Category: Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth

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Worth a Look: Globalization Pain, Local Resilience

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Resilience, Economics, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Survival & Sustainment, True Cost & Toxicity

The first book is important because it points out the fact that globalization has been the economic equivalent of the world putting all its eggs in one basket. The imminent collapse of all national currencies will make that abundantly clear. Countries need to strive harder for self-sufficiency, sustainability, and renewability in order to avoid these kind of global economic wildfires in the future.

The second book is important because when national currencies fail, local currencies will have to be created in order to facilitate the resurrection of local economies. Only *local* economies and currencies will be able to prime the financial pumps of  *national* economies and currencies, which in turn are essential for *international trade*, which in turn is essential for most *urban economies*. This is bootstrap economics. It puts the power back in local hands and takes it out of the hands of “Wall-shington Street.” (to coin a new phrase)

Most “first world” countries cannot sustain themselves without outside resources. Japan is perhaps the most extreme example. But all countries need to find ways to become as self-sustaining as possible. Self-suffiecincy and local currencies are the only things that can provide firewalls to prevent economic wildfires from spreading around the globe and wiping out every economy at once—–the downside to globalization.

The Titanic sank because the watertight compartments didn't go all the way up to the top deck. Water was able to spill over and sink the whole ship. It's the same principle with globalization as it now exists. The first book describes the problem and the second one offers a locally-based solution to the problem (at least in regard to currencies). The second book, therefore, can be of value whether or not the crash happens. If it happens, it will provide a solution. If it doesn't, it will provide a means for local economies to free themselves from the investment bankers of “Washing-Wall Street.”

Tip of the Hat to Bob Saunders.

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Review: What Comes After Money?

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
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Daniel Pinchbeck and Ken Jordan (eds.)

5.0 out of 5 stars Forward-Thinking, Relevant to #OWS, Brilliant Sparks, October 22, 2011

This book is one of at least four that I would suggest are essential reading for any citizen in the aftermath of #OccupyWallStreet (now shortened to #OWS). The other three are:

Extreme Democracy
The Innovator's Manifesto: Deliberate Disruption for Transformational Growth
Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

This book is a spin-off from Reality Sandwich, an online creative blog founded by one of the contributing editors of this book. Billed as evolving consciousness one bite by bite, it offers a melange of forward thinking. Since I am a book person by nature (a digital immigrant), I particularly appreciate “best of the best” rendered in a value-added book form.

Twenty-two contributors focus on transforming currency and community with consciousness being the implicit third leg of the stool.

Everything here was written well in advance of #OWS, but as with the other three books I recommended above, could easily be adopted by #OWS as its own.

Continue reading “Review: What Comes After Money?”

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Review (Guest): Treasure Islands – Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Diplomacy, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial)
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Nicholas Shaxson

Selected Editorial Comments:

“Shaxson’s story of offshore banking is nothing short of Shakespearean, a drama full of secrecy, treachery and corruption in which wealthy countries, companies and individuals collude to horde wealth in a complex global network of largely unregulated tax havens. To realize this end, they install corrupt leaders, exploit indigenous populations and, ultimately, deny both developed and developing nations of vital tax dollars. There is much here that should generate outrage…An admirable job of both arguing the consequences of offshore banking and providing a succinct history of the practice.”–Kirkus

“A blistering account of the role that tax havens play in international finance. . . brilliant.”—London Review of Books

“Far more than an exposé, Treasure Islands is a brilliantly illuminating, forensic analysis of where economic power really lies, and the shockingly corrupt way in which it behaves. If you're wondering how ordinary people ended up paying for a crisis caused by the reckless greed of the banking industry, this compellingly readable book provides the answers.”–David Wearing, School of Public Policy, UCL, London’s Global University

“The real challenge to America’s economy comes not from China – but from the Caymans, the Bahamas, and a whole hot-money archipelago loosely under the control of the City of London.  If only as a civics lesson, read this astonishing book to find out the true political constitution of the world.”– Thomas Geoghegan, author of Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?

With eye opening revelations, Treasure Islands exposes the culprits and its victims, and shows how:

*Over half of world trade is routed through tax havens

*The rampant practices that precipitated the latest financial crisis can be traced back to Wall Street’s offshoring practices

*For every dollar of aid we send to developing countries, ten dollars leave again by the backdoor

Continue reading “Review (Guest): Treasure Islands – Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens”

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Review: The Innovator’s Manifesto – Deliberate Disruption for Transformational Growth

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Economics, Information Society, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Strategy, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution
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Michael Raynor

5.0 out of 5 stars Helps Understand OccupyWallStreet–Solid 5 Misses Mark on True Cost Economics,October 13, 2011

I was given this book as a gift, and could not have–in a million years of planning–gotten a better book relevant to OccupyWallStreet (OWS) than this book. I read it this morning while my MGB was in the shop recovering from my trip to NYC OWS 6-7 October (shredded the generator). Halfway through my notes, advanced here, I observe that the book is a pleasure to read and a substantial advance on the earlier disruption explorations.

While I sympathize with those who do not “get” this book and downgrade it, I gave it a solid five and seriously considered a six star plus (only 10% of my reviews go there) but kept it at five because any book that considers Walmart disruptive (which it is) without observing the “true cost” to society, the environment, government, and small businesses, is completely missing the big picture.

This book does go beyond the earlier book that I have also reviewed, The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business, and while Clayton M. Christensen has been churning books out with variations on the theme, I do see in this book very important, useful, immediately applicable insights and would recommend buying the first Christensen book and this book (to which he writes a Foreword).

