Category Archives: International Affairs

Windfall Profits, the Defense Industry and the American Tax Payer:

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Reflections during another Memorial Day

The fulcrum on which political decisions are leveraged and the world’s future mortgaged is inherently tied to the welfare of investors in “defense” industries, of their senior executives and directors, and secondarily, the welfare of ancillary industries and businesses that profit from war and the threat of war, and if war and the threat of war are constants, then investments in “defense” industries are predictably secure.  Something the commander of allied forces in the Second World War and later, president of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower begged us to avoid.  To the extent related government expenditures are not carefully monitored and waste prevails, so much the better.  That millions subsidize such profits with their lives in diverse parts of the world is merely “collateral damage”, at least to those not suffering such consequences, directly or indirectly.  And of course, on this Memorial Day, we recognize that such casualties are not only innocent foreigners, but also the bravest Americans, those who, believing that their service is essential, volunteer to put their lives and welfare on the line.

The Athenians attitude towards those who provided the armaments for their military and naval forces was wise.  They were required to serve on the front lines.  Not so our own war profiteers, neither they nor their families, except in extremely rare cases, serve at all, being too busy enjoying the fruits of others’ labors.  And most of those who do serve, Albert Gore and George W. Bush being prime examples, do so ensconced in protective cocoons, far from danger, surrounded by photographers so that their purported service can be documented for future use.  The Clintons and the Obamas and the Bidens (Joe and Hunter and Jimmy) and the Trumps were excused from service through the labyrinth of useful loopholes available to those wealthy or influential enough to avoid service, something which needs to be differentiated from the refusal to serve by those opposed to war, and who would never send the children, spouses, siblings or relatives of others to tread where they refused to serve.  Those who declined to serve but on attaining power of any sort, do not hesitate to send others to die or kill, and to suffer and cause mayhem, and to suffer and cause irreparable psychological trauma, are contemptuously referred to by those who served, as well as by conscientious objectors, as “chicken hawks”.  Our country is led by chicken hawks.  Chicken hawks in government, in the “defense” industries and in the corporate media as well.  And the results are predictable.  Profits for the few, massive profits.  But famine and chaos and mayhem and death and destruction for far too many on the other side of the ledger.  Some of them our own.  Some of them the best among us.

This Memorial Day takes place at an interesting time.  There has been hugely hyperbolic debate between the Republican led House of Representatives and the Biden administration concerning the need to raise the national debt limit, an increase once again required, for the 82nd time, because rather than pay for federal expenditures through taxes, to which voters would object and, as a result, might seriously consider what their taxes were being used to fund, it is more palatable, at least for now, to just, well, … borrow the money.  Federal debt financing is done through unsecured borrowing from third parties, largely banks and financial institutions but also investors, foreign and domestic.  Interestingly, the interest paid to holders of United States debt securities is higher than that paid by financial institutions to the Federal Reserve for the money borrowed to acquire such securities, among other things.  Many might wonder why the prohibitions against “ponzi” schemes which the Federal government prosecutes, are not applicable to the largest ponzi scheme of all.

The current direct national debt, that which is disclosed (it may well be substantially greater and does not include state, municipal or local debt), currently stands at almost thirty-two-trillion dollars[1], but the Biden administration insists that it must be increased immediately, if not sooner, and traditionalist members of the Republican Party are in agreement, although its populist branch is  not.  There is a current proposal on the table in Congress to acquiesce to the Biden administration’s demand to increase the national debt during the period preceding the next presidential election (so that it need not be revisited and become a political issue therein), by one-and-a-half-trillion dollars.

Sooo.  Why?

Because the United States government wants to spend the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China into oblivion by funding wars involving the Ukraine, already under way, and Taiwan, even at the risk of a nuclear holocaust, and anyway, that addition to the national debt, like the accumulated debt before it, ends up in the pockets of, well, you may have already guessed the answer from the introductory material above, “investors in “defense” industries, their senior executives and directors, and secondarily, the welfare of ancillary industries and businesses that profit from war and the threat of war”.

And who, you may ask, will pay that accumulated debt?

The answer is interesting and reminiscent of the attitude of French King Louis XV, you know, the one who preceded Luis XVI, who, along with his family and many others, lost his head in the French Revolution of 1789 (which, to an extent, may explain the drastic reaction by the powers that be to the political protests of January 6, 2020).  The answer is, … “who cares”!  At worse, the United States could print the money necessary to pay off the debt, although that would create never before imagined hyperinflation, inflation that would make that suffered in Germany following the War to End All Wars (well, we now call it the first of the world wars) at the dawn of the twentieth century a trifle.  One might recall that the inflation following the first of the world wars led to the rise of fascism in various countries, and threatened to do the same in most others.  Of course, some consider that fascism is currently in vogue among those who most criticized it way back then.

This Memorial Day, as I mourn my many friends and my former classmates who’ve perished in combat during the past six decades (I’m a Citadel graduate), it occurred to me that the answer to our ludicrous national debt crisis is rather simple and does not require a reinvention of the wheel.  It’s called a “windfall profits tax”.  One that should be imposed on those who’ve so profited from the perpetual wars (what would Emanuel Kant think).  You may have guessed the answer again, it’s the same as the answer to the former query: “investors in “defense” industries, their senior executives and directors, and secondarily, the welfare of ancillary industries and businesses that profit from war and the threat of war”.  A tax of 90% on all profits derived from them, directly and indirectly, from whatever sources and wherever derived, until the national debt is paid off, with tax avoidance punishable by forfeiture of all assets and life imprisonment.

Simple, sort of.  At least in a democracy where voters have some awareness of how things work, and why.

A suggestion as we remember those of our fellow men and woman who’ve sacrificed so much, unfortunately, all too often uselessly, on this Memorial Day.

