A German chancellor touts austerity as the sovereign remedy for the worst global economic crisis in most people's memory. Why? The great inflation of 1923 is still so seared into the consciousness of the German political class that keeping the stability of the currency is paramount. Therefore the decree goes out: wages, salaries, and pensions must be cut, government spending slashed, taxes on the middle and working classes raised. Predictably, the unemployment rate rises above 25 percent, riots and demonstrations ensue, and an extreme right-wing party rapidly gains adherents. What this will mean for Europe's political future is unclear.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following.
Back during the George W. Bush neocon regime, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in his UN speech summed up George W. Bush for the world. I am quoting Chavez from memory, not verbatim. “Yesterday standing at this same podium was Satan himself, speaking as if he owned the world. You can still smell the sulfur.”
Chavez is one of the American right-wing’s favorite bogyman, because Chavez helps the people instead of bleeding them for the rich, which is Washington’s way. While Washington has driven all but the one percent into the ground, Chavez cut poverty in half, doubled university enrollment, and provided health care and old age pensions to millions of Venezuelans for the first time.
Little wonder he was elected to a fourth term as president despite the many millions of dollars Washington poured into the election campaign of Chavez’s opponent.
“An anthology of 20 selections about issues central to the concerns of the U.S. Pirate Party, divided into three categories: (1) government and corporate transparency and accountability; (2) privacy; (3) intellectual property. A good resource for seeing how the apparently narrow Pirate Party core issues pertaining to intellectual property tie in pervasively with much broader social and economic factors.”
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Foreword
The first Pirate Party was founded on January 1, 2006 by Rick Falkvinge in Sweden.
Six months later, similar parties started to spring up all over the world. All of these parties started off with the same singular goal of intellectual property reform. But, these disparate parties realized that the roots of the world's problems ran deeper than even intellectual property reform could fix.
With time, these parties added many more items to their platform. These can be condensed into 3 topics – Government and Corporate Transparency and Accountability, Personal Privacy, and, of course, Intellectual Property reform.
If nothing else, 2011 will be seen as the year of the uprisings. The year began with the Arab Spring, in which the citizens of various Middle Eastern countries rose up and either overthrew their governments or caused massive changes in their governing structures. Later in the year – September – the Occupy Wall Street movement began and quickly spread across the United States and to every continent except Antarctica.
Phi Beta Iota: Open Everything (especially OpenBTS, Open Cloud, Open Data, Open Hardware, Open Software, and Open Standards) are the next big leap, or the Internet of Things will be in the service of the elite rather than the 5 billion poor whose entrepreneurial energy can only be harnessed when ALL of them have a free cell phone with Internet access and can receive a free education one cell call at a time.
Also vital in the development of Internet IMPACT as opposed to ACCESS, is the emergence of whole system analytics and true cost economics. Only when ALL have access to true cost information can corruption begin to be detected and eradicated supply chain by supply chain. The nuclear and tobacco and seed industries are three examples of how government corruption and media lies have created massive profit for the few with massive externalized costs to the many.
My friend Jeff Madrick lays out the outlines of the central economic crisis of our times: the hemorrhaging of high paying middle class jobs — a subject I addressed wrt to the loss of manufacturing jobs here.
With domestic policy as the theme of Wednesday’s presidential debate, the Obama campaign is facing a weakening economy. The Commerce Department just reported that GDP grew at an annual rate of only 1.3 percent in the second quarter. Job growth has been tepid, with continued high unemployment and underemployment. When one counts all those looking for full-time jobs and unable to get them, the true unemployment rate is close to 17 percent. Meanwhile, the US faces looming threats of a new European recession and a slowdown in China and other parts of the developing world.
But the starkest evidence that something is seriously amiss in the American economy is the dramatic deterioration of the middle class. Median household income—the midpoint income of all American households—was reported by the Census Bureau (whose data is a year or so behind) to be down in 2011 compared to 2010, despite an economic recovery that began in mid-2009. More disturbing, that figure is now down to around $50,000, which is 7 percent or so below what it was in 2000 and its lowest level since 1996, adjusted for inflation. Incomes are falling still more sharply for black households.
Au moment où vous lisez ces lignes, une cinquantaine d’invitations sont en train d’arriver chez des membres de la société civile: organisations de citoyens, syndicales, d’entreprises, chez des chercheurs, des journalistes spécialisés. des élus du gouvernement et de l’opposition.
Ils sont invités par mon collègue des Finances Nicolas Marceau et moi-même à un exercice de transparence.
Au cours des prochaines semaines, la négociation visant un accord de libre-échange dit de « nouvelle génération » entre le Canada et l’Europe pourrait arriver à destination. Fortement initié par l’ex Premier ministre Jean Charest, l’accord a été négocié depuis deux ans dans une relative opacité, soulevant craintes et grincements de la part de plusieurs, y compris de l’opposition péquiste.
