Now I think we have a pretty good mental picture of what the “Balance of Payments” really is; and its components the Current Account, Capital Account and Financial Account.
Today we will contrast with what you often hear from other economists. It is complete gobbledygook.
What is this? It is nonsense. You should be able to see that clearly now.
3. PROFESSOR Q. ON OCCULT KNOWLEDGE AS THE KEY TO POWER ~
“The theory of aggregate production which is the point of the following book, nevertheless can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state than the theory of production and distribution of a given production put forth under conditions of free competition…” — John Maynard Keynes ~ Forward to the German Edition of the General Theory (September 7, 1936)
Throughout history, secure ruling elites arise through secret, or occult knowledge which they carefully guard and withhold from outsiders The power of such elites or cults diminishes as their occult knowledge is transformed into “scientific” knowledge and vanishes as soon as it becomes “common sense.” Before analyzing the secrets of the finance capitalist money cult let us glance for historical perspective at occult astronomy, the oldest source of stable rule known to man of which astrology is hut the pathetic remnant.
As soon as men abandoned the life of wandering, tribal hunters to till the soil they needed to predict the seasons. Such knowledge was required in order to know when to plant, when to expect floods in fertile valleys, when to expect rainy seasons, and so on. Months of backbreaking work were wasted by the unavailability of the calendar, a convenience we take for granted. The men who first studied and grasped the regularities of sun, moon, and stars that presage the seasons had a valuable commodity to sell and they milked it to the fullest at the expense of their credulous fellowmen. The occult priesthoods of early astronomers and mathematicians such as the designers of Stonehenge, convinced their subjects that they alone had contact with the gods, and thus, they alone could assure the return of planting seasons and weather favorable to bountiful harvests. The staging (predicting) of solar and lunar eclipses was particularly effective in awing the community. The general success resulting from following the priesthood’s tilling, planting, nurturing, and harvesting timetables insured the priesthood’s power. Today’s Christmas holiday season continues the tradition set by ancient priesthoods, who conducted rituals on the winter solstice to reverse the retreat of the sun from the sky. Their invariable success was followed by wild celebrations. Popular knowledge of seasonal regularities was discouraged by every manner of mysticism and outlandish ritual imaginable. Failures in prediction were blamed on sins of the people and used to justify intensified oppression. For centuries people who had literally no idea of the number of days between seasons and couldn’t count anyway, cheerfully gave up a portion of their harvests, as well as their most beautiful daughters, to their “faithful servants” in the priesthoods.
The power of our finance capitalist money cult rests on a similar secret knowledge, primarily in the field of economics. Our power is weakened by real advances in economic science (Fortunately, the public at large and most revolutionaries remain totally ignorant of economics). However, we established money lords have been able to prolong and even reverse our decline by systematically corrupting economic science with fallacious and spurious doctrines. Through our power in the universities, publishing, and mass media we have been able to reward the sincere, professorial cranks whose spurious doctrines happen to rationalize in terms of “common good” the government supported institutions, laws, and economic measures upon which our money powers depend. Keynesianism is the highest form of phony economics yet developed to our benefit. The highly centralized, mixed economy resulting from the policies advocated by Lord Keynes for promoting “prosperity” has all the characteristics required to make our rule invulnerable to our twin nemeses: real private competition in the economic arena and real democratic process in the political arena. Laissez-faire or free market, classical economics was our original attempt to corrupt economic science. Its beautiful internal consistency blinded economists for many years to the fact that it had virtually nothing to do with current reality. However, we are so powerful today that it is no longer possible to conceal our imposing institutions with the appearances of free competition Keynesianism rationalizes this omnipotent state which we require, while retaining the privileges of private property on which our power ultimately rests. Although the interim reforms advocated by Marx in his Communist Manifesto such as central banking, income tax, and other centralizing measures can be corrupted to coincide exactly with our requirements, we no longer allow Marxist movements major power in developed countries. Our coercive institutions are already in place. Any real steps toward communism would mean our downfall. Of course, phony Marxism is an excellent ideological veil in which to cloak our puppet dictators in underdeveloped areas.
