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The Economy

America’s Dysfunctional Economy. Massive Unemployment. Economic Collapse

46 Million US Workers Applied for Unemployment Benefits

fistofmoneyThe US ruling class bears full responsibility for the economy’s unprecedented dysfunctional state. What was unimaginable long ago is reality today, redefining what house of cards economic conditions are all about.

It’s an unsustainable situation certain to implode ahead with longterm devastating consequences for ordinary Americans — paying the price so privileged ones can benefit.

Since March, unprecedented numbers of US workers applied for unemployment benefits, around 46 million so far, according to Labor Department data.

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The Farce and Diabolical Agenda of A “Universal Lockdown”

coronavirus-syria-400x227First comes the farce, an (almost) universal government lie around the globe about a deadly virus, WHO named COVID-19. The decision for a global lockdown – literally for the collapse of the world economy – was already taken at the WEF conference in Davos, 21 – 24 January 2020. On January 30, WHO declared COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). At that time, there were only 150 known COVID-19 cases outside of China. No reason whatsoever to declare a pandemic. On March 11, Dr. Tedros, DG of WHO converted the PHEIC into a pandemic. This gave the green light for the start if implementing “The Plan”.

The pandemic was needed as a pretext to halt and collapse the world economy and the underlying social fabric.

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Post-Republic “Weimar America”, Here We Come! Virus Hysteria Adds $10 Trillion to the National Debt

burning_moneyThere’s no doubt that the Coronavirus is a serious infection that can lead to severe illness or death. There’s also no doubt that ‘virus hysteria’ has been used for other purposes. Wall Street, for example, has used virus-panic to advance its own agenda and get another round of trillion dollar bailouts. In fact, it took less than a week to get the pushover congress to ram through a massive $2.2 trillion boondoggle without even one lousy congressman offering a peep of protest. That’s got to be some kind of record.

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Will the Federal Reserve Make Trump a New Herbert Hoover? Is the US Economy Primed for a 1929-style Shock?

GOOBIn recent months US President Trump has pointed repeatedly to his role in making the American economy the “best ever.” But behind the extreme highs of the stock market and the official government unemployment data, the US economy is primed for a 1929-style shock, a financial Tsunami that is more influenced by independent Fed actions than by anything that the White House has done since January 2017. At this point the parallels between one-time Republican President Herbert Hoover who presided over the great stock crash and economic depression that was created then by the Fed policies, and Trump in 2019 are looking ominously similar. It underscores that the real power lies with those who control our money, not elected politicians.

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Financial Meltdown: The Impending Credit Crunch; The Next Shoe to Drop?

Chart_DownLast week’s violent gyrations in the stock market are the result of a tug-of-war between two well-represented groups of investors. One group thinks the Coronavirus will severely impact the global economy pushing stocks further into the red, while the other group believes the Fed will intervene in the market once more and save the day. The matter is likely to be settled as soon as next week as the drip, drip, drip of bad news continues to dampen investor expectations further intensifying the selloff.

Investors perception of the Fed’s role in fueling rallies, micromanaging the markets and providing a safety-net whenever stocks fall, has reached a critical tipping point.

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On Black Friday, Americans Confront the Walmart 1%:

Pay Employees a Living Wage

fight_for_us_ourwalmart-400x209Pickets, strikes, and protests are slated to sweep across the United States on Black Friday. (Photo: TwitPic/@WorkingAmerica)

“Last year Walmart made $16 billion in profits. The company’s controlling family, the Waltons, is the richest family in America with nearly $150 billion in wealth. That is more than the total wealth of 43% of American families combined.”

Walmart won’t pay its employees enough to afford Thanksgiving dinner, so they’re holding food drives for their employees. Seriously. It’s been reported that an Oklahoma City Walmart set up bins for underpaid associates to donate canned goods to other underpaid associates.

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Corporate Destruction of Free Markets Rules Us

corporationsThe ruling dogma of our political economy is corporatism. Corporatism claims to draw legitimacy from the free market theory that all vendors who do not meet market demands will go under. Corporatism uses this illusion to exert power over all aspects of our political economy.

Free markets, corporatists believe, are the best mechanism to allocate resources for the exchange of goods and services. They believe markets free of regulation, taxation or competition from government enterprises produce the best results. Their favorite metaphor is Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” that produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people by the exertions of many willing sellers and many willing buyers (Adam Smith, they neglected to add, favored public works, public education and social safety nets like decent wages and public welfare as needed.)

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Price Rigging and Financial Corruption. A Global House Of Cards

Money_LaunderingA

s most Americans, if not the financial media, are aware, Quantitative Easing (a euphemism for printing money) has failed to bring back the US economy.

So why has Japan adopted the policy?  Since the heavy duty money printing began in 2013, the Japanese yen has fallen 35% against the US dollar, a big cost for a country dependent on energy imports.  Moreover, the Japanese economy has shown no growth in response to the QE stimulus to justify the rising price of imports.

Despite the economy’s lack of response to the stimulus, last month the Bank of Japan announced a 60% increase in quantitative easing–from 50 to 80 trillion yen annually.

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The Incarceration of the American Consumer

corporationsHow do corporate attorneys sleep at night considering that with the power of their large corporate clients, they often crush the freedoms of workers, consumers and small communities who are trying to break out of a complex web of shackles?

These highly paid power lawyers expertly weave an intricate system of controls into one-sided contracts enforced by laws garnished with the muscle of big business to wear down all but the most intrepid shoppers.

I am not only referring to the mass marketing scams, crams, deceptions and hidden frauds.

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Corporations Spy on Nonprofits with Impunity

corporate_spyHere’s a dirty little secret you won’t see in the daily papers: corporations conduct espionage against US nonprofit organizations without fear of being brought to justice.

