Anything that's bad for corporate profits -- even if it's good for society or reflects national values -- is killed in the name of free trade.

 

IN THE NAME
OF FREE TRADE

[... Samuel Russell and Philip Ammidon founded Russell & Co.. Many notorious traders made their wealth while working for the firm such as John Cleve Green, William Henry Low (first working for Minturn & Champlin of New York), Augustine Heard (later founded his own firm after supporting Joseph Coolidge who was displaced by Robert Bennet Forbes),[47] and Warren Delano Jr. (representing Russell & Sturgis in Canton, but joined Russell & Co. in 1839 just before Forbes dispute with Coolidge. Shortly thereafter he also became the American Consul in Canton). In 1829, Russell & Co. acquired Perkins & Co and became the largest American firm to trade in opium. The acquisition and merger of large agency houses in Canton was merely an economic rearrangement rather than a sign of hard times.[48] Fortune begat fortune as wealthy Bostonian families flocked to the opium trade in China, creating, uniting and expanding firms. John Perkins Cushing, head of Perkins & Co. in Canton since 1803, amassed such wealth in China that he made a name for himself apart from the rest of the Cushing clan, which was not known to lack in means, returning home after over twenty years with seven million dollars.[49]  

The change in names of firms did not cut the familial ties as jobs were assured for family members. Thomas Tunno Forbes, who replaced Cushing, died two years after his arrival Canton. His brothers, Robert Bennet and John Murrey Forbes, arrived in Canton soon afterwards. Robert remained in China and became a partner in Russell & Co. in Canton, whereas John M Forbes served three terms in China, after which he moved on to become one of the railroad tycoons in the United States. All three brothers were nephews of Thomas H. Perkins, one of the founders of the original Perkins firm that traded in opium. He was also the uncle and stepfather of John Perkins Cushing.[50]

Other wealthy Bostonian and Salem families, such as the Bryants, Cabots, Higginsons, Paines, and Peabodys to name a few, were all involved in the opium trade whether in Canton or invested in the trade at home.[51]  New York firms, such as Astor’s American Fur Company, competed for the China trade with their fellow Bostonian countrymen and British firms. Thomas H. Smith, who received three million dollars of government-deferred import tax credit, reinvested the money in opium for tea trade. Smith went bankrupt when the prices of tea plummeted in 1826. In his and Astor’s wake, six new firms, founded in New York, joined the competition with Russell & Co. over the America-China trade. Of these, Abiel Abott Low, William Henry Low’s nephew, was most noteworthy. Low joined his uncle in Canton, rising through the ranks of Russell  & Co. until he felt secure enough to open his own firm, A. A. Low & Bros. in 1840, engaging in the opium-tea markets by taking the advantage of fast American built opium clippers, which could carry up to 350 tons of cargo faster than any other ship in coastal China.[52]  

Between 1812 and 1821, opium accounted for six to fifteen percent of the American trade in China, the bulk of which was still based on silver.[53] In 1831 and 1832, opium consisted one fifteenth of American imports.[54] These figures, however, are restricted to the amount of opium procured in Smyrna and shipped to Canton. The amount of money gained by American firms in Canton who acted as agents for the opium trade in Lintin or who shipped opium in consignment from Calcutta is impossible to ascertain, other than the fact that many American merchants returned home wealthy after few years of business in China; and successful business in China usually meant trading in opium.

THE WAR

The American traders, after some debate, signed Lin’s bond and stayed to conduct business to the very end. Snow’s boss in the firm, Robert Bennet Forbes refused Elliot’s suggestion, reportedly replying to him: “I had not come to China for health or pleasure, and that I should remain at my port as long as I could sell a yard of goods or buy a pound of tea…. We Yankees had no Queen to guarantee our losses.”[77]  Between May 1839 and June 1840, the year that took the British flotilla to arrive in China, tension remained high. Diplomacy, trade and even armed conflict took place between the British and the Chinese. The American traders who stayed were eventually driven out in May 1841, and those few who could not leave suffered the consequences. Joseph Coolidge was apprehended and tortured by the Chinese, and was saved only after someone had identified him as an American rather than an Englishman.[78]The war was unpopular in the United States, yet Robert Bennet Forbes and eight other American merchants in Canton appealed to Congress in May 1839 to send a military force in case American interests were threatened, but no such force was sent. They asked that the “‘robbery’ of British subjects by such ‘high handed measures’ be denounced by that legislative body, and that it ‘take immediate measures; and if deemed advisable, in concert with the governments of Great Britain, France and Holland, or either of them, in their endeavors to establish commercial relations… upon a safe and honorable footing.…’ One American trader, William Henry Low, did not wait for any official action from his government, but served the British as a messenger as soon as the fighting began.”[84]

 

IT IS NOT A CONSPIRIACY WHEN YOU CAN SHOW PROOF OF STRATEDGY

US trade rep demands end to other nations' healthcare, privacy rules, food labelling and The 2014 National Trade Estimate Report, published earlier by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), targets financial, privacy, health, and other public interest policies of each TPP nation as "trade barriers" that the U.S. government seeks to eliminate. The report offers unusual insight into why negotiations over the sweeping, 12-nation deal are contentious and have repeatedly missed deadlines for completion.

 

International Order - The European Union and World Trade Organization codified it all - even if financial capitalism didn't always work so well for countries.

