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US Workers Starved Into Service
Saturday, 31 October 2009 6:45 P GMT-05
It’s hard not to wonder what would happen if, instead of dutifully reading from the Pentagon’s script on October 13, the media had done their job and informed the public about the real nature of the ‘service’ that potential enlistees were signing up for. Maybe if they had, those recruitment officers would not have been quite so busy recruiting – and stealing the lives of – unsuspecting young people in desperate need of employment.
Maybe those eager masses of young men and women wouldn’t have been so hot to sign up if, for instance, they understood that anyone enlisting in the military right now – whatever branch – is required to sign a document that states: "Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay allowances, benefits and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/re-enlistment document.” (DD Form4/1, 1998, Sec.9.5b).
In their book Army of None, published in 2007, Aimee Allison and David Solnit advise those who expect the military to pay for their college to “read the fine print.” The authors point out that only a fraction of recruits who signed up for the Montgomery GI Bill received a dime, and that 65 percent “received no money at all for college.” If you receive a less than honorable discharge (as one in four do), leave the military early (as one in three do), or later decide not to go to college, “the military will keep your deposit and give you nothing.”
Swine Flu Brings Big Business for Doctors and Drug Companies
Monday, 19 October 2009 1:21 A GMT-05
Even companies outside of the medical industry are benefiting: the UPS division that delivers vaccines in specially designed containers, for example, has seen a bump in business.
Bought and Paid For
Monday, 12 October 2009 1:36 P GMT-05
Note: A friend on the Hill made an important point to me by email. Maxine Waters and Ron Paul get almost nothing [from the financial lobby. Sherman, Kucinich, Grayson and Kaptur are some other congress members who have not been bought and paid for]. The story isn’t just that a lot of members are bought and paid for, it’s that some aren’t.
Reviewing Project Censored's Latest Top 25 Censored Stories
Sunday, 11 October 2009 1:02 A GMT-05
From 1998 - 2007, financial and banking companies "spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign contributions and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists." In 1999, Glass-Steagall was repealed, the landmark 1933 law that curbed speculation and separated commercial from investment banks and insurance companies. In January 2000, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act legitimized swap agreements and other hybrid instruments, at the core of today's problems by preventing regulatory oversight of derivatives and leveraging, thus letting Wall Street legally pillage and speculate, so they did. The result was a financial coup d'etat "cement(ing) the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders" who choose candidates, control elections, weaken financial regulations, and run the country for their own self-interest. As a result, Washington today is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Wall Street financial giants. What they want, they get, no questions asked.
High Cost of Death Row
Tuesday, 29 September 2009 2:15 A GMT-05
To the many excellent reasons to abolish the death penalty — it’s immoral, does not deter murder and affects minorities disproportionately — we can add one more. It’s an economic drain on governments with already badly depleted budgets.
Priceless: How The Federal Reserve Bought The Economics Profession
Friday, 11 September 2009 1:14 A GMT-05
The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession, an investigation by the Huffington Post has found.
Big banks grow more powerful under Obama
Thursday, 10 September 2009 12:50 A GMT-05
The Washington Post carried an article last week outlining the immense consolidation that has taken place in the US banking system as a result of the policies of the Bush and Obama administrations in response to the financial crisis. The article, entitled “Banks ‘Too Big to Fail’ Have Grown Even Bigger,” reports how the largest banks have consolidated control over a greater share of financial markets and are using their monopolistic position to increase their profits by raising fees and interest on consumers and small businesses. “The oligopoly has tightened,” said Mark Zandi of Moody’s Economy.com, who is quoted in the Post article. “There’s been a significant consolidation among the big banks, and it’s kind of hollowing out the banking system,” he added.
There Are More Slaves Today Than at Any Time in Human History
Thursday, 27 August 2009 1:47 A GMT-05
Today’s slavery focuses on big profits and cheap lives. It is not about owning people like before, but about using them as completely disposable tools for making money.
Hunger Insurance
Tuesday, 25 August 2009 12:47 A GMT-05
I would like to sell you some hunger insurance. Are you insured against hunger? Perhaps you should be! Without this coverage, you may find it impossible to continue to afford feeding yourself and your family. With this coverage, not only will you be assured of continuing to get at least some food, but so will I. In fact, thanks to this plan, I will get to eat very, very well indeed.
What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us
Saturday, 22 August 2009 2:28 P GMT-05
The system had many decades to work, but widespread apathy and low quality of work paralyzed the healthcare system. In the depths of the socialist experiment, healthcare institutions in Russia were at least a hundred years behind the average US level. Moreover, the filth, odors, cats roaming the halls, drunken medical personnel, and absence of soap and cleaning supplies added to an overall impression of hopelessness and frustration that paralyzed the system. According to official Russian estimates, 78 percent of all AIDS victims in Russia contracted the virus through dirty needles or HIV-tainted blood in the state-run hospitals.
My Bad! Woman's House Mistakenly Auctioned by Bank
Thursday, 20 August 2009 10:23 P GMT-05
You know times are tough when people are getting kicked out of their house when it’s not even for sale. That’s what happened to Anna Ramirez after she found all of her stuff out on the front lawn of her Homestead home last week and a strange man demanding she get out of his newly purchased house.
Concentration of wealth in hands of rich greatest on record
Monday, 17 August 2009 10:54 P GMT-05
“After decades of stability in the post-war period, the top decile share has increased dramatically over the last twenty-five years and has now regained its pre-war level,” Saez writes. “Indeed, the top decile share in 2007 is equal to 49.7 percent, a level higher than any other year since [records began in] 1917 and even surpasses 1928, the peak of stock market bubble in the ‘roaring’ 1920s.”
By comparison, during most of the 1970s the top 10 percent earned around 33 percent of all the income earned in the United States.
The contrast is even starker for the super-rich. The top 0.01 percent of earners in the US are now taking home six percent of all the income, higher than the 1920s peak of five percent, and a whopping six-fold increase since the start of the Reagan administration, when the top 0.01 percent earned one percent of all the income.
Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?
Monday, 10 August 2009 12:04 A GMT-05
In Los Angeles, the fine for truancy is $250; in Dallas, it can be as much as $500 — crushing amounts for people living near the poverty level. According to the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, an advocacy group, 12,000 students were ticketed for truancy in 2008. Why does the Bus Riders Union care? Because it estimates that 80 percent of the “truants,” especially those who are black or Latino, are merely late for school, thanks to the way that over-filled buses whiz by them without stopping. I met people in Los Angeles who told me they keep their children home if there’s the slightest chance of their being late. It’s an ingenious anti-truancy policy that discourages parents from sending their youngsters to school. The pattern is to curtail financing for services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement: starve school and public transportation budgets, then make truancy illegal. Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Be sure to harass street vendors when there are few other opportunities for employment. The experience of the poor, and especially poor minorities, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks. And if you should make the mistake of trying to escape via a brief marijuana-induced high, it’s “gotcha” all over again, because that of course is illegal too. One result is our staggering level of incarceration, the highest in the world. Today the same number of Americans — 2.3 million — reside in prison as in public housing.
War on Terror: Foreign Policy
Saturday, 8 August 2009 9:50 P GMT-05
Hunger hits Detroit
Saturday, 8 August 2009 6:20 P GMT-05
As the area's economy worsens --unemployment was over 16% in July -- food stamp applications and pantry visits have surged. Detroiters have responded to this crisis. Huge amounts of vacant land has led to a resurgence in urban farming. Volunteers at local food pantries have also increased. But the food crunch is intensifying, and spreading to people not used to dealing with hunger. As middle class workers lose their jobs, the same folks that used to donate to soup kitchens and pantries have become their fastest growing set of recipients.
The International - The True Value of a Conflict
Saturday, 8 August 2009 1:48 P GMT-05
A chilling conversation from the film "The International" referring to banking and debt, with no subtle relevence in the real world as we know it.
Entering the Greatest Depression in History
Saturday, 8 August 2009 1:36 P GMT-05
While there is much talk of a recovery on the horizon, commentators are forgetting some crucial aspects of the financial crisis. The crisis is not simply composed of one bubble, the housing real estate bubble, which has already burst. The crisis has many bubbles, all of which dwarf the housing bubble burst of 2008. Indicators show that the next possible burst is the commercial real estate bubble. However, the main event on the horizon is the “bailout bubble” and the general world debt bubble, which will plunge the world into a Great Depression the likes of which have never before been seen.
U.S. Incomes Fall 1.3%, Biggest Drop in Four Years (Update3)
Thursday, 6 August 2009 1:19 A GMT-05
U.S. personal incomes tumbled 1.3 percent in June, more than forecast and the biggest drop in four years, signaling that consumer spending will take time to recover. The decline partly reflected the unwinding of one-time transfer payments from the Obama administration’s stimulus plan, which boosted incomes 1.3 percent in May, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. Spending rose 0.4 percent in June as prices climbed. Adjusted for inflation, purchases fell 0.1 percent, the report showed.
Swine Flu Plc: Cashing in on the pandemic
Sunday, 26 July 2009 8:09 P GMT-05
Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer for England, hit the swine flu panic button last week, warning the outbreak is confronting the NHS with its "biggest challenge in a generation". But that didn't mean everyone caught up in the hysteria that has even seen stoical commuters accessorise their work outfits with face masks was panicking. For dozens of companies, including giant multinational corporations and tiny internet quacks, the outbreak of swine flu frenzy has turned into a licence to print money. And plenty of it. The disease's explosive global advance has sent everyone from private citizens to national governments on a mass shopping spree to try to buy cures: catching swine flu might be not funny but anyone working for what increasingly looks like Swine Flu Inc is laughing all the way to the bank.
More Mexicans Are Sending Money to Help Out Relatives in the U.S.
Sunday, 26 July 2009 8:03 P GMT-05
For decades, money sent home by Mexicans working in the United States has been a key pillar of the Mexican economy. Now, scattered reports are surfacing of Mexicans sending money to support relatives in the United States hard hit by the economic crisis north of the border. Latinos, especially immigrants, are suffering a disproportionate share of the joblessness that is officially rising to engulf close to 10 percent of the overall U.S. population.
The Commercial Real Estate Bust: Gearing up for a $3 Trillion Headache
Sunday, 26 July 2009 7:59 P GMT-05
Industrial production is still heading lower. So why would businesses need so much office space? Do some people still believe in that service sector mantra? The one in which we basically offshore any goods-making jobs and basically sell homes and financial products to one another while not manufacturing anything? As this recession is now showing, that assumption was wrong.
Mass Layoffs: The Continuing Devastation
Sunday, 26 July 2009 7:50 P GMT-05
Stock market investors shrug off a disaster in our midst: mass layoffs. Investors act as though it will soon be business as usual. Companies cut costs by firing employees that have been with them for decades. Then the companies can report higher earnings from cost-cutting measures. The media then proclaim an increase in earnings. But how will these increases be sustained? How will an unemployment rate of 11% help get the economy back on its feet?
Spitzer: Federal Reserve is "a Ponzi scheme, an inside job"
Sunday, 26 July 2009 7:33 P GMT-05
The Federal Reserve — the quasi-autonomous body that controls the US’s money supply — is a “Ponzi scheme” that created “bubble after bubble” in the US economy and needs to be held accountable for its actions, says Eliot Spitzer, the former governor and attorney-general of New York. In a wide-ranging discussion of the bank bailouts on MSNBC’s Morning Meeting, host Dylan Ratigan described the process by which the Federal Reserve exchanged $13.9 trillion of bad bank debt for cash that it gave to the struggling banks.
American Embassies Urged to Stockpile Local Currencies
Tuesday, 21 July 2009 2:17 A GMT-05
Some U.S. embassies worldwide are being advised to purchase massive amounts of local currencies; enough to last them a year. Some embassies are being sent enormous amounts of U.S. cash to purchase currencies from those governments, quietly. But not pound sterling. Inside the State Dept., there is a sense of sadness and foreboding that 'something' is about to happen ... within 180 days, but could be 120-150 days.
Treasury: We Can't Tell You Where Bailout Money Went, Because "Money Given to a Bank is Like Water Poured into an Ocean"
Tuesday, 21 July 2009 2:10 A GMT-05
But just like dye is frequently added to streams by scientists in order to trace the flow of water, Treasury could easily track the flow of bailout funds. Indeed, the government has very sophisticated software which tracks funds, which it uses in terrorism investigations. But that is all moot. The truth of the matter is that Treasury never even asked the banks to keep track of where the bailout money was going. If they ask, the banks would be required to keep track themselves.
How Bad Will the Economy Get? Really, Really Bad
Sunday, 19 July 2009 3:50 P GMT-05
Where does the Fed get the money to buy those "assets" or to make those loans? Quite simply, it creates the money. Unlike you or me or any other economic entity, the Fed has the power to create Federal Reserve dollars by effectively writing a check against no funds. This is the function known as "Open Market Operations." What is the economy experiencing now, and what is in prospect for the future? Despite unprecedented inflation of the money supply, we are now (mid-July, 2009) in a period of depression. How can we have simultaneous inflation of the currency and still have economic depression?
DC Metro Crash: Who Will Die Next Because We Throw Money at Billionaries and Scrimp on the Public Good?
Wednesday, 1 July 2009 4:14 A GMT-05
My shock became anger as it became clear that none of these people had to die, that no one had to be hurt. This accident was about as predictable as the setting sun. The wreckage by my house is not an accident site. It is a crime scene. And it happened for one reason: the twisted policies of the underfunded Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
Burger King: Now Selling Blow Jobs
Friday, 26 June 2009 2:41 A GMT-05
I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination but when a mainstream-Americana company like Burger King chooses to put such a degrading image of women out there as a way to peddle their junk food to the public, I feel the need to say something. They have the right to be tasteless and sexist... And I have the right to tell them they will not see a dime of my money as long as they are using these types vulgar images and tactics in their advertising.
America's socialism for the rich
Sunday, 14 June 2009 8:02 A GMT-05
But this new form of ersatz capitalism, in which losses are socialised and profits privatised, is doomed to failure. Incentives are distorted. There is no market discipline. The too-big-to-be-restructured banks know that they can gamble with impunity – and, with the Federal Reserve making funds available at near-zero interest rates, there are ample funds to do so. Some have called this new economic regime "socialism with American characteristics". But socialism is concerned about ordinary individuals. By contrast, the US has provided little help for the millions of Americans who are losing their homes. Workers who lose their jobs receive only 39 weeks of limited unemployment benefits, and are then left on their own. And, when they lose their jobs, most lose their health insurance too. America has expanded its corporate safety net in unprecedented ways, from commercial banks to investment banks, then to insurance and now to cars, with no end in sight. In truth, this is not socialism, but an extension of longstanding corporate welfarism. The rich and powerful turn to the government to help them whenever they can, while needy individuals get little social protection.
