1 - The “market” conditions life
2 - The partner finance state
3 - GDP and covid
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1 - The “market” conditions life
Recently, the OECD offered to the "market", a very comprehensive picture of the economy for the near future, through the much talked - as little strict, GDP. (see chart at the end).
In particular, the market is the place where normal people, sellers and, buyers of goods meet for subsistence and trade.
In economics, the “ market ” is a tendency to a infinite and particularly nebulous extrapolation from a market. In economic terminology, it is called "market" the ethereal space where they intersect, businessess and very different powers - normal people, harmful pestilences, such as capitalists (individual or collective) and political classes; goods, everything that transacts in the “market” even if it has only a virtual existence; and money, lots of money (overwhelmingly in the form of a record somewhere, in the accounts of the institutions of the financial system) and money, of course, it too, a commodity, the main and most widespread of the goods, leaving... covid-19 far behind.
The functioning of the “market” has not people as the beneficiaries or, as the objective of its existence. The “market” takes the 7000 M of people that inhabit the planet as instruments for the functioning of the “market” itself, as a large mine from which the human capacity for transforming nature into goods and providers of services, more or less necessary, is extracted; it also includes, goods and other elements, coisificados[1], amortized till to be considered as rubbish. As this drive is always scarce for the ambitions of capital, the limitations of the planet need to be overcome; so what if a well-known top capitalist (Elon Musk) takes colonization and the guaranteed fuss of Mars very seriously!
The operation of the "market" takes place, not because of the availability of goods and services essential to life and the reproduction of nature (including human beings) but the consumer products or services, electronic impulses necessary to thicken the already accumulated capital. If this mechanism changes or destroy the environment, local or global; if it promotes suffering and enormous lacks to a significant part of mankind; if it poisons or destroys fields and cities, these are collateral damages, certainly surmountable by a rise in securities on the NYSE or NASDAQ, making happy its holders. Those are the artisans that define, in essence, the contents of the media and the creativity of their plumitivos[2], by duty craft, little aware of the growing margin in the uncontrolled own overall system management; devoting more to gossip, the fait-divers of politics and football - Their master’s voices.
The S&P 500 (Standard & Poors) is a finished example of capitalism in this 21st century. It includes the shares of the most relevant USA 500 companies, listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ and they have the importance of defining the trends of the "market"; it is based on very unrealistic ideas about the evolution and efficiency of investments based on ethereal elements that may be separated into two groups;
· those, related to transactions of land, natural resources, real estate, stocks, currency or goods; elements with intrinsic materiality;
· or, immaterial, virtual elements, such as patents, the values assigned to trademarks, the assessment that makes the customer value of a company or, their software.
|
|
1975 |
1985 |
1995 |
2005 |
2018 |
|
$ Billions * |
0.122 |
0.428 |
3.12 |
9.28 |
21.03 |
|
% of intangibles in total S & P- 500 |
17% |
32% |
68% |
80% |
90% ** |
* 1 B = 10 ^ 12 (Europe ) * * 2020
Source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-soaring-value-of-intangible-assets-in-the-sp-500/
However, the value attributed to intangibles has shown itself to be more and more determinant in the creation of the value attributed by the “market” (and a broken bag, called PIB), making it ethereal, fragile and, in reality, unrelated with the lives of human beings in general. Since the transactions based on purely conceptual elements, riding electrical impulses, their variations, set in the financial voluptuousness, do not will leave to affect heavily, millions of human beings, through the actions of governments and political classes in general, when something escapes to capital accumulation designs. More than ever, the "market" is a game, a casino, which artificiality has the particularity to produce its harmful effects on thousands of millions of human beings, while fattening the elite that Manuel Castells, the beginning of the century, estimated at 1% of the world population.