Britain's vote to leave the European Union means. A British exit, or Brexit
The new nationalism sweeping the Western world.
Francis Fukuyama's famous idea that, with the end of the Cold War, capitalist democracy had not only defeated communism, but also every other ideology. It was supposed to be, as he wrote, the "final form of human government." And insofar as democracies tended to work together, this implied the future would be one where competition wouldn't lead to conflict, but would rather replace it. Tariffs would come down, money would move across borders to where it was needed most, and workers would too. This meant, then, that governments weren't the only ones that would become more alike. People would as well. They'd stop being citizens and chauvinists, and become consumers and cosmopolitans. You'd have nation-states without the nationalism.
Global capitalism didn't always work so well for workers in the United States and Europe even as — or, in some cases, because — it pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty everywhere else. In fact, the working class in rich countries have seen their real, or inflation-adjusted, incomes flatline or even fall since the Berlin Wall came down and they were forced to compete with all the Chinese, Indian and Indonesian workers entering the global economy.

Brexit: Imagine trying to colonize the entire world and then saying how dare these immigrants come ruin our way of life, while eating kebabs.

Globalization didn't create a lot of losers, but the ones it did were concentrated in the countries that were the driving force behind it. The working class's incipient ire on a "foreign" enemy besides outsourcing: immigrants. This antagonism reflected economic anxiety, cultural fear and even racial resentment. Displaced workers felt like immigrants were taking jobs and benefits that should have been theirs. They were worried about losing the one thing — their national identity — the market couldn't take. And, a lot of times, they just didn't want to be around people who didn't look, sound, or worship like they did.  It didn't take long, then, for the West's triumphal globalism to fuel a nationalist backlash. In the United States it's Trump, in France it's the National Front, in Germany it's the Alternative for Germany and, yes, in Britain it's the Brexiters.

Absolute Power

The Britannica defines absolutism as a system in which "the ruling power is not subject to regularized challenge or check by any other agency.”  In ordinary affairs, absolutism is a moral attitude in which values and principles are regarded as unchallengeable and universal. There is no relativism, context-dependence, or openness to change.

 

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM VS. THE ENGLISH SYSTEM

Res ipsa loquitur ("The thing itself speaks") - Washington Constitutional Convention 1787

Henry Carey and William McKinley:
THE AMERICAN SYSTEM VS. BRITISH FREE TRADE LOOTING
​by Marcia Merry-Baker and Anton Chaitkin Printed in the American Almanac, 1995

Henry C. Carey, economics adviser to Abraham Lincoln:

"Two systems are before the world.... One is the English system; the other we may be proud to call the American system
​ ... the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world...."  

 

Henry Charles Carey

 

​Henry Charles Carey - American school of economic thought
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_C._Carey
(December 15, 1793 – October 13, 1879) was a leading 19th century economist of the American School of capitalism. He is now best known for the book The Harmony of Interests: Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Commercial (1851), [1] which denigrates the "British System" of laissez faire free trade capitalism in comparison to the American System of developmental capitalism, which uses tariff protection and government intervention to encourage production and national self-sufficiency.
 

His fundamental theoretic position relates to the antithesis of wealth and value. Carey held that land, as we are concerned with it in industrial life, is really an instrument of production which has been formed as such by man, and that its value is due to the labor expended on it in the past -- though measured, not by the sum of that labor, but by the labor necessary under existing conditions to bring new land to the same stage of productiveness. -- Quotes

Henry Carey and William McKinley:

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM VS. BRITISH FREE TRADE LOOTING

What Is the American System?

U.S. citizens, and even economists and historians in this country, have often never heard of the "American System" of economics which made our nation great. Worse yet, many confuse it with the British System of free trade and looting.

In the nineteenth century, however, our leading statesmen not only understood the American System, but promoted it, and campaigned for it, in their political speeches. They understood that our nation, even the world, was in a life or death battle against the British System of economics.

Americans must understand that their noble identity lies in fighting the British system of economics. That is the only pathway out of the current crisis.

Here, we begin a series of articles explaining the American System in the words of national leaders who implemented it, such as Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, and Abraham Lincoln. We begin with from the writings and speeches of President Lincoln's economics adviser, Henry C. Carey, and President William McKinley, both before and after he entered the White House in 1896. The ferocity of the political battle between America and our historical adversary Great Britain, an implacable adversary of American System economics, is attested to by the fact that McKinley, America's 25th President, was assassinated by British-linked anarchist Leon Czolgosz, six months after his election to a second term in 1900. The Anglophile Teddy Roosevelt, who reversed all of the Lincoln-McKinley economic policies, took office.

 

From Henry Carey's Harmony of Interests, 1851

Henry C. Carey, adviser to Abraham Lincoln, and perhaps the leading American System economist, wrote extensively exposing the failure of the British free trade approach and demonstrating the success of the American System.

The following comes from Henry Carey's book, The Harmony of Interests, written in 1851.

"Much is said of `the mission' of the people of these United States, and most of it is said by persons who appear to limit themselves to the consideration of the powers of the nation, and rarely to think of its duties."

"Two systems are before the world; the one looks to increasing the proportion of persons and of capital engaged in trade and transportation, and therefore to diminishing the proportion engaged in producing commodities with which to trade, with necessarily diminished return to the labor of all; while the other looks to increasing the proportion engaged in the work of production, and diminishing that engaged in trade and transportation, with increased return to all, giving to the laborer good wages, and to the owner of capital good profits.  One looks to increasing the quantity of raw materials to be exported, and diminishing the inducements to the import of men, thus impoverishing both farmer and planter by throwing on them the burden of freight; while the other looks to increasing the import of men, and diminishing the export of raw materials, thereby enriching both planter and farmer by relieving them from the payment of freight. One looks to compelling the farmers and planters of the Union to continue their contributions for the support of the fleets and armies, the paupers, the nobles and the sovereigns of Europe; the other to enabling ourselves to apply the same means to the moral and intellectual improvement of the sovereigns of America. One looks to the continuance of that bastard freedom of trade which denies the principle of protection, yet doles it out as revenue duties; the other to extending the area of legitimate free trade by the establishment of perfect protection, followed by the annexation of individuals and communities, and ultimately by the abolition of custom-houses. One looks to exporting men to occupy desert tracts, the sovereignty of which is obtained by aid of diplomacy or war; the other to increasing the value of an immense extent of vacant land by importing men by millions for their occupation. One looks to increasing the necessity for commerce; the other to increasing the power to maintain it. One looks to under working the Hindu, and sinking the rest of the world to his level; the other to raising the standard of man throughout the world to our level. One looks to pauperism, ignorance, depopulation, and barbarism; the other in increasing wealth, comfort, intelligence, combination of action, and civilization. One looks towards universal war; the other towards universal peace. One is the English system; the other we may be proud to call the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world."