Razing entire neighborhoods?
Saturday, 13 June 2009 12:29 A GMT-05
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens are homeless. But instead of allowing them to find shelter in abandoned buildings we destroy the buildings. The accepted excuse is safety and health concerns. Is facing the elements safer? Try that out one fine Michigan winter...
The OTHER Reason for the American Revolution
Sunday, 7 June 2009 9:58 P GMT-05
Is this just ancient history? No. The ability for America and the 50 states to create its own credit has largely been lost to private bankers. The lion's share of new credit creation is done by private banks, so - instead of being able to itself create money without owing interest - the government owes unfathomable trillions in interest to private banks. America may have won the Revolutionary War, but it has since lost one of the main things it fought for: the freedom to create its own credit instead of having to beg for credit from private banks at a usurious cost.
Still Working, but Forced to Make Do With Less
Friday, 29 May 2009 2:10 A GMT-05
About 6.7 million people were working fewer than 35 hours a week in April because of “slack work or business conditions,” nearly double the number a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A recent survey of 518 large companies by Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm, found 16 percent had cut pay and 20 percent had cut hours or imposed furloughs, far more than the firm has seen in previous recessions. (The actual percentage of workers affected is likely to be significantly lower.)
Under Restructuring, GM To Build More Cars Overseas
Saturday, 9 May 2009 2:38 P GMT-05
The U.S. government is pouring billions into General Motors in hopes of reviving the domestic economy, but when the automaker completes its restructuring plan, many of the company's new jobs will be filled by workers overseas. Аccording to an outline the company has been sharing privately with Washington legislators, the number of cars that GM sells in the United States and builds in Mexico, China and South Korea will roughly double. The proportion of GM cars sold domestically and manufactured in those low-wage countries will rise from 15 percent to 23 percent over the next five years, according to the figures contained in a 12-page presentation offered to lawmakers in response to their questions about overseas production.
Leaked Agenda: Bilderberg Group Plans Economic Depression
Thursday, 7 May 2009 1:47 A GMT-05
Daniel Estulin, Jim Tucker, and other sources who have infiltrated Bilderberg meetings in the past have routinely provided information about the Bilderberg agenda that later plays out on the world stage, proving that the organization is not merely a “talking shop” as debunkers claim, but an integral planning forum for the new world order agenda. Indeed, just last month Belgian viscount and current Bilderberg-chairman Étienne Davignon bragged that Bilderberg helped create the Euro by first introducing the policy agenda for a single currency in the early 1990’s. Bilderberg’s agenda for a European federal superstate and a single currency likely goes back even further. A BBC investigation uncovered documents from the early Bilderberg meetings which confirmed that the European Union was a brainchild of Bilderberg. In spring 2002, when war hawks in the Bush administration were pushing for a summer invasion of Iraq, Bilderbergers expressed their desire for a delay and the attack was not launched until March the following year.
Political Lies and Media Disinformation regarding the Swine Flu Pandemic
Saturday, 2 May 2009 2:23 P GMT-05
Statements of this nature on the "inevitable spread" of the disease, create, quite deliberately, an atmosphere of fear, insecurity and panic. They also serve to distract people's attention from a devastating global economic crisis which is leading the World into mass poverty and unemployment, not to mention the war in the Middle East and the broader issue of US-NATO war crimes. The Real Global Crisis is marked by poverty, economic collapse, ethnic strife, death and destruction, the derogation of civil rights and the demise of State social programs. The EU announcement of the swine flu pandemic inevitably serves to weaken the social protest movement which has spread across Europe. In Mexico, the swine flu emergency measures which have "closed down" entire urban areas, are widely perceived as a pretext of the Felipe Calderon government to curb mounting social dissent against one of the most corrupt administrations in Mexican history. In Mexico, the May 1st Parade, which was directed against the Calderon government, was cancelled.
Venture capital firm set to reap rewards on swine flu
Sunday, 26 April 2009 4:55 P GMT-05
The swine flu outbreak is likely to benefit one of the most prolific and successful venture capital firms in the United States: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Thomson Reuters Private Equity Week reported on Friday.
A 'Copper Standard' for the world's currency system?
Monday, 20 April 2009 1:48 A GMT-05
"China has woken up. The West is a black hole with all this money being printed. The Chinese are buying raw materials because it is a much better way to use their $1.9 trillion of reserves. They get ten times the impact, and can cover their infrastructure for 50 years." "The next industrial revolution is going to be led by hybrid cars, and that needs copper. You can see the subtle way that China is moving into 30 or 40 countries with resources," he said.
Ruined by Health Care: My Family Learned that Even with Insurance We Weren't Safe from Financial Ruin
Saturday, 11 April 2009 3:31 P GMT-05
My husband is a retired college professor, and what the teaching profession lacks in salary it often makes up for with generous benefits. His health insurance would cover most of the emergency costs related to the fall -- the surgeries, the hospitalization, the drugs. But in the astronomical sums the cost of medical care often entails, "most" is not a reassuring word. Months later, as his discharge from the hospital drew near, I sat in my living room looking at the bills piling up on the table. The co-pays, uncovered care and other costs had already reached $8,000, and we had virtually nothing left.
The Declaration Of Independence Has Been Repealed
Wednesday, 8 April 2009 10:31 A GMT-05
Henceforth, our SEC, Commodities Trading Commission, Federal Reserve Board and other regulators will have to march to the beat of drums pounded by the Financial Stability Board (FSB), a body of central bankers from each of the G-20 states and the European Union.
The mandate conferred on the FSB is remarkable for its scope and open-endedness. It is to set a “framework of internationally agreed high standards that a global financial system requires.” These standards are to include the extension of “regulation and oversight to all systemically important financial institutions, instruments, and markets…[including] systemically important hedge funds.”
Fainting in This Country Can Carry a $10,000 Price Tag
Wednesday, 1 April 2009 9:52 A GMT-05
Of course, I was relieved, if not grateful, to learn that I'm not liable for the whole $10,260, and thus not like guys who faint and don't have emergency coverage. But upon further inspection of my statement I noticed a curious and disturbing thing. BCBS had to pay only $2,582 -- about one-fourth -- of that $10,260. So who paid the balance of my $7,992 in "savings"? I wondered. No one. The $7,992 was all discounted because hospitals let BCBS and other big insurance companies pay lower rates than ordinary, underinsured Americans. Similarly, the statement indicates that BCBS would have gotten a huge discount on, and had to pay only one-fourth of, the $1,409 ambulance bill that St. Paul Fire & Safety Service is now pressuring me to pay in full. I'm responsible for all but $17.65 of it, BCBS says, because the ambulance service was "out of network." BCBS has been kind enough to cover less than half of the $48 worth of oxygen I inhaled during my ambulance ride. Hence the check for $17.65 that BCBS mailed me. Some of the oxygen was "in network," I guess.
As travel declines, aircraft 'boneyard' in Victorville fills up
Sunday, 15 March 2009 8:01 P GMT-05
Air carriers are grounding planes at a rate not seen since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and industry experts say this year is likely to set a record for planes sitting on the ground. That has meant job security for Richard Robertson, an aircraft mechanic at the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, formerly George Air Force Base, now one of the nation's busiest boneyards.
After $170b US bailout, AIG to pay $100m in bonuses
Sunday, 15 March 2009 11:38 A GMT-05
In his letter to the Treasury, Liddy said AIG hoped to reduce its retention bonuses for 2009 by 30 percent. He said the top 25 executives at the Financial Products division had also agreed to reduce their salary for the rest of 2009 to $1. But Liddy defended the need to continue paying bonuses if AIG was going to unwind the rest of its disastrous mortgage-related business at the lowest possible cost to taxpayers. "We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses - which are now being operated principally on behalf of American taxpayers - if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued arbitrary adjustment by the US Treasury," he wrote Geithner. The government owns nearly 80 percent of the company.
Bailout for The Mainstream Media May be Next
Sunday, 8 March 2009 3:02 P GMT-05
The article goes on to say “Politicians have every reason to want to see print media fail. That can be said tongue in cheek, but too many governors and congressmen have lost jobs after newspaper investigations to make the relationship between Fourth Estate and politicians a comfortable one. A neutered press would benefit a number of elected officials.“ I wonder what a “neutered press” would look like? Would they peddle optimism even while the economy was collapsing? Would celebrity gossip become newsworthy? If the government wanted to loot the United States treasury and bailout their campaign contributors on Wall St, would a “neutered press” fail to demand answers or, even worse, scare the American people into submission? Would this neutered press allow the government to use 9-11 as a tool to occupy the middle east, while ignoring the cries of first responders and families of 9-11? I’ve often said that I do not follow the mainstream news for information, I follow it for the lie. Establishment news organizations such as Time magazine should be followed only to figure out what it is they are trying to sell. “They” meaning the Washington “In” crowd of government, lobbyists and mainstream reporters. When US government public relations organizations (Mainstream News) publish an article such as Mr. McIntyre’s, you should be paying attention. The campaign is beginning.
MASSILON, Ohio: School Gets 700 Applications for One Janitorial Job
Sunday, 8 March 2009 5:49 A GMT-05
Evidence of the slumping economy is stacking up at an Ohio school which has nearly 700 applications for one open janitorial job. Officials at Perry Local Schools near Canton in northeast Ohio say they've extended the deadline until Monday to accommodate the overwhelming response to the week-old posting.
12.5 Million Unemployed in the United States
Saturday, 7 March 2009 3:46 P GMT-05
The number of unemployed persons increased by 851,000 to 12.5 million in February, and the unemployment rate rose to 8.1 percent. Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed persons has increased by about 5.0 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 3.3 percentage points.
Pictured: The credit crunch tent city which has returned to haunt America
Saturday, 7 March 2009 4:34 A GMT-05
Those who have lost their jobs and homes and have nowhere else to go are constructing makeshift shelters on the site, which covers several acres. As many as 50 people a week are turning up and the authorities estimate that the tent city is now home to more than 1,200 people.
The New F***ing Citibank
Saturday, 7 March 2009 4:25 A GMT-05
After Citibank becomes nationalized, expect to see commercials like this.
"Consumerism" Is Dead -- Can Obama Lead Us to a Downscaled Lifestyle?
Monday, 2 March 2009 12:32 P GMT-05
If contraction and downscaling are indeed the case, then the better question is: why don't we get started on it right away instead of flogging rescue plans to restart something that is DOA? Downscaling the price of over-priced houses would be a good place to start. This gets to the heart of Rick Santelli's crowd-stirring moment. Let the chumps and weasels who over-reached take their lumps and move into rentals. Let the bankers who parlayed these fraudulent mortgages into investment swindles lose their jobs, surrender their perks, and maybe even go to jail (if attorney general Eric Holder can be induced to investigate their deeds). No good will come of propping up the false values of mis-priced things.
Ireland on the Brink of Collapse
Sunday, 1 March 2009 7:44 P GMT-05
Until a year ago, the Republic's Celtic Tiger economy, which attracted such blue-chip companies as Dell, Microsoft and Intel, seemed unstoppable. In a decade, the Irish economy grew by almost 90 per cent, catapulting it from one of the poorest countries in Europe to the fourth-richest per capita. Government advisers from as far afield as Chile and Israel made pilgrimages to marvel at a model that they were desperate to emulate. Not any more. All of a sudden, Ireland's debt-fuelled economy, built largely on a construction boom, has collapsed in a more spectacular manner than almost any other in Europe. Irish government bonds are rated as the riskiest in the EU (see graphic), and there has been panicky talk of Ireland as "the next Iceland".
Mortgage Delinquencies Jump 50 Percent
Sunday, 1 March 2009 7:42 P GMT-05
Dann Adams, president of U.S. Information Systems for Equifax Inc, reported a 37 percent rise in Chapter 7 bankruptcy filings. Under Chapter 7, assets are liquidated for those unable to pay their debts. Also, Equifax reported a 50 percent increase in the number of homeowners who fell at least a month behind on mortgage payments in January, compared with last year.
Blue Cross CEO's pay rose 26%
Sunday, 1 March 2009 3:28 P GMT-05
The salary and bonus paid to Cleve L. Killingsworth, chairman and chief executive of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, increased 26 percent last year, to $3.5 million, even though the health insurer's membership declined and its net income fell 49 percent.
Americans in Appalachia Are Living in a State of Terror
Saturday, 28 February 2009 6:17 P GMT-05
Every day, more than 3 million pounds of explosives are detonated in our state to remove our mountains and expose the thin seams of coal. Over 470 mountains in Appalachia have been destroyed in this process, the coal scooped up and hauled away to be burned at coal-fired power plants across our country and abroad. This includes the Potomac River Plant, which generates the electricity for the White House. Mountaintop removal is the dirty secret in our nation's energy supply. If coal can't be mined clean, it can't be called clean. Here, at the point of extraction, coal passes through a preparation plant that manages to remove some, but not all, of the metals and toxins. Those separated impurities are stored in mammoth toxic sludge dams above our communities throughout Appalachia. There are three sludge dams within 10 miles of my home. Coal companies are now blasting directly above and next to a dam above my home that contains over 2 billion gallons of toxic waste. That is the same seeping dam that hovers just 400 yards above the Marsh Fork Elementary School. As you know, coal sludge dams have failed before, and lives have been lost.
The Two Documents Everyone Should Read to Better Understand the Crisis
Saturday, 28 February 2009 6:15 P GMT-05
As a white-collar criminologist and former financial regulator much of my research studies what causes financial markets to become profoundly dysfunctional. The FBI has been warning of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud since September 2004. It also reports that lenders initiated 80% of these frauds.1 When the person that controls a seemingly legitimate business or government agency uses it as a "weapon" to defraud we categorize it as a "control fraud" ("The Organization as 'Weapon' in White Collar Crime." Wheeler & Rothman 1982; The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. Black 2005). Financial control frauds' "weapon of choice" is accounting. Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime -- combined. Control fraud epidemics can arise when financial deregulation and desupervision and perverse compensation systems create a "criminogenic environment" (Big Money Crime. Calavita, Pontell & Tillman 1997.)
