Author: Alicia

Britain has applied to join the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank), Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said, in a Treasury release on Thursday. A dispatch by Xinhua noted that China’s Finance Ministry welcomed the initiative, which would make Britain a founding member. The Ministry is now seeking the opinions of other founding countries.

At a March 6 press conference, Lou Jiwei, China’s Minister of Finance, said that 27 countries have applied to jointly found the bank. March 31 is the application deadline. Xinhua reports that the bank is to be formally established by the end of 2015. Lou said said that a number of European nations have shown interest to join the bank.

Within hours of the announcement of Britain’s application to the AIIB, reports came out of White House disapproval. The Financial Times reported that,

“The Obama administration accused the UK of a ‘constant accommodation’ of China after Britain decided to join a new China-led financial institution that could rival the World Bank…”

The article stated,

“A senior US administration official told the Financial Times that the British decision was taken after ‘virtually no consultation with the US’… We are wary about a trend toward constant accommodation of China, which is not the best way to engage a rising power…”

EIR has the events under evaluation. Britain has a long history of playing all sides.

Thursday’s official British Treasury release waxes diplomatically.

“As the first major Western country to apply to become a prospective member of the AIIB, the U.K. will join discussions later this month with other founding members to agree with the bank’s prospective Articles of Agreement, setting out the governance and accountability arrangements that underpin the AIIB’s operating practices.”

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is quoted,

“This government has actively promoted closer political and economic engagement with the Asia-Pacific region and forging links between the U.K. and Asian economies to give our companies the best opportunity to work and invest in the world’s fastest growing markets as a key part of our long-term economic plan. Joining the AIIB at the founding stage will create an unrivaled opportunity for the U.K. and Asia to invest and grow together.”

Once fully operational, the AIIB will support access to finance for infrastructure projects across Asia, using a variety of support measures — including loans, equity investments, and guarantees — to boost investment across a range of sectors including transportation, energy, telecommunication, agriculture and urban development.

Britain has applied to join the AIIB (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank), Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said, in a Treasury release on Thursday. A dispatch by Xinhua noted that China’s Finance Ministry welcomed the initiative, which would make Britain a founding member. The Ministry is now seeking the opinions of other founding countries.

At a March 6 press conference, Lou Jiwei, China’s Minister of Finance, said that 27 countries have applied to jointly found the bank. March 31 is the application deadline. Xinhua reports that the bank is to be formally established by the end of 2015. Lou said said that a number of European nations have shown interest to join the bank.

Within hours of the announcement of Britain’s application to the AIIB, reports came out of White House disapproval. The Financial Times reported that,

“The Obama administration accused the UK of a ‘constant accommodation’ of China after Britain decided to join a new China-led financial institution that could rival the World Bank…”

The article stated,

“A senior US administration official told the Financial Times that the British decision was taken after ‘virtually no consultation with the US’… We are wary about a trend toward constant accommodation of China, which is not the best way to engage a rising power…”

EIR has the events under evaluation. Britain has a long history of playing all sides.

Thursday’s official British Treasury release waxes diplomatically.

“As the first major Western country to apply to become a prospective member of the AIIB, the U.K. will join discussions later this month with other founding members to agree with the bank’s prospective Articles of Agreement, setting out the governance and accountability arrangements that underpin the AIIB’s operating practices.”

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is quoted,

“This government has actively promoted closer political and economic engagement with the Asia-Pacific region and forging links between the U.K. and Asian economies to give our companies the best opportunity to work and invest in the world’s fastest growing markets as a key part of our long-term economic plan. Joining the AIIB at the founding stage will create an unrivaled opportunity for the U.K. and Asia to invest and grow together.”

Once fully operational, the AIIB will support access to finance for infrastructure projects across Asia, using a variety of support measures — including loans, equity investments, and guarantees — to boost investment across a range of sectors including transportation, energy, telecommunication, agriculture and urban development.

The great Russian-Ukrainian Biogeochemist V.I. Vernadsky.

Today marks the 152nd birthday of a person who is likely known to regular visitors of the LaRouchePAC site, but a personality whose wise words have not had the impact they should.

Vladimir Vernadsky, a Russian-Ukrainian scientist and founder of the science of biogeochemistry, lived until 1943, the middle of World War II, and despite the horrors of the war, he was steadfast in his belief that mankind would one day live as he should, with nations and cultures united in the development of what he called the Noösphere, the non-living and living world as controlled by the reason of man.

In a soon to be published translation of a revolutionary piece by Vernadsky, called “The Study of Life and the New Physics,” Vernadsky examines some of the unique characteristics of life and human life. Vernadsky, unlike modern environmentalists, understood that the biosphere is evolving into increasingly more energetic states, and that species which survive, contrary to the ideas of Darwin, actually survive because they meet the requirements of this principle.

Two principles which Vernadsky emphasized here and throughout his work summarize this idea. His first biogeochemical principle states that:

“Biogenic geochemical energy tends toward its maximum manifestation in the biosphere.”

And the second:

“In the course of the evolution of species, it is the organisms which augment, through their life, biogenic geochemical energy, which survive.”

Vernadsky believed that these requirements for life on Earth extended to man and his activity. In the midst of World War II, he marveled at how industry and technology had developed up until that point. He once visited the United States, and was struck by the pace of economic development.

Vernadsky knew that man’s capabilities were distinct from those of other living things. He rightly saw that which is characteristic of man, especially what makes him distinct from lower forms of life, as what should govern his actions. Man did not have the potential to discover and use fire only to live like a beast, ignorant of this. Vernadsky wrote about this power in a later piece from 1938 called “Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon.”