"Such is the true mission of the people of these United States.... To raise the value of labor throughout the world, we need only to raise the value of our own.... To improve the political condition of man throughout the world, it is that we ourselves should remain at peace, avoid taxation for maintenance of fleets and armies, and become rich and prosperous.... To diffuse intelligence and to promote the cause of morality throughout the world, we are required only to pursue the course that shall diffuse education throughout our own land, and shall enable every man more readily to acquire property, and with it respect for the rights of property. To substitute true Christianity for the detestable system known as the Malthusian, it is needed that we prove to the world that it is population that makes the food come from the rich soils, and food tends to increase more rapidly than population, thus vindicating the policy of God to man."

Carey attacked British Free Trade economics as a system that destroys national agro-industrial productivity, reduces consumption, destroys freedom, and causes war:

"Two systems are before the world: on the one hand, that which is denominated protection, and on the other that which is denominated free-trade."
"A great error exists in the impression now very commonly entertained in regard to national division of labor, and which owes its origin to the English school of political economists, whose system is throughout based upon the idea of making England "the workshop of the world,' than which nothing could be less natural. By that school it is taught that some nations are fitted for manufacturers and others for the labors of agriculture, and that the latter are largely benefited by being compelled to employ themselves in the one pursuit, making all their exchanges at a distance, thus contributing their share to the maintenance of the system of `ships, colonies, and commerce." The whole basis of their system is conversion and exchange, and not production, yet neither makes any addition to the amount of things to be exchanged. It is the great boast of their system that the exchangers are so numerous and the producers so few, and the proportion which the former bear to the latter, the more rapid is supposed to be the advance towards perfect prosperity. Converters and exchangers, however, must live, and they must live out of the labor of others: and if three, five, or ten persons are to live on the product of one, it must follow that all will obtain but a small allowance of the necessaries or comforts of life, as is seen to be the case."

"The object of free-trade is proclaimed to be the increase of commerce, but commerce withers under it."

"We thus have here, first, a system that is unsound and unnatural, and second, a theory invented for the purpose of accounting for the poverty and wretchedness which are its necessary results."

"The object of what is now called free-trade is that of securing to the people of England the further existence of the monopoly of machinery, by aid of which Ireland and India have been ruined, and commerce prostrated. Protection seeks to break down this monopoly, and to cause the loom and the anvil to take their natural places by the side of the food and the cotton, and that production may be increased, and that commerce may revive...."

"The object of protection has been, and is, to restore the natural tendency by which industrial manufacturing takes its place by the side of the producer of food (national self-sufficiency), thus reducing substantially transportation fees and middle men sales costs and bringing about the stabler self-sufficient communities and nations."

McKinley vs. Free Trade

William McKinley was a U.S. Congressman in 1882 when he spoke on the tariff policy, and on the social conditions won for the people by nationalists associated with Abraham Lincoln. McKinley distinguished between a low tariff for purposes of collecting tax revenue only, and a higher tariff which deliberately protects native industries against trade war by foreign powers.

McKinley asked his fellow Congressmen: who originated the free trade, low tariff policy?

"Who has demanded a tariff for revenue only.... What portion of our citizens? What part of our population? not the agriculturalist; not the laborer; not the mechanic; not the manufacturer; [there is] not a petition before us, to my knowledge, asking for an adjustment of tariff rates to a revenue basis."

Congressman McKinley answered his own question:

"England wants it, demands it -- not for our good, but for hers; for she is more anxious to maintain her old position of supremacy than she is to promote the interests and welfare of the people of this republic, and a great party in this country voices her interest.... She would manufacture for us, and permit us to raise wheat and corn for her. We are satisfied to do the latter, but unwilling to concede to her the monopoly of the former."

The future President then explained why the British system was not appropriate to the United States:

"... Free trade may be suitable to Great Britain and its peculiar social and political structure, but it has no place in this republic, where classes are unknown, and where caste has long since been banished; where equality is a rule; where labor is dignified and honorable; where education and improvement are the individual striving of every citizen, no matter what may be the accident of his birth, or the poverty of his early surroundings. Here the mechanic of today is the manufacturer of a few years hence. Under such conditions, free trade can have no abiding place here."

American System Agriculture

Free trade shaves down [the workingman's] labor first, and then scales down his pay by rewarding him in a worthless and depreciated State currency.

Five years later, on Dec. 13, 1887, Congressman McKinley spoke to a farmers' organization called the Ohio State Grange. He set forth the political reasoning behind his agricultural policy. It was the policy of the American Revolution, and of Abraham Lincoln, who had given free land to family farmers. It was an argument for the practical realization of the democratic republic, against the European feudal system. What McKinley said is still valid today against the British-Swiss food cartels, and a rebuke to populists misguided by British anti-industrial propaganda:

"Tell me how land is held, and I can tell you almost to a certainty the political system of the country, its form of government, and its political character. When land is divided into small farms, the property ... of those who till them, there is an inducement, ambition, and facility for independence, for progress, for wider thought and higher attainments in individual, industrial life. Over such a population no government but a free one, under equal laws and equal rights, with equal opportunities, can exist for any length of time. The small farm, thoroughly worked, was the ancient model, commended by the early sages and philosophers; as old Virgil put it, 'Praise a large farm, cultivate a small one.'