Violence between repo men, car owners on the rise
Saturday, 28 February 2009 6:00 P GMT-05
Alone in his mobile home off a winding dirt road, Jimmy Tanks heard a commotion at 2:30 a.m. just outside his bedroom window: Somebody was messing with his car. The 67-year-old railroad retiree grabbed a gun, walked out the back door and confronted not a thief but a repo man and two helpers trying to tow off the Chrysler Sebring. Shots were fired, and Tanks wound up dead, a bullet in his chest. The man who came to repossess the car, Kenneth Alvin Smith, is awaiting trial on a murder charge in a state considered a Wild West territory even by the standards of an industry that's largely unregulated nationally. Since Tanks' death last June, two other repo men from the same company Smith worked for were shot, one fatally.
Citigroup Stock Costs Less Than Their ATM Fee
Saturday, 28 February 2009 5:56 P GMT-05
Citi Shares Drop Below Their $1.50 ATM Fee
Boomer wealth is evaporating
Saturday, 28 February 2009 5:35 P GMT-05
Boomers between 45 and 54 have lost 45% of their median net worth, leaving them with just $80,000 in net worth, including home equity, according to the report. Older boomers have fared marginally better. Those between 55 and 64 have lost 38% of their net worth, leaving them with $140,000. But this group is rapidly nearing retirement age and they have few working years left to make up the losses.
The Spectacular, Sudden Crash of the Global Economy
Wednesday, 25 February 2009 3:30 A GMT-05
Economist Robert Brenner described a "long downturn" in the world's wealthiest countries, noting that their economies grew by a steady rate of 5 percent or more each year from the end of World War II through the 1960s, but in the 1970s their growth fell to 3.6 percent, and it has averaged around 3 percent since 1980. But as the social scientist Walden Bello pointed out, even those anemic numbers are misleading. “China's 8-10% annual growth rate has probably been the principal stimulus of growth in the world economy in the last decade,” he wrote. Without China’s (and to a lesser degree India’s) consistent growth rates, global economic expansion has been all but nonexistent.
Destroying the Economy to Save It
Tuesday, 24 February 2009 7:15 P GMT-05
Housing prices are doing what prices should when there's a glut of supply, they are falling. Over the past year the median price has fallen from $429,000 to $280,100 in San Diego, and from $415,000 to $250,000 in Southern California as a whole. Think about all the people who didn't buy houses they couldn't afford. The free market is now rewarding their prudence by making homes available at affordable prices. This will also help people who are upside-down on their mortgages, because housing prices can't move upward again until the glut clears. All hail the free market and personal responsibility! Screeeech! That's the sound of the politicians hitting the brakes. Politicians hate personal responsibility. Everyone must be dependent on them, instead. No one should be able to benefit from being responsible and prudent. INSTEAD, SUCH PEOPLE MUST BE PUNISHED!
How to Lose 55 Percent: Invest in TARP
Tuesday, 24 February 2009 6:18 P GMT-05
TARP investments are certainly “troubled.” And Washington, it turns out, isn’t the best short-term investor. The government’s investments in the nation’s ailing banks, made through the newly coined Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, have taken a huge hit since the program started making capital injections last October. Thanks to last week’s stock market sell-off, the government is now sitting on a paper loss of at least 55 percent, or $107.7 billion, on the $195.5 billion invested under the TARP program.
Health care costs to top $8,000 per person
Tuesday, 24 February 2009 5:57 P GMT-05
Health care costs will top $8,000 per person this year, consuming an ever-bigger slice of a shrinking economic pie, says the report by the Department of Health and Human Services, due out Tuesday. As the recession cuts into tax receipts, Medicare's giant hospital trust fund is running out of cash more rapidly, and could become insolvent as early as 2016, the report said. That's three years sooner than previously forecast.
Downturn inspires an uptick in volunteerism
Friday, 20 February 2009 4:23 P GMT-05
Volunteer organizations such as the Peace Corps and Teach for America say the floundering economy and President Obama's call for service have led to a major increase in applications. Teach for America received a record 14,000 applications by November, an almost 50 percent increase over the previous year. And Peace Corps applications rose 16 percent from fiscal 2007 to 2008.
Family of 5 weathers economy with 7 housemates
Friday, 20 February 2009 12:30 A GMT-05
Chris and Georgia Frankel have no idea what it must be like to live alone as a married couple. They started out their life together staying with relatives and later friends. Those early years proved to be good training because their house in Albuquerque, New Mexico, now has 12 people calling it home. In addition to their three daughters, ages 3, 6 and 17, the couple shares their space with five adults and two teens. The family started taking in people before the economy soured, and now they say they are weathering the downturn better than some, in part because of their unconventional living arrangement.
Tariff Protests in Eastern Port Rattle Kremlin
Monday, 16 February 2009 8:20 A GMT-05
The car dealers’ demonstrations in Vladivostok in the past two months have drawn thousands of people, more than events sponsored anywhere in Russia by liberal opponents of Vladimir V. Putin. The government grew so alarmed in late December that it took the extraordinary step of sending special riot police officers to Vladivostok from Moscow, nine hours away by plane, to break up one rally.
A Dubious Equality for Women
Sunday, 15 February 2009 4:33 P GMT-05
In the winter of our economic discontent, women now hold more than 49 percent of jobs on the nation’s payrolls. If we cross the 50 percent line—hold the applause—it will be because men are losing their jobs even faster than women. This dubious equality is in large part an ongoing tale of two economies. Men tend to work in manufacturing and construction, areas that were the hardest and first hit. Women tend to work in jobs such as health care and education that haven’t (yet) been as affected. In the past year, eight out of 10 pink slips went to men. The unemployment rate for women is bad enough at 6.2 percent, up 2 percentage points since 2007. But the unemployment rate for men is 7.6 percent, up three points. Add to that the fact that more men stop looking for jobs. You not only have a near-equal number of women in the work force, you have a lot of women in formerly two-earner families who’ve become the breadwinners. Breadwinners? Or should I say crustwinners. The other dubious part of this “equality” for families is that even if women fill half of the payroll jobs, they don’t bring home half the paychecks. They still earn only 78 cents for every male dollar. In two-worker households, husbands earn close to two-thirds of the income and usually hold the job with health insurance.
Britain's bankers plumb new depths
Sunday, 15 February 2009 3:13 P GMT-05
The spectacle of bankers continuing to award themselves bonuses while taking taxpayer support is feeding an extraordinary public rage and a fierce sense of injustice. With 40,000 people losing their jobs each month, it is a recipe for trouble, come the traditional rioting months of the summer.
Home price declines deepen
Friday, 13 February 2009 9:44 A GMT-05
Home prices fell 12.4% during the fourth quarter of 2008, the largest year-over-year decline since the National Association of Realtors began keeping comprehensive records in 1979. The median price for a U.S. home sold during the fourth quarter of 2008 fell to $180,100, down from $205,700 during the last quarter of 2007.
Why You Can't Buy a New Car Online
Friday, 13 February 2009 9:35 A GMT-05
Americans can buy virtually anything over the Internet these days -- sex, booze, houses -- everything, that is, but a new car. If you want to buy a new Ford Fusion, you have to go down to your local dealership and haggle with the car salesmen, an unpleasant and daunting task. The process usually subjects consumers to hours in the dealership hotbox and can add hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to the price of the car. Wouldn't it be nice if you could cut out the middleman and just order your Prius straight from Toyota? But you can't. And there's one reason why: the car-dealer lobby, which has worked hard to ensure that this will never happen. Since the late 1990s, car dealers have used their considerable political clout to pass or better enforce state franchise laws that in many cases make it a criminal offense for an auto manufacturer to sell a new car to anyone but a state-licensed car dealer. The laws governing who can sell new cars are among the most anti-competitive of any domestic industry. By creating local monopolies for dealerships and prohibiting online sales for new cars, they constitute a major restraint on interstate commerce; in 2001, the Consumer Federation of America estimated [pdf] that the laws added at least $1,500 to the price of every new car.
Take low-skilled jobs, class of 2009 told
Friday, 13 February 2009 9:10 A GMT-05
Students are being urged to take lower-skilled jobs or do voluntary work when they graduate this summer, after a poll of employers revealed widespread cuts in graduate recruitment. Vacancies for graduates in the City alone nose-dived 28% in the past year, the survey found.
Keep Your Job, Lose Your Health Insurance
Saturday, 7 February 2009 2:48 P GMT-05
According to The Washington Post, ten years ago, employers paid about 90 percent of their workers' health costs. That is down to 73 percent.
UPDATE: Junket Canceled... Bailed-Out Wells Fargo Plans Vegas Casino Junkets
Thursday, 5 February 2009 3:17 A GMT-05
Wells Fargo & Co. abruptly canceled Tuesday a pricey Las Vegas casino junket for employees after a torrent of criticism that it was misusing $25 billion in taxpayer bailout money.
Oh. My. God. IBM Offers to Move Jobless Workers to India, Where They Can Earn Pennnies on the Dollar!
Thursday, 5 February 2009 2:10 A GMT-05
The climate is warm, there's no shortage of exotic food, and the cost of living is rock bottom. That's IBM (NYSE: IBM)'s pitch to the laid-off American workers it's offering to place in India. The catch: Wages in the country are pennies-on-the-dollar compared to U.S. salaries.
Medford readies wind turbine at site along I-93
Saturday, 31 January 2009 2:27 P GMT-05
The turbine's hub is 131 feet tall and its three blades are 34 feet long. It was made by Northern Power of Vermont. It's expected to generate 170,000 kilowatt hours per year, or about $25,000 worth of electricity. That's about 10 percent of the school's electricity bill, said Patty Barry, director of the city's energy and environment office.
The Financial Crisis Is Driving Hordes of Americans to Suicide
Thursday, 29 January 2009 12:16 P GMT-05
Pushed past their breaking points, people are robbing banks to pay the rent, setting homes on fire -- even taking their own lives.
Wall Street's Sick Psychology of Entitlement
Thursday, 29 January 2009 12:36 A GMT-05
The news that Merrill Lynch paid out $15 billion in bonuses is sure to ignite new questions about the wisdom of bailing out Wall Street. Merrill Lynch took $10 billion from the TARP, allegedly to fill holes in its balance sheet. But instead of using that to repair its financial health, it simply put the money into the pockets of its employees. There is no way to defend this disgusting payout.
Watching the Growth of Walmart Across America
Sunday, 25 January 2009 6:01 P GMT-05
Resistance to Housing Foreclosures Spread Across the Land
Friday, 23 January 2009 10:58 A GMT-05
"The small home-owners of the United States are organizing," Steele concluded, "tardily perhaps, but none the less surely." It wasn't just homeowners -- three months earlier the governor of Iowa had called out the National Guard after farmers stormed a courthouse and threatened to hang the judge if he didn't stop issuing foreclosures. They left him in a ditch, bruised but alive. By the end of the 1930s, farmers' and home-owners' struggles had pushed the legislatures of no fewer than twenty-seven states to pass moratoriums on foreclosures. The crowds appear to be gathering again -- far more quietly this time but hardly tentatively. Community-based movements to halt the flood of foreclosures have been building across the country. They turned out in Cleveland once again in October, when a coalition of grassroots housing groups rallied outside the Cuyahoga County courthouse, calling for a foreclosure freeze and constructing a mock graveyard of Styrofoam headstones bearing the names of local communities decimated by the housing crisis. (They did not, unfortunately, stop the more than 1,000 foreclosure filings in the county the following month.) In Boston the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America began protesting in front of Countrywide Financial offices in October 2007. Within weeks, Countrywide had agreed to work with the group to renegotiate loans. In Philadelphia ACORN and other community organizations helped to pressure the city council to order the county sheriff to halt foreclosure auctions this past March. Philadelphia has since implemented a program mandating "conciliation conferences" between defaulting homeowners and lenders. ACORN organizers say the program has a 78 percent success rate at keeping people in their homes. One activist group in Miami has taken a more direct approach to the crisis, housing homeless families in abandoned bank-owned homes without waiting for government permission.
More Americans Joining Military as Jobs Dwindle
Thursday, 22 January 2009 11:17 A GMT-05
And the trend seems to be accelerating. The Army exceeded its targets each month for October, November and December — the first quarter of the new fiscal year — bringing in 21,443 new soldiers on active duty and in the reserves. December figures were released last week. Recruiters also report that more people are inquiring about joining the military, a trend that could further bolster the ranks. Of the four armed services, the Army has faced the toughest recruiting challenge in recent years because of high casualty rates in Iraq and long deployments overseas. Recruitment is also strong for the Army National Guard, according to Pentagon figures. The Guard tends to draw older people.
2009 Heralds 'New Age Of Rebellion'
Thursday, 22 January 2009 10:36 A GMT-05
Boyes notes that Iceland, Bulgaria, and Latvia are not natural protest cultures and that something is worryingly amiss. He cites the warning of respected LSE economist Robert Wade, who recently told a protest meeting in Reykjavik that the world was approaching a tipping point and that March to May would be marked by widespread global civil unrest. “It will be caused by the rise of general awareness throughout Europe, America and Asia that hundreds of millions of people in rich and poor countries are experiencing rapidly falling consumption standards; that the crisis is getting worse not better; and that it has escaped the control of public authorities, national and international,” said Wade.
Stats Say Yes, It's a *Depression*
Monday, 19 January 2009 3:22 P GMT-05
Retail sales actually fell off a cliff last quarter, down by over 17%. This is more than DOUBLE the 7.7% drop the government “officially” reported Jan. 14th. [link to "official" report] This massive drop in retail sales and fourth quarter industrial production easily exceeds the “10% Rule” for defining the difference between a recession and a depression. Yes, we are now in a DEPRESSION, not a recession.
Inauguration Day, 2009: A Day of Mourning
Monday, 19 January 2009 3:18 P GMT-05
When Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated, he sought to dismantle the evolving Federalist tradition of pomp and circumstance. In a ceremonial sense, royalism seemed to have been restored, or so it seemed to him. As this blogger put it, "Dressed in simple attire, Jefferson walked over to the Capitol with a phalanx of riflemen, friends, and fellow citizens from his home state of Virginia." In these last days of the American Empire, such austere republicanism would be considered impossibly quaint. Having long ago morphed into Jefferson's worst nightmare, the closer we get to the end, the more glamorous our inaugurals become. The poorer we are, the more millions we'll throw at a ceremony that is really the crowning of a monarch – and not just any old king, but an emperor bestriding the globe.
