Is there “a bigger picture”?
It think it was Pablo Picasso who, when asked by an admirer what he was trying to say in a new canvas, replied “I don’t know, it’s not finished yet”. Degas also said similar things: indeed, he had the unnerving habit of, while round at a client’s for dinner, taking one of his paintings off the wall as he left “to finish it”.
There is a bigger picture behind the great majority of world events in 2015, but nobody knows what it is yet, because it’s a long way from finished. At this point – it sometimes seems to me – it is little more than a preparatory series of sketches. I do not and never will buy into the World Conspiracy tripe, be it about Jews, Islamics, the Pentagon, Putin or the EU/banker/Wall Street axis, because these are at best very loose and occasional cooperations. Most of the time, sharks do not like sharing their prey: a squabble breaks out and there’s a feeding frenzy, but by the end of it they’re as likely to turn on each other as the victim. Islamists split into literally dozens of sectarian groups, Wall Street hates the City, most Russian oligarchs don’t like Putin, the European Commission distrusts the ECB, and a helluva a lot of Jews are either way about Israelis.
What I do think however is that certain similarly aligned interest groups are doing similar things, because they’re jockeying for position in a world where the ringside seats are in short supply. Some of it too, I think, is self-protection by those with vision (and no proprietors to worry about) who want to reduce their exposure to the massive pavanne they just know is coming.
It’s why from 2011-2013 there was a ‘glitz bricks’ boom right at the top of the property markets, as those worried about fiat currencies went for ‘safe’ area property, thus reducing cash liquidity in the economies still further. It’s why (despite manipulation of the price downwards) huge numbers of key institutions and Sovereign governments are buying gold, and new alliances are forming. The AIIB Beijing initiative has had remarkable success in pulling major US supporters and even close allies into its orbit; and predictably, the US has pulled every string, lever and favour in a bid to undermine the new Chinese system.
The Americans will become increasingly isolated the more they go lalalalah about their debt mountain. They may think that QE, huge stock bubbles and Zirp can save their system while inflating away the debt, but if there is another system upon which people can hedge, then that plan isn’t going to work.
The Brussels-am-Berlin-und-Frankfurt axis for a long time saw, in the classic Gaullist tradition, the EU as a commercial, economic and military bulwark against American hegemony. But as their isolation has grown, from Geithner onwards the interference of Wall Street, the State Department and the CIA in European affairs has become increasingly blatant…as indeed has its determination to remain hooked into fossil fuels via the Middle East.
The Mediterranean Lake (for want of a better term) is an infinitely more homogeneous mix than than the north-south divided EU. Similarly, the central, eastern and south Eastern territories relate more closely to German, Russian and Arab relations that they ever will to those with the US. The US knows this…and is committed to “not losing this one” as one well-placed New Yorker told me two weeks ago.
Atop everyone else in the eurozone, Angela Merkel too is preparing before the Future. The Marks
are printed and ready to go, and while she doesn’t trust Putin, they do have ‘an understanding’. As a smart person, she can also see where the Club Med revolt will inexorably lead; and above all, she does not trust Mario Draghi’s motives. This last is possibly the only thing we have in common.
The power shift from labour to capital and big to bigger has had a good run for its money….but the smarter end of that money knows it isn’t the future. Totally unreported in mainstream media, Rupert Murdoch has made three speeches in the last two years saying the future is small and fleet of foot, not big and unwieldy. I don’t think he was talking about Geli in the Chancellery, but you never know.
In between those planning as best they can are the middling-brained folks trying to defend what they’ve got. This applies to the eurozone and the EC as much as it does to the neoliberal globalists. There is no conspiracy I can discern here at all – unless you call water cannon and panicky, illiberal laws a conspiracy. I prefer to see them as siege-mentality desperation.
We need to move away from being easy targets for the Status Quoers who are keen to stick us all in a tight frame called Conspiracy theory non-violent extremists.
The aim from here on, in my view, should be to record and analyse those acts suggestive of a strategy…not force fit them into Elders of Zion looney-tune bollocks.
A geopolitical strategy is what all the major players are sketching out at the moment. Some will work better than others, but don’t expect the final result to be a work of art. The only way we’re going to get that is to take the money out of politics, and give power back to the citizenry.
The Slog 