Yes, that means using a great array of spycraft and snoopery, including planned electronic surveillance, wiretapping, information warfare, infiltration, dumpster diving and so much more.

The evidence abounds.

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Peak Inequality: The .01% And The Impoverishment Of Society

Occupy_Jump_YouAsignificant systemic change is now a mathematical fact. Corruption, greed and economic inequality have reached a peak tipping point.  Due to the consolidation of wealth, the majority of the population cannot generate enough income to keep up with the cost of living.  In the present economy, under current government policy, 70% of the population is now sentenced to an impoverished existence.

Let’s take an in-depth look at the evidence.

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Remembering Joe...R.I.P. - Revenge of the Mutt People

Bred for meanness

joe_bageant_iii“There are some things so disgusting that only a white man would be willing to do them.”
-- Walter Wildshoe, Coeur d’Alene Indian

Many years ago I worked at an industrial hog farm owned by the Coeur d’Alene Indian tribe in northern Idaho. The place stank of the dead and rotting brood sows we chopped out of farrowing crates -- bred to death in the drive for pork production. And it stank of the massive ponds that held millions of gallons of hog feces and rotting baby pigs, and every square inch was poisoned by the pesticides used to kill insects that hogs attract and the antibiotics fed to hogs from hundred pound sacks. The Coeur d’Alene Indians refused to suffer those kinds of conditions; they wouldn’t even manage the place. They contracted it out. As my friend Walter Wildshoe said: “Only a white man would work there.”

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What A Destructive Wall Street Owes Young Americans

Robin_Hood_Tax_smWall Street’s big banks and their financial networks that collapsed the U.S. economy in 2008-2009, were saved with huge bailouts by the taxpayers, but these Wall Street Gamblers are still paid huge money and are again creeping toward reckless misbehavior. Their corporate crime wave strip-mined the economy for young workers, threw them on the unemployment rolls and helped make possible a low-wage economy that is draining away their ability to afford basic housing, goods, and services.

Meanwhile, Wall Street is declaring huge bonuses for their executive plutocrats, none of whom have been prosecuted and sent to jail for these systemic devastations of other peoples’ money, the looting of pensions and destruction of jobs.

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The TPP: Power to the Corporations at the Expense of the Planet

TPPThe TPP trade deal would expand a system of corporate rights and private courts that threaten progress on some of our most urgent environmental issues, writes Thomas McDonagh.

In January 15th last, Wikileaks revealed the proposed environmental chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement.

This massive trade deal, despite its implications for sensitive policy areas such as access to medicines and food safety across North America, Peru, Chile, Australia, Japan and beyond had, until recently, been kept far away from the public spotlight.

Negotiations take place behind closed doors and not even public representatives from the countries involved have access to the negotiating text.

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Usurious Returns on Phantom Money:

 The Credit Card Gravy Train

credit_cards

The credit card business is now the banking industry’s biggest cash cow, and it’s largely due to lucrative hidden fees.

You pay off your credit card balance every month, thinking you are taking advantage of the “interest-free grace period” and getting free credit. You may even use your credit card when you could have used cash, just to get the free frequent flier or cash-back rewards. But those popular features are misleading. Even when the balance is paid on time every month, credit card use imposes a huge hidden cost on users—hidden because the cost is deducted from what the merchant receives, then passed on to you in the form of higher prices.

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Remembering Joe...R.I.P. - Poor, White and Pissed

Joe_italy  A Guide to the White Trash Planet for Urban Liberals   February 18, 2005

 If you are reading this it is very likely that you are a liberal, maybe even an outright screaming burn down the goddam country commie -- in which case I say, "Come sit by me comrade!" (Especially if you are a blonde.) Like most lefties you probably live in an urban area, or someplace with reasonable cultural diversity. More than likely you are educated and can read this without moving your lips. Maybe you even live in the freethinking People's Republic of Berkeley, or bustle along under the fabled lights of Manhattan where you can see independent films and buy such things as leeks and soy milk at your grocery store.

I, however, live in a town where it is easier to find chitterlings, ponhaus and souse in the grocery store than a leek -- and where Smokey and the Bandit still plays to packed movie houses year after year.

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The Wild and Cruel Gap Between Debtors and Creditors

money_hand_shakeThe word “inequality” is much in vogue these days. We hear almost daily about the inequality of wealth, income and wages between the richest top 2 or 3 percent of people and the majority of the country’s wage earners. But not much attention is given and not many marches and other protests are addressing the huge inequalities between creditors and debtors.

Of course the aforementioned inequalities, especially of wages and income, worsen the plight of individual debtors. One more distinction needs to be made – that between corporate debtors who receive many favored legal entitlements (even in bankruptcy) and individual debtors who are slammed and harassed by debt collectors.

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Amend the Federal Reserve:

We Need a Central Bank that Serves Main Street
federal_reserveD ecember 23rd marks the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve. Dissatisfaction with its track record has prompted calls to audit the Fed and end the Fed.  At the least, Congress needs to amend the Fed, modifying the Federal Reserve Act to give the central bank the tools necessary to carry out its mandates.

The Federal Reserve is the only central bank with a dual mandate. It is charged not only with maintaining low, stable inflation but with promoting maximum sustainable employment. Yet unemployment remains stubbornly high, despite four years of radical tinkering with interest rates and quantitative easing (creating money on the Fed’s books). After pushing interest rates as low as they can go, the Fed has admitted that it has run out of tools.
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Martial Law and the Economy:

Is Homeland Security Preparing for the Next Wall Street Collapse?

ashamed_LibertyReports are that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is engaged in a massive, covert military buildup. An article in the Associated Press in February confirmed an open purchase order by DHS for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. According to an op-ed in Forbes, that’s enough to sustain an Iraq-sized war for over twenty years. DHS has also acquired heavily armored tanks, which have been seen roaming the streets. Evidently somebody in government is expecting some serious civil unrest. The question is, why?