"We must avoid in this country the holding of large tracts of land by non-resident owners for speculative purposes, and set our faces like flint against alien land-holding in small or large tracts. Our public domain must be re-dedicated to our own people, and neither foreign syndicates nor domestic corporations must be permitted to divert it from the hallowed purposes of actual settlement by real farmers."

"One of the great lessons of history is that agriculture cannot rise to its highest perfection and reach its fullest development without the aid of commerce, manufactures, and mechanical arts. All are essential to the healthy growth and highest advancement of the others; the progress of one insures the prosperity of the others. There are no conflicts, there should be no antagonisms. They are indispensable to each other. Whatever enfeebles one is certain to cripple the rest."

Congress passed in 1890 a great protectionist tariff bill, which was known as the "McKinley Act," in honor of its author who was the principal spokesman for the nationalist policy. McKinley commented that his 1890 Act had "no friends in Europe."

Having been elected Ohio's governor, William McKinley spoke in Boston Oct. 4, 1892, on the purposes of his legislation. He showed how the strong-central-government economic system, identified with American Revolution and with Lincoln's American Union, improves life for the common people, as compared to the British Free Trade system:

"We ... are opposed to British political economy.... Free trade shaves down [the workingman's] labor first, and then scales down his pay by rewarding him in a worthless and depreciated State currency."

On the question of federal government control of currency and credit, McKinley told the Boston crowd:

"The currency of this country should be as national as its flag. It should be as unsullied as the national conscience and as sound as the government itself. And there is not a business man or working man, no matter to what political party he belongs, if he will honestly vote his convictions, who will not vote against the party that proposes to re-establish a system under which this country lost millions upon millions of dollars. We have had all the Confederate currency we want. We are for a United States currency in some form for all time in the future. We are not only opposed to Confederate currency, but we are opposed to British political economy. We not only fight for our industries and our labor, that they may be prosperous and well-paid, but we insist that when they have earned their money they shall be paid in a dollar worth full one hundred cents. When a workingman gives ten hours a day to his employer--ten full hours--he is entitled to be paid in a dollar worth full one hundred cents. Free trade shaves down his labor first, and then scales down his pay by rewarding him in a worthless and a depreciated State currency."

On the protective tariff, McKinley said:

"[Anti-nationalists say] that protection is unconstitutional.... I know of but one constitution which it violates and that is the constitution of the Confederate [slave] States.... But we are not operating under it. That instrument went down under the resistless armies of Grant and Sherman and Sheridan, and the constitution of Washington and Lincoln was sustained.

"Unconstitutional?.... They do not seem to know that the man who made the first Protective Tariff law we ever had, in 1789 ... made the Constitution of the United States. James Madison, a member of the Constitutional Convention, and who afterwards became President ... reported that bill to Congress. It passed the House of Representatives, composed ... largely of members of the Constitutional Convention [,] ... unanimously, and passed the Senate ... by a vote of five to one, and in that body were a large number of men who made the Constitution itself. And that Protective Tariff law was signed by George Washington, President of the United States.

"They put into the preamble of that law ... 'We levy these duties to raise money to pay the debts of the government; to provide money for the expenses of the United States, and to encourage and protect manufactures in the United States....'

"Ah, but [the anti-nationalists] say, if you had not had the Protective Tariff things would be a little cheaper. Well, whether a thing is cheap or dear depends upon what we can earn by our daily labor. Free trade cheapens the product by cheapening the producer. Protection cheapens the product by elevating the producer. Under free trade the trader is the master and the producer the slave. Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man.

"[It is said] that protection is immoral.... Why, if protection builds up and elevates 63,000,000 [the U.S. population] of people, the influence of those 63,000,000 of people elevates the rest of the world. We cannot take a step in the pathway of progress without benefiting mankind everywhere. Well, they say, `Buy where you can buy the cheapest'.... Of course, that applies to labor as to everything else. Let me give you a maxim that is a thousand times better than that, and it is the protection maxim: `Buy where you can pay the easiest.' And that spot of earth is where labor wins its highest rewards.

America Booms

"What has this Protective Tariff law of 1890 done? Why, it has increased factories all over the United States. It has built new ones, it has enlarged old ones.... [For example, we] used to buy our buttons made in Austria by the prison labor of Austria. We are buying our buttons today made by the free labor of America. We had 11 button factories before 1890; we have 85 now. We employed 500 men before 1890, at from $12 to $15 a week; we employ 8,000 men now, at from $18 to $35 a week.

"... Well, but, they said, this tariff law of 1890 was going to increase the price of necessaries of life, and was going to diminish the wages of labor. It has done neither. The necessities of life are cheaper today than they were 18 months ago. The commodities that go into the household of every man and woman are cheaper today ... and the price of labor has increased to some extent."
 

The McKinley Act of 1890 was a serious blow to British global power. Teddy Roosevelt's intimate friend and guide, British diplomat Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, complained in a letter to London:

"We must count on the present tariff for a year and a half at least ... probably for much longer. We must reconcile ourselves to it and look for new markets. A serious aspect of it is the reciprocity clause, which drives us out of the West Indies and South America."

McKinley was elected President in 1896, campaigning against the British Free Trade doctrine. He immediately put through Congress yet another bill increasing the tariff protection for American industry.

In the years of McKinley's presidency, the U.S. economy surged ahead.