U.S. role in Gaza invasion
Monday, 19 January 2009 2:57 P GMT-05
It's well known that the U.S. supplies the Israelis with much of their military hardware. Over the past few decades, the U.S. has provided about $53 billion in military aid to Israel. What's not well known is that since 2004, U.S. taxpayers have paid to supply over 500 million gallons of refined oil products -- worth about $1.1 billion –- to the Israeli military. While a handful of countries get motor fuel from the U.S., they receive only a fraction of the fuel that Israel does -- fuel now being used by Israeli fighter jets, helicopters and tanks to battle Hamas. According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, between 2004 and 2007 the U.S. Defense Department gave $818 million worth of fuel to the Israeli military. The total amount was 479 million gallons, the equivalent of about 66 gallons per Israeli citizen. In 2008, an additional $280 million in fuel was given to the Israeli military, again at U.S. taxpayers' expense. The U.S. has even paid the cost of shipping the fuel from U.S. refineries to ports in Israel.
Bank Of America "Is Insolvent", Will be "Broken Up"
Friday, 16 January 2009 10:24 A GMT-05
Mike "Mish" Shedlock has batted 100% - for the time I've been reading his blog - in calling companies insolvent months or years before it becomes public knowledge. Mish is now saying "Bank of America Is Insolvent".
False Diagnosis of Deflation
Saturday, 3 January 2009 2:27 P GMT-05
In my view, the entire topic of inflation is intentionally obfuscated by the economists at work across the entire financial sector spectrum. They prefer to maintain a high level of ignorance among the public, and of confusion even among the analysts, so that the USGovt officials and Wall Street bankers can continue to steal savings via confiscation by inflation, all without any formal tax levy and without any legislation in support. Worse, inflation is blessed as good, which actually enables those Elite in Power to continue vast counterfeit rings. Their vehicles are USTreasury Bonds, Fannie Mae bonds, Congressional appropriations, and sacred USMilitary budgets, each of which has had almost zero enforcement. It is my contention that each has been a principal part of syndicate activity, sanctioned and protected by USGovt agencies and US Financial titans, along with lapdog regulators. Generally, the dumber the nation remains, the more the Elite can continue to ply their privileged trade. The era of paper pusher domination is gone, as Wall Street gradually will resemble a Ghost Town that mirrors suburban residential foreclosure blight. The nation has probably never been more ignorant on matters pertaining to inflation in its history, as it is now. The next stage will feature grand exposure of lies, fraud, deceit, and corrupt relationships including routine bribery, insider trading, and counterfeit rings. The penalty suffered is a wrecked nation, and inevitable lost sovereignty. When foreigners own over half the national debt, and the USEconomy is in tatters, and the US banking system is both dysfunctional and in failure mode, foreigners have the right to take control. They will do so. The arrogant will be swept aside as thoroughly as the billionaires will be ruined. If you think such words are wild and silly, just wait and watch! Receivership committees are being formed in foreign lands, but they must contend with military threats. Numerous bilateral trade agreements are being hammered out, designed to circumvent the corrupt paper price systems in US & UK control. Times are changing, and the door is open for some degree of colonization. Wealth will flow in the direction of those prepared. Owners of actual gold & silver, as well as crude oil & natural gas, will lead the next era.
The Economist: U.S. In Depression, Not Recession
Saturday, 3 January 2009 2:17 P GMT-05
“A depression is the result of a bursting asset and credit bubble, a contraction in credit, and a decline in the general price level,” according to the article. “In the Great Depression average prices in America fell by one-quarter, and nominal GDP ended up shrinking by almost half.” Fast forward to the start of 2009 and house prices have fallen by at least 17 per cent over the last two years with that number only set to plunge further over the coming 18 months. Overall, American homeowners have lost $2 trillion of equity during what has become the worst housing slump since World War II. U.S. GDP in the fourth quarter last year fell an estimated six per cent, but that number is expected to accelerate through 2009.
5 governors unite, seek $1 trillion in federal aid
Saturday, 3 January 2009 1:16 P GMT-05
Governor Deval Patrick and four other influential Democratic governors pleaded their case yesterday for up to $1 trillion in federal assistance over the next two years, to help alleviate budget cuts, create jobs, and avoid inflicting irreversible damage to schools during a fiscal crisis.
In Housing Fall, Breaking Up Is Harder to Do
Tuesday, 30 December 2008 11:23 A GMT-05
With nearly one in six homes worth less than the mortgage owed on it, according to Moody’s Economy.com, divorce lawyers and financial advisers around the country say the logistics of divorce have been turned around. “We used to fight about who gets to keep the house,” said Gary Nickelson, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. “Now we fight about who gets stuck with the dead cow.”
When Trust Runs Out
Thursday, 25 December 2008 5:38 P GMT-05
Every society and every institution rests heavily on trust. There is active trust, the result of "trust, but verify." I call this stage one trust. Then there is stage two trust, which I call default trust: "Trust, and assume that someone else has verified." Next, there is stage three trust, which I call blind trust: "Trust, because there is nothing else worth trusting." Then there stage four trust, which I call tooth fairy trust: "Trust, despite all evidence to the contrary." This form of trust is the foundation of all Ponzi schemes.
Five Bailout Lessons From Katrina
Thursday, 25 December 2008 4:46 P GMT-05
The US has committed nearly three trillion dollars to the financial bailout so far. The Federal Reserve has made more than $2 trillion in emergency loans and another $700 billion has been pledged through Congressional action. Much more money is coming. Things better for your community? I didn't think so. Welcome to Katrina world. Despite pledges of a hundred billion dollars, we are still in deep pain along the Gulf Coast. What happened? Unless citizens are vigilant and demanding, the entire US will be subjected to the same forces that swept through the Gulf Coast after Katrina - spending huge amounts of money and leaving a second disaster behind.
"Living Under the Trees"
Thursday, 25 December 2008 4:40 P GMT-05
"Migration is a necessity, not a choice," explained Romualdo Juan Gutierrez Cortez, a teacher in Santiago Juxtlahuaca, in Oaxaca's rural Mixteca region. "It is disheartening to see a student go through many hardships to get an education here in Mexico and become a professional, and then later in the United States do manual labor. Sometimes those with an education are working side-by-side with others who do not even know how to read."
U.S. Army Ready If The Downturn Gets Out Of Hand
Thursday, 25 December 2008 4:10 P GMT-05
ARE you afraid that the eco nomic downturn could get out of hand? I mean, really out of hand?
Well, don’t worry. The US Army War College is on the case - ready to handle “unforeseen economic collapse” and the “rapid dissolution of public order in all or significant parts of the US.” And you thought we were just dealing with a recession!
Krugman: We're in for a Year of 'Economic Hell'
Thursday, 25 December 2008 3:44 P GMT-05
Whatever the new administration does, we're in for months, perhaps even a year, of economic hell. After that, things should get better, as President Obama's stimulus plan -- O.K., I'm told that the politically correct term is now "economic recovery plan" -- begins to gain traction. Late next year the economy should begin to stabilize, and I'm fairly optimistic about 2010.
How We Can Live with Less and Still Feel Rich
Wednesday, 24 December 2008 10:29 A GMT-05
"Nobody really wants to talk about consumption, itself, as the issue," says Michael Maniates, co-editor of Confronting Consumption, a scholarly dissection of the origin and politics of America's consumer society. "We talk about ways to save, ways to conserve, ways to be more efficient, but when we do, we don't get at the heart of the problem: Our demand is simply too high." Only when the question is placed directly on the table, he says, will government consider measures to reduce consumption. And only then, he says, will Americans confront the fundamental assumptions of economic policy that underlie their consumer behavior.
Gilt-free shopping
Wednesday, 24 December 2008 9:12 A GMT-05
Because of the down economy, malls in the Northeast, those vast retail shrines to creature comforts, have welcomed a new business into the mix this holiday season: gold buyers. A Virginia-based company called Goldrush has set up kiosks in malls from Virginia to New Hampshire asking customers to sell them gold and silver - at a fraction of its value - so they can melt it down and resell it.
Layoff warning law falls short
Tuesday, 23 December 2008 10:42 P GMT-05
The law requires companies with 100 or more workers to give 60 days notice to officials in states where they plan to make wide-scale job cuts and facility closings. Adopted in 1988 after a wave of plant closings, the law is intended to give state and local officials time to help targeted workers move on - or even to try to save the jobs from elimination. Violators are liable for back pay and benefits, and penalties of $500 per day. But labor leaders say the law, known as the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or the WARN Act, doesn't typically apply to financial firms, which unlike manufacturers with one or two plants, often have workers deployed at many smaller offices around the country.
Depression Hits Detroit: Average home price $18,513 - Unemployment rate 21%
Tuesday, 23 December 2008 4:32 P GMT-05
Home values have plummeted to levels not seen in 1/2 a century… and the 21% unemployment has in some cases been projected to double within 12 months if the auto industry totally collapses. To make matters even worse, Detroit has superseded New Orleans as the “worst city” in America…. but New Orleans had a Hurricane they could assign blame to… Detroit has no such natural disaster crutch.
In Hard Times, Houses of God Turn to Chapter 11 in Book of Bankruptcy
Tuesday, 23 December 2008 12:42 P GMT-05
During this holiday season of hard times, not even houses of God have been spared. Some lenders believe more churches than ever have fallen behind on loans or defaulted this year. Some churches, and at least one company that specialized in church lending, have filed for bankruptcy. Church giving is down as much as 15% in some places, pastors and lenders report. The financial problems are crimping a church building boom that began in the 1990s, when megachurches multiplied, turning many houses of worship into suburban social centers complete with bookstores, gyms and coffee bars. Lenders say mortgage applications are down, while some commercial lenders no longer see churches as a safe investment.
Hedge Fund Manager: Goodbye and F---- You
Tuesday, 23 December 2008 2:22 A GMT-05
Some people, who think they have arrived at a reasonable estimate of my net worth, might be surprised that I would call it quits with such a small war chest. That is fine; I am content with my rewards. Moreover, I will let others try to amass nine, ten or eleven figure net worths. Meanwhile, their lives suck. Appointments back to back, booked solid for the next three months, they look forward to their two week vacation in January during which they will likely be glued to their Blackberries or other such devices. What is the point? They will all be forgotten in fifty years anyway. Steve Balmer, Steven Cohen, and Larry Ellison will all be forgotten. I do not understand the legacy thing. Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life.
How We Got the Worst Health Care System Mountains of Money Can Buy
Tuesday, 16 December 2008 10:11 A GMT-05
Many of the problems of American health care grow out of this history. The system is so complex that even experts -- let alone ordinary people trying to find care for themselves and their loved ones -- are unable to fully understand it. The system spends one-third of its cost on paperwork, waste and profit over and above the cost of actually providing health care. Yet, nearly one-third of Americans are without health insurance over the course of a year. In all other developed countries, more than 85 percent of citizens have health coverage under public programs. The American health care system is full of inequalities: People who work for one company may have high-quality insurance, while those who work for a similar company have none.
Wal-Mart workers in Minnesota win $54 million settlement
Saturday, 13 December 2008 6:49 P GMT-05
Some 100,000 current and former hourly employees of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in Minnesota – and the state of Minnesota itself – will share up to $54 million from the giant retailer under a settlement announced Tuesday. The agreement is the final stage in a wage-and-hour class action suit that put a spotlight on Wal-Mart's practice of having employees work through their rest and meal breaks. In July, Dakota County District Judge Robert King ruled the company committed more than 2 million violations of the Minnesota Fair Labor Standards Act and ordered it to pay $6.5 million in back pay.
Homelessness, hunger on rise in US cities: report
Saturday, 13 December 2008 6:44 P GMT-05
The price of food increased 6.2 percent on average over the last year, the largest increase in nearly 20 years, the report said. And during the 12-month period ending in September for which most of the cities provided data, gasoline (petrol) prices skyrocketed in the United States to reach record highs of more than four dollars per gallon to the consumer, with the price of diesel fuel used by truckers going even higher.
That Was No Small War in Georgia -- It Was the Beginning of the End of the American Empire
Saturday, 13 December 2008 3:49 P GMT-05
But listening to Colonel Konashenko, it becomes clear to me that I'm looking at more than just the smoldering remains of battle in an obscure regional war: This spot is ground zero for an epic historical shift. The dead tanks are American-upgraded, as are the spent 40mm grenade shells that one spetznaz soldier shows me. The bloated bodies on the ground are American-trained Georgian soldiers who have been stripped of their American-issue uniforms. And yet, there is no American cavalry on the way. For years now, everyone from Pat Buchanan to hybrid-powered hippies have been warning that America would suddenly find itself on a historical downslope from having been too reckless, too profligate, and too arrogant as an unopposed superpower. Even decent patriotic folk were starting to worry that America was suffering from a classic case of Celebrity Personality Disorder, becoming a nation of Tom Cruise party-dicks dancing in our socks over every corner and every culture in the world, lip-synching about freedom as we plunged headfirst into as much risky business as we could mismanage. And now, bleeding money from endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're a sick giant hooked on ever-pricier doses of oil paid for with a currency few people want anymore. In the history books of the future, I would wager that this very spot in Tskhinvali will be remembered as both the geographic highwater mark of the American empire, and the place where it all started to fall apart.
U.S. Collective Dictatorship Enlarges
Sunday, 7 December 2008 3:43 P GMT-05
We are entering upon a sequence of events that will, in the end, transform the American economy even more than now into a slow-growth, no-growth, inflationary, regulated, stalled, and inefficient economy. It will be a miracle if the Fed’s expansion is brought under control and reduced. The Fed will maintain its lending and even expand it. This can only atrophy both the banking system and the capital markets. Inflationary pressures are bound to build up, and that will lead to economic controls. The Treasury will look for ways to regulate capital markets still further, and this will undermine them. There is no worse signal than the Treasury’s intrusion into maintaining zombie institutions that should fail and be re-organized. This has already happened in the cases of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This all means that efficient institutions, companies, and persons will be penalized at the expense of the inefficient ones or the deadbeats. More and more will buy tickets to Washington to beg for relief. The end of the road is government control of the means of production. When companies can no longer finance themselves through the standard private means of capital markets and banks, they turn to government. When government can no longer handle the bankruptcies, it seizes the means of production.