Something on which not only to reflect, but perhaps on which to act.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] Information based on the national debt clock as of this Memorial Day, available at https://www.usdebtclock.org/.

The “Woke” …?

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First of all, for context, I freely confess that I’m a confirmed, left wing democratic socialist in the style of Albert Einstein, Noam Chomsky, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc., and thus an anti-interventionist pacifist, but not an isolationist.  I’m a non-globalist, non-neoliberal, non-neoconservative internationalist.  I’m an independent, disdaining both the GOP and the Democratic Party, but feel the Democratic Party is the greater evil.  I do not vote for lesser evils though.

Another confession: many people that I’ve cared for over the years, some whom I’ve loved, and even some after whom I’ve lusted, are among the “woke” who are the subject of this reflection.  I don’t like Donald Trump (who I’ve only met once).  I find him a childish, egocentric buffoon, but that doesn’t prevent me from admitting that he’s been treated in an outlandishly unfair manner by the corporate press, the Justice Department, his own appointees, traditional Republican leaders, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, and, that, without a doubt, the presidential election of 2022 was manipulated, if perhaps not “technically stolen. 

The foregoing is to contextualize the following perspectives concerning the controversial nature of the postmodern term “woke”, to which I frequently allude.

To me, the term “woke” is a sort of neologism in the sense that during the past decade it has acquired very different meanings depending on who’s using it, in what context and for what purpose.  It no longer merely refers to the opposite of sleeping in a biological sense but has been given political overtones.  It is a self-anointed appellation by those I describe below, who consider it a positive metaphor but, in my opinion and as I use it, the people who apply the term as a self-description instead engage in futile, hubris afflicted self-defeating distortion of progressive values.  Because, as I indicated, I frequently use the term in my reflections, articles, reports and comments, I’m frequently asked what it means, albeit usually by people who clearly have their own opinions on the point and who are usually among those I describe as “woke”.  In any case, this reflection involves an effort to describe the term for both those people (whose minds are already made up as to its meaning), and for those who are honestly curious concerning its use in my discourse.  I note that, apparently, there exists a dictionary definition which identifies them in a manner which their adherents love, in essence, as selfless, well informed, well intentioned humanists.  I assume it was devised by a “woke” lexicographer.  I, find it misleading at best, hence this reflection.

From the foregoing it’s obvious that I’m at odds with those who describe themselves as the “woke”, a group that reminds me of Star Trek’s fictional “Borg” (because to the “woke”, resistance to them is futile).  The irony is that we purport to share the same goals and similar values: a more enlightened world, a more equitable world, one free of racism, misogyny and xenophobia.  A world where justice prevails and impunity and nepotism are minimized, an environmentally sustainable world where everyone is enabled to attain their highest potential.  But we differ on bellicosity.  Bellicosity in every sense (personal, domestic and international).  We differ on tactics and strategies.  And we differ on the essential need for mutual respect and for open minds and the importance of empathy.  “Empathy”, that psychological state of mind which enables us to understand (in a non-judgmental fashion) the positions held by others and the reasons for their actions and reactions.  Which enables us to maintain open minds and to listen at least as much as we preach, and to differ respectfully instead of with animosity.  I believe that only through the use of empathy and respect can we all evolve, changing our hearts and souls as well as our minds in the manner necessary to attain our mutual goals.  I derive great satisfaction from what I’ve learned from others, as well as from the shifts in attitude, especially concerning war and the military-industrial-intelligence complex, of many of the military personnel (both retired and active) with whom I’ve interacted.

In my opinion, politics, on a worldwide, not just United States basis, has not really been the realm of a liberal left versus a conservative right for a very long time.  Those are cultivated delusional illusions.  Rather, it involves a truly adversarial relationship between an alliance of deep states subservient to the primary Deep State (the one associated with the United States but with tentacles everywhere), versus diverse, divided and fragmented populists, “populists” being those who believe that traditional governmental institutions, self-described as “democratic”, are in fact, chokeholds to assure popular democracy is at best a dysfunctional illusion.  The rise in populism is being addressed by deep states though coercive communication-censoring policies, abuse of prosecutorial and judicial systems, and, if all else fails, by facilitation of the development of a capitalist oriented, for-profit market in votes through relaxation of procedures safeguarding against electoral fraud (e.g., identity verification, direct voting, verified ballot collection, etc.), oxymoronically, in the name of “democracy”.

The purportedly “woke”, as I see them, are tools of the permanent government structure owned by the wealthiest among to which I alluded above as the “Deep State”, which is an informal but highly efficient structure comprised of ensconced bureaucrats unresponsive to democratic vagaries, the corporate media, the aforementioned military-industrial-intelligence complex and the newly empowered owners of the Internet’s technocracy, to which, during the past decade, has been added Big Pharma.  The role of the “woke” in that scheme (albeit perhaps a role of which they are not aware) is to distract the attention of liberals and progressives from the goals described above through polarizing identity politics, keeping us divided through wedge issues such as abortion, gun control, immigration, revisionist history and exaggerated racism and divisive gender related issues (using gender in the broadest possible context), all of the foregoing never to be resolved, as resolution would minimize their political usefulness.

The “woke” are characterized by a blend of naivety and hubris, believing themselves morally and ethically superior, better informed, wiser, more erudite and, most of all, entitled.  For some unfathomable reason, they’re convinced that the minds and hearts of those not yet “woke” can best be changed through ridicule and rhetoric, clever distortions, and ignoring past realities through creative fiction.  In essence, they’re intolerant in the name of tolerance (freedom of opinion and of expression be damned!).  Narrative replaces history (well, … okay, …it always has, but much more aggressively), in the belief that the past and even the present are irrelevant to the future, so long as both are presented in a manner that facilitates the belief that the future sought is inevitably preordained, a sort of five story mansion, but without a foundation or first story, just somehow floating closer to heaven.

