03 Economy – Page 164 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/08/19

Michel Bauwens: Moody’s Analyst on Core Corruption

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

220px-Michel_Bauwens_crop — Michel Bauwens

Dan Gillmor originally shared this post:

Wow. Henry Blodget has discovered and pulled out incredible stuff from a document filed with the SEC by a former senior employee at Moody's, one of the big-3 securities ratings agencies.

Moody's is partly owned by a company in which I've owned stock for many years: Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett has consistently defended Moody's (and the sleazy Goldman Sachs, another big BRK investment) with feel-good non-answers to serious questions. I'm increasingly disenchanted with Buffett, and that's one of the main reasons why.

MOODY'S ANALYST BREAKS SILENCE: Says Ratings Agency Rotten To Core With Conflicts, Corruption, And Greed

A former senior analyst at Moody's has gone public with his story of how one of the country's most important rating agencies is corrupted to the core.

The analyst, William J. Harrington, worked for Moody's for 11 years, from 1999 until his resignation last year.

From 2006 to 2010, Harrington was a Senior Vice President in the derivative products group, which was responsible for producing many of the disastrous ratings Moody's issued during the housing bubble.

Harrington has made his story public in the form of a 78-page “comment” to the SEC's proposed rules about rating agency reform, which he submitted to the agency on August 8th. The comment is a scathing indictment of Moody's processes, conflicts of interests, and management, and it will likely make Harrington a star witness at any future litigation or hearings on this topic.

Chuck Spinney: Fukushima Aftermath

03 Economy, 05 Energy, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency

A sobering Japanese bookend to the stunning Sprey-Cockburn report which documented Fukushima's increased infant death rates in some cities in the United States (distributed on 16 Aug). Yet another nail in the claim that we can evolve a safe carbon-free economy in the near term. Given the low power density of green technologies, like wind and solar, going carbon-free or moving away from fire — i.e., the invention that launched millions of years human cultural evolution — in the next 30-100 years necessarily involves a huge expansion in nuclear power, because is the only high power-density, non-carbon solution available over the foreseeable future).

Chuck Spinney
The Blaster
Nice

Published on Thursday, August 18, 2011 by Al Jazeera

Fukushima Radiation Alarms Doctors

Japanese doctors warn of public health problems caused by Fukushima radiation.

by Dahr Jamail

Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant.

“How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?” asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives.

John Robb: 147 Banks & Corporations as Global Financial Cancer, Gray Markets Fairs, Urban Foraging

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Blog Wisdom, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Corporations, Corruption, IO Impotency, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth

JOURNAL: Global Financial Cancer

EXTRACT: A new paper, The Network of Global Corporate Control by Vitali et. al. from ETH in Zurich. This paper finds, through extensive network analysis, that a small group of tightly intertwined financial institutions control the bow of the global financial system. It is in effect, the world's first super-organism. 147 trans-national companies that the global core that is owned by itself (3/4 of the ownership of firm's in this organism are owned by firms in the organism). This organism is beyond governments. If it is self serving (and this shouldn't be too hard to assume), it is the equivalent of a biological cancer that has metastasized.

JOURNAL: Grey Market Fairs

Maker grey market ecosystem in China. Note how the Shanzhai Rules are reminiscent of the standing orders of OSW.

Foraging on vacant lots. The NYTimes dives in.

Phi Beta Iota: The day will come when the executives of the 147 transnational companies find themselves kidnapped, renditioned, and tortured until they make restitution by giving up the majority of their ill-gotten gains. We anticipate a mix of vigilante, criminal, and third world governments getting into this business. On the other end of the spectrum, we anticipate a massive withdrawal of normal people from the fraud-ridden world of banking and government-printed money. The two go together.

2011/08/16

Chuck Spinney: The S&P Downgrade Market Plunge Myth

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Law Enforcement, Media, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

The S&P Downgrade Market Plunge Myth

Monday 15 August 2011

by: Dean Baker, Truthout | News Analysis

The Wall Street crew that wants to cut your Social Security and Medicare benefits are sensing that victory is in sight. They have managed to knock jobs completely off the agenda and have made deficit reduction the near exclusive focus of economic policy in Washington. They are now setting the stage to have the Congressional “super committee” produce a deal that will mean large cuts in both programs.

The backdrop for these cuts is that the country is in crisis and that we have no choice. A central part of this story is that the stock market crashed last week in response to the Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgrade of US government debt. The Wall Street crew and their allies in the media and Congress will tell the country that if we don't have the cuts in Social Security and Medicare demanded by S&P then we run the risk of further downgrades. This raises the prospect of further market panics and the complete wreckage of the economy.

This story has as much credibility as John Edwards' tales of marital bliss during his presidential campaign.

Read rest of article.

Phi Beta Iota: A couple of things are clear, the first being that Barack Obama is not in charge of anything, the second being that New York–Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, the Koch Brothers–is. From the Tea Party funded and manipulated by the Koch brothers, to the idiotic lack of intellent analysis from the newspapers and broadcast stage, what we have here is theater. The truth is nowhere to be found between New York and Washington.

2011/08/14

DefDog: The Pentagon’s new China war plan

02 China, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Waste (materials, food, etc)

The Cold War Part 2, revisiting a failed strategy…..

Good closing paragraph in the story……

The Pentagon's new China war plan

Despite budget woes, the military is preparing for a conflict with our biggest rival — and we should be worried

This summer, despite America’s continuing financial crisis, the Pentagon is effectively considering trading two military quagmires for the possibility of a third. Reducing its commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan as it refocuses on Asia, Washington is not so much withdrawing forces from the Persian Gulf as it is redeploying them for a prospective war with its largest creditor, China.

. . . . .

AirSea Battle, developed in the early 1990s and most recently codified in a 2009 Navy-Air Force classified memo, is a vehicle for conforming U.S. military power to address asymmetrical threats in the Western Pacific and the Persian Gulf — code for China and Iran. (This alone raises a crucial point: If the U.S. has had nothing but trouble with asymmetrical warfare for the last 45 years, why should a war with China, or Iran for that matter, be any different?) It complements the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, a government white paper that precluded the rise of any “peer competitor” that might challenge U.S. dominance worldwide.

. . . . . . .

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. government has encountered the practical limits of the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance.

. . . . . .

Here is a noble appeal for Washington to match its commitments with the resources needed to sustain them, the absence of which has fueled the debt crisis that nearly reduced the United States to a mendicant state. Such are the crippling costs of a defense policy that makes global hegemony a mindless imperative.

Read full article….

2011/08/12

John Robb: Can Middle Class Be Saved? Too Late.

03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence

Great article. Starts with Citigroup's Plutonomy report (the report has been ruthlessly removed from the Web by Citi's lawyers) — wherein they show that, in the US, the middle class doesn't really exist. In reality, there are only two groups, a small percentage of rich households (that drive all consumption and investment) and the rest (that live hand to mouth). The last time this happened (in the 1920s) a global depression was the inevitable result

Can the Middle Class Be Saved?

The Great Recession has accelerated the hollowing-out of the American middle class. And it has illuminated the widening divide between most of America and the super-rich. Both developments herald grave consequences. Here is how we can bridge the gap between us.

By Don Peck

The Atlantic, September 2011

Read article….

2011/08/09

Reference: National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Final Report December 2010)

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Office of Management and Budget

Free PDF Online

Phi Beta Iota: This report, while responsible (unlike the current food fight a year later), does not go far enough. It allows the borrowing of one trillion a year to continue, while observing that interest on the debt could reach one trillion a year by 2020. The principle recommendations, all sound but insufficient, are listed in the Overview section.