While Some of Us Are Hoping for Change, Others Are Literally Starving for It
Thursday, 27 November 2008 6:08 P GMT-05
The swelling numbers waiting outside homeless shelters and food pantries around the country, many of them elderly or single women with children, have grown by at least 30 percent since the summer. General welfare recipients receive $140 a month in cash and another $140 in food stamps. This is all many in Trenton and other impoverished areas have to live on. Trenton, a former manufacturing center that has a 20 percent unemployment rate and a median income of $33,000, is a window into our current unraveling. The financial meltdown is plunging the working class and the poor into levels of destitution unseen since the Depression. And as the government squanders taxpayer money in fruitless schemes to prop up insolvent banks and investment houses, citizens are callously thrown onto the street without work, a place to live or enough food.
Cost Of Bailout Hits $8.5 Trillion
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 8:32 P GMT-05
The total amount of funds now committed equals a figure that represents 60 per cent of the U.S. gross domestic product. Millions of Americans with savings accounts and pensions will ultimately pay the price because, as the San Francisco Chronicle admits today, “The Fed lends money from its own balance sheet or by essentially creating new money.”
Zimbabwe on brink of collapse as outbreak of cholera spreads
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 3:26 P GMT-05
About 6,000 people have contracted cholera in recent weeks, according to the UN, and almost 300 have died. A chronic shortage of medicine has sent hundreds of people south to seek treatment in South Africa. "Unless this root cause of the political absence of a legitimate government is solved, the situation will get worse and may implode and collapse ... It is now an urgent matter, because people are dying," said South Africa's caretaker president, Kgalema Motlanthe.
Russian analyst predicts decline and breakup of U.S.
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 1:14 P GMT-05
When asked how Russia should react to his vision of the future, Panarin said: "Develop the ruble as a regional currency. Create a fully functioning oil exchange, trading in rubles... We must break the strings tying us to the financial Titanic, which in my view will soon sink."
Dollar Collapse Has Begun
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 1:12 P GMT-05
There will be hyperinflation on par with that experienced by the Weimar Republic. Gas and food prices will jump up sharply to new highs and keep rising. Meanwhile, Consumer spending on anything outside food and energy will completely collapse, and most retailers will be forced into bankruptcy. Unemployment will soar, and there will be social unrest.
Down on the farm, a frenzy over free food
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 2:55 A GMT-05
They expected between 5,000 and 10,000 people spread out over a couple of days. Instead, they found themselves on Saturday morning inundated with cars and people with sacks and wagons and barrels ready to harvest whatever was available. The Millers canceled the second day of the giveaway originally planned for today because, as Chris Miller put it, "the pickins' are very slim now." At one point, 30 acres of family farmland had become a parking lot. Their crowd estimate of 40,000 plus was based on the number of cars. Sheriff's officials said they "wouldn't be surprised" if that count was accurate.
Iceland Riots Precursor To U.S. Civil Unrest?
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 2:41 A GMT-05
Those who continue to assert, “It can’t happen here,” only need to look at the scenes in Reykjavik to realize that similar events could unfold across the U.S., where the reaction of militarized riot cops and even the military itself may be a little more heavy handed to say the least. With top Russian analysts predicting the breakup of the U.S. into different parts, allied with people like deadly accurate trends forecaster Gerald Celente warning of food riots and tax rebellions, the scenes in Reykjavik may be amplified in the U.S. should a significant portion of the public wake up to the monumental fraud of the bailout and begin to feel the impact of its consequences as we enter 2009.
Mass. home sales rise, but prices fall
Tuesday, 25 November 2008 9:28 P GMT-05
One bright spot: The number of homes sold in October rose nearly 14 percent from October 2007, said the Warren Group, a Boston real estate date firm. The median selling price for a Massachusetts single family home was $285,000 in October, compared with $331,000 in October 2007 and $287,500 in September 2008. Last month, 3,698 single family homes were sold in Massachusetts versus 3,253 in October 2007, the Warren Group said.
US in deal to rescue Citigroup
Monday, 24 November 2008 1:44 P GMT-05
The complex arrangement, announced jointly by the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., calls for the government to back about $306 billion in loans and securities. The $20 billion cash injection by the Treasury Department will come from the $700 billion financial bailout package. The infusion follows an earlier one of $25 billion in Citigroup in which the government received an ownership stake. The plan, which emerged after a harrowing week in the financial markets and around-the-clock negotiations this past weekend, marks the government's third attempt in as many months to contain the deepening economic crisis.
I'm an American Worker and I'm Tired of Getting Screwed
Saturday, 22 November 2008 10:21 P GMT-05
The American worker doesn't want a handout. Never did. We do want a hand up from our government. We still believe and have hope that this is a government of, by and for the people. We do want to know that our government will finally stand with us against this onslaught, this Robin Hood in reverse, being conducted by the bosses against the workers. The bosses know that W. and McCain have been on their side for the past eight years - and so do we workers. We just want our government to now stand on our side as we stand up against this corporate attempt to create third world working conditions right here in America. Restore our right to fight for a better living for ourselves and our families, and let the power of pissed-off workers, united in struggle, spread corporate America's stolen wealth back into the pockets of those whose pockets got picked these last eight years - the American worker.
General Motors to Invest $1 Billion in Brazil Operations -- Money to Come from U.S. Rescue Program
Saturday, 22 November 2008 9:41 P GMT-05
General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind of problems the U.S. automaker is facing in its home market, said the beleaguered car maker. According to the president of GM Brazil-Mercosur, Jaime Ardila, the funding will come from the package of financial aid that the manufacturer will receive from the U.S. government and will be used to "complete the renovation of the line of products up to 2012."
Paulson Was Behind Bailout Martial Law Threat
Saturday, 22 November 2008 6:34 P GMT-05
“Somebody in D.C. was feeding you guys quite a story prior to the bailout, a story that if we didn’t do this we were going to see something on the scale of the depression, there were people talking about martial law being instituted, civil unrest….who was feeding you guys this stuff?,” asked host Pat Campbell. “That’s Henry Paulson,” responded Inhofe, “We had a conference call early on, it was on a Friday I think – a week and half before the vote on Oct. 1. So it would have been the middle … what was it – the 19th of September, we had a conference call. In this conference call – and I guess there’s no reason for me not to repeat what he said, but he said – he painted this picture you just described. He said, ‘This is serious. This is the most serious thing that we faced.’”
Collapsing the Economy in the Buildup to World War III: 11 of the Most Important Economic Events of the Last 11 Years
Saturday, 22 November 2008 4:41 P GMT-05
Since 1999, the following events have either caused or been the symptom of the present economic crises:
Price of Southern California homes falls 41% from peak
Thursday, 20 November 2008 3:27 A GMT-05
The median sales price for homes in the region fell to $300,000 in October, a level not seen since 2003 and a 41% drop from the peak price set in the spring and summer of 2007, according to San Diego-based MDA DataQuick.
Big Three automakers beg for $25 billion lifeline
Tuesday, 18 November 2008 9:46 P GMT-05
Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., told Wagoner and leaders of Ford and Chrysler that the industry was "seeking treatment for wounds that were largely self-inflicted." Still, he said, "Hundreds of thousands would lose their jobs" if the companies were allowed to collapse.
Japan to seek to take lead in creating new financial order: Aso
Monday, 17 November 2008 5:07 P GMT-05
During the summit, Japan announced a plan to lend up to 100 billion dollars to the International Monetary Fund to help provide financial lifelines to crisis-hit emerging countries. Japan separately agreed to invest two billion dollars in a new World Bank fund to help recapitalize banks in smaller emerging markets.
$50 billion for the auto industry?
Saturday, 15 November 2008 1:50 P GMT-05
Since when is it the government’s job to restructure the auto industry? The auto industry got itself into this mess, and it doesn’t need government or the tax payers to get it out of this mess. That’s how capitalism works people. If a company has made bad executive decisions, that means that they should file for bankruptcy and not have the taxpayers try to bail them out. Also, there will always be another company their to either purchase it or pick up the slack. And besides, what makes the auto makers believe that government could do a better job of restructuring their industry? Politicians aren’t in the industry … let the companies that once enjoyed such great success build on the ingenuity that made them great. The only guarantee you will have from government is mediocrity. In the mean time, all three automakers will be hoping their lobbying efforts pay off, though none of the companies is on track to spend much more than they did last year–perhaps another indicator of their dire financial situation.
GM Spends $17 Million Per Year on Viagra
Friday, 14 November 2008 12:33 A GMT-05
Lifestyle drugs -- chiefly Viagra -- are costing General Motors $17 million dollars a year and the cost is passed along to car, truck and SUV consumers. The blue pill is covered under GM's labor agreement with United Auto Workers, as well as benefit plans for salaried employees. GM executives estimate health care adds $1,500 to the price of each vehicle but they do not break out how much of the premium is caused by erectile dysfunction expenses. GM provides health care for 1.1 million employees, retirees and dependents and is the world's largest private purchaser of Viagra.
Former Vice President of Dallas Federal Reserve: Failure of the Government to Provide More Information About Bailout Could Signal Corrruption
Thursday, 13 November 2008 3:53 P GMT-05
Gerald O'Driscoll, a former vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said he worried that the failure of the government to provide more information about its rescue spending could signal corruption.
Government To Confiscate 401(k)s and IRAs For Mandatory Savings Tax?
Thursday, 13 November 2008 1:15 P GMT-05
Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, testified before Congress last month, proposing that 401(k)s and IRAs be confiscated and converted into universal Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs) managed by the Social Security Administration. The GRAs would be enforced by means of a mandatory savings tax equating to 5 per cent of an individual’s annual paycheck deposited to the GRA. Social Security and Medicare taxes would still be payable, employers would no longer would be able to write off their contributions and capital gains would be taxable year-on-year. In addition, workers could bequeath only half of their account balances to their heirs, unlike full balances from existing 401(k) and IRA accounts.
Scrounge up cash with used gadgets
Thursday, 30 October 2008 11:04 P GMT-05
No wonder lots of people sell to dealers who pay cash up front, then resell the gadgets online. A couple of local Internet sites simplify the process. NextWorth Solutions Inc. in Lawrence operates www.nextworth.com, while Second Rotation Inc. of Boston runs www.gazelle.com. Both sites track the wholesale value of used devices. A visitor punches in a description of the product he's looking to sell - say, a fourth-generation iPod with a 20-gigabyte hard drive and some scratches on the case. Up pops the price that NextWorth or Gazelle is willing to pay - a mere $27 at Gazelle, or a lavish $40.50 at NextWorth. Prices vary based on supply and demand. If you agree, the companies will send you a prepaid shipping container. Send in your item, and if it passes inspection, you get paid in about two weeks.
Web of Debt - Dollar Deception: How Banks Secretly Create Money
Tuesday, 28 October 2008 11:42 P GMT-05
Don't believe banks create the money they lend? Neither did the jury in a landmark Minnesota case, until they heard the evidence. First National Bank of Montgomery vs. Daly (1969) was a courtroom drama worthy of a movie script.3 Defendant Jerome Daly opposed the bank's foreclosure on his $14,000 home mortgage loan on the ground that there was no consideration for the loan. "Consideration" ("the thing exchanged") is an essential element of a contract. Daly, an attorney representing himself, argued that the bank had put up no real money for his loan. The courtroom proceedings were recorded by Associate Justice Bill Drexler, whose chief role, he said, was to keep order in a highly charged courtroom where the attorneys were threatening a fist fight. Drexler hadn't given much credence to the theory of the defense, until Mr. Morgan, the bank's president, took the stand. To everyone's surprise, Morgan admitted that the bank routinely created money "out of thin air" for its loans, and that this was standard banking practice. "It sounds like fraud to me," intoned Presiding Justice Martin Mahoney amid nods from the jurors. In his court memorandum, Justice Mahoney stated:
Foreclosure Alley
Tuesday, 28 October 2008 11:23 P GMT-05
SoCal Connected tracked down some surreal sights associated with the crisis - a company that specializes in removing whatever people leave behind in their foreclosed homes. The process is called a “trashout” - a term the company came up with because it perfectly describes what happens. Everything that’s left is dumped in a trailer and taken to the landfill.
Then there’s the guy who started a business to spray-paint dead lawns. That’s right. He paints brown lawns green. We also tag along with a couple of code enforcement officers who are spending more and more of their time having to drain slimy, abandoned pools.
IMF may need to "print money" as crisis spreads
Monday, 27 October 2008 10:51 P GMT-05
The International Monetary Fund may soon lack the money to bail out an ever growing list of countries crumbling across Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia, raising concerns that it will have to tap taxpayers in Western countries for a capital infusion or resort to the nuclear option of printing its own money.
Gasoline prices in steepest drop ever
Monday, 27 October 2008 12:29 A GMT-05
The national average price for a gallon of self-serve, regular unleaded gas was $2.7785 on October 24, a decline of about 53 cents per gallon in the past two weeks, according to the survey of some 7,000 gas stations. Gasoline is now about a penny cheaper than it was a year ago, and about $1.33 less than it was at a record peak in July.
Copper thefts leave youth sports scrambling for field time, answers
Thursday, 23 October 2008 11:07 A GMT-05
In the past five years, copper prices have risen about 300 percent, from about a dollar a pound at scrap yards in 2005 to more than $4 a pound earlier this year. "When it was around a dollar a pound, metal theft wasn't something we dealt with too often. Now, it consumes about 85 to 90 percent of our time," said Sgt. Walt Reed of the Kern County Sheriff's Department in California. His jurisdiction covers 100 square miles of the county in California's central valley, the heartland of the state's agricultural production. Kern County's vast geography makes it difficult for Reed's force to patrol tracts of farmland. It's a magnet for scrap thieves drawn to the metal in irrigation pipes, water pumps and diesel motors. Reed estimated that about 90 percent of the suspects arrested for metal theft turn out to be addicted to the stimulant methamphetamine.
Arson, Suicide, and Murder Mark the Economic Crisis, and We're Not Hearing About it
Monday, 20 October 2008 10:48 A GMT-05
Suicide is, however, just one type of extreme act for which the financial meltdown has seemingly been the catalyst. Since the beginning of the year, stories of resistance to eviction, armed self-defense, canicide, arson, self-inflicted injury, murder, as well as suicide, especially in response to the foreclosure crisis, have bubbled up into the local news, although most reports have gone unnoticed nationally -- as has any pattern to these events.