It’s much easier to win arguments if truth is irrelevant, if it is “relative”, something flexible to be molded as best suits a particular occasion, and easily discarded when inconvenient, discarded to an abyss for those beliefs which, in an Orwellian sense, “never existed, … anymore”.  The “woke” are firm practitioners of that verisimilitudinous art form in the firm belief that the means justify the ends, and thus, as so often happens in those cases, there’s a shift and the means become the ends, the former ends fading into oblivion.

“Merit” is, as I see it, a pejorative to the “woke”, a synonym for racism, and for misogyny, and for xenophobia.  To them, quotas are essential in everything; something glaringly obvious in the entertainment industry where accurate reflections of society and history are irrelevant and every scene must now include non-existent racial and gender balances, with positive attributes concentrated among women and minorities, especially African Americans and those who adhere to sexually alternative lifestyles, and negative attributes are primarily ascribed to Caucasian males older than forty.  Of course, “merit” has always been an elusive concept, especially where nepotism provides an alternative, and, of course, merit has never been all that relevant in the apparently eternal political-favors-based-favoritism-system in which we humans appear to have always lived.

So, the “woke”, to me, are a sad irony involving a diversion of energy and human resources that could really make a difference in the attainment of the values and the world to which they and I both aspire; to which most people aspire., but which, as economist Thomas Piketty’s ground breaking studies and analyses clearly demonstrate, is becoming more and more distant and more and more unlikely as we become more and more polarized, more and more embittered and more and more successfully manipulated by the cynics who joyfully rule as all.

Rule us all as surely as though we were ringwraiths and they possessed Sauron’s once and future ring.

Of course, the “woke” who’ve read my reflections and opinions probably reciprocate my perceptions, believing me to be as delusional as I perceive them.  And that’s fine.

Paraphrasing the refrain used in adds concerning historically black colleges: “An open mind is a terrible thing to waste”.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

A Glance at an Ugly Image in an all too Accurate Mirror

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Mirrors can be useful things if used objectively, but the truth is frequently uglier than we care to bear. Who we’ve become politically, perhaps who we’ve always been, is an all too accurate example.

A reflection of sorts:

The voting dead used to be a reliable Democratic Party constituency.  They won the presidency for young John Kennedy in 1960.  In Illinois.  In Chicago to be precise.  Home town to another slick president almost half a century later.  It’s a bit trickier nowadays to convince the deceased to continue to exercise their political rights, but the concept has morphed and we have voters who’ll vote as their told, no matter what.  To vote as if they were zombies.  Whole “blocks” of them, … Well almost, there are always those inexplicable few who insist on exercising their own judgment, but they’re pretty few.

A “motley bunch” is a misunderstood expression.  It does not denigrate the nature of its members, rather, it makes clear their diversity and perhaps even, their diverse goals, backgrounds and aspirations.  Today, the Democratic Party is a motley group comprised of one large ethnic group, African Americans; women desperate to preserve their ability to discard their would be progeny; those unhappy with their gender; feminists who have a flexible approach to misogyny depending on the political leanings of particular misogynists; the rebellious children of the very wealthy; artists of questionable talent other than their ability to self-promote; pseudo journalists much more talented in creative writing than in seeking the truth; creative academics and historians interested in molding the past as they wish it had been; and, government bureaucrats, especially of the quasi-permanent mole variety.  But it is a “motley” which rather than generate synergy, is merely subservient to the billionaire classes who own the Deep State, the potentates who, like Sauron’s ring in Tolkien’s novels, ruthlessly rule us all.

The GOP is not a motley, it is much more homogenous than the Democratic Party, albeit now divided into two ideological groups: traditionalists like the Bushes, the McCains, etc., also owned by the Deep State, but now a majority seems to be comprised of right wing populist libertarians who in some, but unfortunately not all, aspects, oppose the Deep State.  Too often all of the foregoing are supportive of the Deep State’s primary business, perpetual conflict and a quest for global hegemony similar to that once enjoyed by the Roman empire, not cognizant of the fact that the human cost is all too similar quantitatively to that paid by the victims of the Nazi’s own pursuit of hegemony.  Unlike the Romans though, who cared not a whit about moral justification for their actions, the United States is compelled to justify itself through hypocrisy, deception and self-delusion, something it inherited from the British (from who it inherited its own hunger for hegemony).

Political independents, a heterogeneous group whose members  purportedly form a larger block than either Democrats or Republicans, together with members of minor political parties like the Greens, the Libertarians, etc., could theoretically change the current United States cascade towards mutually assured oblivion but seem trapped in a quagmire, hypnotized and unable to move or act, as though charmed by a snake, the snake being the corporate media that convinces them, briefly but regularly (during electoral cycles), that the exercise of their better judgment would be anathema and would assuredly bring on an apocalypse.  And that their efforts would, in any case, prove futile.  The current apparent only choices, choices between a bombastic and childish lesser evil (Mr. Trump) and an utterly corrupt war monger (Mr. Biden, the clear Deep State designee), illustrate the foregoing.

Thus, we, as a People, become more and more polarized, more prone to violence and psychological and sociological anomalies (like mass murder both abroad and at home).  We sit sort of idly watching and perhaps kvetching as the Deep State destroys more and more of everything around us, whether our environment or our fellow men and women, especially the aged and the very young.  Destroys them sociopathically and amorally for the profit of the billionaire class, to the delight of the laughing and smirking hyenas (my apology to hyenas) who comprise our purported cultural leaders (i.e., massively overpaid albeit usually ignorant glitzy entertainers and athletes).