The entry into scene of coronavirus came to show the inability of capital institutions (multinational companies and institutions, such as WHO, captured by private interests), without forgetting the enormous responsibilities of governments, always agile in the impoverishment or the withdrawal rights and, in evident bewilderment to overcome the consequences of the viral invasion. As a result, the number of infected people continues to grow (more than 93 M of people, including 2 M (jan 14th) of fatal victims, when the end of the one-year period that has elapsed since the emergence of covid-19 is approaching. Only one Copernician change, creating democracy, annuls nationalisms, state powers, political classes and, turns economy an instrument of a harmonious encounter between Humanity and the planet.
Before protests and rebellions, there is always available, by political powers, one takes care of the array of repressive or destructive resources ranging from various strains of police and military, hierarchized based on bestiality, the bombing of cities, with the generation of millions of refugees, in addition to the use of electronic warfare tools, "clean", able to settle specific people or, raze cities. Saddam Hussein, even though he had several look - alikes - whom even his guards did not recognize as such - ended up not escaping the execution ordered by the occupier; and General Suleimani was shot down without an ancient protocolized declaration of war or invasion. Trump is a greater symbol of post-fascist modernity.
What in the eighteenth century came to be called economy, consisted of the adaptation of human effort to the satisfaction of needs. Capitalism has to be associated with the accumulation of capital in the context of a deranged compulsion by looking for an infinite growth of GDP, even though it only has a name since 1932. Despite this drive towards the infinite, the satisfaction of real human needs - food, housing, health, peace and, education - is systematically impaired to the detriment of capital accumulation, today, mostly in the form of electronic records that multiply incessantly, without generating a bread crumb; but, stealing many crumbs from those who do not live in the lust of financial speculation.
2 - The partner finance state
This madness developed by the financial system, to create a constant and accelerated creation of money, has as counterpart credit creation, debt, from companies, families and, states, a creation that does not correspond to concomitant use of savings; it corresponds to an anticipation of the future, especially of future earnings that, within a current practice (economic and political) may not exist. On the contrary, the formation of credit cascades by the financial system proceeds without having any significant volume of savings in the balance. So, the savings or simple deposits placed by people, as a form of annuity that gives them some security in the future, are in no way guaranteed...even if the States ensure (... gravely...) € 100,000/person in the case of banking laugh!
It is known that the financial system will never be able to return the amounts deposited by its customers, just as it is known that public debts have an impossible repayment; although some Portuguese economists, out of ignorance or reactionarism, pointed, some years ago, to a restructuring of the Portuguese public debt, which in due time, we considered (as today) as priceless as illegitimate [1] .
Thus, GDP intends to represent everything, representing, in reality, little. When someone prepares a meal for you, it doesn't count towards GDP, but if you go to a restaurant you'll join the “market” and then contribute to GDP! Aid for a young person in schoolwork only enters GDP, if produced in an explanatory company, on a commercial basis. GDP only considers what is traded in the "market", knowing that the transactions carried out in the market are, to a large extent, external and, therefore, impossible to integrate the sanctified GDP. A major element of integration in GDP is the value-added tax (VAT) which is levied on almost all purchases of goods or services [2]; a whistleblower at the service of the State, the collective capitalist. Relating to work, work effort, this integration is assured by the with holding tax on the remuneration of labor (IRS). Finally, there is an interconnection between goods registered (and paid) by companies as necessary for their activity (especially automobiles), but whose use is allowed to capitalists and senior staff for their use in their private life, thus avoiding taxation of income from work.
The purchase of war material counts as … investment in national accounts! Whether an investment is a money application into something that allows the satisfaction of an individual or collective need, it is clear that the military equipment is useless and is artificial to count to GDP (see EU, the chart of accounts 2010, the SEC10). It should be noted that military spending comprises a strong import to most countries since production is very concentrated in a few number which, due to its sophistication, makes buyers (the vast majority of countries) dependent on components or the load coming from abroad; a weakness inherent in the respective geopolitics but which, as a rule, result in the inability to engage in wars, unless the major producing powers or the smuggling networks feed the logistics.