Comparing 1896 (the last year of his pro-Free Trade predecessor) to 1901 (when McKinley was murdered), the average value per hectare of farm production increased 48 percent, while industrial and mineral production increased as follows: copper +31 percent, lead +50 percent, coal +53 percent, zinc +73 percent, iron ore +80 percent, cement +111 percent, steel +155 percent, railroad rails +156 percent. (1) The dollar value of production increased, for locomotives and railroad cars +73 percent, musical instruments +125 percent, farm equipment +149 percent, ships and boats +211 percent, electrical equipment (industrial and commercial) +271 percent; meanwhile, the average hourly earnings for workers in all U.S. industry increased by an estimated 10 percent. (2)

Notes

1. Guetter, Fred J., Statistical Tables Relating to the Economic Growth of the United States (Philadelphia: McKinley Publishing Co., 1924).
2. Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789-1945 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1949).
Captions

 

 

Wall Street was always just a bunch of British financial bloodsuckers who hated the United States.

William McKinley, 25th President of the United States.

"Free trade cheapens the product by cheapening the producer. Protection cheapens the product by elevating the producer. Under free trade the trader is the master and the producer the slave."

"Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man."

The British system: Southern blacks work the cotton fields in 1879, more than 15 years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

 

American Revolution in Japan

Now, the previous year, 1868, Japan had had a revolution. It set up the modern Japanese government. Under Prince Iwakura, this revolution overthrew feudalist warlords, created a modern central government, and it was guided by Japanese students of Henry Carey.

The Japanese consuls in America at that time worked very closely with Carey. One of those consuls commissioned the first Japanese translations of Carey's works, and another went back to Japan and set up the Meiroku (Sixth Year of Meiji) Society, which organized the economic thinking of Japan, for American System economics, as opposed to British economics, British Free Trade. So the American and Japanese allies in this Careyite movement actually led Japanese industrial development from that time on. The Americans advised the Emperor, and helped to identify Japanese mineral resources, plan exports, and design a tariff strategy, so that Japan wasn't simply a victim of genocide such as Britain was practicing against China at that time.

In March of 1872, representatives of the new Japanese government arrived in Philadelphia, escorted by United States Army officers. The leaders of the city of Philadelphia published a pamphlet called the ``Diary of the Japanese Visit to Philadelphia in 1872.'' It described, as they put it, ``the mission on which these pioneers of an advancing state of civilization in their own country were engaged.''

On the first page of that pamphlet, published by the leaders of Philadelphia, they said that before the United States began to aid Japan's development, Japan was closed to world commerce. Why? Because of the empires, the European empires' outrages against Japan.

And this is the way the Philadelphia leaders, the American nationalists, described this: They said that ``the least concession'' by the Japanese "made to the foreign trader'' brought in "that aggressive policy, that arrogance, and grasping spirit of monopoly which have ever followed the British footfall on foreign soil,'' so that, the Japanese, before then, had closed up, "as a means to preserve its national and political autonomy.'' But, now they were opening up again, in cooperation with a U.S. effort to develop Japan, not destroy it, as the British were doing. That was the American idea, as opposed to our principal enemy, the British Empire.

The first stop on this visit of the Japanese to Philadelphia was the Baldwin Locomotive Works, the world's largest capital goods organization at that time. [Matthias Baldwin]

The Japanese went in there and inspected the engines, the machine tools, the foundries where the metal was made, and the plans for the locomotives. They did this in order to buy all those types of things, and also to build these locomotives themselves with U.S. assistance.

We have in Washington, at the Smithsonian Institution, a wonderful set of books, in the Archive center. These are the order books of the Baldwin Locomotive Company. You can go see these things. They show a complete record for every single locomotive built by the main locomotive company. Thousands of locomotives, throughout the 19th century; all the specifications of the locomotive, how it was made, what the parts were, the principal metals, the price, the terms of sale, where it was going to be delivered, what country, at what port was it landed.

You wonder, how does a locomotive get somewhere, except on a track? Well, it goes on a boat, just as Lincoln brought the first locomotive to Illinois, when he was a state legislator there. There wasn't any track from the east coast to there, so they had to put it on a boat. Because all railroad-building is political. You get a good political leader, he builds a railroad. And if there is no good political leader between there and here, you have to float it on a boat to get it there, right?

So Lincoln made Illinois the center of American industry, by political policy. The same thing was going on all around the world, when Lincoln's policy faction was in control, and, it was principally through this locomotive company. The locomotives were the "engine of development.''
 

Locomotives Shipped Around the World

We see in the order books, Baldwin's shipments of locomotives to American railroad lines, to Russia, to Japan, China, Australia, Mexico, Brazil. This was a calculated program of economic development. That is, the people who ran this company were politically motivated.

The Baldwin company was only one part of a conglomerate, a whole set of institutions. Probably the biggest money-maker was the Pennsylvania Railroad, the largest railroad company. See Board of Directors Alexander Johnston Cassatt

Also in this conglomerate, controlled by the same people, was the Franklin Institute for Scientific and Technological Research. This was the organization set up by Matthias Baldwin and others in this group, whose leader, in the mid-19th century, was Alexander Dallas Bache, the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin. This was all part of Franklin's personal organization, continuing after the American Revolution, taking the spirit and the ideas of that revolution onward.

Bache and this institution collaborated directly with the great German scientists, Humboldt, Gauss and Weber, in a worldwide organization of the highest science on the planet; and the U.S. headquarters was here, in Philadelphia.

Other parts of this one, functioning unit in Philadelphia were the University of Pennsylvania, controlled by Carey and his friends at that time; machine tool companies: the greatest one was that of William Sellers; the Carnegie steel company, and other Carnegie organizations; all in effect one partnership, interlocked, working together for common goals.

The business leaders of this group called themselves, the "Philadelphia Interests,'' opposed to Wall Street, at war against Wall Street, because Wall Street was always just a bunch of British financial bloodsuckers who hated the United States.
 