A conclusion:

That is by all appearances who we are today.  Ugly is as ugly does.  Perhaps it’s just the predictable evolutionary path of who we’ve always been as a group, although perhaps individually most of us seem very different.  One wonders if nature’s purported natural selection of the fittest still applies, and just what that might imply.

A sort of Cassandric entropy seems to shout that we’ve already passed the point of no return, hence, our current epigram at birth would seem to be “abandon all hope ye who enter here”.

To which, unfortunately, no pithy rejoinder comes to mind.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Damned Trump!!!

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The corporate media is in hyperbolic, hysterical meltdown.  The thoroughly unpleasant Mr. Trump has rejected their narratives and continues to express his beliefs, whether all too accurate or deluded, on one of their own platforms, the very much discredited and disdained CNN.  But, the corporate media, its supporters in the bureaucracy, the judiciary, prosecutorial authorities and the legal profession, as well as victims-on-demand, remain as dedicated as ever to assuring that he shan’t govern, no matter what the electors think about the choices being foisted upon them by the Clintons, the Bidens, or the slickly subtle Obamas.

Mr. Trump had a Town Hall meeting on CNN this week and he spoke his mind during a week in which those who not only disdain and dislike him (like me), but avidly hate him, attained a series of triumphs in the legal system, albeit perhaps transitory.  Unfortunately, notwithstanding their machinations, he was not universally rejected.  Indeed, polls show that the United States electorate prefers him to the inept and unscrupulous mad man the Deep State has imposed on us all, with, of course, the full-fledged support of the corporate media, Mr. Trump’s own intelligence agencies and the oxymoronic Department of Justice.

Perhaps, assassination is now the only option if the United States electorate continues to seem disinclined to yield and cooperate.  Who knows, it’s happened before in the United States, at least according to rebel Democratic Party presidential contender, Robert F. Kennedy III, who, if his own prospects take off, may face the same hazard as Mr. Trump, in his case, a family tradition in the form of a curse.

What’s very sad is that the belligerent and unpleasant Mr. Trump and the utterly corrupt and apparently senile Mr. Biden are clearly not the only choices.  Sure, most of the options presented to us by the Deep State (Republican and Democrat alike) are terrible, but, in addition to the apparently decent Mr. Kennedy, there’s Tulsi Gabbard, although she’s veering sharply to the right on moral issues, and the always decent Dennis Kucinich.  There’s former Virginia Senator James Webb, and even recently fired sort of journalist (the closest thing to one we had within a major media organization, but no Assange), Tucker Carlson.  And perhaps, promoting other alternatives, we have a real live version of Ben Bova’s fictional Sam Gunn, blended with Robert Heinlein’s Delos David Harriman, who seemingly likes to stir the pot hoping something interesting will pop up: Elon Musk (whose name my mind keeps confusing with Nikola Tesla).

The problem, of course, is us.  The intellectually malleable electorate, which, if the Deep State shouts BOOOOO loudly enough, promptly return to the wolves’ fold to be slaughtered like the foolish sheep we are, actually more a hybrid between lemmings and sheep.  All elections, according to the Deep State and its minions, are existential choices between evil and lesser evil.  The good, ensconced in smaller political parties and independents, is never (heaven forbid, or maybe hell) an available option.

BOOOO!!!  The evil Russians are coming again!!!  BOOO!!!  The evil Muslims who hate freedom are around every corner.  BOOOO!!!  The evil Chinese seek to take over the world.  Vote for our choice, good old Joe, or else.  And keep on earning all those dollars we need to extort from you in the form of taxes, essential to finance our liberty loving, sort of democratic aspirations.  Peace is only viable through constant war; and freedom and liberty and respect are only possible through constant meddling and coups, hard and soft (and military interventions when sort of absolutely necessary).  But don’t worry, we’ll finance a great deal of the costs through constant increases in the permissible ceiling for our national debt, already greater than our gross domestic product, but who cares, as long as we can keep printing dollars and force others around the world to accept them, or else.  As Louis XV heartily extorted his People, shortly before the unfortunate Louis XVI and the French Revolution, “Après moi, le deluge” (After me, the flood).

But, … BOOO!!!  The damned pesky BRICS countries (Brazil Russia, India, China and South Africa) seem to be expanding (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria and who knows who else), and threatening to take away our printing presses.

Elections are once again around the corner, so BOOO, BOOO, BOOO and BOOO some more!  Interestingly, from a small segment of the electorate, a seemingly responsive sound resounds in the form of a “raspberryish” booooooo!

That damned Trump just won’t let sleeping dogs lie!
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

On the Coronation of Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Hanover)

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Charles and I are of an age, albeit with drastically different life experiences. 

He has a warm spot in my heart, despite my leftist, democratic socialist political tendencies.  He visited my alma mater in Charleston, the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, on two occasions a half century apart.  Once as a young prince in 1970, and then again, as the inchoate king of the Britons, in 2020.  On the latter occasion, my beloved alma mater granted him a degree honoris causa.  I’ve followed his difficult life (despite all the wealth, privileges and trappings) closely, and have come to believe that in many ways, it is an allegorical reflection of our times.

He has been criticized, often, too often unfairly, for whatever he does and doesn’t do, in the “heads I win, tails you lose” manner now prevalent in the corporate media and among the faux leftists who for some reason or another, have decided that only they are conscious, and have consciences, that they are the repositories of virtue and morality despite their consistent failure to attain any of their supposed goals, and instead, have succeeded only in generating intolerance, hatred and polarization, while permitting the worst among us to continue to rule unabated.

That’s sort of weird, given that Charles’ background is exactly what the worst among us aspire to possess.  Still, while Charles has the trappings, they have the power.

