Category: 03 Economy

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Mother Jones: Who Screwed the Middle Class?

03 Economy, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making

Who Screwed the Middle Class?

— By Kevin Drum

| Fri Mar. 25, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

EXTRACT:  A lot has happened over the past 30 years, but if you're looking for a single political sea change that's had the biggest impact on middle class wages—more important than union decline, more important than NAFTA, more important than the end of Glass-Steagall—it's the political consensus that underlies the Fed's reluctance to allow labor markets to stay tight enough to generate wage increases in the real economy. And it's something we're seeing all over again right now, as the DC chattering classes have almost unanimously decided that inflation is our real enemy right now, even though core inflation is running around 1% and unemployment is still near 9%.

This is a policy beloved of the business community, which prefers loose labor markets that keep wages low and executive compensation high, but it hasn't always been the Fed's policy and it's not written in stone that it has to be now. Tight labor markets and rising middle-class wages are, to a large extent, a choice we make. Politics took them away 30 years ago, and politics can return them to us if we want.

Worth a full read….

Continue reading “Mother Jones: Who Screwed the Middle Class?”

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Tom Atlee on the US Budget Crisis

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Multinational, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Open Government, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Strategy
Tom Atlee

March 25, 2011

Dear friends,

So much is happening under the guise of “the budget crisis” that I thought it might be useful to deconstruct this issue a bit.

Phi Beta Iota: Tom has produced a relatively long and meticulously documented essay

PART A: PRIMARY SOURCES OF THE BUDGET CRISIS
PART B: RATIONAL APPROACHES TO THE BUDGET CRISIS
PART C: IMPORTANT LINKS
Among us all, he is the most balanced and closest to the public soul.
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General Electric 2010: No Taxes, Claimed 3.2B Credit

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
DefDog Recommends...

But Nobody Pays That

G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

The New York Times, March 24, 2011

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year
in 2010.

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1
billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2
billion.

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: This is an atrocity, a crime against humanity.  Legalized crime in the US has reached heights not seen in modern history. There is no social contract between the government and those puportedlyostensibly governed.  GRIFTOPIA meets Empire of Illusion.  The systemic corruption of America–the Paradigms of Failure–is daunting to those who strive to serve the public interest.  Integrity–one word–absent across the board.  Why?  Because they can get away with it.

See Also:

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

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U.S. Lacks Plan for Dealing With Chaos in Yemen Despite Dire Warnings

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Multinational, Military, Peace Intelligence
Who, Me?

Although it is Fox News and arch-critic Lindsey Graham pointing fingers, the fact is they are right!  US Government seems trapped in a time warp and completely unprepared to contemplate a world in which our military is relatively useless (as well as unaffordable) and we actually need to have a deep capacity for nation-building.  P

The Obama administration, after helping to orchestrate a U.N.-backed military intervention in Libya, is facing pressure to do more to prepare for the potential collapse of the government in another Mideast country, Yemen — but U.S. officials admit they are doing little more than watching at this point.

. . . . . . .

Yemen is a central ally of the U.S. government against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The group, along with its operational planner, the American Anwar al-Awlaki, the first American on the CIA's kill or capture list, are now considered a greater threat than Usama bin Laden's network in Pakistan. And one U.S. lawmaker suggests that chaos in Yemen could result in a worse terrorist breeding ground than Afghanistan.

But Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ admission in Cairo that the administration had not focused on a future without Yemen's president was startling.

Read full article….



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Japan Lost Its Integrity over Nuclear Safety

03 Economy, 05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Sense-Making
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

The below report in the Guardian makes three general points regarding the Tokyo Electric's management operations at the Fukushima Daiichi reactor site:

1. Cost-cutting degraded safety procedures.

2. Collusion between industry and regulators.

3. Deferring decisions on how to permanently store nuclear waste.

Thank god these problems do not occur in Amerika (sic).

Chuck Spinney

Japan Nuclear Firm Admits Missing Safety Checks at Disaster-Hit Plant

Documents show operator failed to carry out mandatory checks at Fukushima Daiichi and allowed fuel rods to pile up

by Justin McCurry in Osaka, The Guardian/UK, March 22, 2011

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: Integrity, or the lack of integrity, is the defining factor in the rise or fall of complex civilizations.  The harm coming from the lack of integrity by the members of the UN Security Council with respect to nuclear proliferation and safeguards for nuclear waste; the arms market (they are the largest traders), and the general disregard for poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation, makes it clear that “governance” today is totally corrupt.  The good news is that informed hybrid networks can overcome Industrial Era irresponsibilities.  Multinational information-sharing and multinational intelligence (decision-support) offers a non-violent way forward.

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10 Projects Toward a Superfluid Economy

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Gift Intelligence
Venessa Miemis

emergent by design

10 Projects Moving Us Towards a Superfluid Economy

March 22, 2011

What is the future of money? And not just money, but currencies in general – from virtual currencies to timebanks to social currencies based around trust, identity, reputation, expertise and relationships. And not just currencies, a.k.a. tools that are supposed to represent a unit of measurement in order to transact, but also value exchange in general and the social behaviors that precede them.

So we’re really talking about The Superfluid Economy, the set of tools and behaviors that are developing to make economic exchange, transactions, payments, commerce, distributed collaboration, resource allocation, and social enterprise formation as frictionless and fluid as possible.

To kick off the conversation, I pulled up 10 projects that are innovating in this space which are either developing new products and services, or raising awareness through art and media. We’re excited to know that some of the initiatives below will be represented at Contact!

Read Blog that includes graphics, text, and twitter handles….

1. The Metacurrency Project ..  2. Community Forge ..  3. Bitcoin ..  4. Symbionomics ..  5. Payswarm ..  6. Ripple ..  7. OurGoods ..  8. WingCash ..  9. Open Bank Project ..  10. time/bank

Phi Beta Iota: Each generation marks their own path.  The above list does not include the real pioneers of Open Money and community credits.  Learn more at Open Money,  Openmoney, and  P2P Open Money Category.

noble gold