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EDITORIAL

Global Usury And Its Consequences: America's Depression And China's Formidable Manufacturing Base

CHINESE SUPERCOMPUTER AND ITS GESTALT

Released: 2 June, 2010.
© Macroknow Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 

The Cantos of Ezra Pound*
XLV
. . . With usura hath no man a house of good stone . . .
with usura, sin against nature . . .
Stonecutter is kept from his stone
weaver is kept from his loom . . .
Usura slayeth the child in the womb . . .
N.B.  Usury: A charge for the use of purchasing power, levied without regard to production; often without regard to the possibilities of production. . .
 

L
. . . Debt when the Medici took the throne was 5 million
And when they left was fourteen
And its interest ate up all the best income . . .

 

THE NEBULAE EVENT

"A Chinese supercomputer [the Nebulae system] has ranked as the world’s second fastest machine, surpassing European and Japanese systems and underscoring China’s aggressive commitment to science and technology," so announced the New York Times.1

This event cannot be taken in isolation. It is part of a much bigger whole. A whole that gives the event its meaning. What is this whole (or Gestalt2)? What is its meaning? For insight, we need to

  • Scope the event from many perspectives,
  • Identify the players and their intentions, and
  • Most important, identify the unfolding global phenomenon which enframes the event or in which the event inheres.

The event has been covered in the press.1,3 The perspectives taken typically include:

  • Ranking of supercomputers by petaflops (the US Department of Energy's "Jaguar" is top ranked at 1.75 petaflops; the Chinese Nebulea is ranked second at 1.271 petaflops).3
  • Geopolitical distribution of supercomputers (the US dominates the top 500 with 282 supercomputers, Europe with 144, China with 24, etc).3

Clearly, the event itself the building of the Nebulae system is part of "China’s aggressive commitment to science and technology."1 Strong science and technology means more power economic and military. But who are the players and what are their intentions. The construction of the Nebulae system involved Dawning, China's leader in high-performance computing.4-5 It also involved components and parts from several companies:

  • Intel and Nvidia, two U.S. companies, provided microprocessors.3
  • Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli-American company, provided connectivity products, including adapters, switches, and management software.4

Clearly, the intention of these companies is commercial. In the Nebulae case, international trade facilitated the acquisition by China of American and Israeli high-technology subsystems, components, and parts; and increased America's and Israel's exports. But there is more to this event, much more: China continues to be dependent on America and Israel for components and parts. But for how long?

THE GLOBAL PHENOMENON IN WHICH THE NEBULAE EVENT INHERES

In 2001, the G8, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and business leaders pushed aggressively for the globalization of "free trade." For many people in the U.S., Canada, Italy, Sweden, etc., the "free trade" doctrine could not be trusted. Why? "Free trade" is financed in large part by public and private debts and, if you trust the wisdom of the Tanach, debt is nothing but "economic slavery."5 Many equated the globalization of "free trade" with the globalization of "usury" and its perverted "rule of law" (the sense I give to the word "usury" is that given by the Hebrew sages in the Tanach).6

"Free trade," as a global phenomenon, opened two wide horizons: one was immediately exploited by American bankers (and, ironically, by al-Qaeda); the other by China, India, and others (including, ironically, Iran). The first horizon resulted in the biggest financial meltdown since the Depression AIG, GM, Lehman Brothers, and countless other icons of American Capitalism collapsed, and millions of Americans lost their homes. The second allowed China to develop a formidable manufacturing base for producing just about anything – toys, cars, planes, pharmaceuticals, . . . and computers. To mitigate the nasty consequences of dependence, China smartly opted to invest in U.S. treasury securities.

As at March 2010, China held $895.2 billion in U.S. treasury securities (China's holdings of U.S. securities peaked at $939.9 billion in July 2009).7 (According to Simon Johnson, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, China holds "about $1 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities, or nearly half the $2.37 trillion stock of Treasury debt held by 'foreign official' owners"; and according to Eswar Prasad, of Cornell University, "China probably holds about $1.7 trillion in U.S. government debt."8)

U.S. DEBT OUTSTANDING

Which leads me to a discussion of "debt." The debt outstanding of the United States has two components: domestic nonfinancial sector and domestic financial sector. The domestic nonfinancial sector debt includes household debt (home mortgages, consumer credit, etc.), business debt, and government debt (local, state, and federal). The domestic financial sector debt includes domestic financial debt and foreign debt. Data from the "Flow of Funds Account of the United States" (Z.1 Release) indicate as follows:9

  • U.S. domestic nonfinancial sector debt outstanding soared from $3.2 trillion in 1978 to $34.7 trillion in 2009.
  • U.S. financial sector debt outstanding soared from $0.9 trillion in 1978 to more than $10 trillion in 2009.
  • The total debt outstanding of the U.S. soared from $3.8 trillion in 1978 to $52.4 trillion in 2009 (a 13.9-fold increase).
  • On a per capita basis, the total debt outstanding of the U.S. soared from $16,891 in 1978 to $170,006 in 2009.10

The poetic hate of "usura" in Ezra Pound's Cantos became everybody's hate!