I am confessedly among the minority who find that his late, former-wife, Diana, was among the most egocentrically frivolous and devious among us, which of course, made her a media darling.  That she used Charles to ascend the social ladder she so craved, and that once there, she sought to ensconce herself, at his expense, and even at the expense of her purportedly beloved children (who she primarily raised through self-serving photo ops).  But she did it with such grace and style that the commons loved her, regardless of her obvious “indiscretions.  She was an inverse Cinderella, … or was that Camila.  And what does the adjective “inverse” do to the concept I seek to portray anyway?

Charles was the victim of duty every second of every minute of every hour of every day of his life.  The “Duty” which prevented him, for a long time, from being the husband of perhaps the only woman he ever loved, and instead, being placed in a loveless and counterproductive marriage, which, like a plague, still refuses to set him free, even after the death of his “fairy tale” wife, “fairy tale”, but not in a good way.  He was subservient to his mother, as he was duty bound to be, and it seemed as though he would never attain his own, independent destiny, and even as he was crowned “King”, perhaps he never will.  He’ll be an afterthought, a cipher, an interregnum, and one tainted at that.  At least among the “woke”.

To me he has been, is, and I think will continue to be a symbol of courage and duties honored under difficult circumstances, all too often in no win situations that refuse to grant him the status of “human” we all proudly claim as our own.  But that’s the nature of monarchy, and of real monarchs, and of real men, at least as men were once defined.  Not as selfish, self-centered misogynists, but as chivalrous defenders and providers for their families, their communities and their nations.  Not perfect by any means, but compared to his brother Andy and his youngest son harry; compared to his late, former wife, Charles is a complex human being deserving of admiration, not because of but notwithstanding his royal standing.

I like the newly crowned King, I’ll confess it, but as a person, not as the crystallization of the purported aristocrats among whom he was born and who from now on, will surround and seek to suffocate him more than ever.

If I were a believer, which I may or may not be, I’ve never been sure (other than that I am not a believer in the religion “created” by the egregious Saul of Tarsus), I would end this, and perhaps I will, whispering “God Save the King”!
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Quizás, quizás, quizás

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For erudite and knowledgeable conservative Republicans of the populist rather than traditionalist bent, it must be shocking to have to admit that Hugo Chavez was dead on with respect to his New Latin American Constitutionalism, a political philosophy premised on the hypotheses that elite control over the judiciary, the media, the bureaucracy and the legislative branch was antithetical to democracy, and especially to democratic reform.

Chavez, in essence, recognized the functioning of Latin America’s version of the “deep state”, a subsidiary of the United States’ own Deep State, and tried his best to dismantle it in Venezuela, impossible given the economic leverage against Chavismo exerted by the United States and its allies, including fifth columnists predominant among the Venezuelan elite, but he at least managed to splinter the preexistent power structure, at least in the public’s perception.

His successor, Nicholas Madura is no Chavez, he is a lightweight caretaker whose replacement never arrived.  He is not an intellectual theorist, or a revolutionary.  But amazingly, notwithstanding the theft of major Venezuelan assets organized in a bipartisan manner by the United States and its allies, especially the United Kingdom, he has hung on.  By his fingernails at times, but he has hung on.

Now the tactics used against Latin American progressives by elites loyal to the United States billionaire class have come home to roost, … in a sense.  The diverse agencies charged with administration of the justice system in the United States, on federal and state levels, including prosecutors, private attorneys and judges are busy investigating and litigating in order to obstruct functional democracy and to deprive voters of choices deemed unacceptable, to exact revenge on political adversaries, while the corporate media is not only cheering them on, but censoring information damaging to predetermined electoral outcomes, predetermined, of course, by the Deep State and its owners.  The mole ridden bureaucracy is a second line of defense, should primary efforts to block an unruly electorate prove insufficient, as occurred in 2016.  Just as Hugo Chavez predicted.  Only the victims now include the American People, and of course, superficially, those rigidly antisocialist populist right wingers beloved by adherents of the philosophies of the non-existent Tea Party.

Unfortunately, victims also include the left wing Cassandra class.  We who’ve been pointing out the dangers of a Deep State dedicated to extracting every penny possible from “ordinary” Americans through taxation and government borrowing, mechanisms for generating and “laundering” extorted wealth through the ill named “defense industry” (what Ike referred to as the “military industrial complex”), now supplemented by the pharmaceutical industry via “blessed” pandemics.

Perhaps, somehow, Latin America can escape the vicious sociopolitical-economic quagmire in which so much of the world finds itself.  Perhaps it can orchestrate such escape through the insights Hugo Chaves tried to weave into an effective oppositional strategy, and if it does, perhaps other countries will follow it and escape the Deep State gravity well whose event horizon seems to have the world trapped in endless war.  Perhaps the BRICS’ efforts to attain a non-hegemonic world power structure will bear fruit, and, echoing the hypothesis on which United States federalism was premised, a multipolar world will experiment with different sociopolitical and economic options resulting in new solutions to age old problems which can then be adopted by others.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, as the wonderful Hispanic song “Quizás, quizás, quizás” croons.

But from where I sit, that seems to be somewhat beyond today’s horizons.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

On the Psycho-social Aspects of Sports

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The concept of “sport” involves two principal roles, one is participatory: a physical activity to develop and improve physical skills, sometimes in a competitive fashion, often with health benefits related to attaining physical optimization.  But it also has a non-participatory entertainment aspect, one geared to spectators in general but more frequently to spectators who develop an affinity for a particular person or corporate entity, “corporate” in the sense of entity-continuity notwithstanding changes in its composition.  For example, despite the fact that Babe Ruth died long ago, the Yankees are still the Yankees.  Well, … almost.