In Portugal, it is estimated that an income corresponding to about 25 to 29% of GDP does not count within the latter. And that disgusts all governments, always ready and eager to reduce social costs and increase the revenue from taxes, fees, fines... as economists dislike, with a real fixation on the infinite growth of GDP...
There is a constant struggle of the binomial States/political classes to frame, under their knowledge and their enormous capacity for predation, the entire production of goods and services, without exceptions, as if all transactions between humans have or should integrate a commercial logic. Among the few situations where the States and political classes are tolerant facing to a non - accounting in GDP, the main is, corruption; and, for obvious reasons, since they strive for an open and happy life, achieved through lies and theft, with the distracted connivance of the judiciary.
For all this oppressive and kleptocratic machinery to work, governments are needed where there is a presence of mandarins embedded in the influence trade, young technocrats eager for promotion and, plenty of imbeciles that history will not mention and that seek financial glory as a result of favors to businessmen.
So, it is no wonder that the governmental caste grows, and grows substantially. In Portugal, the first constitutional government, in 1976, had 18 ministers and 37 secretaries of state; the current one has 27 ministers and 68 secretaries of state, not to mention tons of secretaries and advisers, all paid for by the public purse.
3 - GDP and covid
According to the OECD, the outlook for GDP growth looks very promising for the next two years. It is possible that after this annus horribilis (2020) the economic situation will prove to be less disastrous, although this should not have repercussions on the unemployed waiting for better days and, even less, on those who moved from old people's deposits (cynically referred to as homes) to the cemetery. The production and sale of vaccines will certainly have effects on GDP growth.
The balance between the savings available and the investment financed by them no longer has any meaning, once the financial system runs on its track, separated from the real world; central banks issue electronic circuits that will inflate the banks' availabilities, having, on the other hand, credit rights over those, whose return will probably never happen.
So, by the end of 2020, the US FED made available to the big banks a billion (in the US it is a trillion) dollars, as very short-term credits, in a concerted action with the other central banks (ECB, and banks in Canada, Japan and, Switzerland) so that there is no shortage of dollars in the market, at a time when funds will be distributed to the population to compensate for damage resulting from the virus and the disastrous way in which it has been combated by the Trump administration.
The US public debt remained stable between 1994 and 2008, between 5 4 and 63% of GDP; in 2009 , with the crisis of subprime came to 74 %, with 84% the following year and to 92% in 2011; growth, albeit slower, reached 107% in 2020 and 122% in April. In dollar terms this means the passage of 4.5 trillion (billion in Europe) in 1994 to 9.2 in 2008, 14 in 2011 and 23.7 in last April. A rain of money, a success...which left out the large range of poor people.
In Portugal, in the first ten months of the year , the impact of the measures adopted within the scope of Covid-19 reproduced a value of € 7692.5 M, divided between revenue breaks and expenditure increases (an amount equivalent to 3.6% of 2019 GDP) . The most relevant contributions to these breaks are as follows:
· Measures with an impact on revenue - € 1508.3 M (893.9 M and 611.1 M, respectively within the scope of Central Administration and Social Security [3] and, essentially, consist of a suspension of IRC payments (€ 791 M) and exemption from TSU [4] payments (€ 477 M); and also, suspensions of tax (€ 68.5 M) or contributory (€ 71.8 M) foreclosures, certainly benefiting a good portion of typically relapsed and fraudulent entrepreneurs.
· Measures impacting on spending - € 2356.2 M, highlighting € 819 M for the layoff, € 201.3 M to support the self - employed, € 368.4 M for health equipment and € 248.4 M of various allowances.
And, of course, they are not included, the purchase of vaccines and correlated spending...