Even in 1930, he did not shy away from envisioning man as a creature of the Earth, but not bound to it. In “The Study of Life and the New Physics” he writes:

Where do we stand today with respect to Vernadsky’s vision? It is emphatically not the direction dictated by the outlook and policies of the Obama Administration, nor the Troika in Europe. Vernadsky, a patriot of Russia and Ukraine, would be disgusted by the antics of the likes of Victoria Nuland in bringing not only those two nations closer to war, but the world as a whole closer to a World War. On the contrary, the trajectory of policy and intention coming from China, from Russia, from the group of BRICS nations, does represent a commitment to develop the Noösphere. Projects such as the New Silk Road represent an uplifting of the natural territory of the great Eurasian landmass to support the development of mankind. On Vernadsky’s birthday, let us work to make his principled vision a reality.

Today marks the 152nd birthday of a person who is likely known to regular visitors of the LaRouchePAC site, but a personality whose wise words have not had the impact they should.

Vladimir Vernadsky, a Russian-Ukrainian scientist and founder of the science of biogeochemistry, lived until 1945, the middle of World War II, and despite the horrors of the war, he was steadfast in his belief that mankind would one day live as he should, with nations and cultures united in the development of what he called the Noösphere, the non-living and living world as controlled by the reason of man.

In a soon to be published translation of a revolutionary piece by Vernadsky, called The Study of Life and the New Physics, Vernadsky examines some of the unique characteristics of life and human life. Vernadsky, unlike modern environmentalists, understood that the biosphere is evolving into increasingly more energetic states, and that species which survive, contrary to the ideas of Darwin, actually survive because they meet the requirements of this principle.

Two principles which Vernadsky emphasized here and throughout his work summarize this idea. His first biogeochemical principle states that:

“Biogenic geochemical energy tends toward its maximum manifestation in the biosphere.”

And the second:

“In the course of the evolution of species, it is the organisms which augment, through their life, biogenic geochemical energy, which survive.”

The great Russian-Ukrainian Biogeochemist V.I. Vernadsky.

Vernadsky believed that these requirements for life on Earth extended to man and his activity. In the midst of World War II, he marveled at how industry and technology had developed up until that point. He once visited the United States, and was struck by the pace of economic development.

Vernadsky knew that man’s capabilities were distinct from those of other living things. He rightly saw that which is characteristic of man, and what makes man distinct from lower forms of life, is what should govern his actions. For example, as Vernadsky discusses in a later piece from 1938 called “Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon.”, mankind uniquely had the potential to discover and use fire. He was not given this capability only to live like a beast, ignorant of this. Even in 1930, well before the space age, he did not shy away from envisioning man as a creature of the Earth who is at the same time not bound to the Earth as other animals. In The Study of Life and the New Physics he writes:

Vernadsky knew that man’s capabilities were distinct from those of other living things. He rightly saw that which is characteristic of man, especially what makes him distinct from lower forms of life, as what should govern his actions. Man did not have the potential to discover and use fire only to live like a beast, ignorant of this. Vernadsky wrote about this power in a later piece from 1938 called

Even in 1930, he did not shy away from envisioning man as a creature of the Earth, but not bound to it. In The Study of Life and the New Physics he writes:

Where do we stand today with respect to Vernadsky’s vision? It is emphatically not the direction dictated by the outlook and policies of the Obama Administration, nor the Troika in Europe. Vernadsky, a patriot of Russia and Ukraine, would be disgusted by the antics of the likes of Victoria Nuland in bringing not only those two nations closer to war, but the world as a whole closer to a World War. On the contrary, the trajectory of policy and intention coming from China, from Russia, from the group of BRICS nations, does represent a commitment to develop the Noösphere. Projects such as the New Silk Road represent an uplifting of the natural territory of the great Eurasian landmass to support the development of mankind. On Vernadsky’s birthday, let us work to make his principled vision a reality.

A March 7 entry in former Reagan Administration official David Stockman’s blog, “Stockman’s Corner,” updates the near-complete lack of real business credit in the U.S. economy.

Stockman starts with the extraordinary fact that in January, February and the first few days of March, U.S. business have borrowed $214 billion; but they have expended $128 billion of that on stock buybacks to benefit their stockholders’ and officers’ wealth, plus $21 billion on just one large merger of IT companies. Thus nearly three-quarters of the debt taken on, was matched by spending to blow up the stock market bubble. Symptomatically, GM announced March 9 another $5 billion stock buyback program, to start immediately.

He then looks at the picture for the last seven years, since the bank collapse, bailout, and economic plunge began. During that period, total business debt in the United States rose from $11 trillion in 2007 to $15 trillion now — so any idea that corporations were “deleveraging” from debt, as households were, is false. But the real spending rate on structures and equipment by business, known as capital expenditures or “capex,” did not grow. This capex, which had averaged 2% annual growth from 2000-2007 and 4.3% annual rate from 1990-1997 (already low parameters), grew at only an 0.4% annual rate from 2007-2014 inclusive.

That is, capital expenditures grew by a total of 3.4% for the whole period 2007-2014 inclusive, while business debt grew by 35%.

And since the rate of depreciation of business sector capital was $1.1 trillion/year during those seven years, net capital investment has actually been negative, Stockman says. It is no mystery why U.S. economic productivity, even measured by the fraudulent moneterist yardstick of production or services per worker-hour, has declined for 17 quarters in a row through the end of 2014. And this is not real new productivity, which results only from creative discoveries translated into technological and engineering advance.

This complete lack of real capital investment in the economy has occurred, Stockman exclaims, while the Fed printed $4.5 trillion to lend to banks, to create investment through the stock and corporate bond markets and through business lending. Though not repeated in this column, Stockman has frequently called for a “new super Glass-Steagall” to break these banks up.