The latter variant has interesting psychosocial dynamics with cultural implications that reflect social trends in the interrelationships between the spectators; between the spectators and the participants; between the spectators, the participants and those in charge of training and managing the participants; and, finally, between all of the foregoing and ownership.

Spectators tend to assume two very different roles: passive spectators who cheer on “their” team in a non-critical manner, no matter its performance; and, active, more-involved and more critical spectators, usually much more knowledgeable and frequently having formerly, at one level or another, been active participants.  The two groups have become increasingly polarized as our society has become less cohesive, with the cheer-leading spectators becoming bitterly critical of what they deem to be fair-weather fans, and the more active, critical fans, those who demand quality performance from the teams or players they support, deeming the cheer-leader types idiotic know-nothings.  Sports managers and owners at every level prefer the cheer-leading fan variant, especially those willing to spend on viewing sporting events in person or by subscription, but, in addition, purchasing related branded merchandise.  Some teams apparently go so far as to pay individuals and business involved in the new phenomenon of social media, to use fictional cheer-leader fans (trolls) to purportedly criticize the critical fans as traitors, something, to some extent, also done in the past through less honest sports journalists.

The issue of sports polarization is especially problematic with sports involving children where the “competitive” factor is bitterly debated among parents, some of whom (the “woke”) believe that sports should be fun for all, without winners, or even scores; and, fanatical parents who intervene, at times physically, frequently embarrassing their own children, living out their own frustrated sports fantasies, in quest for victory at any price.  Balance involving competition and development of life and social skills, those once revered concepts of good sportsmanship, seem all too frequently unattainable today.  That, unfortunately, merely reflects trends throughout our diverse social institutions, trends all too often manipulated as a means of maintaining control through polarization and involving issues such as abortion, gun control, political correctness, censorship, etc.

Sports have become a business with massive profits to both teams and players at its highest levels, as well as to broadcast media; ludicrous profits and ludicrous salaries when judged on the basis of comparative social contributions and on the basis of the growing disparity between the wealthiest among us and the rest, especially those who receive the lowest compensation for the most difficult and tedious jobs. The foregoing is true of professional sports, but unfortunately, has also afflicted amateur sports in academic institutions where college football coaches sometimes earn up to ten times what the college president or any academic professor or researcher is paid.

Sports have also become a useful tool for political control, deflecting dissatisfaction with poor political and economic performance, broken promises and inequity, into strong emotional responses to sporting events and activities, redirecting justifiable social anger towards competing sports spectators, whether those who support other teams or those who criticize the performance of teams and players they themselves support.  It is how we “blow off steam”; psychic energy needed to power necessary societal change, leaving us either satiated, exhausted or both, and bitter towards umpires, referees, coaches, players and other fans, instead of against those we most need to replace: our political, media and economic “leaders”.

Sports have evolved from their earliest roles, when they involved non-partisan appreciation of excellence, dexterity and physical abilities (such as in the ancient Olympics), into a social phenomenon much more like the violent partisan events that existed during the Roman imperial period, events centered on chariot racing, where almost the entirety of the population was divided among violent supporters of Greens and Blues, such division flowing into political groupings as well.

International sports can be a unifying force domestically while a divisive force internationally.  For example soccer’s world cup and the modern variant of the Olympic games, international spectacles where international political rivalries now regularly intervene to exclude more capable athletes and teams from competing based on factors totally unrelated to sports, factors such as economic and political rivalries among groups of allied nations.

Notwithstanding the foregoing I am an avid sports enthusiast, perhaps an addict of sorts.  I love sports as an active participant (when possible), but as a spectator as well (admittedly of the more critical variant).  And that’s the case notwithstanding all of the deficiencies, abuses and dangers associated with modern sports that I acknowledge exist.  That’s the case with most of us, although the majority have no idea concerning many of the issues raised in this introspective article.

In short, it seems that as humans, there is nothing we cannot pervert into a polarizing factor, into something to divide us and set us off against each other, into something that can be used to manipulate and control us.  Even something as magnificent as the sports we purport to love.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Context on the Current Criminal Case against Former US President Donald John Trump, a Perspective from the Republic of Colombia

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The following is based on an article written by the author for use in the Republic of Colombia trying to contextualize for a Colombian audience the nature of the actions recently brought against former president Donald Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  It contrasts Mr. Trump’s current situation with the similar experiences of Colombia’s current president, a left wing progressive, when he was the mayor of Bogota and a probable contender for the Colombian presidency (which he obviously won, but only after intervention by the Interamerican Human Rights Court, an institution to which the United States does not subscribe).

The recent indictment of former President Donald John Trump by a grand jury convened and controlled by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg seems very confusing to foreigners, primarily because reports in the traditional United States lack both context and objectivity, and, further, admittedly, because the former president’s personality is so abrasive, self-centered and unpleasant, that it is difficult to feel compassion for him.  However, as indicated in the introduction, for Colombians, some analogies involving their own recent experiences are useful. 

One, involves a political leader who shares Mr. Trump’s aggressive personality, Carlos Felipe Mejía Mejía, a former senator from former president Alvaro Uribe Velez’s ultra-right wing political party, the Centro Democratico (a favorite of the United States’ Deep State), and the other (again as mentioned in the introduction), involves the experiences of current Colombian president Gustavo Petro’s in the face of abuse of the Colombian legal system by his opponents, to prevent him from participating in electoral politics.  Mr. Petro’s struggles were successful only because, unlike the United States, Colombia respects international law and human rights and accepts the decisions of the Interamerican Court of Human Rights, an institution established through the Interamerican Convention on Human Rights, which the United States has refused to ratify (that tribunal found the abuse of the legal system to bar Mr. Petro from political activity illegal).  Mr. Petro had been removed from office as mayor of Bogota and barred from future political by the national procurator, a political opponent, pretty much in the manner Democratic prosecutors in Georgia and New York, as well as in the Department of Justice, are seeking to convict Mr. Trump of crimes in order to render him ineligible to engage in political activity, especially with respect to the presidential elections scheduled for 2024.