The heart of the United States military and industrial machine was this Philadelphia operation, and the guiding light of this was Henry Carey.

So Prince Iwakura, leader of the Japanese revolution, and his party of visitors came to Philadelphia, 1872.

They met with the banker, Jay Cooke, who was the U.S. government's principal banker at that time. Cooke was not Wall Street. He sold U.S. bonds to the public; that's how they financed the Civil War, not Wall Street. The Japanese were preparing a treaty with the U.S., and a huge loan. They were negotiating connections with the Northern Pacific Railroad in Asia. Cooke was also negotiating the annexation of Canada at the time. The German ambassador to the United States was helping in this process, building that Northern Pacific, so they named the terminus of the railroad after the German Chancellor, Bismarck (the capital of North Dakota is still Bismarck), because of the international project that was going on, for this land-bridge.

This was not something the British were going to stand for. They struck with real fury. The newspapers came out with slanders against this whole project, against Jay Cooke, and against the railroad operations. They said that he was bankrupt. They stopped his credit. They had anti-railroad scandals in Congress, which you probably have read about, if you have studied some of the history of this period.

 

British Free Trade Causes 1873 Depression

The Congress turned yellow, turned chicken, cut off the funds, cut off subsidies, cut off support for this kind of project. There was a terrible crash when the Jay Cooke banking house closed down. The United States went into the 1873 depression, and joined the rest of the world, which was in a depression because of British free trade hegemony that had plunged everybody into unemployment, all over the world.

But Henry Carey, at the age of about 80, did not quit. He fought back with tremendous bold initiatives that changed the face of the world. He put out a pamphlet in 1876, entitled "Commerce, Christianity and Civilization Versus British Free Trade, better known by its subtitle, "Letters in Reply to the London Times."
https://archive.org/details/commercechristia00care

This pamphlet was circulated by Carey's friends overseas. It was a call to arms for world development! It especially attacked the British destruction of China, through the opium trade, the principal point in the pamphlet; Carey wanted to illustrate, "what do you mean by `Free Trade'? Oh, you mean this crime."

The pamphlet was a response to a London Times editorial, that had complained that the viewpoint of "Mr. Carey, of Philadelphia ... has been "repeated in hundreds of magazines and newspapers, and ... endless orations, and has affected the economical policy of the Union ... and is held by multitudes....''

The London Times warned that Free Trade, which they called "English political economy," is rejected by the Americans, and other countries under the influence of "ignorant," "imbecile," "dishonest," "heretics," [aside] such as ourselves.

This Carey pamphlet, used poetry by Robert Burns, on its cover:

"Oh wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us And foolish notion."

It said that the British rulers ought to try to see themselves as others see them. It would protect us from many a blunder, if we see ourselves as others do. In other words, they should see themselves as pirates, dope pushers and mass killers. That is the idea of the pamphlet.

He said that the British monarchs, heads of Church of England, sanctioned and pushed opium smuggling to China, using bribery, fraud, perjury, and violence, against the valiant self-sacrificing attempts of Chinese leaders stop it. That they waged two Opium Wars to compel the dope to be thrust onto China. They seized Hong Kong in the first Opium War, and the rest of that colony, Kowloon, in the second Opium War.

Why did Britain seize Hong Kong? As a depot for dope smuggling, that was the whole purpose of it; and today, they are crying tears in Britain about having to give that up.

Principally, as in the pamphlet's title, Carey mocked the British empire's religious pretense, that they claimed to be Christians. He wrote about their racist arrogance: where they portrayed this bloody so-called Free Trade as "great Reformer''; that is what they called their own policy.

He went through the looting of India by the British, the destruction of India's independent economy. They had set up India as the base for growing opium, dope, to be sold to China, to be forced on China by war. That was the Free Trade system.

The London Times also had terrible hypocrisy which the pamphlet blasted, because they praised the efforts of the so-called ``human rights'' groups of the time, led by the British government, that were hypocritically campaigning against slavery in Africa, after they had just supported the South in America's Civil War. Whereas they are imposing on China the worst possible slavery that exists: dope. And he went through the social situation in England, the poor masses, and the bored, lazy aristocrats, which was very similar both to the Roman Empire and to the southern states of the United States. It's all in this pamphlet.

He described the British free-trade system, wrecking much of the world economy. But, he said, the United States has now overthrown Negro-slavery, and America, and some other countries, under protectionism, are developing home industries, on purpose, with government interference in the market, and we are going to succeed economically because of that.

resources:

• Baldwin Locomotive Works
• Thomas A. Scott
• Matthias W. Baldwin
• Samuel Vaughan Merrick 

 

FREE TRADE SECRETS PROTECT THE 1%

 

Subsidies Distorting Global Trade, China Daily, March 21, 2009. BY Joseph E. Stiglitz

Economics Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz yesterday said the "huge" trade-related subsidies in developed countries distorts global trade and jeopardizes the interest of developing countries.

Stiglitz is of the view that the financial crisis may lead to a reshaping of the monetary landscape. China can play a "vital" role in the global economic recovery, he said.
"Subsidies are distorting trade," he said during a speech at the Hanqing Advanced Institute of Economics and Finance of the Renmin University of China. "In the current context of the economic recovery, the subsidies (in the developed countries) are larger than what anybody has ever thought of before."

Stiglitz, who is also professor in economics at Columbia University, emphasized on China's role in the global economic recovery. "China has a vital role to play by maintaining the strength of its economy through appropriate macroeconomic policies," he said.

China can also contribute to balanced global recovery by assisting developing countries and also work with the G20 economies and UN to make reforms that are necessary to prevent such crises in the future, he said.

