Category: Commerce

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John Robb: Greece, MF Global, & Crony Capitalism

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
John Robb

JOURNAL: Greece, MF Global and Crony Capitalism

The slow motion bankruptcy of MF global and Greece should prove we're still on the brink of an economic meltdown that will likely result in a global depression.  Why?  These events demonstate how the global economy, like the Communist system before it, is run by a small group of central planners (that allocate the world's collective capital).  These planners:

  • Make lots of VERY bad decisions.  Wall Street and EU planners routinely attempt to sink the entire economic and financial system with excessive leverage and risk.  These systemic threats have become so commonplace now, it's nearly inevitable that one will cause a major collapse.
  • Become morally and ethically depraved.   They operate on a continuous stream of fraud and lies.  Too many instances to count.  These planners are unencumbered by ethical or cultural norms.  They actually believe these rules are below them.  In reality, by doing so, these planners are eviscerating their own decision making (i.e. in terms of an  OODA loop, they aren't orienting themselves to the deep/rich cultural experience these rules represent).
  • Completely arrogant and unapologetic.  They are never wrong.  Nobody could have foreseen it.  It's a one in 10,000 year event.

Of course, this situation will persist until it doesn't.  At that point, we'll be in for a long rebuilding process.

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Chuck Spinney: William Pfaff on USA Gone Awry

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Chuck Spinney

Good summary of the American sickness.

One Nation, Gone Awry

William Pfaff – truthdig – 02/11/11

The theme of most political and social commentary is that things are more complicated than you think. For once, I wish to write that things are simpler than you think. This concerns two matters at the core of the present American political crisis.

The first is that control over the government has passed all but completely into the hands of business corporations. The country has become a plutocracy. This has occurred because corporations are the principal supplier of funds essential to the election of federal officials—the president and the members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, and through them, the members of the Supreme Court and the rest of the federal judiciary, all of whom are nominated and confirmed by the elected officials of the executive and legislative branches of the government.

. . . . . . .

I spoke of a second source of American crisis to which there is a simple solution, an intellectual solution, which to impose would require conversion of the hard hearts and biased minds of a sizable part of the international economic community (at least that part of it educated at the University of Chicago since the Second World War), as well as a near-revolutionary change in how the American government presently functions (see above). The crisis is easily described as the 1 percent problem. One percent of the American population receives income equivalent to the other 99 percent put together.

This is caused by the consensus decision of the economists and business schools to define profit as the sole criterion of corporation efficiency and public (and civic) worth. The automatic consequence of this has been the de-industrialization of the United States, the export of its manufacturing capacity, unemployment in the U.S. comparable to that of the Great Depression, poverty levels with no modern American precedent, and the moral corruption of American politics.

Read full article.

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Matt Taibbi: Bloomberg’s Marie Antoinette Moment

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth
Matt Taibbi

Mike Bloomberg's Marie Antoinette Moment

Rolling Stone, November 3, 11:00 AM ET

Last year I had a chance to see New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg up close at the Huffington Post’s “Game Changers” event. I was standing right behind the guy when he was introduced by Nora Ephron, and watched as the would-be third party powerhouse wowed the liberal crowd with one zinger after another.

Includes short video.

EXTRACT:

The whole game was based on one new innovation: the derivative instruments like CDOs that allowed them to take junk-rated home loans and turn them into AAA-rated instruments. It was not Barney Frank who made it possible for Goldman, Sachs to sell the home loan of an occasionally-employed janitor in Oakland or Detroit as something just as safe as, and more profitable than, a United States Treasury Bill. This was something they cooked up entirely by themselves and developed solely with the aim of making more money.

Read full skewering of Mike Bloomberg.

See Also:

Review: Griftopia–Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

Matt Taibbi: The Real Housewives Of Wall Street–How Morgan Stanley Wives Christy Mack & Susan Karches Ripped Off Taxpayers In Geithner-Bernanke Bailout Scheme

Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? + US Fraud RECAP

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Mini-Me: OccupyParty.org Bloomberg Act III?

Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency
Who? Mini-Me?

NO LABELS was laughed out of existence.

America Elects was scorned into oblivion.

Is this false flag “Tea Party of the Left” a Trojan Horse, a blatant dishonorable attempt to misdirect the energy of the Occupy movement?

Note the absence of contact information, a sure sign that this is funded by friends of Wall Street.

OccupyParty.org

Phi Beta Iota:  This is lame, phoney, and the photo is so obviously Madison Avenue stupid that we expect this web site to self-destruct within weeks.  Tea Party of the Left?  The level of idiocy within the “Save the Two-Party Tyranny” gang is higher than ever.

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Event: Nov 9 – Nation-wide House Parties to Plan for the Two-Year Anniversary of Citizens United

Civil Society, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Ethics, Government


More than 150 house parties are being planned, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will join the parties by phone and webcast. For those in Manhattan, believe it or not, but there is only ONE event listed (60 Wall St, “the Atrium” which is also accessible from Pine St).

 Also see:
Resources for House Party Hosts and Activists Organizing for the Two-Year Anniversary of Citizens United v. FEC

Boulder's corporate personhood measure

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Howard Rheingold: Mindfulness for Executives

Advanced Cyber/IO, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Movies
Howard Rheingold

Webinar: “Cultivating the Executive Mind: Is Mindfulness the Key to 21st Century Economic Survival?”

Peter Drucker, the founder of the discipline of modern management, asserted that making knowledge workers productive was the key to economic survival for the developed economies. Though knowledge workers use their minds to make a living, are they ever taught to use their minds more effectively? This webinar discusses my decade-old mindfulness program at the Drucker School of Management designed to teach managers to manage themselves.

See Also:

The Knowledge Executive

noble gold