Commercial Intelligence – Page 175 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/08/052011/08/06

Koko: Bloomberg & Soros Do Wrong Thing Righter

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Gift Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, Methods & Process, Reform

Can George Soros, Michael Bloomberg save New York's troubled young men?

CSM, 4 August 2011

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a $127.5 million plan Thursday to help young black and Hispanic men. The effort includes money from financier George Soros and his philanthropy.

Education

Socioeconomic and Health issues

Employment

Incarceration

Event: 22-25 May Laguna Beach CA Future in Review

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Technologies

“The best technology conference in the world.” – The Economist

Future in Review Conference

May 22-25, 2012
Montage Laguna Beach
Laguna Beach, California

2011/07/312011/08/01

Chuck Spinney: Jeff Madrick on The Age of Greed and Failure of Government to Check Private Sector Greed

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

Here is a review of my friend Jeff Madrick's important new book, Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present

Book review: ‘Age of Greed’ by Jeff Madrick

By David Greenberg, Washington Post Outlook, 29 July 2011

David Greenberg is a professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. He is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for the 2010-11 academic year.

EXTRACTS

“Age of Greed” chronicles how Americans ended up with the highly unregulated financial system that produced the meltdown of 2008 and the fallout that lingers three years later. What’s most novel about the book, which relies heavily on other secondary accounts, is that unlike other recent treatments of the financial crisis, it traces the origins of the problem not to the Bush or Clinton or even Reagan years, but all the way to the late 1960s.

. . . . . .

The real scandal revealed by Madrick’s important book is not the well-known tales of dastards such as telecom analyst Jack Grubman or Internet stock promoter Frank Quattrone, but the more elusive — and more consequential — story of how the government came to abdicate this supreme responsibility.

Read full review….

2011/07/312011/07/31

DefDog: Who Lent to America? America, Not China

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, IO Impotency

Who owns America? Hint: It's not China

A close-up look at who holds America's debt.

Thomas Mucha, July 20, 2011 17:45

Truth is elusive. But it's a good thing we have math.

Our friends at Business Insider know this, and put those two principles to work today in this excellent and highly informative little slideshow, made even more timely by the ongoing talks in Washington, D.C. aimed at staving off a U.S. debt default.

. . . . . . .

America owes foreigners about $4.5 trillion in debt. But America owes America $9.8 trillion.

Phi Beta Iota: Details below. The lies and misrepresentation from all sides in Washington are reprehensible. The distance between the truth and those in power has never been greater. It turns out the US owes the largest chuck (30.3%) to the US Treasury and the Social Security fund; next up is 6.6% to US households, and then a plethora of banks and funds that could easily be stiffed for a year.

US holders of US debt:

Continue reading “DefDog: Who Lent to America? America, Not China”

2011/07/30

Chuck Spinney: Robert Bryce on Wind Power Falsehoods

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government

My good friend Robert Bryce carpet bombs the wind industry and highlights some very important issues in the process. He is author of several energy-related books, including the released book: Power Hungry: The Myths of ‘Green’ Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future (PublicAffairs, April 27, 2010), which is an excellent description of the of some show stopping limitations of the current menu non-nuclear green technologies.

Weekend Edition
July 29 – 31, 2011

The Global Backlash Against Wind Energy

T. Boone's Windy Misadventure

By ROBERT BRYCE, Counterpunch

Phi Beta Iota: There is no lack of open source information necessary to create public intelligence in the public interest. There is only a lack of integrity among all concerned–from government to corporations to parasitic think tanks and non-profits whose existence is rooted in pleasing masters with money rather serving the public interest. Particularly troubling is the US Governments refusal to be honest about either the carbon costs or the ecological costs (thousands of birds and bats being wiped out), and refusing to carry out its Congressionally-mandated duties with respect to protecting the environment from corporate predators.

2011/07/292011/07/29

John Robb: Concentration of Wealth = Central Planning = Fall of US Empire from Misappropriation

03 Economy, Blog Wisdom, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, IO Impotency

JOURNAL: Central Planning and The Fall of the US Empire

Here's some thinking that draws on decision making theory. It's very much in line with how the late John Boyd (America's best strategist) would approach it.

___________

One of the most interesting underlying reasons for the decline of the Soviet Union, and soon the US, is misallocation of resources due to central planning.

Misallocation in this context means that year after year, decade after decade, the wealth of a nation is spent on the wrong things. The wrong projects are funded. The wrong things are built. The wrong things were bought and so on. Eventually, the accumulation of bad investment made them so fragile that even the smallest shock could topple them. The reason for this the Soviet's reliance on central planning. A system of economic governance where small group of people — in the Soviet Unions case bureaucrats — had all the decision making power. They decided what was spent and where. They decided badly.

Why did they decide badly? The massive economy of a modern superstate is too complex for a small group of people to manage. Too much data. Too many uncertainties. Too many moving parts.

The only way to manage an economy as complex as this is to allow massively parallel decision making. A huge number of people making small decisions, that in aggregate, are able to process more data, get better data (by being closer to the problem), and apply more brainpower to weighing alternatives than any centralized decision making group.

Of course, the misallocation due to centralized decision making wasn't supposed to be a vulnerability of the West. To allocate resources in our economy, we had a more efficient mechanism: markets. Markets are supposed to be a mechanism that allows massively parallel decision making.

Those assumptions are proving false. The succession of market bubbles and finally, the global financial collpse of 2008 is prima facie that gross misallocation is occurring. The wealth of the West, particularly the US, is being spent on the wrong things year after year, decade after decade. We are now as fragile as the Soviet Union in the late 80's.

Continue reading “John Robb: Concentration of Wealth = Central Planning = Fall of US Empire from Misappropriation”

2011/07/262011/07/26

John Steiner: Christopher Schaefer on Wealth

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Articles & Chapters, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government

Christopher Schaefer (PhD), gives us both a short essay below recommending two books, and at the link, a five-page essay, “Mind the Gap: Wealth Disparities, the Deficit, and our Economic Future.”

CREATING COMMON WEALTH

Christopher Schaefer

It is now clear that the present global economic crisis is also a political and moral crisis raising fundamental questions about the nature of market capitalism in the West, in particular in the United States and England. Old arguments from the Right and the Left about more government involvement in society or less are often deemed irrelevant as the system is perceived as being corrupt and manipulated by economic and political elites. A recent Pew Research Poll found that over 92 percent of Americans viewed the economy as bad, over 70 percent say they have suffered job related or financial hardship as a result of the great recession, 25 percent say they have difficulty paying their mortgage and 24 percent in paying their medical bills. Meanwhile 65 percent see government in a negative light and large banks and large corporations as corrupt, ( 67 and 64 percent respectively ). Or as David Korten states in Agenda for a New Economy, (Berrett Koehler) “conservatives and liberals share a sense that the dominant culture and institutions of the contemporary world are morally and spiritually bankrupt, unresponsive to human needs and values , and destructive of the strong families and communities we crave and our children desperately need.(1)

Korten's book is an excellent beginning in rethinking how our economy should be organized and should function. He makes a strong case for a 12 point agenda in achieving independence from Wall Street and and in creating a more local and sustainable economic future. The 12 point Agenda includes:

Continue reading “John Steiner: Christopher Schaefer on Wealth”