Now bodies of the dead are not being buried as effects of credit crunch spread across Britain
Thursday, 16 October 2008 3:56 A GMT-05
The spectre of the Winter of Discontent threatened to return to haunt Labour last night after funeral directors revealed that the burial of 'hundreds' of bodies is being delayed for financial reasons. Undertakers hit by the credit crunch are refusing to carry out funerals until the Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed it will foot the bill. In a bleak new sign of the growing economic crisis, hard-up families are having to wait more than two months before receiving Government money for funerals.
Why this bailout is as bad as the last one
Thursday, 16 October 2008 3:45 A GMT-05
The Treasury Department's decision to take equity stakes in banks represents a significant reversal, coming just weeks after Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had opposed the idea. In a momentous meeting yesterday afternoon in Washington, Paulson, flanked by top financial regulators, told the executives of nine leading banks that they needed to participate in the program for the good of the national economy, two industry sources said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
U.S. Forces Nine Major Banks To Accept Partial Nationalization
Thursday, 16 October 2008 3:20 A GMT-05
The Treasury Department's decision to take equity stakes in banks represents a significant reversal, coming just weeks after Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. had opposed the idea. In a momentous meeting yesterday afternoon in Washington, Paulson, flanked by top financial regulators, told the executives of nine leading banks that they needed to participate in the program for the good of the national economy, two industry sources said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Dynamic Maps of Nonprime Mortgage Conditions in the United States
Friday, 10 October 2008 12:48 A GMT-05
A nice interactive way to see the dynamics of the housing loans - and, consequently, of the current crisis. -BE
$700 billion is nothing
Sunday, 5 October 2008 4:21 P GMT-05
Voters are rightly furious at the proposal to spend $700,000,000,000 that the government doesn't have to bail out Wall Street bankers who created the current economic crisis in the first place. But why then aren't we concerned about the trillions of dollars the Federal Reserve is pumping into the system? Or the trillions missing from the Pentagon? Or the quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble. For more news and economic analysis, visit: http://www.corbettreport.com
At home with the Palins: 'struggling working-class Americans' worth $1.2m
Sunday, 5 October 2008 3:33 P GMT-05
But the Palin family income reached comfortably into six figures in her 2007 declaration, capitalising on valuable salmon fishing rights and a series of property deals. Her governor's salary brought in $125,000 (£71,000), while her husband Todd earned almost $100,000 from his part-time job at BP, combined with income from commercial fishing. The couple appeared to be worth at least $1.2m, including a $500,000 lakefront home, a Piper float-plane and two holiday getaways. That probably does not seem like struggling to the average American family living on less than $50,000 a year and trying to pay off credit card debts of $9,840 (Mrs Palin has none).
Two weeks after AIG bailout, execs party in style (!!!)
Sunday, 5 October 2008 2:43 P GMT-05
Less than two weeks after Uncle Sam gave American International Group (AIG) an $85 billion loan - staving off financial collapse - execs from one of its insurance subsidiaries, AIG American General, gathered for a conference at the uber-swank St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort, billed as “California’s only Mobil Travel Guide Five-Star Resort,” where ocean-view rooms start at $565 a night and “world class luxury” is the rule.
National debt topped $10 trill this week
Sunday, 5 October 2008 5:26 A GMT-05
There were no fireworks so a lot of people probably missed it. We even forgot to mention it here on The Swamp when it happened though we saw the reports. Anyway, on the last day of September, the national debt hit $10 trillion plus.
Smoke Mirrors And How A Handful Of Missed Mortgage Payments Started The Global Financial Crisis
Sunday, 5 October 2008 5:02 A GMT-05
It's called "fractional reserve banking". Alone among commercial institutions, banks are allowed to create value out of nothing - in other words, they are allowed to lend out money they don't have. To explain more fully: at any one time a bank may have, say, £1 billion in assets, but it will have lent out at least £10bn. That £10bn will yield interest, earning money for the bank - but it's interest on money the bank doesn't actually own, that is not based on deposits in its accounts. Magic. Money for nothing.
There's No Difference Between Martial Law and the THREAT of Martial Law
Saturday, 4 October 2008 8:38 P GMT-05
Just because it forked over $700 billion or more in our lunch money based upon coercion by the thugs in the executive branch doesn't mean that the thugs are still following the separation of powers or anything else in the Constitution. Remember that, for years, Congress has operated under "martial law" provisions which force Congress members to vote on legislation without having time to adequately read and review it. Remember also that the U.S. has been in a declared state of national emergency for 7 years, and normal constitutional provisions were probably long ago superseded.
The Bailout in Plain English
Saturday, 4 October 2008 8:33 P GMT-05
Any number of cultural historians have noted the American belief that success is a sign of God's favor. And over the past couple of decades he has had a downright love fest with the already-rich. So much so that the richest 400 Americans now have more money stashed away that the combined bottom 150 million Americans. Some $1.6 trillion bucks. This was accomplished by selling off or shipping out ever available asset, from jobs to seaports, smashing usury and anti-monopoly laws, raiding the public coffers and manipulating the medium of exchange and blackmailing the peasantry regarding common needs such as heath care and energy to keep their asses warm -- to name a few. The ultimate coup was to convince the entire nation that the well being of the rich, meaning the well being of Wall Street, was indeed the common man's well being. All went well for a while. People went into credit card hock up to their noses in order to provide 26% credit card interest to Wall Street, etc. And when that became untenable, flimsy mortgages were cranked out by the millions ensuring that every American who could hold a crayon could sign to purchase a home. To facilitate this all sorts of shaky 'mortgage instruments' were created -- balloon, (sign here Jeeter, you're gonna flip it in a year and make a hundred K on this house trailer) interest only, and finally negative balance mortgages where you only paid part of the interest and the rest was rolled back into the principal balance. And joy of joys you could refinance a couple of times while the inflated value of these houses was on the way up. Life was good for everybody.
Food Stamp Participation Increases As Economy Slows
Saturday, 4 October 2008 5:45 P GMT-05
The latest federal statistics indicate that nationally, participation in the low-income nutrition supplement program rose from 28.08 million in April to 29.05 million in July, the last month for which the figures are available, a department spokeswoman said.
Shock and Awe: Bipartisan Beltway Terrorists Launch Economic 9/11 on the American People
Saturday, 4 October 2008 5:38 P GMT-05
There were many viable, reasonable, eminently centrist alternatives to the radical, plutocratic Bush-Obama scam -- alternatives which would have been politically palatable to a broad spectrum of the electorate. One of the best ones of this ilk that I've seen was outlined in the eminently mainstream Washington Post earlier this week by two eminently respectable Yale economists. (You can find it here.) There were many other such practical and effective plans offered by reputable experts, any one of which could have gone a long way toward protecting ordinary citizens now exposed by the meltdown, supporting the banks, and stabilizing the markets -- all without effecting one of the largest single redistributions of wealth since the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in 1917. None of these plans were considered or debated or even mentioned, not even for a single moment, by the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate. Instead, they joined the Republican leadership and the Bush Administration in repeating, over and over, the Big Lie that there was NO OTHER CHOICE but some basic version of the unworkable Bush plan. The Democrats -- led by Barack Obama -- not only threw a political lifeline to the most despised president in American history (in the middle of an election year!), they deliberately took ownership of a measure widely rejected by the American public -- a class war weapon of mass destruction whose malign effects will reverberate through American society for years, perhaps generations to come.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) Says Congress Threatened with Martial Law If Bailout Bill Is Not Passed
Saturday, 4 October 2008 5:12 P GMT-05
For bailout to work, housing market needs to mend
Saturday, 4 October 2008 5:01 P GMT-05
Washington's financial bailout plan is now law. So the credit spigot will start flowing again, banks will resume lending, and an economic recovery can begin, right? Wrong. Experts say the most important thing that needs to happen before the $700 billion bailout even has a chance of working: Home prices must stop falling. That would send a signal to banks that the worst has passed and it's safe to start doling out money again.
Fannie Mae forgives loan for woman who shot herself
Saturday, 4 October 2008 2:43 P GMT-05
Addie Polk, 90, of Akron, Ohio, became a symbol of the nation's home mortgage crisis when she was hospitalized after shooting herself at least twice in the upper body Wednesday afternoon. On Friday, Fannie Mae spokesman Brian Faith said the mortgage association had decided to halt action against Polk and sign the property "outright" to her. "We're going to forgive whatever outstanding balance she had on the loan and give her the house," Faith said. "Given the circumstances, we think it's appropriate." Residents of Akron have rallied behind Polk, who is being treated at Akron General Medical Center. She was listed in critical condition Friday afternoon, according to Akron City Council President Marco Sommerville.
9/11 Truth in New Video About Bailout
Friday, 3 October 2008 12:08 A GMT-05
The Corbett Report has created a new video explaining why people should be angry about more than just the proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. One reason, of course, is the $2.3 trillion missing from the Pentagon the day before 9/11, when the Pentagon's Budget Analyst Office was destroyed. Watch the video below:
Bailout Bill Passes the Senate
Thursday, 2 October 2008 11:49 P GMT-05
The bill also allows the FDIC to borrow an unlimited amount of money from the Treasury Department until the end of next year to cover the increased insurance limit.
Pride
Wednesday, 1 October 2008 3:11 A GMT-05
For a long time now, powerful people have been able to control public opinion and pass rushed legislation with visions of boogeymen under our beds. They’ve used our fear to convince us to abandon our core principles. Yesterday, I found out that it’s still OK to have faith in Joe Average. He has been thinking of all the different things he has allowed to happen in the last few years, and he’s ashamed of them. We’re all ashamed of them. Polls show that anywhere between 70 to 90 percent of Americans are opposed to the “bailout package”, while CNN screams at us about how VERY, VERY AFRAID we should be. We’re not certain about what’s best economically, but we are not going to be manipulated by fear. We’re willing to look down the gun barrel and tell our representatives - and our own children - that the market is supposed to be free, that hard work is supposed to be the key to success, and that it’s time the people resumed the ultimate responsibility for the government this country, and we will do so even if it’s painful and difficult.
Putin Promises $50Bln For Banks
Wednesday, 1 October 2008 3:05 A GMT-05
The liquidity boost comes in addition to a $130 billion crisis package comprising loans to banks, tax cuts and delayed tax payments. The government was forced into action by investor flight triggered by last month's five-day war in Georgia, a drop in commodity prices and the seizure in global capital markets after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. "Psychologically, this is very much needed," said Natalya Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank. "It will help restore confidence in the interbank market."
Will Hutton: I've watched the economy for 30 years. Now I'm truly scared
Monday, 29 September 2008 1:54 A GMT-05
This is not the end of capitalism, as some wildly claim; there is no intellectual, social or political challenge to a market system based on respect for private property rights, even by the Chinese Communist party. Rather, it is a crisis of a particular capitalism that has set aside respect for trust, integrity and fairness as fuddy-duddy obstacles to 'wealth generation'. What we are relearning is that without trust and fairness, capitalism risks its own sustainability, even while it unleashes forces that undermine those self-same values. London's money markets froze because of a trust collapse; banks simply don't believe each other when they say their businesses are sound and will not default on their obligations. Trust matters.
Deal reached on financial markets bailout
Sunday, 28 September 2008 3:27 P GMT-05
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the $700 billion accord just after midnight but said it still has to be put on paper.
Evidence that Bush Will Exploit 'Crisis' to Declare Martial Law
Sunday, 28 September 2008 3:17 P GMT-05
Excuse me! I believe that the 'goddamned piece of paper' --otherwise known as the Constitution of the United States --makes the use of armed forces against American citizens on American soil a matter of 'high treason' i.,e the government waging 'war' upon the people, a matter that is expressly forbidden by the "Goddamn piece of paper", Article III:
Wall Street Bailout Takes Us Back to the U.S.S.R.
Sunday, 28 September 2008 3:15 P GMT-05
Amerika, like other socialist nations, also has its share of faux converts and unconvincing agitprop. John "I am fundamentally a deregulator" McCain has suddenly gone French, embracing regulation with the zeal of a beret-wearing Parisian reciting "Das Kapital" in a left bank coffeehouse (call him Monsieur Jean McCain, s'il vous plait). CNBC's Larry Kudlow justifies kleptocratic socialism by absolving the financial elite and blaming the meltdown on that all-powerful Poor People Lobby, which he claims is "forcing banks to make low-income loans." And New York Times' columnist David Brooks, long the ruling class's Minister of Propaganda, applauds the "public spiritedness" of Paulson's "Progressive Corporatism."
3 to 4.3 Billion Barrels of Technically Recoverable Oil Assessed in North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken Formation—25 Times More Than 1995 Estimate
Sunday, 28 September 2008 1:59 A GMT-05
A U.S. Geological Survey assessment, released April 10, shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency's 1995 estimate of 151 million barrels of oil.
The Bailout Is - Literally - Fascist
Saturday, 27 September 2008 10:12 P GMT-05
The bailout is - literally - fascist, because it socializes Wall Street's losses and privatizes its gains, in order to further the merger between corporations and the state, to guarantee loyalty by Wall Street to Big Brother, and to reward the boys who have been "playing ball" with the Bush administration.
Bush the Socialist and Destroyer
Saturday, 27 September 2008 10:08 P GMT-05
What is striking here is the level of public opposition. It is somewhere between 55 and 90 percent, depending on the way the question is worded. Also, it is wide and deep opposition. It is made up of Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, blacks, whites, rich, poor, men, women – just about everyone, with no systematic bias among the polled groups. In other words, we have here a wonderful thing: a clash of group interests, as Mises would say. It is the state and its friends vs. the American people.
Bank Borrowing From Fed Already Exceeded Bailout Total in Last Week
Saturday, 27 September 2008 2:30 A GMT-05
U.S. banks borrowed $188 billion per day on average in the latest week from the Federal Reserve, meaning that the Fed loaned out more money than the Treasury’s proposed bailout in just one week, still barely managing to keep the economy afloat.
Bush Mouthpiece Admits: They've Been Sitting on this Plan
Thursday, 25 September 2008 2:02 A GMT-05
Which raises three questions for me:
Vote No Bailout!