Praising China's efforts in stimulating the domestic economy, he said, "It is doing it (stimulus package) much better and I think it's likely to be more successful (than the US). There is much more confidence in the government."

Stiglitz cited the example of the US subsides for banks and the automobile industry. "Everybody is now lining up for a subsidy," he said.

The Nobel laureate said the subsidies have damaged the interest of developing countries, as they cannot cope up with them. "Clearly, the notion of a level-playing-field has been totally destroyed."

Stiglitz called for a fundamental change of the world economic order by creating a new global reserve system and exhorted multilateral institutions to restore confidence and help developing countries.

"There is a need for a new global reserve system," he said. Such an idea has long been put forward, but has met with resistance from countries like the US, he said. "Now it is time to initiate the reforms."

THOMAS PIKETTY

 

5/26/14 Thomas Piketty  "the central contradiction of capitalism"

What is this flaw at the heart of the economic machine, a flaw that centuries of economists have overlooked? Simply that at some times and at some places, the interest rate is greater than the economy's growth rate. (Piketty correctly uses the term "interest rate" as a stand-in for the total average return on capital: profits, interest, and, when he has data available, capital gains.) 
Piketty sums it up with a simple equation: r > g. And if r > g for decades, he argues, capital contains the seeds of deep social conflict. If the wealth of capitalists grows at the interest rate, and if that wealth grows faster than the overall economy, capitalists will take over more and more of the economy until something genuinely awful happens, Piketty says. Ultra-wealthy economic elites can buy massive political influence, pushing the government to favor well-connected insiders and in the process slowing down the economy.
Thomas Piketty piketty@ehess.fr
Data on Income and Wealth from "Capital in the 21st Century", Harvard University Press 2014.

Thomas Piketty: on tour with the 'rock-star economist'​ video - who gets a slice of the growing pie? It's mostly the 1% !! 
It just sounds so much better when somebody can explain it in English with a a wonderful french accent.

NOTHING FREE ABOUT FREE TRADE

2014 Cartels, Cartels Everywhere 

Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and South-East Asia Part 1 and Part 2

At the heart of the average godfather’s empire is a concession or license that gives rise to a monopoly or oligopoly activity.

The role of monopolies and crony capitalism in East Asia written by Joe Studwell, editor of the China Economic Quarterly. Here is the second. Much, mostly hagiographic, has been written about the fabulously wealthy group of mostly overseas Chinese whose names are familiar throughout the region and have been widely assumed to have been responsible for its economic growth. 

This second section, “Core Cash Flow,” describes how the close relationship between government and commerce can lead to an atmosphere that can produce a godfather cartel. The crudeness of the monopolies handed out by Marcos and Suharto tends to obscure the almost universal presence of monopolies, cartels and controlled Asian markets in Southeast Asia. Hong Kong is a case in point, not least because it is regularly voted one of the freest economies in the world. The right-wing American think tank the Heritage Foundation has ranked Hong Kong first (and Singapore second) in its Index of Economic Freedom for the past fourteen years. 

The Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman lauded Hong Kong for decades as a bastion of the free market; a week after the territory’s return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, he lamented: ‘If only the United States were as free as Hong Kong.’ 

Such assertions reflect a focus on Hong Kong’s status as a free port with tariff- and exchange control-free international trade. But Hong Kong’s domestic economy, where the godfathers operate, is a different story. It has long been a patchwork of de facto cartels. The origin of the cartels lies in the colonial era. The best known of them dominates the territory’s real estate market and is the core source of wealth of every Hong Kong billionaire. The British administration set the scene for real estate oligopoly because it chose to depend heavily on land sales – all land was deemed ‘Crown land’ until sold – to fund its budget.

FREE TRADE SECRETS ONLY PROTECT THE CARTELS = THE 1%

5/29/14 Meet TISA: Another Major Treaty Negotiated In Secret Alongside TPP And TTIP​ CONTROL THE TRADE TREATIES

Monday 28 April, members of the Swiss trade unions, global unions and civil society will lead an international day of action to protest against the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). In Geneva, the protest will take place before the Permanent Mission of Australia (Chemin des Fins 2, 1211 Geneva 19, Switzerland) , where negotiations are taking place in secret. Throughout the world, people are coming together to demand that that those countries currently involved in TISA negotiations release the text, exclude all public services from the agreement and ensure that countries have the right to regulate in the public interest.

4/30/14 Silicon Valley’s No-poaching Case: CONTROL THE JOBS: The Growing Debate over Employee Mobility

When Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe Systems last week agreed to settle a lawsuit accusing them of conspiring to prevent the hiring of each other’s employees, they avoided having to testify in court and risk a public glimpse into their strategies. Yet, the case has provoked a heated debate on the damage that no-poaching agreements cause.  The class action lawsuit accused the four Silicon Valley companies of conspiring, between 2005 and 2009, to avoid hiring each other’s employees – a practice that the lawsuit says resulted in lower salaries for the affected individuals. About 64,000 employees of those companies sought $3 billion in damages, which would have risen to $9 billion under antitrust law. Estimates are that the companies agreed to settle the case for about $325 million, although they did not formally disclose that figure. 

4/29/14 With the Techtopus wage theft lawsuit settled, all eyes turn to eBay CONTROL THE POWER

The case has been more than an embarrassment for the Big Tech defendants — led by Apple, Google, and Intel. It’s also exposed the raw brute politics at the top of the Silicon Valley corporate pyramid, and how the concentration of so much overwhelming wealth and power impacts the lives of the tech industry workforce, a workforce that’s supposed to be a model for the utopian New Economy future. The workforce that supposedly has it best in America.  A disturbing question arises from this story: Perhaps the tech workforce — itself powerless, manipulated, their wages covertly stolen by a handful of billionaire board directors looking to pad their profits — really is the best-treated workforce of the future. What does that say for everyone else, and for the future?

