The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Living Sacred Economies: Money, Gift & Transition
Host: Charles Eisenstein
How to live in a Sacred Economy, in all aspects of your life, during this time of global transformation.
6 Sessions, starting November 30
Featuring: Julio Olalla, Fernanda Ibarra, John L. Petersen, Lynne Twist, Orland Bishop, Mark Boyle
Keen: Government should print money to pay off our debts
Economist Steve Keen is one of the few economists to have predicted the global financial crisis and now he says we are already in a Great Depression. He says the way to escape it is to bankrupt the banks, nationalise the financial system and pay off people's debt.
He admits what he is advocating is radical but says it is time governments gave money to debtors to pay down debt instead of to creditors such as banks who have held onto it.
European Union: Reuters and other news services reported on 18 November that the European Commission will present a study that proposes three options for debt issuance for the Eurozone. The study indicates the European Union intends to exploit the debt crisis to undermine sovereignty in debtor countries, such as the PIIGS – Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain.
• The first law would link the acquisition of emergency loans from current and future bailout funds to the acceptance of economic monitoring by the Commission, which would be more extensive than that for Portugal, Ireland or Greece. If a eurozone member accepts this enhanced surveillance, it could mean the Commission would have an almost permanent presence in the nation.
• The second law would allow the Commission to evaluate draft budgets, suggest changes or draft a new budget. The Commission could also debate the budgets in a national parliament. These changes would not require a change to the EU treaty, which already states that economic policy is a common concern.
• The third law stipulates that budgets must be drafted based on forecasts from independent institutions, such as the Commission or the European Central Bank, rather than government agencies. The Commission will also propose that fiscal rules be written into national laws, preferably a country's constitution.
Comment: If the PIIGS accept these terms, they surrender national sovereignty. It is unlikely that the laws will be approved, but they make clear the intentions of the unelected Eurocrats to govern. Budgetary authority is government authority. The Eurocrats think they know better than the people of the PIIGS.
Phi Beta Iota: The only thing worse than democracy is everything else, and that everything else assuredly includes European technocrats who have deep conflicts of interest, deep gaps in their knowledge, deep gaps in their integrity, and zero appreciation for the realities that have led to this situation including deep corruption in both government and finance. In a democracy, if politics and intelligence keep their integrity, there is no conflict and good policy results from good intelligence. When either or both abandon their integrity, the people get screwed. The LAST thing any of the weaker countries should do is listen to dictats from external “authorities.” The re-nationalization of privatized public assets, and the criminal prosecution of all Goldman Sachs and other banking figures that lied to governments over the past decade, are two of the FIRST things each government should do.
See Also:
Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both
Some background on this old report…..this conference has been going on for some time, fluctuates between Garmisch and Moscow…The US has offered to host it but has been consistently turned down. China showed up two years ago and the next conference (2012) is scheduled to be in Beijing…..if the US cannot, with is efforts in technological development, host a cyber conference it is indicative of what the rest of the world thinks of us….
As Washington airs plans for a new “cyber command,” a top Russian official discusses the threat of cyberweapons.
Phi Beta Iota: The lack of intelligence and integrity in the US Government is chillingly deep, especially within the US secret intelligence, and nowhere more irresponsible than within the National Security Agency/US Cyber-Command – both oxymorons. The Chinese are all over NSA and Cyber is not a Command.
See Also:
Continue reading “DefDog: Russia-Europe-China Ignore US Cyber-Fools”
47 minutes 49 seconds. Riveting. The bottom line: high-frequency computer based trading is divorced from reality, humans, and tangible value.
US Federal Prosecutions For Financial Fraud In the Obama Administration Fall to Record Lows
Jesse's Cafe Americain, 16 November 2011
The declines in US Federal prosecutions for financial fraud that began under G.W. Bush have followed that down trend that in the first three years of the Obama Administration. That might make more sense if Obama had not been elected as a reform president in response to one of the greatest financial frauds in American history.
In the first three years of the Obama Administration, federal prosecutions have been running at new highs. Over half of the prosecutions involve illegal immigration. Another 17% are drug related.
Illegal immigrants and drug dealers have the reputation for being notoriously cheap in providing campaign contributions.
Prosecutions for financial fraud however have dropped to the lowest levels in over 20 years.
Read more (including NYT article).
Phi Beta Iota: When Goldman Sachs continues to “own” the Secretary of the Treasury, has its own lobbyist in the office of the National Security Advisor to the President, and can count on a the Fed Chairman–as always, both Jewish and ensnarled in conflict of interest relationships with the major private banks, we can only conclude that Bush-Obama are one.