Tuesday, 23 September 2008 10:59 A GMT-05
We are witnessing a bankers' coup d’etat. In the name of saving the economy from a crisis created by their own greed and immense profits, the biggest bankers have taken a country and a people hostage. “Give us your money and tear up what’s left of your Constitution or we will sink your economy,” is the message from Wall Street and the Bush Administration. “Give us the power and money we demand or you will be left jobless from a new economic depression." Under the pretext of the banking crisis, the Bush Administration is changing the way this country operates. This is not simply taking trillions of dollars from the people and giving it to the richest bankers to do with as they see fit.
Fury at $2.5bn Lehman bonus
Sunday, 21 September 2008 4:45 P GMT-05
STAFF at Lehman’s New York office who helped to cause the world’s biggest corporate bankruptcy are to share in a $2.5 billion bonanza.
We Have DAYS To Stop the $700 Billion Stick-Up (and Fascist Power Grab)
Sunday, 21 September 2008 2:46 P GMT-05
In case you haven't heard, the bill would not only stick up American taxpayers for an additional $700 billion, but would literally give Paulson and the government fascist powers. Don't believe me? Well, as the Bloomberg article notes: "The bill would bar courts from reviewing actions taken under its authority."
Rescue plan seeks $700B to buy bad mortgages
Saturday, 20 September 2008 5:07 P GMT-05
The Bush administration is asking Congress to let the government buy $700 billion in toxic mortgages in the largest financial bailout since the Great Depression, according to a draft of the plan obtained Saturday by The Associated Press.
High Energy Costs Prompt Farmers to Eye Treated Sewage for Fertilizer
Saturday, 20 September 2008 1:12 P GMT-05
The flags might easily be overlooked by an outsider, but they provide an alert that's well understood by locals: This field has been fertilized with treated sewage. The stuff's technical name is "biosolids," and it's been used by golf courses, parks, and even some farms for decades. But partly because of rising energy costs, farmers here and elsewhere in the United States have been more aggressively eyeing the processed waste product as an alternative to pricey fertilizer. Farmers can get it for free in most places, and many are saving hundreds of dollars per acre as a result.
Working Harder; Falling Further Behind
Sunday, 14 September 2008 11:24 P GMT-05
Two new books reflect the increasingly difficult lives of U.S. workers today. The forthcoming State of Working America 2008-2009, published by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), marshals a mass of statistical material to show how workers are slipping further behind on virtually every score. Complementing the EPI study is The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker by New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse, who gives a voice to those who struggle mightily just to get by--and, all too often, fail. Together, the books portray a society in which class lines are more rigid than the nations of Western Europe, once dominated by a wealthy aristocracy. Some 26.4 percent of U.S. workers receive poverty wages, and--in the economic expansion just ended--workers' productivity grew by 11 percent, while real wage gains (after inflation is taken into account) amounted to nothing.
Government to wipe out Fannie/Freddie shareholders by Sunday
Sunday, 7 September 2008 2:27 P GMT-05
And now what could become history's biggest transfer of tax dollars to bail out bad lending begins. Last month Congress passed a bill that gave the Treasury Department $800 billion to bail out Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE). And while it is unclear how much money will be used to bail them out, the general outlines of the soon-to-be-announced terms are becoming clearer than they were last night.
Mass. foreclosure deeds push past 2007 levels
Tuesday, 2 September 2008 6:50 P GMT-05
Foreclosure activity has doubled so far this year, with 7,804 deeds filed through July 2008 compared with 3,902 filed during the same period in 2007, the Warren Group said in a new report.
The cheapest place to buy
Friday, 22 August 2008 11:56 P GMT-05
According to the National Association of Home Builders, Indianapolis is currently the most affordable major US housing market. During the second quarter, 91.6% of the homes sold in that city were affordable to families that earn the area’s median income of $65,100. The least affordable major market was the New York-White Plains-Wayne, N.J., area, where 11.4% of the homes sold were affordable to families earning the area’s median income of $63,000, according to the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index released this week.
Exxon posts record $11.68 billion profit
Friday, 1 August 2008 1:10 A GMT-05
Exxon Mobil once again reported the largest quarterly profit in U.S. history Thursday, posting net income of $11.68 billion on revenue of $138 billion in the second quarter. That profit works out to $1,485.55 a second. That barely beat the previous corporate record of $11.66 billion, also set by Exxon in the fourth quarter of 2007.
Russia takes control of Turkmen (world?) gas
Tuesday, 29 July 2008 11:05 P GMT-05
From all appearance, Gazprom, which was headed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for eight years from 2000 to May 2008, has taken an audacious initiative. It could only have happened thanks to a strategic decision taken at the highest level in the Kremlin. In fact, Medvedev had traveled to Ashgabat on July 4-5 en route to the Group of Eight summit meeting in Hokkaido, Japan. Curiously, the agreements reached in Ashgabat on Friday are unlikely to enable Gazprom to make revenue from reselling Turkmen gas. Quite possibly, Gazprom may now have to concede similar terms to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the two other major gas producing countries in Central Asia. In other words, plain money-making was not the motivation for Gazprom. The Kremlin has a grand strategy.
Massive Economic Disaster Seems Possible -- Will Survivalists Get the Last Laugh?
Saturday, 26 July 2008 7:16 P GMT-05
They used to be paranoid preparation nuts who built bomb shelters for a place to duck and cover during nuclear dustups with communist heathens, but their tangled roots go back to the Great Depression for a reason. If you want to get sociological about it, survivalism started out as a response to economic catastrophe. And now, with a cratering stock market, a housing meltdown that has devalued everything in sight, and skyrocketing prices for food, gas and pretty much everything else, survivalists are preparing for -- and are prepared for -- the rerun. In fact, they may be the only people in America feeling good about the prospects of a major crash. And the interesting thing about the once-fringe movement at this moment in history is that survivalism has now gone green -- at least in theory. From peak oil and food crises all the way to catastrophic payback from that bitch Mother Earth, there are more reasons to hide than ever. Conventional society as we know it is already undergoing some disastrous transformations. Ask anyone ducking fires in California, floods in the Midwest or bullets in Baghdad. Maybe it didn't make sense to run for the hills, stockpile water and food, grow your own vegetables and drugs, or unplug from consumerism back when America's budget surplus still existed, its armies weren't burning up all the nation's revenue and its infrastructure wasn't being outsourced to a globalized work force. But those days are gone, daddy, gone.
Survey predicts vast supplies of Arctic oil, gas
Saturday, 26 July 2008 3:29 P GMT-05
An estimated 90 billion barrels of undiscovered but technically recoverable oil — three years of world consumption — lie north of the Arctic Circle, the U.S. Geological Survey reported Wednesday.
Ron Paul on the Housing Bill - "The Mother of All Bailouts"
Friday, 25 July 2008 9:24 A GMT-05
Ron Paul talks about the bailout out of the housing industry and how it really just destroys the dollar and adds enormously to the debt.
Facing foreclosure, Taunton woman commits suicide
Thursday, 24 July 2008 1:13 A GMT-05
The housing crunch has caused anguish and anxiety for millions of Americans. For Carlene Balderrama, a 53-year-old wife and mother, the pressure was apparently too much to bear. Police say that Balderrama shot herself Tuesday afternoon 90 minutes before her foreclosed home on Duffy Drive was scheduled to be sold at auction. Chief Raymond O'Berg said that Balderrama faxed a letter to her mortgage company at 2:30 p.m., telling them that "by the time they foreclosed on the house today she'd be dead."
California foreclosures up 261% from '07 levels
Wednesday, 23 July 2008 11:17 A GMT-05
Breaking: DataQuick reports today that foreclosures in California soared 33% from the first quarter to the second quarter of 2008, and are running 261% ahead of year-ago levels.
Food stamp use soars in Mass.
Wednesday, 23 July 2008 11:00 A GMT-05
More than 500,000 people statewide received food stamps in April, a 67-percent increase from 2003 and 11 percent more than last year, according to state records. Food-stamp participation increased across the country between 2003 and 2008, with the exception of Hawaii and Wyoming. In New England, New Hampshire saw the next-fastest growth, with a 41-percent rise from five years ago, and Rhode Island saw the smallest change, with a 13-percent increase over that period. In Massachusetts, residents received about $48 million in food stamp benefits in April 2008, more than double the $22 million they received in April 2003. The figures reflect a drastic change for the state, which had the lowest food stamp participation in the country from 2000 to 2002.
New oilfield discovered in south Iran
Monday, 21 July 2008 1:23 A GMT-05
Iran’s Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari has announced the discovery of a new oilfield with in-place reserves of about 525 million barrels. The discovery was made near the southern port city of Assaluyeh in Bushehr province, he said. Nozari called the discovery unprecedented given that so far most of the discoveries in the Assaluyeh region have been gas fields.
America First
Sunday, 20 July 2008 11:15 P GMT-05
Politicians and celebrities with an urge to see poverty only need to visit the Mississippi Delta or some of the neighborhoods in American cities. If they yearn for more exotic poverty, all they have to do is visit the Indian reservations that do not have casinos. Any disease they are hot to trot to cure can be found right here in the good old U.S.A. Depressed economic conditions? We have them. Crumbling infrastructure? We have that, too. Hunger? Yes, that too. Inflation and weak currency? Present right here. Corruption? Our politicians can hold their own in that dubious category. Orphans? There are plenty of those, too. There is simply no need to travel. Any bad or sad thing you wish to see you can see here in the U.S.
How Long Will Your Doctor Continue Accepting Private Insurance?
Sunday, 20 July 2008 10:37 P GMT-05
A story in a New Jersey newspaper describes how physicians in Northern Jersey have begun following in the footsteps of "elite Manhattan doctors and are withdrawing from all insurance plans." The article compares fees with and without insurance. On the right, the fees that insurers typically pay for these services; on the left, the fees that Jersey doctors who don't take insurance charge:
Ron Paul: "Some Big Events Are About To Occur"
Friday, 18 July 2008 12:03 A GMT-05
Paul outlined the history of the current economic crisis and alluded to key events such as the inception of the Federal Reserve System, the creation of the Bretton-Woods Monetary System and the creation of a "dollar bubble". "This bubble is different and bigger for another reason." Paul argued. "The central banks of the world secretly collude to centrally plan the world economy. I'm convinced that agreements among central banks to “monetize” U.S. debt these past 15 years have existed, although secretly and out of the reach of any oversight of anyone--especially the U.S. Congress that doesn't care, or just flat doesn't understand." Yesterday, the Congressman also confronted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke over what he described as a 35 plus year dollar bubble, telling him "You are probably the biggest taxer in the country", citing the inflationary fiat money system as the most unfair and regressive form of taxation there is. A stunned Bernanke put up little resistance and simply agreed with Paul, stating “Congressman, I couldn’t agree with you more that inflation is a tax, and that inflation is currently too high.”
The buck doesn't stop here; it just keeps falling
Sunday, 6 July 2008 3:35 P GMT-05
The limp greenback has had one big benefit to the U.S. economy: Since it makes American goods cheaper overseas, it has helped manufacturers who export and other U.S. based companies with international reach. Exports have been one of the few bright spots in an otherwise darkening U.S. economy.
Use of credit shows steady increase
Saturday, 7 June 2008 5:14 P GMT-05
Total consumer credit rose $8.9 billion for the month to $2.56 trillion, the Federal Reserve said yesterday. In March, credit rose $13.1 billion, previously reported as an increase of $15.3 billion. The Fed's report doesn't cover borrowing secured by real estate.
Jobless rate jumped to 5.5 percent in May
Saturday, 7 June 2008 3:32 P GMT-05
With employers worried about a sharp slowdown and their own prospects, they clamped down on hiring in May, said Friday’s report from the Labor Department. The unemployment rate soared from 5 percent in April to 5.5 percent in May. That was the biggest one-month jump in the rate since February 1986. The increase left the jobless rate at its highest since October 2004.
US Economy is a National Security Crisis: 'US Needs to Raise $6 Trillion and It is Simple,' Says Visionary William Glynn
Saturday, 7 June 2008 3:30 P GMT-05
"Right now, China, Russia, India and Saudi Arabia basically own the United States. Our economy is the real target of terrorists and this is our potential downfall," says Glynn. His solution is transparent and uncomplicated... a 10% solution. "If we are to prevent another Great Depression we need to pass one simple law: All pension plans, endowments, 401(k)s and the like will be required to allocate 10% of their portfolios to buy back U.S. debt and currency." With more than 40 trillion dollars currently invested in these types of accounts, Glynn asserts that some four trillion dollars could be freed up in a matter of days to wipe out the national debt, buy back the $1.6 trillion in U.S. debt currently owned by China and more. He suggests that approximately one trillion dollars go into a 10-year Zero Coupon Bond with the proceeds ultimately going back to the endowments and pension plans. "Rather than seeing this as simply giving money back to the government, it's really a 10-year interest-free loan that has incredible benefits," he explains.
Safety Lapses Raised Risks In Trailers for Katrina Victims
Sunday, 25 May 2008 6:13 P GMT-05
"The most likely source of formaldehyde in the Katrina trailers and in all travel trailers are composite wood products . . . [and] the most likely source for those materials are imported products," primarily from China, said Elizabeth Whalen, director of corporate sustainability for Columbia Forest Products, of Portland, Ore., the association's largest U.S. plywood manufacturer.
Biofuel 'home brewers' raid grease barrels
Thursday, 22 May 2008 2:34 A GMT-05
A few years ago, drums of used french fry grease were only of interest to a small network of underground biofuel brewers, who would use the slimy oil to power their souped-up antique Mercedes. Now, restaurants from Berkeley, California, to Sedgwick, Kansas, are reporting thefts of old cooking oil worth thousands of dollars by rustlers who are refining it into barrels of biofuel in backyard stills. "It's like a war zone going on right now over grease," said David Levenson, who owns a grease hauling business in San Francisco's Mission District. "We're seeing more and more people stealing grease because it lets them stay away from the pump, but it's hurting our bottom line."
Food Crisis Hits Fallujah
Sunday, 18 May 2008 1:19 P GMT-05
Residents say they are told of a world food crisis that may be affecting them. But their crisis arises mainly from local factors like shortage of water, fuel and electricity. Whatever the reason, residents simply want relief. "We just want our lives back," said a college student who gave her name only as Nada. "We want to eat, buy clothes, get proper education and breathe pure air. No thanks to Americans for their effort to bring us democracy that killed half of us by their bombs and is now apparently killing the other half by starvation. Can you pass this message to the American people for us?"