ABSOLUTE POWER

DARK GOOGLE We witness the rise of a new absolute power. Google transfers its radical politics from cyberspace to reality. It will earn its money by knowing, manipulating, controlling the reality and cutting it into the tiniest pieces.

Markets Are Rigged to Protect the 1% 


there are no laws for the 1%

 

But no, no, no, the "markets" are most certainly not "rigged", right?  
For starters, being allowed to act without impunity and then settle without admitting guilt once caught sure sounds like a form of officially-endorsed rigging to the 99% !

5/1/14 SEC Charges NYSE, NYSE ARCA, and NYSE MKT for Repeated Failures to Operate in Accordance With Exchange Rules

NYSE to pay $4.5 mln to settle SEC charges Washington D.C., 

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced an enforcement action against the New York Stock Exchange and two affiliated exchanges for their failure to comply with the responsibilities of self-regulatory organizations (SROs) to conduct their business operations in accordance with Commission-approved exchange rules and the federal securities laws.  Also charged was the NYSE exchanges’ affiliated routing broker Archipelago Securities.

< - >

The violations detailed in the SEC’s order occurred during periods of time from 2008 to 2012.  The SEC’s order finds that the NYSE exchanges violated Section 19(b) and 19(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 through misconduct that included the following:

    • NYSE, NYSE Arca, and NYSE MKT (formerly NYSE Amex) used an error account maintained at Archipelago Securities to assume and trade out of securities positions without a rule in effect that permitted such trading and in a manner inconsistent with their rules for the routing broker, which limited Archipelago Securities’ activity primarily to outbound and inbound routing of orders on behalf of those exchanges.

    • NYSE provided co-location services to customers on disparate contractual terms without an exchange rule in effect that permitted and governed the provision of such services on a fair and equitable basis.

    • NYSE operated a block trading facility (New York Block Exchange) that for a period of time did not function in accordance with the rules submitted by NYSE and approved by the SEC.

    • NYSE distributed an automated feed of closing order imbalance information to its floor brokers at an earlier time than was specified in NYSE’s rules.

    • NYSE Arca failed to execute Mid-Point Passive Liquidity Orders (MPLOs) in locked markets (where the bid and ask prices are the same) contrary to its exchange rule in effect at the time.

In addition, the SEC’s order finds that NYSE Arca accepted MPLOs in sub-penny amounts for National Market System stocks trading at over $1.00 per share, in violation of Rule 612(a) of Regulation NMS.

 

5/2/14 CONTROL SPY CRAFT FROM GETTING SUED ​White House seeks legal immunity for firms that hand over customer data 
Obama administration asks legislators drafting NSA reforms to protect telecoms firms complying with court orders.

In a statement of principles privately delivered to lawmakers some weeks ago to guide surveillance reforms, the White House said it wanted legislation protecting “any person who complies in good faith with an order to produce records” from legal liability for complying with court orders for phone records to the government once the NSA no longer collects the data in bulk.

The brief request, contained in a four-page document, echoes a highly controversial provision of the 2008 Fisa Amendments Act, which provided retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that allowed the NSA to access calls and call data between Americans and foreigners, voiding lawsuits against them. Barack Obama’s vote for that bill as a senator and presidential candidate disappointed many supporters.

 

5/2/14 CONTROL NOT PAYING TAXES 

Rewriting global tax rules 
​Could increase developing countries’ corporate tax revenues by over 100% "Corporations are rigging the rules and taking advantage of poor countries, fueling a vicious cycle of inequality. ” Winnie Byanyima Oxfam International Executive Director

THE VOTE

2016 Zephyr Teachout Is Battling Big Money and Cynicism in One of This Year’s Tightest Congressional Races Can Teachout’s radical optimism prevail in the Hudson Valley?

“Trade is about power; trade is about war and peace; trade is about where we do things,” Teachout says.

In the deindustrialized Hudson Valley region, where NAFTA is a dirty word, Teachout has hammered on the issue, criticizing the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and talking about bringing manufacturing home. As with almost every issue I hear her address, she attacks the subject with both a grand vision and nitty-gritty details: While she dreams of an economy where one in five people in the district are making or growing something, she grounds it with an example of how apples from New York’s Ulster County are shipped to Texas to be sliced and packaged and sold to McDonald’s. “Why can’t we do that here?” she asks the crowd in Catskill.

“One of the things that the insider club has lost is any sense that the world can be any different than it is,” she continues. “One of my least favorite sentences—and you’ll hear lobbyists for the TPP say this all the time—is: ‘The horse is out of the barn.’ I’m like, ‘I know it takes a while, but you can get the horse back in.’ Your metaphor isn’t working!” For the hedge-funders, an insider like Faso, who also assumes that outsourcing jobs is a done deal, might seem like a good investment against Teachout. (Faso, as well as Singer and Mercer, did not respond to The Nation’s requests for comment.)  

Republican Party and super-PAC-funded ads have flooded the district, accusing Teachout of everything from carpetbagging to planning to raise property taxes to facilitating nuclear war through her support of President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Not to be outdone, the Faso campaign released an ad calling her “crazy.” Teachout, in response, has run ads mocking the over-the-top critiques and continues to challenge the big donors to come out of the shadows.  

“These guys don’t create their money sprinkling fairy dust over unicorns,” says Michael Kink, who also works with the activist organization Hedge Clippers. “They get rich outsourcing jobs and driving down wages and raiding pension funds—everything that regular people hate about the way the economy is going is being caused by these guys that are trying to take out Zephyr. Do you want a government that is bought and paid for by the most destructive forces and the inequality-exploding billionaires?”

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