Apple makes the iPod, right? Sure they do, but where? Try overseas. Apple employs 27,250 overseas employees at an average salary of $11,743. Sure, the company is making great profits, but that’s because it’s both exploiting overseas labor and refusing to give jobs to Americans. Most of its US jobs are low-paying, to be fair. No, wait, that’s unfair!

7789 of Apple’s US jobs pay an average of $28,244, about 2.5 times what the Chinese and Filipinos are paid, but still hardly anything relative to what it costs to live here. And before someone brings up the “it’s cheaper to live in Asia” argument, there’s a reason why it’s cheaper there: they don’t have access to lots of things that are necessary for getting around in the USA. They still face massively more expensive food prices, crowded living conditions, and poor access to health care – kind of like the poor in the USA, but without cars.

6101 professionals and engineers working for Apple’s iPod division made an average of $86,051. They can afford the stuff the rest of the workers made. This is a pattern common across US-based firms and firms that were formerly based in the US, but which moved their HQs to Switzerland to avoid paying taxes to support the nation that gave them their start.

While my own salary is just above the nation’s per capita income, I don’t earn enough for my household of 5 to have a total income equal to that per capita number times 5. I don’t have health care, it’s kinda crowded in this house, and food and fuel are part of my inflationary worries, even if the USG doesn’t want me to think about them. I’m not part of the world of the Apple engineers and the rest of the iPod users. I’m constantly asked to “do more with less”, which is a codephrase for “you’re going to be exploited more.” The whole world has to do more with less so that those who have more can get more still.

Emergent promises a great return on their African funds. The Oakland Institute would like you to know that, yes, the great returns exist, but that you might not like the way in which the returns are attained.

Basically, the people of Africa targeted by Emergent’s investors are stripped of their lands and left to starve as their subsistence farms are plowed under to make way for plantation economies. Lands that supported 50,000 people are bulldozed to “create over 2000 jobs” that support no-one. To throw a wrench into the minds of ultra-conservative Christian free-market boosters, the bulldozing included the largest Christian church in East Africa. Seriously, people… Jesus wasn’t kidding when he said between God and money, you can serve only one. You either have unfettered free marked capitalism OR you have Christianity (or any other religion, for that matter), but you can’t have both. But I digress, even if it is with a purpose.

The “job creation” is a mask for paying basement-level wages that are just enough to avoid laws against chattel slavery. It was the same in Juarez when the maquiladoras went up there. Should workers ask for more money, the labor organizers are fired or murdered and the rest are told that the factory jobs will go elsewhere if wages go up, so shut up and get back to work if you want to earn enough so 75% of your family can have enough to eat. Maybe.

It’s outright plundering disguised as a solid, sane retirement plan. Free market cheerleaders will say that the people are better off with those jobs: that’s an outright lie. What they had was subsistence, which I admit is a harsh existence. What they get is unemployment, starvation, marginalization, wage slavery, and a industry-government partnership we used to call “fascism.”

Looks like the EU finance ministers are asking a basic question… IE, “Anyone with ideas?”

By requiring Greece to implement additional austerity measures (such as hiring the proper accountants Edinburgh to rake up proper numbers), the EU finance ministers have pulled a Pontius Pilate move. If Greece doesn’t implement the measures, it’s not their fault. Technically, their hands are clean.

Greece won’t implement the measures and it will have to default. After defaulting, it will have to pull out of the euro if it wants any hope of recovery, and the EU ministers will need to recognize that. The euro is a political currency that’s supposed to tie Germany economically to every nation on the continent so it won’t start another war, sort of the opposite of the idea after WW1… Now, though, the rest of Europe doesn’t necessarily want a tie with Germany if it means hampering the local economy. The political will to hold the euro together seems woefully lacking.

I’m not going to provide timing signals, but you can bet the number of currency trading newsletters that will advise readers to short the euro is going to increase with each passing week. It’s going to lead to a speculative run on the euro, which will last until the involved governments defend it no more and impose financial tyranny on the speculators. Those that get in at the start will make some tidy sums, those that run the game in the middle will get big rewards, and those at the very end will make all or nothing, depending on how good their internet connections are at the time the EU pulls the plug on it.