The following is pretty much how I explained the current situation in the United States to a Colombian audience:

Former president Donald Trump has just been indicted by a grand jury organized by a county attorney within New York City on 34 felony counts. They all have to do with a payment pursuant to a legal settlement and non-disclosure agreement seeking to put an end to accusations by Mrs. Stephanie Gregory Clifford, a former porn star using the name “Stormy Daniels”, to the effect that Mr. Trump had spent a night with her when, although married, he was a private citizen.

Normally, Ms. Clifford’s demands would have involved the crimes of blackmail and extortion and she would have been the person facing criminal prosecution, but the current case is, for purely political reasons, different. The truth is that the alleged crimes attributed to Mr. Trump have never existed in American jurisprudence and, rather, involve an “innovation” by the Manhattan District Attorney focused on the way in which the expenses were reported by Mr. Trump’s employees, i.e., not as donations from Mr. Trump to his own presidential campaign, but as business or personal legal expenses, paid to his attorney, who had paid them to Ms. Clifford.  Indeed, the agreement was between that attorney and Ms. Clifford, for the benefit of Mr. Trump.

If settlement and non-disclosure agreements were a crime, then many American politicians would (or should) be in jail, especially major Trump adversaries, but that doesn’t seem to matter. It also doesn’t matter whether he is eventually found innocent. The mere accusations (indictments are only accusations, after all) are expected to have the desired impact. An electoral victory in 2024 for someone more in accord with current neoconservative politics in the United States.

So, why the current situation? After all, Mr. Trump is clearly a neoliberal capitalist very much in the mold of many of his political opponents.  Well, because “very much” is apparently not enough, especially when it involves rejection of traditional neoconservative tactics.

Former President Trump currently leads presidential preference polls for the 2024 presidential elections in the United States, and that is intolerable to the Democratic Party and to traditional Republicans, not because of his alleged immoral personal conduct, that’s a matter between him and his wife, but because Mr. Trump disagrees with current policies concerning the conflict in the Ukraine, because he wants to end NATO, which he perceives as anachronistic, and also, because he believes that the huge expenditures on “defense” spending, on military bases in other countries and on interventions in foreign affairs should be reduced considerably, with the savings used to improve domestic infrastructure, lower taxes charged to US citizens and reduce the national debt to zero.

For the powers that actually control the American state (which President Dwight David Eisenhower warned against when he alluded to “the military/industrial complex”), that would be intolerable given that such industry “earns” billions of dollars in profits every year. Thus, as was the case for current the Colombian president (prior to intervention by the Interamerican Human Rights Court), Mr. Trump’s opponents are seeking to destroy him politically through constant and consistent abuse of the legal system, abuse orchestrated by Democratic prosecutors in several states, especially in New York and Georgia, as well as in the Department of Justice; prosecutors using all the resources available through the United States criminal justice system (an oxymoron) to convict Mr. Trump of offenses which would make him ineligible to run for or hold public office.

In the case of Colombian President Petro, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights prevented his political opponents from denying the Colombian people the right to elect the candidate of their choice as president, but nothing of that nature exists with respect to the United States, purportedly the land of the free, and Mr. Trump is at the mercy of judges and prosecutors appointed by his political enemies, and a press that hates him.  Not an enviable position for Mr. Trump, but also, not an enviable position for those Americans, perhaps a majority, who see him as their champion.  The United States is currently more polarized than it has been since 1859, and we know what happened then.  This situation is likely to make matters even worse, but then, that’s a future problem and as Louis XV is alleged to have proclaimed: “Let the flood come, as long as I’m no longer here”, which it did.  From this author’s perspective, the issue is not whether Mr. Trump is a good or decent person, he is not a Trump supporter nor does he intend to vote for him, but in a democracy, a real democracy, what is happening to Mr. Trump should not be tolerated.

It should be noted that the author tried to post a Spanish version of this article on Facebook, but it was immediately banned, allegedly for violating the community guidelines against nudity. Judge for yourself what this article has to do with that subject, and then ask yourself what is happening, and why.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Now What?

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As I write this, I wonder if it will ever be permitted to see the light of day.  I’m certain that access to this article will be subjected to the de facto censorship limiting its spread and access through algorithms designed to limit postures frowned upon by our Internet censors.  But perhaps some brave souls will share it.  Every once in a while we somehow manage to get our messages heard, after which, of course, they’re distorted.

As usual when I write about abuse of the political, electoral and legal systems by the Deep State and its primary tools, the Democratic Party, traditionalist Republicans and the corporate media to impact the electoral options of Donald John Trump, I precede by asserting that I do not care for him and do not intend to vote for him, even as a protest.  But Mr. Trump has been indicted through the machinations of a Deep State tool, one of several local attorneys general and federal prosecutors tasked with preventing him for again running for and again possibly winning the United States presidency. 

The action is unprecedented, not only because it involves a former United States president, but because the purported “crime” involves having been the victim of blackmail and extortion.  But the real reason seems obvious to me.  It seems obvious to many who love peace, to the many who really strive for equity and equality, and for a system of governance based on justice and legality.

