| I stand by "the amount of influence that western elites had over Japanese foreign policy in 1931 was very close to zero". > Other than the fact we currently occupy japan? We have bases there. We don't currently occupy Japan. There's a difference. The occupation ended in 1952. But even if we did currently occupy Japan, that started in 1945, and so has absolutely nothing to do with how much influence we had over their foreign policy in 1931. You apparently are serious, but your arguments make no sense. Yes, we limited their naval growth with the Washington Treaty. We pushed them into it against their will, because they considered an arms race against the US to be a worse outcome than the treaty. That still doesn't show any evidence that the US elites were dictating that Japan would invade China in 1931. > All crashes are a result of the elites creating the environment whether money flows out of the markets. Naturally they'd be the first to pull out which causes others to and so forth. What else could it be? Overleveraged buying of stocks that aren't going up any longer leading to margin calls? What else could it be? > Who creates the environment of speculative bubbles? Prosperity creates earnings, which makes stocks look undervalued, which makes people buy them, which makes the stocks go up. When that happens for long enough, people buy them because they've been going up. That makes the stock go up more. When that happens for long enough, people buy stocks with borrowed money, because it's been going up for so long that they expect that it's certain to continue to do so. And that makes the price go up even more, which makes even more people buy it on borrowed money. Eventually, the price stops rising because the banks won't lend any more, and then people start selling, and it collapses in a panic. At what point do you think the elites are making that happen? More, were deliberately making that happen? I don't agree with your starting point, which is that the elites currently control things to the degree that you think they do. I agree that they set it up; I disagree that they still have the level of control that your ideas imply. |