I recall the currency runs of 1997. Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan… all the little tigers fell, one by one. Then the raiding funds targeted Hong Kong and lost big when the PRC said it would defend the HK dollar. Back then, it had the means to do just that. Now, in 2011, we have a set of governments that are ready to defend the euro. They say, “whatever the cost!”, but we all know their financial systems are weak from the fallout of the 2007-8 crisis. The euro will fall, they will prop it up, it will fall some more, they will prop it some more, all the while with the euro losing value over time. Once the EU banks can defend it no more, there will be a time period where the euro falls mercilessly and everyone shorting it will laugh all the way to the US-owned bank… I suppose the last laugh will be Europe’s, though, after the US banks collapse because of they way the US financial system was insuring European assets.

As Moody’s rating service placed the three largest French banks under review for a possible downgrade due to their exposure to Greek debt, they attempted to make their situation seem not all that bad by pointing out how Germany’s banks were way more exposed than they were…

In other news, Greece’s largest private bank has started to sell all of its Greek government bonds. Greece’s prime minister might be forced to resign and in between riots, Greek citizens are shopping for forks to stick into their country, because it’s done.

There are rumours that Elton John is considering re-re-recording a version of “Candle in the Wind” to commemorate Greece’s brief flirtation with the euro. Other rumours say he’s holding off to see if he has to re-re-record it to commemorate Europe’s brief flirtation with the euro.

Reinhart and Rogoff are looking at historical evidence of defaults and make a strong case about what prerequisites will allow for a crisis to precipitate. Right now, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland are in the most precipitous situation and stand ready to create a replay of the crisis that followed in the wake of German default in the late 20s.

Is this a stretch? I don’t think so.

Zimbabwe, Argentina, and others went bust either singly or as part of a regional financial crisis. We’re looking today at a global situation, with much more going on in more countries than in any other crisis since 1927-1933. Look at Spain’s recent election results: the Socialists that advocated austerity were swept aside in favor of populist parties. Greece isn’t likely to accept a surrender of fiscal independence to a band of German bankers, so look for a political trump there of any possible economic solution involving staying in the Euro with austerity. Italy’s and Belgium’s debt outlooks have both been lowered, and Italy is one of the G7/G8 nations: they’re a whale to the minnow of Greece.

The outcome of a crisis is never certain: one only knows that a crisis will precipitate an outcome that is in many ways significantly different from the set of conditions that existed prior to the crisis. While hindsight is also clearer than what people see at the time events are happening, it’s also insulting to those that experienced the events. By that, I mean we need to take a look at how people react in the midst of a crisis and what causes them to realize what will happen down the road. What danger signs do people consider? What events do they consider significant?

In Nazi Germany at the time of WW2, roughly half the Jews there had fled, while roughly half remained. While there were likely many Jews that could not afford to travel, there were those who could afford to do so that felt things would be all right in the long run. For those who fled, different things acted as triggers to their decision to depart. As the events became more obvious, escape became more difficult to accomplish, but remained possible. From a man who wrote “Mein Kampf” leading a coalition government to the Reichstag fire to the Enabling Act to Kristallnacht to the Nuremberg Laws to Rhineland occupation to Anschluss to Sudetenland to the Danzig crisis, events mounted in seriousness and yet war and its consequences still came as a surprise to many observers. Such will happen again in the current crisis.

This is not to say that we’re going to see, specifically, Nazism, World War, and a Holocaust. But I do believe we will see more political extremism and populism, increased tensions that will lead to more conflicts, increased opportunities for small nations to wage war as the bigger nations are preoccupied with internal troubles, and increased opportunities for ethnic-based conflict as the peacekeepers turn inward. We’re already witnessing the various Arab states dealing with their outbreaks of democracy in their own ways, and none of them are finished with their internal turmoil.

A huge question mark in my mind is China. It recently had to declare martial law in Inner Mongolia, adding that region to its list of ethnic hotspots. Couple that with increasing unemployment and inflation, and the necessary preconditions exist for a potential violent regime change in China – political infighting within the CPC at the very least and open warlordism with a breakdown of central authority as a real possibility.

Now back to Europe. 45% of Spain’s under-25s are unemployed. Massive anti-government protests have happened across the nation. This is on the level of what took place in Tunisia and elsewhere, this time in Europe. Greece had similar protests, and those are sure to worsen as the economy there worsens. Italy could be next. On the strategic side, the Visegrad nations of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, and Slovakia have agreed to form a battlegroup under Polish command. This is significant because they would not feel compelled to do so if both Russian power were not on the ascendant and protection guarantees from NATO were credible. The Visegrad nations are seeking to extend their alliance to Romania and Bulgaria, to formalize a vision of Pilsudski’s to create an “intermarium” alliance between nations that were traditionally in the orbit of either Russia or Germany, or both.

When was the sign that got me thinking along these lines? When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and the rich world watched on, impotently.