Secondarily, the power of the lords of money rests on an occult knowledge in the area of politics and history. We have quite successfully corrupted these sciences. Although many people are familiar with our secrets through such books as 1984 by the disillusioned George Orwell, few take them seriously and usually dismiss such ideas as paranoia. Since real politics is motivated by individual self-interest, history is viewed most accurately as a struggle for power and wealth We do our best to obscure this self-evident truth by popularizing the theory that history is made by the impersonal struggles between ideas, political systems, ideologies, races, and classes. Through systematic infiltration of all major intellectual, political, and ideological organizations, using the lure of financial support and instant publicity, we have been able to set the limits of public debate within the ideological requirements of our money power.
The so-called Left-Right political spectrum is our creation. In fact, it accurately reflects our careful, artificial polarization of the population on phony issues that prevents the issue of our power from arising in their minds. The Left supports civil liberties and opposes economic or entrepreneurial liberty. The Right supports economic liberty and opposes civil liberty. Of course neither can exist fully (which is our goal) without the other. We control the Right-Left conflict such that both forms of liberty are suppressed to the degree we require Our own liberty rests not on legal or moral “rights,” but on our control of the government bureaucracy and courts which apply the complex, subjective regulations we dupe the public into supporting for our benefit.
Innumerable meaningless conflicts to divert the attention of the public from our operations find fertile ground in the bitter hatreds of the Right/Left imbroglio. Right and Left are irreconcilable on racial policy, treatment of criminals, law enforcement, pornography, foreign policy, women’s lib, and censorship to name just a few issues. Although censorship in the name of “fairness” has been useful in broadcasting and may yet be required in journalism, we generally do not take sides in these issues. Instead we attempt to prolong the conflicts by supporting both sides as required. War, of course, is the ultimate diversionary conflict and the health of our system. War provides the perfect cover of emergency and crisis behind which we consolidate our power. Since nuclear war presents dangers even to us, more and more we have resorted to economic crisis, energy shortages, ecological hysteria, and managed political drama to fill the gap. Meaningless, brushfire wars, though, remain useful.
We promote phony free enterprise on the Right and phony democratic socialism on the Left. Thus, we obtain a “free enterprise” whose “competition” is carefully regulated by the bureaucracy we control and whose nationalized enterprises are controlled directly through our government. In this way we maintain a society in which the basis of our power, legal titles to property and money, remain secure, but in which the peril of free, unregulated competition is avoided and popular sovereignty is nullified. The democratic process is a sitting duck for our money power. Invariably we determine the candidates of the major parties and then proceed to pick the winners. Any attempts at campaign reforms simply put the rules of the game more firmly under our government’s control.
Totalitarianism of the fascist of communist varieties is no danger to us as long as bastions of private property remain to serve as our bases of operation. Totalitarian governments of both Right and Left, because of the vulnerability of their highly visible leaders to party rivals, can be manipulated easily from abroad. Primarily, totalitarian dictatorships efficiently prevent new money lords that could challenge our power from arising in whole continents, civilizations, and races.
Perhaps a few words on ideology proper are in order before I conclude. The only valid ideology, of course is rational egoism, that is, the maximization of the individual’s gratification by whatever means prove practical. This requires power over nature, especially, when possible, power over other humans who are the most versatile and valuable tools of all. Fortunately, we do not have a society of egoists. Money lords would be impossible in such a society as the mental spooks and rationalizations by which we characteristically manipulate and deceive would be a laughing stock Under such circumstances a policy of live and let live or true “laissez-faire” anarchy might be the only alternative. Certainly a hierarchical order would be difficult to maintain by force alone. However, in the current era, while minds are yet in the thrall of altruistic collectivistic, and divine moralistic spooks, the egoist’s rational course is to utilize such spooks to control others.