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U.S. Economic Hegemony:

Consolidation and Deepening of the Pacific Alliance Trade Bloc

EagleIn a short period of time, the Pacific Alliance has emerged as one of the leading economic integration projects in Latin America. It aims to succeed where others have failed by creating a gateway to Asian markets and building a Pacific-rim trade deal. The U.S. and Canada are both pursuing deeper ties with the group and have been granted observer status. This is part of efforts to revive and expand their presence in Latin America. In some areas of integration, the Pacific Alliance has surpassed NAFTA. By merging the two together, it could be used to fill the void left by the collapse of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

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Avaricious Brilliance for Economic Disaster

Larry_SummersThe widening circle applauding megamillionaire Larry Summers –of Harvard University, Washington, D.C. and Wall Street – agrees on one word to describe the colossal failure – Brilliant! That circle includes Barack Obama, who appointed Summers in 2009 to be his chief economic advisor, Bill Clinton, who made him Secretary of the Treasury, and the Harvard Board of Overseers, who named him president of Harvard University in 2001.

With Clinton and his promoter, Robert Rubin, who preceded him at the Treasury post before making over $100 million at Citigroup, Summers brilliantly deregulated Wall Street in 1999 and 2000 thus setting up one of corporate capitalism’s most harmful speculative binges.

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Detroit Bankruptcy Sets Stage for National Assault on Public-sector Pensions

detroit_bankruptLast week’s bankruptcy filing by the city of Detroit is being used as a test case for a much wider assault on the pensions and health benefits of millions of state and municipal employees around the country.

The city’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, and Detroit’s Democratic mayor, David Bing, made this clear during appearances on nationally televised news talk shows Sunday.

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The Crisis of Extreme Capitalism

Capitalism_is_not_workingOur current incarnation of capitalism — variously referred to as savage capitalism, extreme capitalism or euphemistically as the “free market” (free of any constraints) — is in one of its periodic crises. For years many assumed that the smart people who ran the system and benefitted from it would find a practical way to fix it. The problem is that the solutions are all framed within an ideology that makes that extremely unlikely. That ideology, neo-liberalism, is like a religion. Once you are a true believer you see other solutions as heresy.

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The Trans-Pacific Partnership:

Global Corporate Coup, Assault on Democracy and National Sovereignty

According to Ron Kirk former US Trade Representative: making the text public would raise such opposition that it could make the deal impossible to sign.

There is a battle building between the people of the planet and transnational corporations.  The battleground is the Trans-Pacific Partnership.  It is a battle the people can win if we act in solidarity.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a global corporate coup that makes corporations more powerful than governments and undermines our national sovereignty.  While the public and media are not allowed to see the text, and members of Congress only receive limited, heavily restricted access, 600 corporations have been advising the president and suggesting amendments as they have full access to the documents.  This includes some of America’s worst corporate citizens: Monsanto, Walmart, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Phiser and big Pharma, Cargill, Exxon-Mobil, Chevron among them.

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The Entire Economy Is a Ponzi Scheme

The Global Financial System is Insolvent

Ponzi_IF_ImagePonzinomics

Bill Gross, Nouriel Roubini, Laurence Kotlikoff, Steve Keen, Michel Chossudovsky, the Wall Street Journal and many others say that our entire economy is a Ponzi scheme.

Former Reagan budget director David Stockton just agreed:

So did a top Russian con artist and mathematician.

Even the New York Times’ business page asked, “Was [the] whole economy a Ponzi scheme?

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Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP):

Corporate Power-Tool Of The 1%

One of the least discussed and least reported issues is the Obama administration’s effort to bring the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement to the forefront, an oppressive plurilateral US-led free trade agreement currently being negotiated with several Pacific Rim countries. Six hundred US corporate advisors have negotiated and had input into the TPP, and the proposed draft text has not been made available to the public, the press or policymakers. The level of secrecy surrounding the agreements is unparalleled – paramilitary teams scatter outside the premise of each round of discussions while helicopters loom overhead – media outlets impose a near-total blackout of reportage on the subject and US Senator Ron Wyden, the Chair of the Congressional Committee with jurisdiction over TPP, was denied access to the negotiation texts. “The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations — like Halliburton, Chevron, PhaRMA, Comcast and the Motion Picture Association of America — are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement,” said Wyden, in a floor statement to Congress.
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How Big Corporations Are Unpatriotic

corporationsMany giant profitable U.S. corporations are increasingly abandoning America while draining it at the same time.

General Electric, for example, has paid no federal income taxes for a decade while becoming a net job exporter and fighting its hard-pressed workers who want collective bargaining through unions like the United Electrical Workers Union (UE). GE’s boss, Jeffrey Immelt, makes about $12,400 an hour on an 8-hour day, plus benefits and perks, presiding over this global corporate empire.

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The Confiscation of Savings in Canada?

Cyprus-Style “Bail-Ins” Proposed by Ottawa Government

harperflagThe politicians of the western world are coming after your bank accounts. In fact, Cyprus-style “bail-ins” are actually proposed in the new Canadian government budget. When I first heard about this I was quite skeptical, so I went and looked it up for myself. And guess what? It is right there in black and white on pages 144 and 145 of “Economic Action Plan 2013? which the Harper government has already submitted to the House of Commons.

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It Can Happen Here:

The Bank Confiscation Scheme for US and UK Depositors

moneybagConfiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few Eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds.

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New Phase in the Global Financial Crisis:

EU Summit Sparks Run on Cyprus Banks

greek_workers_protest_austerity_measuresIt took until Saturday morning for the European summit to agree to a much reduced €10 billion ($13 billion) loan to bail out the banks in Cyprus, the fifth euro zone country after Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain to apply for aid. 

