. And no surprise, these are the countries most effected by the actions of the United States and Japan.
Ultimately, though, talk of a true currency war, where countries competitively devalue their exchange rates in a zero sum game that recalls the old Matthew Broderick film “War Games,” is overstated. Remember that in “War Games,” just by playing, you lose.
The reason is that even for those countries that can devalue, too much is at stake in this game. Instead, we are more likely to get what Goldman Sachs in a recently released research report called a “global exchange rate mechanism, but in a new noncooperative variant.”
Countries will act within bands based on their options and status, but no one country will take the same tack at the same time because of their different economic positions In other words, a country can’t merely turn on a switch and start a currency war of the sort people are talking about. Some don’t want to, others cannot and the rest are constrained in how they can act.
And while disruptions may happen from time to time, equilibrium is more likely to set in as each country responds slowly. So the currency game will play out in slow motion as each country adopts its preferred approach.
This is a game that has been going on for years. Instead of a currency war, what we are seeing is the everyday problems of a global economy where countries are highly connected and quite distinct.
Steven M. Davidoff, a professor at the Michael E. Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, is the author of “Gods at War: Shotgun Takeovers, Government by Deal and the Private Equity Implosion.” E-mail: dealprof@nytimes.com | Twitter: @StevenDavidoff