U.S. STRATEGY: ANYONE CAN BE BOUGHT

" . . To the fine formulas of the anti-Semite – ‘Money can’t do everything’ – ‘There are things money can’t buy’ – the Jew replies sometimes by affirming the absolute power of money: ‘Anybody can be bought, if you can just find his price.’"11 Jean-Paul Sartre

U.S. political leaders have made it absolutely clear: the bailout of the global banking system trumps everything. The center of life is money and money is created as debt! I'm afraid leaders who are ruling many of the so-called Western enterprises (government and business) are not capable of appreciating the significance of the Nebulae event as part of the global usury phenomenon. Why? Because they believe that through money they control the world. The meltdown notwithstanding, there is no reason to worry: a dollar e-minted in America is still more trusted than a Renminbi or Yuan e-minted in China – at least for the time being! With money you can buy anything and anyone.11

 

 


References

* Ezra Pound, The Cantos of Ezra Pound. Ezra Pound, 1934, 1937, 1940, 1948, 1950, 1956, 1959, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1968, 1970, 1971. The Estate of Ezra Pound, 1969, 1972. The Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust, 1973, 1986. Vice Versa, 1942. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1950. New York, NY: New Directions Publishing Corporation. Canto XLV, at 229-230; Canto L, at 246. See also: Ezra Weston Loomis Pound, Macroknow Library, 29-Sep-2006, http://www.macroknow.com/books/quotes/q-pound.htm.

1 John Markoff, Chinese Edge Toward Supercomputing Record. New York Times, 30-May-2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/science/01compute.html.

2 Maurice Merlau-Ponti, Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Colin Smith. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958. New York, NY: Routledge, 2002-2008. Originally published as Phénomènologie de la perception, Editions Gallimard, Paris,1945.

3 John E. Dunn (TechWorld). China chases US in latest supercomputer ranking. NetworkWorld, 1-Jun-2010, http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/060110-china-chases-us-in-latest.html.

4 Mellanox-Connected Dawning “Nebula” Petaflop Supercomputer at SIAT to Meet China’s National Needs in Healthcare and Manufacturing: Mellanox 40Gb/s InfiniBand Solutions Enable Dawning to Achieve a Performance Record for the Largest HPC System in China. Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. (Sunnyvale, California and Yokneam, Israel), News Release, 1-Jun-2010, http://www.mellanox.com/content/pages.php?pg=press_release_item&rec_id=431.

5 Dawning Information Industry Co., Ltd. (Beijing, China). Website, http://www.dawning.com.cn.

6 See Edward E. Ayoub, Nothing But a Tail. Mind Hat, Editorial, 8-Dec-2001 (Updated 10-Jan-2002), http://mindhat.com/editorials-eea/op-ed-20011208.htm. The Editorial includes this admonition: Let the heads of nations beware! They are being cajoled to join the "free trade" club. But this is a monstrous deception. The deception is designed to transform free peoples into nothing but a tail (emphasis in the original). The admonition anticipated the current financial crises in Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain (PIGS).

7
Major Foreign Holders of Treasury Securities. U.S. Department of the Treasury, Mar-2010, http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt.

8 David M. Dickson, China holds more U.S. debt than indicated. The Washington Times, 2-Mar-2010, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/02/chinas-debt-to-us-treasury-more-than-indicated.

9 Z.1 Release Flow of Funds Account of the United States: Debt Growth, Borrowing, and Debt Outstanding Tables. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 11-Mar-2010, http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/Current/z1r-2.pdf.

10 Sources of U.S. population estimates (December 31 population estimates obtained by linear interpolation):

11 Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew. Translated by George J. Becker. Preface by Michael Walzer, 1995. New York, NY: Schoken Books Inc., 1948, 1976. Originally published as Réflexions sur la Question Juive, Paris, France: Éditions Morihien, 1946. Chapter 3, at 128. See also: Jean-Paul Sartre, Macroknow Library, 14-Oct-2001, http://www.macroknow.com/books/quotes/q-sartre.htm.

 

 

 

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