Within hours, the decision to levy a tax on Cyprus bank deposits to pay for the rescue package resulted in a stampede to withdraw cash from the country’s banks via ATMs.

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The Fracked-up USA Shale Gas Bubble

no_frackingAt a time when much of the world is looking with a mix of envy and excitement at the recent boom in USA unconventional gas from shale rock, when countries from China to Poland to France to the UK are beginning to launch their own ventures into unconventional shale gas extraction, hoping it is the cure for their energy woes, the US shale boom is revealing itself to have been a gigantic hyped confidence bubble that is already beginning to deflate. Carpe diem!

America: The New Saudi Arabia?

If we’re to believe the current media reports out of Washington and the US oil and gas industry, the United States is about to become the “new Saudi Arabia.” We are told she is suddenly and miraculously on the track to energy self-sufficiency.

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U.S.-EU Trade Deal is the Foundation For a New Global Economic Order

USA_Europe_flagThe U.S. and EU have agreed to launch negotiations on what would be the world's largest free trade deal. Such an agreement would be the basis for the creation of an economic NATO and would include trade in goods, services and investment, as well as cover intellectual property rights. There are concerns that the U.S. could use these talks to push the EU to loosen its restrictions on genetically modified crops and foods. In addition, the deal might serve as a backdoor means to implement ACTA which was rejected by the European Parliament last year. A U.S.-EU Transatlantic trade agreement is seen as a way of countering China’s growing power and is the foundation for a new global economic order.

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Obama’s Next Big Housing Market Giveaway to the Bankster Mafia

For those who missed President Obama’s latest giveaway to the Bank Mafia, we’ll repeat what he said here.

 This is an excerpt from his recent State of the Union Speech:

Obama_Mirror_Image“Part of our rebuilding effort must also involve our housing sector. Today, our housing market is finally healing from the collapse of 2007. Home prices are rising at the fastest pace in six years, home purchases are up nearly 50 percent, and construction is expanding again.

But even with mortgage rates near a 50-year low, too many families with solid credit who want to buy a home are being rejected. Too many families who have never missed a payment and want to refinance are being told no. That’s holding our entire economy back, and we need to fix it. Right now, there’s a bill in this Congress that would give every responsible homeowner in America the chance to save $3,000 a year by refinancing at today’s rates. Democrats and Republicans have supported it before. What are we waiting for? Take a vote, and send me that bill. Right now, overlapping regulations keep responsible young families from buying their first home. What’s holding us back? Let’s streamline the process, and help our economy grow.”

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Why The Banking Elite Want Riots in America

Every indication clearly suggests that authorities in the United States are preparing for widespread civil unrest. This trend has not emerged by accident – it is part of a tried and tested method used by the banking elite to seize control of nations, strip them of their assets, and absorb them into the new world order.

 theftcuffsThere is a crucial economic imperative as to why the elite is seeking to engineer and exploit social unrest.

As respected investigative reporter Greg Palast exposed in 2001, the global banking elite, namely the World Bank and the IMF, have honed a technique that has allowed them to asset-strip numerous other countries in the past – that technique has come to be known at the “IMF riot.”

In April 2001, Palast obtained leaked World Bank documents that outlined a four step process on how to loot nations of their wealth and infrastructure, placing control of resources into the hands of the banking elite.

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The Choice of Guns Over Butter

Eisenhower Farewell AddressYears ago I read a newspaper story about an elderly man who lived in an impoverished area of Cleveland, Ohio. The man was a friendless loner who seemed to have no caring family members. Neighbors had noticed his mail piling up on his porch, and, with no responses to knocks on the door, they called the police who broke into the man’s house.

What they found is an allegory for our time, especially after another, peculiarly American school shooting, the latest one involving non-hunting weapons and the gunning down of 26 defenseless little children and staff members at an elementary school.

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Who Owns The Federal Reserve?

The Fed is privately owned. Its shareholders are private banks.

federal_reserve“Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.”   –   The Honorable Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s  

  The Federal Reserve (or Fed) has assumed sweeping new powers in the last year. In an unprecedented move in March 2008, the New York Fed advanced the funds for JPMorgan Chase Bank to buy investment bank Bear Stearns for pennies on the dollar.
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The Big Banks Are Criminal Enterprises

The Mainstream Media Acknowledges the Criminal Nature of the Banking System

fistofmoney“The Government Has Bought Into the Notion that Too Big to Fail Is Too Big to Jail”

Alternative financial media have noted for years that:

Fraud caused the Great Depression and the current financial crisis, and the economy will never recover until fraud is prosecuted

Criminal fraud is the main business model adopted by the giant banks. See this

Largely because they are out-of-control criminal enterprises, economy cannot recover unless the big banks are broken up.

The Obama administration has made it official policy not to prosecute fraud. Indeed, the “watchdogs” in D.C. are so corrupt that they are as easily bribed as a policeman in a third world banana republic.

Instead of prosecuting, the government throws money at them.

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The “Fiscal Cliff” Is A Diversion:

The Derivatives Tsunami and the Dollar Bubble

theftcuffsThe “fiscal cliff” is another hoax designed to shift the attention of policymakers, the media, and the attentive public, if any, from huge problems to small ones.

The fiscal cliff is automatic spending cuts and tax increases in order to reduce the deficit by an insignificant amount over ten years if Congress takes no action itself to cut spending and to raise taxes. In other words, the “fiscal cliff” is going to happen either way.

The problem from the standpoint of conventional economics with the fiscal cliff is that it amounts to a double-barrel dose of austerity delivered to a faltering and recessionary economy. Ever since John Maynard Keynes, most economists have understood that austerity is not the answer to recession or depression.

Regardless, the fiscal cliff is about small numbers compared to the Derivatives Tsunami or to bond market and dollar market bubbles.