Mr. Trump has many negative characteristics but also a few saving graces, and it is the latter which have led the Deep State to take this unprecedented action, an action so polarizing that it once again promotes the prospect that American citizens will feel it is their duty to act in an uncivil, possibly violent manner.  The saving graces all involve repudiation of neoconservative military activities abroad, for example, in the Ukraine and in Taiwan; they involve repudiation of the dangerously anachronistic North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the similar web of offensive military alliances and bases around the world designed to promote and preserve political, economic and military hegemony, even at the risk of nuclear war.  They involve a desire to redirect spending on defense towards improved infrastructure.

Mr. Trump’s posture with respect to the foregoing is neither consistent nor coherent given his dedication to Israeli objectives and his intent to do to the Islamic Republic of Iran what his predecessors did to Iraq, nor given his methodology of governance through arrogance and aggressive posturing on economic issues, but it is deeply threatening to those who rule us through proxies, those who rule us through moles scattered throughout the bureaucracy and the judiciary, throughout what used to be a purportedly free press, throughout international institutions.  That is why a minor league functionary has taken the unprecedented, illegal action that confronts the United States today.  The action which will exacerbate the polarization which led to the events of January 6, 2020, and which, step by step, is bringing Americans closer and closer to another disastrous civil conflict.

Some among the American people seem to be waking up to the reality that democracy in the United States is an illusion, too many perhaps.  And the Deep State will not tolerate such independence, not again.  It is hell bent on preventing the miscalculations that led to the disastrous 2016 presidential and Congressional elections, disastrous at least from their perspective.  And no price is too high to pay to avoid them, especially when it is We the People who pay the price, not those who rule us.  Who rule us as though they were the proud owners of Tolkien’s one ring.

Julian Assange sits rotting in a British prison, thanks to the Deep State, in that case including Mr. Trump.  The real criminals, the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bush’s and the Bidens (and I don’t mean just Hunter and Jimmy), are free to loot, plunder and cast the world into chaos; a world suffering from the blights of inflation and recession everywhere, and from the violence of the antithesis of Kant’s perpetual peace.  And I’m not at all certain that We the People can do anything about it.  It may already be too late. 

It is certainly way too late to stop the madness through the prophylactic means the Constitution was adopted to provide, means such as limiting the war powers to Congress, an institution which, for more than a century, has abdicated its most important responsibilities, both with respect to peace, and to foreign affairs, and to the wise use of our tax dollars.  And I’m not certain that there are any other constitutional options still open. 

Many of us seriously question the legitimacy of the electoral process, some, because of recent events, but others because the United States has always been a duopoly, a faux democracy with the electoral system rigged in favor of two principal players, both ultimately controlled by the same people.  That leaves us no options that most of us find acceptable, certainly not those options brewing under the surface among left and right wing armed thugs who consider themselves patriots.

So, … “now what”, as Troy’s Cassandra might ask, after having warned us of what was happening for so long?  As Julian Assange might ask, or Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning, or as the small group of independent journalists exiled from the major media constantly remind us.  Or as George Orwell and Aldous Huxley and myriad other authors of dystopian novels illustrated for us.

Now what?
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

On the Ironic Nature of the Emerging Financial Crisis

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The Biden administration’s economic policies are clearly a disaster, largely because of the administration’s insane efforts to destroy the Russian and Chinese economies, rather than concentrating on improving our own.  That is not a partisan issue as both major political parties bear at least some blame, but the architects of this disaster are clearly Barak Obama, Joe Biden and their Ukrainian misadventures.

The latest problem, that of failing banks, very large banks, involves something that impacts all banks, large and small, and that involves the diminution in the value of their investment portfolios, especially the fixed, legally required portion invested in United States government securities.  The diminution is not the fault of the bankers, regardless of what the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission seek to imply.  It is a direct result of the Federal Reserve’s efforts to curb the inflation caused by poorly thought out economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union all over the world.

By raising interest rates to curb inflation, the Federal Reserve causes interest on all new debt to rise, making new debt more desirable for investors, including all kinds of financial institutions, than debt previously issued.  The older debt comprises a major portion of the assets held in portfolios. Consequently, the value of the principal on old debt decreases compared to the value of higher interest paying new debt.  It does so in order to equalize yields.  For example, a $100,000 dollar bond paying interest at the annual rate of five percent yields a $5,000 annual return.  If new $100,000 bonds paid ten percent, their annual yield would be $10,000 and in order to compete, that is, to yield a comparable return (10%), the old bonds, rather than having a price based on their face value, would have to be deeply discounted, in this case, to $50,000.  That would vastly reduce the value of portfolios holding the older debt.

That is exactly what happened to Silicon Valley Bank’s portfolio, seriously impairing its liquidity by souring initially sound investments, and putting the depositors’ savings at risk.  More seriously, that is what is happening to the portfolios of every financial institution required to maintain a portion of their assets in United States’ securities, securities issued by the same Federal Reserve that is responsible for the national banking system.

So, it is the state itself that is guilty of the disaster for not taking into account the consequences of its actions that resulted in inflation in the first place when imposing economic sanctions, getting involved in expensive armed conflicts abroad, and taking other reckless economic actions, such as forgiving debt, etc., and then the reactions to combat the resulting inevitable inflation

There is a belief in the United States, especially among Democratic Party strategists, that the United States can merely print its way out of the problem, increasing the national debt and inflation; but the world is no longer as accepting of such conduct.  Acceptance of irresponsible United States fiscal policies relies totally on maintaining the United States dollar as the world’s medium of exchange.  However, the arbitrary imposition of economic sanctions and the freezing of other countries assets are quickly resulting in the evolution of mechanisms to clear international transactions in currencies other than the dollar.  In addition, no longer will most countries feel secure in maintaining their assets, their gold, etc., in facilities subject to United States or even European Union control, and as that happens, a different doomsday clock approaches an economic apocalypse.

Fasten your safety belts and hang on.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.