Michael Hudson and the Game of Thrones

I have the highest regard for the thinking of Michael Hudson.

He wrote this appearing at Naked Capitalism with a relatively long introduction by Yves.  If she puts a "must read" or a long intro to anything that she links to then I must read it with attention.

This is the link to Michael Hudson's examination with Yves preface:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/michael-hudson-how-the-u-s-avoided-chronic-deflation-by-relinquishing-monetary-control-to-wall-street.html

I read the whole thing!  Read it and you will see what I mean.

Game of Thrones is a complex story.  At least is has the direct story line thread of sex and violence related to power.  What Michael Hudson wrote will never come to the screen as a block buster like GoT!  Too many players, too many story lines,  too many motivations.  It is a chess game compared to Rock, Scissors, Paper.

Reading it I kind of got (GoT) the general gist of it.  I read it all.

It all comes together in the conclusion that neatly wraps up all the preceding drama and story lines, the cast of characters largely being long dead but their proxy inheritors of the conflict still standing today with Wall Street having seized the throne.

Winter has come.

How it came about is a long story that Michael tells well.  The high brow version of GoT or the writings of J. K. Rowling.

Michael's conclusion:

"Since 2008, Wall Street investment banks have obtained much more wealth by capital gains (asset-price gains for real estate, bonds and stocks) and investment fees than from interest. This has led them to press the government for policies to inflate asset sheets more than provide credit for industry. Europe has followed suit. The upshot is that banks both in Europe and America have gained control over government policy to become the main suppliers of the economy’s money and receive public subsidy and favors. Their capture of the government’s financial, regulatory and policy-making institutions has led to a policy bias favoring creditors over debtors. In terms of monetary policy, creditors always have advocated downward commodity prices and wages. But since the 1980s they also have favored debt-leveraged inflation of real estate, stock and bond prices to create “capital” gains via low-interest “soft money” policies."

At the time  history of the evolving relationship of between government and banks was being made was all the behind the scenes machinations and and motivations the subject of conversation and comprehension by the general public?   Certainly to the extent of where the money to support the next growing season was going to come from.  The main need for credit I suppose in an Agrarian society and its growing Industrial counter part both needing the means of investment (credit).

However the detailed smoky backroom fight among a few key players on either side was probably as obscure then as it is now with each using the power of "Populism Support" even if that "Support" was gained by deception of the general population to the extent of working against their own self interest.

The proof is in the pudding.

The bottom line of who benefited from all the twisted story line and players is far more simple and self evident than the story of how it got there.

At the bottom or at the top, it makes no difference how you look at it is........

1%

Nuff said.

Roll the credits!

It is the greatest story that nobody ever watched because they got lost in the first episode of the season.  Only a few could follow it as it was being broadcast in real time.  Only a few can comprehend  the re-run on the "History Channel".

Michael tells the greatest story ever told but heard by the fewest.  The problem of that is this:

It is not just a story.  It is real world.  We are the real world players and the story line would change if we understood it.  In the end it is a conflict between the multitude of People and a few People holding an equal or greater amount of power.

There is a lot of speculation about what happened to John Snow.  He was the figure head of Power to the People.

What Michael writes about is Money.  The medium of exchange story line thread that drives all of complexities of the story he tells.

The Internet is the new Mint of conceptual Value in the Information Age.  Its "Stage" of conceptual value medium of exchange activity is the World Wide Web.  The same laws of supply and demand and the power intrinsic to the control of the Mint as well as the application of the medium of exchange product of the Mint is the some old story simply updated like Shakespeare plays to modern times the same way "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" updates mythology to a new stage to play out on.

Stories have power in their conclusion.

Happy Endings.

or

Bad Endings.

Where would stories be if they just sputtered out?  Nobody left to watch them I suppose because nobody cares because they have no meaning any more.  A story that so insignificant that it was even lost in history.  So bad the projector got up and left before it was over.

On the other hand, the black humor side of being so bad it is good, just because it is so bad makes it a great story.

Maybe what the story teaches is what gives it power?

What it teaches is equal to our ability to learn?

As Money becomes digital it becomes a child of the Internet and the Word Wide Web.  A physical component of the Internet Body as well as an entity in the conceptual structure of the World Wide Web brain.  The bridge of relationship and method of conversion from physical to conceptual is the nervous communication system.

Money used to be the only social game in town that was a universal medium of exchange lubricating social interaction like a language.  It was the thing that brought everything together like its counterpart Religion operating in a different world.

There are always bigger fish that come along to eat smaller fish.

The Internet of Things and its World Wide Web as physical and logical manifestations like body and brain, hardware and software system will eat Money as Currency in its (now conceptualized) "physical digital" body manifestation and more abstractly and higher order conceptualized "Medium of Exchange" brain operations.

Money was our highest order Information System structure and master of its Problem Domain.  Money has always been an Information Entity.

Now there is a new kid on the block that manages all information better.  Bigger, better and badder.  It eats the lunch of others.  One bite at a time like Pac-Man until it eats everything.

Pac-Man eating us physically and logically is the stuff of Science Fiction and the stories we tell of the future are fascinating to the extent of both Good and Bad endings.  Just like the stories of the past.

I did it, I did it, I did it!

I said what I want to say about what I see.

Told my story about it.

I reduces complexity to simplicity in the end.

The End.