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Preserve Benefits:

Cut Gouging and Inequities

poverty_AmericaCongress is still talking about a “Grand Bargain” that “balances” far more spending cuts than tax increases. That is another way of saying that you – the consumer of Medicare and Medicaid services, the recipient of Social Security, and the average taxpayer will take the brunt of the spending cuts, while the wealthy get their income taxes restored, not raised, to their pre-Bush modest levels. Don’t buy it!

There are two ways to cut Medicare and Medicaid. The right wingers want to cut benefits. Consumers want to cut vendor fraud, the overcharging and the immense over-diagnosis, over-treatment and erroneous or unnecessary procedures and prescriptions documented so often by, among others, the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Don’t think this is small stuff.

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Austerity

The 1%’s Global Battle Cry

occupy_all_streetsWhether we are left with the Fiscal Cliff or a Grand Bargain, workers in the U.S. face massive cuts to programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, unemployment insurance, Food Stamp assistance and other needed social safety nets. This is an example of “austerity” which has largely been pursued in the U.S. until now, on a statewide and local level.

The policies of austerity are not unique to the U.S. They are being enacted internationally. In Europe they have been aggressively put into play for four years. While austerity has been pursued on all continents, this article will focus on Europe and the U.S.

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The “Fiscal Cliff” Fraud

dollarAs the US Congress reconvenes following the Thanksgiving Day holiday, the media is once again ratcheting up its propaganda offensive over the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

Behind the orchestrated wrangling between the Obama administration and congressional Republicans over averting the supposed catastrophe of automatic tax increases and budget cuts due to take effect January 1, the details of plans to impose unprecedented cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are being worked out behind the backs of the American people.

There is bipartisan agreement between the two corporate-controlled parties to slash social programs upon which tens of millions of working people rely for health care and retirement income. The main issue under debate is how to package the cuts so as to best confuse public opinion and obscure what is really happening.

In this, President Obama is taking a leading role. His primary concern is to make the slashing of social programs that keep millions out of poverty seem necessary, while providing this reactionary attack with a fig leaf of “fairness.”

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Leaked “Grand Bargain”

Document Details Obama’s Plan for Cuts in Entitlement Programs

john-boehner-barack-obamaIn his first post-election press conference, President Barack Obama on Wednesday reiterated the claim that his focus in deficit-reduction talks with the Republicans is to provide jobs and help the struggling “middle class” recover from the economic crisis.

To this end, Obama declared, he is determined to reach a “balanced” compromise that will require the wealthy to “pay a little bit more.” In practical terms, that means, at most, slightly raising the income tax rates of the richest 2 percent of US households—those making more than $250,000 a year—by allowing the Bush-era tax cuts for this income group to expire on January 1st.

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It’s the Interest, Stupid!

Why Bankers Rule the World

moneybagIn the 2012 edition of Occupy Money released last week, Professor Margrit Kennedy writes that a stunning 35% to 40% of everything we buy goes to interest. This interest goes to bankers, financiers, and bondholders, who take a 35% to 40% cut of our GDP. That helps explain how wealth is systematically transferred from Main Street to Wall Street. The rich get progressively richer at the expense of the poor, not just because of “Wall Street greed” but because of the inexorable mathematics of our private banking system.

This hidden tribute to the banks will come as a surprise to most people, who think that if they pay their credit card bills on time and don’t take out loans, they aren’t paying interest. This, says Dr. Kennedy, is not true.

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The Virtual Economic Recovery

Rigged Inflation Measure Understates Inflation

BubbleSince mid-2009 the US has been enjoying a virtual recovery courtesy of a rigged inflation measure that understates inflation. The financial Presstitutes spoon out the government’s propaganda that prices are rising less than 2%. But anyone who purchases food, fuel, medical care or anything else knows that low inflation is no more real that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction or Gadhafi’s alleged attacks on Libyan protesters or Iran’s nuclear weapons. Everything is a lie to serve the power-brokers.

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Deepening the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Trade Partnership

US_EU_flags_cloudOvershadowed by the upcoming American election are reports that the U.S. and European Union (EU) are working towards launching official negotiations on a deal that would further deepen their transatlantic trade partnership.

According to a recent Reuters article, “Europe and the United States are set to launch trade talks early next year to deepen the world’s largest trading relationship.” It goes on to say that, “An expert group co-chaired by EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk will in December issue a report recommending pursuing talks.” An EU official explained that, “The report will recommend the negotiation of a comprehensive agreement between the United States and the European Union.” Last week, the European Parliament also approved a resolution calling for talks on a possible trade deal with the U.S. to begin in 2013. The U.S. and EU have already made incremental strides with regards to economic integration. With renewed political support, momentum for a transatlantic trade accord is building.

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Capitalism’s Two Step Survival Plan:

Austerity and Structural Reform

greek_workers_protest_austerity_measuresThe coast is clear, the media tells us; economic disaster has been averted. The Euro Zone is finally stable and the U.S. economy is recovering. Whew!

Why, then, are government policies internationally still pursuing extremist measures?

In the U.S., a third round of excess money printing —called Quantitative Easing — began recently in which banks are directly profiting by unloading their toxic mortgages on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet (another backdoor bailout paid by taxpayers).

After the U.S. presidential election, both Democrats and Republicans are committed to different versions of historic cuts to social services, education, Medicare, unemployment benefits, and very likely Social Security. This bi-partisan plan is often referred to as a “grand bargain,” the details of which both parties are still haggling over.

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The Trans-Pacific Partnership’s “Global Economic Coup”:

Secret Negotiations Behind Closed Doors

TPPThis week, secret ‘negotiations’ are underway in a remote resort in Lansdowne,Virginia for the greatest global corporate coup in history. It’s called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and if you haven’t heard about it, then you are in the majority because there is a virtual media blackout in the United States.

