Category: 03 Economy

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Winslow Wheeler: Military Spending versus Competence

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Winslow Wheeler

Washington Post Joins Hysterical Defense Budget Rhetoric

Center for Defense Information, 7 November 2011

Monday, November 7, the Washington Post editorial board published its take on the extreme rhetoric the country has been hearing on the defense budget since Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta starting talking about the “doomsday mechanism” that would reduce defense spending.  Quoting the newer extreme rhetoric of several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff defending their budget ambitions to the eager-to-listen House Armed services Committee, the Washington Post positioned itself foursquare in favor of hysterics.  It was with an editorial titled “Defense on the Rocks: Mandated spending cuts could decimate U.S. military might.”  Find it here  (although at the web link they toned down the title with the more sympathetic “US Defense on the defensive.”)
Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Military Spending versus Competence”

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Koko: Bernie Sanders on Time to Change Fed

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Hill Letters & Testimony, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Koko

Worth a close reading.  The revealed conflicts of interest and probably high crimes and misdemeanors and nothing less than expected, but astonishing all the same.

The Veil of Secrecy at the Fed Has Been Lifted, Now It's Time for Change

By Sen. Bernie Sanders

Huffington Post, November 4, 2011

As a result of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street, the American people have experienced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs, homes, life savings, and ability to send their kids to college. Small businesses have been unable to get the credit they need to expand their businesses, and credit is still extremely tight. Wages as a share of national income are now at the lowest level since the Great Depression, and the number of Americans living in poverty is at an all-time high.

Continue reading “Koko: Bernie Sanders on Time to Change Fed”

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Event: 8-10 June NYC Strategies for a New Economy

03 Economy, Academia, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics
Click on Image to Enlarge

Upcoming Event:

June 8-10, 2012
Conference:  Strategies for a New Economy
Bard College, on the Hudson River, New York
Registration open in January of 2012
Themes for Conference Tracks
Each Track will have seven associated workshops
1.  Modeling the New Economy: Shared Prosperity within Planetary Limits
2.  Measuring Well Being: Alternative Indicators of Wealth and Progress
3.  Banking and Financing a New Economy: Scale, Criteria, Innovation
4.  Re-building Local Economies:  Engines for Resilience
5.  Re-imagining Ownership: Coops, Stakeholders, Corporate Structure
6. Transforming Money: Structuring, Issuing, and Valuing New Mediums of Exchange
7.  Sharing the Commons: Identifying, Allocating, and Restoring
8.  Messaging a New Economy: Education, Media, Public Campaigns
9.  Forging Justice for All: Economic Security, Equity, and Jobs in the New Economy
10. Empowered Youth: Mandating a New Economy
11. Responsive Government for a New Economy: Politics as if People and Planet Mattered
 12. Moving Beyond Consumerism: Plenitude, Sufficiency, and Mindful Consumption
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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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Reference: System D – The Global Black Market

03 Economy, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Civil Society, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Hacking
Click on Image to Enlarge

The Shadow Superpower

Forget China: the $10 trillion global black market is the world's fastest growing economy — and its future.

Robert Neuwirth

Foreign Policy, 28 October 2011

It wasn't a matter of technology. David is not an inventor or an engineer, and his insights into his country's electrical problems had nothing to do with fancy photovoltaics or turbines to harness the harmattan or any other alternative sources of energy. Instead, 7,000 miles from home, using a language he could hardly speak, he did what traders have always done: made a deal. He contracted with a Chinese firm near Guangzhou to produce small diesel-powered generators under his uncle's brand name, Aakoo, and shipped them home to Nigeria, where power is often scarce. David's deal, struck four years ago, was not massive — but it made a solid profit and put him on a strong footing for success as a transnational merchant. Like almost all the transactions between Nigerian traders and Chinese manufacturers, it was also sub rosa: under the radar, outside of the view or control of government, part of the unheralded alternative economic universe of System D.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  The old estimate was $2 trillion a year, of which half went to bribes paid to government officials.  To put this in a larger context, governments have failed to adapt and failed to represent the bulk of their populations — they have been captured at the upper levels by lobbyists, “experts” and the elite 1%, and at lower levels by common one to one bribes.  Hence, in the new economy, the 99% are routing around government, and creating their own hybrid forms of governance, generally driven by information and reality instead of ideology and greed.  It can be said that the illegal economy is more honest than the “legalized crime” economy.

See Also:

Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy

 Cartoon Source

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Chuck Spinney: No-Nothingism with Nukes

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy
Chuck Spinney

Below is a brilliant synopsis of America's defeat in Iraq.  The author Patrick Seale, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last summer, is one of the leading authorities on the Middle East.  Seale lays out the costs incurred and the unintended grand-strategic consequences of the US invasion of Iraq, and he reminds of us of its fraudulent origins.  Contrast Seale's analysis with the self-serving pap peddled by Fredrick Kagan et al. in Weekly Standard that caused Col. XXX to do his atomic puke (distributed in my previous blaster).

The most disturbing point made by Seale, at least to me, is his observation that the people and politics of the United States show no signs of wanting to determine who is responsible for the Iraq catastrophe or to hold them to account.  Without accountability and punitive as well as corrective action, the very idea of a representative republic becomes a sham, and the Constitution becomes a sick joke.  Given the escalating danger in the Middle East, not mention our dangerous economic times, the absence of any self-correcting mechanism in the political OODA loops of people or government in the United States is a scary thing indeed, not only to the United States but also for the entire world — think of US politics as no-nothingism with nukes.

Chuck Spinney
Barcelona, Catalunya

America’s Defeat in Iraq and Beyond

by Patrick Seale, Agence France Global

Released: 1 Nov 2011

EXTRACTS:

Can America chance course? Nothing is less likely. It is widely predicted that if the Republican Mitt Romney wins the White House, the pro-Israeli neocons will be back in power in Washington. Their target this time will be Iran.

Phi Beta Iota:  A superb article that names names.  It is very likely that Occupy Wall Street is going to blow its one chance to demand an Electoral Reform Act of 2012, and that the next “president” will again be a puppet to Israel, extremist influences, and Wall Street.  Romney is a suit – a corrupt suit.  Obama is the same.  The US Government no longer represents the US public, but Occupy Wall Street is so busy doing intense kum-ba-ya they are ignoring the one thing everyone can agree on: it's time to dump the two-party tyranny in the toilet and reset US democracy with open ballot access and the other nine elements of the Electoral Reform Act of 2012.

noble gold