I am less interested in the emphasis that the author places on Disruption Theory being able to build a bridge from the art of successfully guessing what innovations with succeed to the science of increasing by 5% or more which innovations will succeed, but that is, as the author points out, very significant when you consider that the percentage improvement is on hundreds of billions of dollars of investment.

QUOTE (5): Disruption's central claim is “that an innovation has the best chance of success when it has a very different performance profile and appeals to cusomters of relatively little interest to dominant incumbents, and the organizaton commercializing it enjoys substantial strategic and operational autonomy.”

Could that be a description of OWS and the 99% that have been screwed over by the two-party tyranny that has shaken down Wall Street and the military, intelligence, health, energy, and prison complexes for political contributions (bribes) while discounting the public treasury by 95% (the going rate for an earmark is 5%)?  The 99% are of no real interest to Wall Street or the two-party crime family that has hijacked democracy, and OWS is demonstrating substantial strategic and operational autonomy. What neither the left or right “get” right now about OWS is that it is a manifestation of a broad view that we need to dismantle both parties and end institutionalized politics while restoring the sovereign individual.

Continue reading “Review: The Innovator's Manifesto – Deliberate Disruption for Transformational Growth”

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Review (Guest): Fixing America – Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media, and the Religious Right

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Censorship & Denial of Access, Civil Society, Communications, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Economics, Environment (Problems), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Future, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Public), Justice (Failure, Reform), Media, Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
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John Buchanan

5.0 out of 5 stars Gets to the very crux of our nation's ills.,September 27, 2009

John Buchanan understands the true spirit of our nation and puts his finger smack on all the ways we've strayed away from that spirit. This is the first social studies volume every high school kid should read. This book is so right on it hurts. Get this book; read it; then go out there and save your nation — these United States — from those greedy insiders who have high jacked it for their own evil gains.

Phi Beta Iota:  The Occupy movement in the USA that has emerged in Sep-Oct 2011 is a manifestation of the ideas in this book, and the urgent needs identified but not assimilated in 2005 and earlier.

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Review (Guest): Confidence Men – Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Culture, Research, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Leadership, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, True Cost & Toxicity, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)
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Ron Suskind

From Product Description:

The new president surrounded himself with a team of seasoned players—like Rahm Emanuel, Larry Summers, and Tim Geithner—who had served a different president in a different time. As the nation’s crises deepened, Obama’s deputies often ignored the president’s decisions—“to protect him from himself”—while they fought to seize control of a rudderless White House. Bitter disputes—between men and women, policy and politics—ruled the day. The result was an administration that found itself overtaken by events as, year to year, Obama struggled to grow into the world’s toughest job and, in desperation, take control of his own administration.

5.0 out of 5 stars Objective Look at Presidential Leadership,September 20, 2011

Suskind's “Confidence Men” is based on 746 hours of interviews with over 200 people, including former and current members of the Obama administration – including the president. It's negative observations will not make the president's life any easier – already dealing with an emboldened, growing opposition, a floundering economy, the appearance of having been outmaneuvered during the debt-ceiling debacle, the Solyndra mess, another Palestine-Israel mess, and even prominent strategists already saying he should ‘fire much of his staff.' It begins with candidate Obama's crash course in economics and ends in early 2011, and does not include the efforts to kill Osama bin Laden, the more recent debt ceiling fight, nor his most recent efforts to create jobs.

The most attention-getting material involves comments from Obama's economic team. For example, Lawrence Summers is quoted as saying to Budget Director Peter Orzag at a dinner that ‘There's no adult in charge. Clinton would never have made these mistakes.' Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, in turn, describes the president as too reliant on Summers, smart, but not smart enough. Senior White House aide Pete Rouse wrote ‘There is deep dissatisfaction within the economic team with what is perceived as Larry's imperious and heavy-handed direction of the economic policy process.' Suskind also tells us Geithner was working behind the scenes to neutralize Elizabeth Warren and prevent her being named to leadd the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – per bankers' demands. And then there's Christina Romer, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, stating that she ‘felt like a piece of meat' after being kept out of a meeting by Summers; further, she once threatened to walk out of a dinner with the president and outside economists after the president skipped over her when asking his guests for their recommendations.

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Stephen Lendman: How Wall Street Fleeces America – Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War

Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Impeachment & Treason
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SYNOPSIS

SYNOPSIS

The 1913 Federal Reserve Act let powerful bankers usurp money creation authority in violation of the Constitution's Article I, Section 8, giving only
Congress the power to “coin Money (and) regulate the Value thereof….”  Thereafter, powerful bankers used their control over money, credit and debt for private self-enrichment, bankrolling and colluding with Congress and administrations to implement laws favoring them.

As a result, decades of deregulation, outsourcing, economic financialization, and casino capitalism followed, producing asset bubbles, record budget and
national debt levels, and depression-sized  unemployment far higher than reported numbers, albeit manipulated to look better.

After the financial crisis erupted in late 2007, even harder times have left Main Street in the early stages of a depression, with recovery pure illusion. Today's contagion has spread out of control, globally. Wall Street got trillions of dollars in a desperate attempt to socialize losses, privatize profits, and pump life back into the corpses by blowing public wealth into a moribund financial sector, failing corporate favorites, and America's aristocracy.

While Wall Street boasts it has recovered, industrial America keeps imploding. High-paying jobs are exported. Economic prospects are eroding.  Austerity is being imposed, with no one sure how to revive stable, sustainable long-term growth.

This book provides a powerful tool for showing angry Americans how they've been fleeced, and includes a plan for constructive change.