To raise awareness of the TPP and to delay the ‘negotiations’, I shimmied up a 20 foot-high metal pole early yesterday morning in the driveway of the Lansdowne resort and attached myself at the top to a tripod. Negotiators abandoned their cars and walked up the driveway past me on the tripod and our banners that read “Trading away People’s lives and Planet’s future” and “FlushtheTPP.org”

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The Euro Is Not in Trouble. People Are.

ecbankOne of the phrases frequently written in economic circles in the United States (and to a lesser degree in Europe) is “the Euro is going to collapse.” Those who repeat that phrase over and over again do not seem to know how the Euro was established, by whom, and for whose benefit. If they knew the history of the Euro, they would have noticed that the major forces behind the Euro have done very well and continue to do so.

As long as they continue to benefit from the Euro’s existence, the Euro will continue to exist.
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The Global 1%:

Exposing the Transnational Ruling Class

1percentAbstract: This study asks: Who are the the world’s One percent power elite? And to what extent do they operate in unison for their own private gains over benefits for the 99 percent?  We examine a sample of the 1 percent: the extractor sector, whose companies are on the ground extracting material from the global commons, and using low-cost labor to amass wealth. These companies include oil, gas, and various mineral extraction organizations, whereby the value of the material removed far exceeds the actual cost of removal.We also examine the investment sector of the global 1 percent: companies whose primary activity is the amassing and reinvesting of capital. This sector includes global central banks, major investment money management firms, and other companies whose primary efforts are the concentration and expansion of money, such as insurance companies. Finally, we analyze how global networks of centralized power—the elite 1 percent, their companies, and various governments in their service—plan, manipulate, and enforce policies that benefit their continued concentration of wealth and power. We demonstrate how the US/NATO military-industrial-media empire operates in service to the transnational corporate class for the protection of international capital in the world.

The Occupy Movement has developed a mantra that addresses the great inequality of wealth and power between the world’s wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of us, the other 99 percent. While the 99 percent mantra undoubtedly serves as a motivational tool for open involvement, there is little understanding as to who comprises the 1 percent and how they maintain power in the world. Though a good deal of academic research has dealt with the power elite in the United States, only in the past decade and half has research on the transnational corporate class begun to emerge.[i]

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Greece:

  Syriza Shines a Light

syrizaLike a swan moving moving forward with relaxed confidence while paddling furiously beneath the surface, Syriza, the radical left coalition that could become the next government of Greece, is facing enormous challenges calmly but with intensifed activity.

In the palatial setting of the Greek parliament, Alexis Tsipras, the president of the radical left coalition Syriza’s parliamentary group, opens the first meeting of its 71 new deputies with his characteristic mix of cool and conviviality. At the same time, across Greece, other Syriza activists are organising neighbourhood assemblies, maintaining ‘solidarity kitchens’ and bazaars, working in medical social centres, protecting immigrants against attacks from Golden Dawn, the new fascist party that won 7 per cent of votes in the election, creating new Syriza currents at the base of the trade unions – and kickstarting the transition from a coalition of 12 political organisations (and 1.6 million voters) to a new kind of political party.

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Black Dossier:

HSBC & Terrorist Finance

guns-moneyIt's tough being the world's second largest bank.

HSBC, the London-based British multinational banking and financial services giant operates in 85 countries with 7,200 offices worldwide with assets totaling more than $2.6 trillion (£4.06tn).

They're also caught-up in serial scandals: the Libor interest rate-fixing scam, serious charges of drug money laundering as well as suspicions that bank officers "palled around" with terrorist financiers.

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Titanic Banks Hit LIBOR Iceberg: Will Lawsuits Sink the Ship?

Antitrust violations, wire fraud, bid-rigging, and price-fixing

Wall StreetAt one time, calling the large multinational banks a “cartel” branded you as a conspiracy theorist. Today the banking giants are being called that and worse, not just in the major media but in court documents intended to prove the allegations as facts. Charges include racketeering (organized crime under the U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO), antitrust violations, wire fraud, bid-rigging, and price-fixing. Damning charges have already been proven, and major damages and penalties assessed. Conspiracy theory has become established fact.

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Failing to Break Up the Big Banks is Destroying America

The Size of the Big Banks Is – Literally – Destroying the Rule of Law

fistofmoneyPulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind quotes Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as saying:

"The confidence in the system is so fragile still… a disclosure of a fraud… could result in a run, just like Lehman."

In other words, Geither said that the big bankers are “too big to jail”, because disclosing any portion of their massive fraud would cause bank runs.

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Pensions Under Attack in America

New Bill signed into law by Obama

Unclesam amd moneyOn Friday, July 6, President Obama signed into law a bill that would renew transportation programs and extend low interest rates on student loans for one year. While this minimal gesture resulted in, no doubt, sighs of relief from those burdened by student debt, tucked away within the bill's pages was a little-noticed proposal to further erode the funding of workers' pensions. The bill was a brilliant sleight of hand where what it appeared to be giving with one hand distracted the public from what it was taking away with the other.

Aside from the more publicly known parts of this bill, it also reduced the amount that corporations pay into an already grossly underfunded pension system. The way it achieved this is with a complex equation factoring in interest rates, changes in how businesses calculate what they must contribute to retirement premiums, and how these contributions are tax deductible. The end result of this opaque process of number crunching is that, according to the Society of Actuaries, employer pension contributions will be reduced overall from a mandatory $80 billion to $45 billion this year alone. Next year this amount will be slashed by $73 billion. (1)
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At the Crossroads of the Most Serious Economic Crisis in World History

Guns and Butter - June 27, 2012 at 1:00pm

Click to listen
Guns and Butter

"At the Crossroads of the Most Serious Economic Crisis in World History" with Michel Chossudovsky. History of the financial crisis from the early 1980s to the present; economic dimensions of the global crisis; naked short selling; market manipulation; speculative activity; derivatives; solutions to the crisis the cause of further collapse; privatization; government policies; bankruptcies; debt and social breakdown; grassroots organizing; Occupy Wall Street; Ad Busters; CANVAS-OTPOR; Anonymous.

