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
John Robb

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.

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
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off....

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.

Richard Wright: DoD Drowning, Leaders Can’t Swim

03 Economy, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency, Military, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Richard Wright

The Perils of Cutting Defense Spending

The Public Intelligence Blog has speculated that the financial elites who indirectly are the principal influencers the U.S. Congress and the Presidency have decided that their best interests will be served if U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) spending is substantially reduced. It has long been obvious that DOD budgets have been bloated beyond any rationality so any real effect to bring those budgets under control should be welcomed.

Yet I have concerns about how DOD will respond to major reductions in military spending. The permanent senior civilian leadership of DOD and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), for the most part, appear to be completely devoid of integrity and indeed common sense. I seriously doubt if DOD leadership can be trusted to execute intelligent reductions in spending. I worry that the bureaucrats and JCS staffers will end up cutting back even further on support to our actual fighting forces (real men and women) in order to continue funding parochial badly conceived programs that are expensive, but often useless.  There is such a close relationship between DOD and the Defense Industries that as the late Colonel John Boyd (USAF ret.) observed the real strategy of the JSC is to keep the money flowing (and increasing if possible).  Too many military and civilian DOD officials use a revolving door between high level DOD positions and high paying defense industries jobs to be able to objectively evaluate the real worth of many defense projects.

Continue reading “Richard Wright: DoD Drowning, Leaders Can't Swim”

George Soros: Eleven Economic Insights + RECAP

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
George Soros

11 Timely Insights From George Soros On The Economy

Courtney Comstock<

Business Insider, 7 August 2011

In the past six months, hedge fund manager George Soros has been an outspoken critic of the economicrecovery.And as the U.S. digests the S&P downgrade, it's helpful to remember that as Barclays analysts Ajay Rajadhyaksha and Anshul Pradhan put it, The S&P's action is not a surprise. So to gain a market expert's view, we've gone through many of Soros' recent interviews and selected his main points.

Soros describes the key arguments the market is dealing with right now and makes predictions on what will happen next.

His quotes are dated in chronological order.

Phi Beta Iota:  The original article has photos and more context for each quote.  Eleven quotes only are below the line.

Continue reading “George Soros: Eleven Economic Insights + RECAP”

Richard Wright: F-22 Raptor Goes Under the Bus

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Technologies
Richard Wright

It is amazing that the L.A. Times would publish this story. Maybe even the ‘lame stream media' is starting to wake up to the foolishness of the MICC.

High costs, malfunctions plague F-22 Raptor fighter jets

W. J. Hennigan

Los Angeles Times, 6 August 2011

The fleet of 158 F-22 planes — costing $412 million each — has never entered combat and has been grounded since May 3 because of a government safety investigation. The probe follows more than a dozen incidents in which oxygen was cut off to pilots, a problem suspected of contributing to at least one fatal accident.

Read more….

Phi Beta Iota:  The Los Angeles Times was among several mainstream newspapers that refused $100,000 full page ads against the Iraq War.  Like CNN and Fareed Zakaria, they do not stray from the approved party line.  This is a very clear sign (to us, at least) that Wall Street is throwing DoD under the bus.  Leon Panetta probably has no idea what is about to hit him–hyping Al Qaeda will not match a deliberate Wall Street shut down of all support for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Comples (MICC).  A Civil War is in progress in the USA, on multiple fronts.

Paul Jacob: Rogue Government USA

03 Economy, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of War, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Paul Jacob

Paul Jacob is president of Citizens in Charge, a non-profit, non-partisan group working to protect and expand voter initiative rights, and the Citizens in Charge Foundation, a charitable foundation conducting research on the initiative process, educating the public and litigating to defend the petition rights of Americans.

Paul Jacob

Rogue government, USA

Early last week, insider Republican and CNN columnist David Frum lashed out at the GOP’s Tea Party wing, writing: “You can’t save the system by destroying the system.” I responded on This is Common Sense:

If the system has put America on a crash course with disaster, then that system must be replaced. With a better one.

When I wrote that I had not yet fully comprehended the full import of the goofy creation (by the debt deal) of what Rep. Ron Paul calls a Super Congress — the select committee of senators and representatives to be put in charge of budgeting, with the rest of Congress not allowed to amend their proposals, just vote yea or nay.

Read more….

See Also by Paul Jacob:

Unrepresentative government

What do you call a “representative government” that enjoys the approval of less than one in four of the people it is charged with… more

Chuck Spinney: Jeff Madrick on The Age of Greed and Failure of Government to Check Private Sector Greed

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Chuck Spinney
Here is a review of my friend Jeff Madrick's important new book, Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present

Book review: ‘Age of Greed’ by Jeff Madrick

By David Greenberg, Washington Post Outlook, 29 July 2011

David Greenberg is a professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University. He is a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars for the 2010-11 academic year.

EXTRACTS

“Age of Greed” chronicles how Americans ended up with the highly unregulated financial system that produced the meltdown of 2008 and the fallout that lingers three years later. What’s most novel about the book, which relies heavily on other secondary accounts, is that unlike other recent treatments of the financial crisis, it traces the origins of the problem not to the Bush or Clinton or even Reagan years, but all the way to the late 1960s.

. . . . . .

The real scandal revealed by Madrick’s important book is not the well-known tales of dastards such as telecom analyst Jack Grubman or Internet stock promoter Frank Quattrone, but the more elusive — and more consequential — story of how the government came to abdicate this supreme responsibility.

Read full review….