Observing the evolution of the public debt in the periods January / October in 2019 and 2020, it is easily noted that the increase in debt in 2020 is about ten times greater than that recorded in the previous year (in € million). Far beyond, therefore, the sum of increases in expenditure and reduction in revenues.
|
2019 ( Jan / Oct) |
+ 1225 M |
|
2020 ( Jan / Oct) |
+ 12896 M |
The increase in debt is not always easy, given the very low level of interest rates (even negative) and especially because the financial system needs to raise debt of states, to deliver to the ECB as collateral for the funds that the central bank issues, with the objective, to be applied to the lust of financial capital. The enrichment of this has little or nothing to do with peoples' lives, increases inequalities but...it is positively reflected in the well-known GDP!
The EU has faced the pandemic through its usual narrow economistic way, recalling that in the beginning, it was just a "common market"; and, thus, everything plans to solve with a focus on the mobilization of money, of a Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) in force until 2027, to be distributed among the member states, with Portugal having € 30000 M, to be contemplated in the budgets and yet, € 15 300 M grants, without prejudice to the use of more loans.
Bureaucrats, of economistic or mere mandarins bias, experts in the trafficking of influences, practicing brinkmanship paltry, just based its pressure on people, reducing their well-being, with isolation, in the narrowing of distances and the frequencies in their movements, in the use of masks and frequent use of alcohol-gel, which, as it turns out, have been of little use. They discovered the wide range of vaccines to stick in the population, with variable prices [5] but excluding those created by geopolitical, Chinese and, Russian challengers. And they look with culpable indifference on the main victims of the virus, the elderly, especially if confined to homes, defenseless before the plague that enters by the door or through family members; and, that make up the overwhelming majority of cases of death by covid-19.
The graph below reflects the growth prospects advanced by the OECD for the next two years. Perhaps it is, above all, the formulation of something that will comfort the peoples subjected to fear of the covid-19 and its recent variant; and that, frightened, restricted and confined, dismissed or placed in layoffs, they watch, frightened or rocked by the hype of the political classes, to fatten financial capital.
Source: OECD - https://stats.oecd.org/viewhtml.aspx? Datasetcode = EO108_INTERNET & lang = en # )
- - - - - -
[1] How the financial system captures humanity through debt
http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.pt/2016/12/como-o-sistema-financeiro-captura.html
http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.pt/2017/01/como-o-sistema-financeiro-captura.html
http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.pt/2016/12/como-o-sistema-financeiro-captura.html
Restructuring public debt solves nothing in our lives
http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.pt/2016/11/reestruturar-divida-publica-nada.html
Public debt - Public debt - Cancer is not treated with paracetamol
http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.pt/2016/05/divida-publica-divida-publica-cancro.html
Europe - debtors of unpaid debt
https://grazia-tanta.blogspot.com/2019/06/europa-os-devedores-de-uma-divida-nao.html
[2] In addition to other taxes with a specific impact on certain consumptions (beer, tobacco, fuels); inherent to property ( I S Veículos, IUC or IMI) or acquisitions (cars, pleasure boats ...) and others, always in the sights of the government shift gang, with a more general impact, such as stamp duty.
[3] Portuguese Social Security has been stolen by governments and companies for decades, in view of the conniving silence of the parties on the right or less on the right; but also by the press. On the subject, consult:
https://www2.slideshare.net/durgarrai/segurana-social-vtima-de-uma-burla-com-dcadas
http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.pt/2012/07/a-divida-seguranca-social-o-longo.html
http://www.slideshare.net/durgarrai/segurana-social-processos-de-descapitalizao-1
[4] TSU is the contribution of the firms to the Social Security of workers
[5 ]Oxford / AstraZeneca - € 1.78; Johnson & Johnson - € 6.9; Sanofi / GlaxoSmithKline - € 7.56
Pfizer/BioNTech - € 12; CureVac - € 10; Moderna - € 14.70, per serving
This and other texts here, in Portuguese and English:
http://grazia-tanta.blogspot.com/
http://www.slideshare.net/durgarrai/documents
[1] Seen as a thing in Portuguese
[2] Plumitivo – The one with the profession of writing what the boss orders
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