 

Greece and the Euro: Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover

Alternatives to an "Ugly Divorce"

The problem is all inside your head she said to me
The answer is easy if you take it logically
I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover.

–Lyrics by Paul Simon

Greek_Euro_FlagThe Euro appears to be a marriage of incompatible partners. A June 1st article in the UK Telegraph titled “Why Europe’s Love Affair with the European Project Is Ending” reported that two-thirds of 9,000 respondents thought that having the euro as their single currency was a mistake.

For Greece, it was a tragic mismatch from the beginning; and like many a breakup, it is really about money. Greece is a vivacious young woman chained to a tyrannical old man. She yearns to be free to dance on her own; but breaking up is hard to do. Defaulting on her debts will force her out of the Eurozone and back to issuing drachmas, and she could get brutally beaten by speculators on foreign exchange markets for her insolence.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to an ugly divorce. The treaties binding the 17 member nations are just a set of rules, entered into by mutual agreement; and rules can be bent or broken, especially in crises. The ECB (European Central Bank) broke a litany of rules to save the banks, and so did the Federal Reserve to save Wall Street in 2008. Rules that can be bent for banks can be bent for people and nations—not just Greece, but all the other Eurozone countries threatening to file for divorce.

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Financial Collapse At Hand:

When is "Sooner or Later"?

federal_reserveEver since the beginning of the financial crisis and Quantitative Easing, the question has been before us: How can the Federal Reserve maintain zero interest rates for banks and negative real interest rates for savers and bond holders when the US government is adding $1.5 trillion to the national debt every year via its budget deficits? Not long ago the Fed announced that it was going to continue this policy for another 2 or 3 years. Indeed, the Fed is locked into the policy. Without the artificially low interest rates, the debt service on the national debt would be so large that it would raise questions about the US Treasury's credit rating and the viability of the dollar, and the trillions of dollars in Interest Rate Swaps and other derivatives would come unglued.

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SPENDING ON WEAPONS OF WAR IS THE CAUSE OF THE US BUDGET DEFICIT

Veterans for Peace Leah Bolger Faces Jail for Challenging the US Government on how it Uses its Tax Dollars

Leah_BolgerIn 45 Seconds Leah Bolger Did More to Represent the Views of Americans then the Supercommittee Ever Did:
Now She Faces Jail

On April 12th, Leah Bolger, the president of Veterans for Peace and an occupier at Freedom Plaza, will appear in DC Superior Court to face charges stemming from her interruption of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, also known as the Super Committee. Below is the statement I will submit on her behalf.

See
20 Year Veteran Faces Jail Time for Civil Disobedience


STATEMENT IN SUPPORT OF LEAH BOLGER SUBMITTED BY KEVIN ZEESE April 12, 2012

This statement is submitted in support of Leah Bolger for her action to stop the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, also known as the “super committee,” from reducing government deficit spending by cutting desperately needed social programs primarily for senior citizens and the disabled, rather than taxing the wealthiest 1% of Americans and reducing military spending.

The Joint Select Committee was a congressional aberration with only one precedent, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. The Joint Select Committee was made up of senators and members of Congress from both parties and was designed to avoid the normal legislative process, especially public hearings and the ability of Americans to hold their elected representatives accountable for their actions. The Joint Committee was called a super committee because it would put forward cuts in the budget and increased taxes and the full Congress would then vote on the full proposal without any amendments. This process usurped the authority of elected officials to write and revise legislation.

The Joint Committee met almost completely in private without opportunity for public testimony. There were only a few public meetings of the Committee with carefully selected witnesses. News reports indicated that President Obama and the Democrats were negotiating with the Republicans to cut Social Security and Medicare. This was being done even though both those programs are funded by separate tax revenues, the payroll tax, which withholds taxes from the pay checks of all Americans to fund these programs. These programs are a contract with Americans who pay throughout their working lives for these benefits.

Neither of these programs was in deficit spending. Indeed, since 1982 Social Security has maintained a budget surplus. Social Security remains strong with a $2.7 trillion surplus and will be able to pay full benefits for the next 25 years – until 2036. Despite the gloom and doom rhetoric of those who want to cut Social Security to balance the budget, the program continues to run an annual surplus – and is separate from the general fund and the deficit problems the country faces.

Medicare presents greater challenges because of the failure to control health care costs in the United States. Medicare is the victim of this problem not the cause. Spending per beneficiary rose more than 400 percent over the last 30 years but this is much less than inflation-adjusted premiums on private health insurance which rose more than 700 percent. Throughout this time administrative costs for Medicare have been 2 to 3 percent, compared to nearly 18 percent for private insurance. Slight changes in tax structure would be sufficient to fully fund Medicare and Social Security for the foreseeable future. As with Social Security, the challenges in funding Medicare are separate from the general federal deficit.

Both these programs are immensely popular with polls consistently showing that super majorities of Americans – more than 60 percent –supporting them. Polls also show that Americans want to see other cuts, including to military spending, rather than cuts to these desperately needed social programs for which there is contract between government and the American people. For these reasons Congress sought to circumvent the normal open and transparent democratic process, with opportunities for public comment, in order to cut them.

Instead of listening to and representing the views of the American people, the Joint Committee was representing the interests of big money. The twelve Members of the Joint Committee had received $41 million from the financial sector during their time in Congress. In the previous five years they received more than $1 million in contributions from the health care industry and at least $700,000 from weapons makers. The Joint Committee was carefully selected so it would protect the wealthiest Americans, weapons makers and the for-profit health industry rather than the American people. The only path they would consider in reducing the deficit was on the backs of working Americans.

In 45 seconds retired Commander Leah Bolger did more to represent the views of Americans and tell the true facts about the deficit than all of the elected representatives on the Joint Committee. Commander Bolger correctly said that the cause of the deficit was spending on weapons and war – on which the United States spends a trillion dollars annually, as much as the whole world combined; and failure to progressively tax the wealthiest Americans who despite their record-setting wealth pay less than working Americans. Indeed, the 400 hundred wealthiest Americans have wealth equal to more 154 million Americans, but they pay an average tax of 17% while working Americans pay 30%.

Commander Bolger was a member of the Occupation at Freedom Plaza. On Freedom Plaza we held our own Occupied Super Committee hearing which was aired on CSPAN. And, we produced our own report, The 99% Deficit Proposal: How to Create Jobs, Reduce the Wealth Divide and Control Spending. We found that by making reasonable cuts to the military budget – cuts recommended by many former military officials; and taxing the wealthiest at rates that had been common in the 20th Century, the United States could achieve the $1.2 trillion in budget savings that the congressional super committee sought to achieve in 10 years, in merely two years.

Commander Bolger did an incredibly brave and patriotic act of citizenship – during one of the rare public hearings of the Joint Committee she walked to the front of the hearing room, into the well, and told the elected officials the truth: if we taxed the wealthy and cut the military budget there would be no deficit problem. She also told the American public the truth that this aberration of the democratic process was designed to hide from all of us.

Once again, Leah Bolger was an American hero. Her personal story is one that deserves note. She joined the Navy at 22 years old and served until the year 2000. Over two decades she served all over the world, including tours in Iceland, Bermuda, Japan and Tunisia. She served as an anti-submarine warfare specialist and rose to the rank of a Commander in the Navy, equivalent to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. She did not leave the Navy as an opponent of war, indeed like many in the military she did not think about what she was doing when serving the country; she followed orders and did her job.

In 2005 she attended an exhibit of the American Friends Service Committee called “Eyes Wide Open,” and had a “moment of epiphany.” The exhibit showed a pair of army boots for every soldier that had been killed since 2001. Each boot had tags which gave the name of each soldier and where they were from. Rows and rows of boots lined up. There were posters of Americans and Iraqis who had died in the war. She says she remembers it affecting her “viscerally, the feeling in my stomach — it was a kick in the gut when I saw that. It really, really hit me.”

She took action, became an active citizen and spoke out against war. She joined Veterans for Peace and in 2009 she was elected the national Board of Directors and served as the national vice-president until 2012 when she was reelected to her second term on the board, and became the first female national president of the organization.

When she spoke before the Joint Committee she delivered a message on behalf of the vast majority of Americans – a message the committee was trying hard not to hear, nor to allow others to hear: End the wars and tax the rich to fix the deficit.

Her action helped changed the course of American history. While she was not alone in protesting the Joint Committee – indeed there were protests outside the committee room and dozens of people walked from New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore to oppose the cuts that were being talked about – she did something no one else did – she went before the elected officials and did something radical in that committee room – she told the truth. In the end, the truth won and the committee backed off of cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

When I speak in praise of Leah Bolger for her actions, I know I am not speaking only for myself as Leah spoke for millions of Americans who were not being heard. I urge you to recognize that this was an act of conscience taken on behalf of the American people at a time when representative government no longer serves us.

More Information:

The 99%’s Deficit Proposal: How to create jobs, reduce the wealth divide and control spending

We Stand With the Majority of Americans: Human Needs, Not Corporate Greed

A Naval Commander for the 99% Stands Trial

Copyright © Kevin Zeese, Global Research, 2012

 

Capitalism:

A Ghost Story

antalia_27_storey_dwellingRockefeller to Mandela, Vedanta to Anna Hazare.... How long can the cardinals of corporate gospel buy up our protests?

The corporate or Foundation-endowed NGOs are global finance's way of buying into resistance movements, literally like shareholders buy shares in companies, and then try to control them from within. They sit like nodes on the central nervous system, the pathways along which global finance flows.

Is it a house or a home? A temple to the new India, or a warehouse for its ghosts? Ever since Antilla arrived on Altamont Road in Mumbai, exuding mystery and quiet menace, things have not been the same. "Here we are," the friend who took me there said, "Pay your respects to our new Ruler."

Antilla belongs to India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani. I had read about this most expensive dwelling ever built, the twenty-seven floors, three helipads, nine lifts, hanging gardens, ballrooms, weather rooms, gymnasiums, six floors of parking, and the six hundred servants. Nothing had prepared me for the vertical lawn—a soaring, 27-storey-high wall of grass attached to a vast metal grid. The grass was dry in patches; bits had fallen off in neat rectangles. Clearly, Trickledown hadn't worked.

But Gush-Up certainly has. That's why in a nation of 1.2 billion, India's 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of the GDP.

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Greek Lessons:

Great_Depression

Democracy versus Debt-Bondage


It is a truism to say that democracy began with the Greeks – less so to say that it originated in popular rebellion against debt and debt-bondage. Yet, with the Greek people ensnared once more in the vice-grip of rich debt-holders, it may be useful to recall that fact. For the only hope today of reclaiming democracy in Greece (and elsewhere) resides in the prospect of a mass uprising against modern debt-bondage that extends the rule of the people into the economic sphere.


Across virtually all the ancient world, to fall into irretrievable debt was to enter into bondage to the rich. For millennia, the poor typically had no collateral for loans beyond their bodies and their labour. The result in ancient Greece, as Aristotle acknowledged, was that “the poor ... were enslaved by the rich.”[1]


Beginning more than 2,600 years ago, a succession of upheavals by the Athenian poor – or the demos – broke the power of the aristocracy and began a drawn out democratic revolution. Squeezed by debts and the spread of debt-bondage the common people rendered their aristocratic society effectively ungovernable.

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