Dollar Falls Most Against Euro in Seven Weeks on Sentiment, Oil
Sunday, 18 May 2008 12:30 P GMT-05
The dollar fell the most against the euro since March as a drop in consumer confidence and record crude oil prices raised concern U.S. economic growth will slow. The dollar's second consecutive weekly decline against the euro pared its increase from the all-time low reached last month to 2.7 percent. The Australian dollar rose to the strongest level against the greenback since 1984 as oil pushed up prices of other commodities. Mexico's peso rose to a five-year high, while the Brazilian real strengthened to the most since 1999.
US property foreclosures up 65%
Saturday, 17 May 2008 8:14 P GMT-05
The wave of misery caused by America's sub-prime mortgage crisis engulfed more homeowners in April as foreclosures leapt by 65% year-on-year, adding to pressure on the White House to provide relief for stricken borrowers. Banks filed foreclosure papers on 243,353 US properties last month according to RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for repossessed homes. The figure was up 4% on March and experts suggested that the rate of increase would be higher were it not for a logjam at courtrooms in some areas, with over-burdened clerks taking several months to process paperwork. "Although only 2% of households nationwide are in foreclosure, these properties contribute to already bloated inventories of homes for sale and put downward pressure on home values," said James Saccacio, chief executive of RealtyTrac.
Who Are You Going To Believe: The Government or Your Thinning Wallet?
Friday, 16 May 2008 6:16 A GMT-05
The government really does like to mess with its numbers, although the Bureau of Labor Statistics did state in their report that the price of gasoline was up, when it came time to record the price change for gasoline in their seasonally adjusted index, they recorded a decline in the price of gasoline.
"We Are Workers, Not Criminals"
Monday, 5 May 2008 1:25 A GMT-05
In the big immigrant marches that swept the country on May Day in 2006 and 2007, one sign said it all: "We are Workers, not Criminals!" Often it was held in the calloused hands of men and women, who looked as though they'd just come from working in a factory, cleaning an office building or picking grapes. The sign stated an obvious truth. Millions of people have come to this country to work, not to break its laws. Some have come with visas, and others without them. But they are all contributors to the society they've found here, not people who mean it harm. Again this May Day, immigrant workers are filling the streets, making the same point.
One of History's Great Atrocities: The Corporate Theft of the Public's Natural Right to Water
Monday, 5 May 2008 12:53 A GMT-05
Less industrialized countries have borne the brunt of the most severe effects of water commodification. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the corporate ownership of water has only aggravated an already dire situation-both in terms of compromising the democratic, innate rights of citizens and endangering the environment. For example, during the Fox Administration in Mexico, water privatization often left Mexican citizens — specifically the poorest sector of the population — deprived of water resources as well as a deteriorating infrastructure. By 2002, precisely a decade after the Mexican government constitutionalized the jurisdiction of foreign-based corporations over what formally had been municipal water services, 28 of the country’s 30 states had been affected by privatization practices; this represented roughly 70 percent of the nation’s water supply. Once President Fox had created the Program for the Modernization of Water Management Companies (PROMAGUA), an agenda geared towards the commodification of the nation’s water supplies, Mexican citizens began to feel the harsh consequences of private ownership of water — and at an exceedingly expensive price. During the 2004 World Water Forum in Kyoto, Japan, Maude Barlow, a highly regarded Canadian field expert in the subject of water privatization, described the actions of one very irate Mexican citizen in the midst of confronting a panel of executives and specialists in water policy:
Will America become one huge tent city?
Monday, 5 May 2008 12:40 A GMT-05
Just how close are we to the homeless that we help, but hope like hell we never to have to live their lives? What happens to us, the USA, as a family? Will America become one huge tent city, manned by armed gunmen? Or a fighting, biting, screaming free for all-citizens running wild-dirty and hungry and ruthless? Let's hope the changes that come turn us back into a family-united and prepared. I shudder to think too much about the alternative.
Limbo debate: How low can these candidates go?
Monday, 5 May 2008 12:33 A GMT-05
Similarly, both Democratic Party candidates pledged not to raise capital gains taxes above 20%, which amounts to a mere 5% increase over the Bush rate of 15% for long term capital gains. Since 20% is far below the current 28% maximum earned income (payroll wages), both Clinton and Obama just pledged to treat millionaires and gazillionaires far better than people who work for a living.
The Next Slum?
Monday, 5 May 2008 12:13 A GMT-05
For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and ’70s—slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay.
Bailing Out Banks
Monday, 28 April 2008 2:41 A GMT-05
Worst of all, the Treasury Department has recently proposed that the Federal Reserve, which was responsible for the housing bubble and subprime crisis in the first place, be rewarded for all its intervention by being turned into a super-regulator. The Treasury foresees the Fed as the guarantor of market stability, with oversight over any financial institution that could pose a threat to the financial system. Rewarding poor-performing financial institutions is bad enough, but rewarding the institution that enabled the current economic crisis is unconscionable.
The Double Trouble of Taxation
Sunday, 27 April 2008 12:07 A GMT-05
The burden of complying with the income tax is tremendous. Since its inception in 1913, the tax code has gone from 400 pages to over 67,000. The Tax Foundation estimates that around $265 billion dollars and 6 billion hours are spent just on compliance. That expense amounts to about 22 cents of every dollar the IRS collects. Imagine the boon to the economy if we spent that time and money expanding our businesses and creating jobs! Aside from the direct loss of money and productivity, the funds from the income tax enable the government to do some very destructive things, such as vastly over-regulating economic activity, making it difficult to earn money in the first place. The federal government funds over 50 agencies, departments and commissions that formulate rules and regulations. These bureaucracies operate with little to no oversight from the people or Congress and generate around 4,000 new rules every year and operate at a cost of about 40 billion dollars. There are some 75,000 pages of regulations in the Federal Register that Americans are expected to know and abide by. Complying with these governmental regulations costs American businesses more than one trillion dollars per year, according to a study by Mark Crain for the Small Business Administration. This complicated system drives production to other countries and shrinks our job market here at home. Big government is destructive when it takes your money and when it spends it. There is no economic benefit to supporting a government sector as massive as ours. In fact, this country thrived for well over 100 years without an income tax. Today, if you took away the income tax, the government would still have revenue from other sources equal to total government spending in 1990, when government was still too big. $1.2 trillion should be more than enough to fund a government operating within its constitutional confines, and that is exactly what we need to get back to.
The Pentagon Strangles Our Economy: Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke
Saturday, 26 April 2008 6:13 P GMT-05
The military adventurers in the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups thought that they were the "smartest guys in the room" -- the title of Alex Gibney's prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination. As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries. Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations to pay or repudiate. This fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching.
The Real Matrix: The Pentagon Invades Your Life
Saturday, 26 April 2008 6:09 P GMT-05
During Ike's time, when civilian firms like Ford and AT&T were the big military suppliers, the payroll showed an utter lack of cool companies. Now, the Pentagon is reaching into virgin territory in new ways with new partners. Today, hip firms like Apple, Google, and Starbucks are also on DoD contractors' lists. And while Ike's complex was typified by brass bands and patriotic parades, today's variant is a flashy digitized world of video games, extreme sports, and everything cool that appeals to potential young recruits. Steven finally shuts down Tropico: Paradise Island - a nation-building simulation video game where the player, as "El Presidente," attempts to lure tourists to his/her fun-in-the-sun resort. Neither father nor son is remotely aware that the software maker, Breakaway Games, does taxpayer-funded work for such military clients as DARPA, the Joint Forces Command, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the United States Air Force - as well as having developed 24 Blue, a simulator used to improve aircraft carrier-based operations. They are blissfully unaware of even the existence of Breakaway's Pentagon-funded video game that could conceivably lead to more effective bombing of targets abroad. Steven grabs his iPod MP3 player (from DoD contractor Apple Computer) and heads downstairs to leave with his father. On his way to the door, Rick goes to his bookshelf and scans a selection of progressive texts whose publishers just happen to be DoD contractors, including a reissue of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin), Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America by Lou Dubose and Molly Ivins (Random House), and Jon Stewart's America (The Book) (Warner Books), before choosing the Hugo Chavez-approved Hegemony or Survival by Noam Chomsky (ahem, Metropolitan Books from Macmillan publishers). As the last one out, Donna sets the ADT alarm system. (ADT took in more than $16 million from the Pentagon in 2006, while its parent company, Tyco International, cleaned up to the tune of over $187 million.)
Mainstream Economist Makes Passing Comment About Explosives Taking Down Towers
Friday, 25 April 2008 2:49 A GMT-05
Here's the relevant quote: "I wonder what they would do if they knew about the dangers posed by investment bank credit default swaps, CDSs, a $62 trillion unregulated market that could destroy the global economy as quickly and as easily as charged explosives brought down three towers at the World Trade Center on 9/11." Full article can be found here: http://www.kitco.com/ind/schoon/apr222008.html
Los Angeles 'is a Third World city'
Thursday, 24 April 2008 1:12 A GMT-05
"The question is are we going to be a 21st century city with shared prosperity, or a Third World city with an elite group on top and most on near poverty wages?"
Why Shouldn't We Be Bitter?
Thursday, 17 April 2008 8:35 P GMT-05
With the critical Pennsylvania primary a week away, this is the Obama sentence that, as Thurber would say, has torn up the peapatch: "It's not surprising then that they [small town people] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." The response to this by the media and the attempts to exploit Obama's words by Senators Clinton and McCain have been mind shattering in their hypocrisy and cynicism. As political operative Bob Shrum wrote in The Huffington Post, "Ironically, Obama's the one raised by a single mother. He's the one who only recently finished paying off his student loans. He doesn't know what it's like to have $100 million. The opponents who are attacking him are the ones who inhabit that financial neighborhood."
Tent city highlights US homes crisis
Thursday, 17 April 2008 7:24 P GMT-05
We are on the outskirts of Ontario, a functionally pleasant commuter-city in southern California. Last summer, local officials established this camp as a temporary base for the city's homeless population, then around two dozen. But word spread and now some 300 people live here. It has an air of scruffy permanence, and indeed, city officials say there are no current plans to close it down.
U.S. Economy: Consumer Sentiment Drops to 26-Year Low
Saturday, 12 April 2008 2:51 P GMT-05
The Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment decreased to 63.2 this month, the weakest level since 1982, when the jobless rate approached 11 percent, the worst since the Great Depression. In other figures released today, the Labor Department reported that the cost of imported goods climbed 14.8 percent in March from a year ago, led by oil. The reports validate concern among Federal Reserve officials that the economy will shrink in the first half of the year, and traders now anticipate the central bank will lower its benchmark interest rate by another half point on April 30. General Electric Co., the world's third-largest company by market value, also said today that its profit fell for the first time since 2003.
Meet THE SYSTEM
Friday, 11 April 2008 10:13 A GMT-05
"Meet the System" provides a less intimidating way for people to learn about the Federal Reserve System. It is written in simple language and, at just 8 chapters in length, most can read through it in an afternoon.
Metro Detroit schools coping with surge of homeless children
Wednesday, 9 April 2008 10:39 A GMT-05
"I miss my school, and that was a good house. Plus I miss my dog, Precious. We had to give her away to somebody," said Cherish, a pretty girl with her hair pulled into a puff on top of her head. "The hardest part was I lost all my best friends." The 8-year-old is one of a growing number of homeless children attending schools throughout Metro Detroit, where the number of children known to have no fixed address has shot up by more than 70 percent in the last three years. Cherish has lived in two shelters since her family was evicted from their Detroit home in November.
Stories Web Classifieds Railcars idle as economy falters
Wednesday, 9 April 2008 10:31 A GMT-05
BNSF Railway Co., the nation’s top hauler of container rail freight, is parking miles of railcars in Montana and elsewhere because there isn’t enough freight to keep them rolling. Cars that often carry 40-foot containers of goods shipped from Asia stand like an iron fence between the Missouri River and this Montana burg known for world-class fly fishing. They stretch as far as Sandee Cardinal can see when she stands outside her home on the river’s west bank between Helena and Great Falls. ‘‘What is that but a symbol of how America is down in the dumps right now?’’ Cardinal asked as she gazed at the cars that haven’t moved for about three months. The cars parked are the type that haul cargo from ships on the coast to points inland, mainly imported goods — an area that’s starting to slow down due to the weak economy. Analysts say transportation usually is among the first sectors to show signs of a downturn in the economy and with Americans feeling pinched — employers eliminated 63,000 jobs last month amid declining consumer confidence — it could be a while before the idle cars move.
Truckers Protest, the Resistance Begins
Tuesday, 8 April 2008 10:41 P GMT-05
But the truckers' protests have ramifications far beyond the owner-operators' plight -first, because trucking is hardly a marginal business. You may imagine, here in the blogosphere, that everything important travels at the speed of pixels bouncing off of satellites, but 70 percent of the nation's goods - from Cheerios to Chapstick -travel by truck. We were able to survive a writers' strike, but a trucking strike would affect a lot more than your viewing options. As Donald Hayden, a Maine trucker put it to me: "If all the truckers decide to shut this country down, there's going to be nothing they can do about it." More importantly, the activist truckers understand their protest to be part of a larger effort to "take back America," as one put it to me. "We continue to maintain this is not just about us," "JB" - which is his CB handle and stands for the "Jake Brake" on large rigs - told me from a rest stop in Virginia on his way to Florida. "It's about everybody - the homeowners, the construction workers, the elderly people who can't afford their heating bills ... This is not the action of the truck drivers, but of the people." Hayden mentions his parents, ages and 81 and 76, who've fought the Maine winter on a fixed income. Missouri-based driver Dan Little sees stores shutting down in his little town of Carrollton. "We're Americans," he tells me, "We built this country, and I'll be damned if I'm going to lie down and take this." At least one of the truckers' tactics may be translatable to the foreclosure crisis. On March 29, Hayden surrendered three rigs to be repossessed by Daimler-Chrysler - only he did it publicly, with flair, right in front of the statehouse in Augusta. "Repossession is something people don't usually see," he says, and he wanted the state legislature to take notice. As he took the keys, the representative of Daimler-Chrysler said, according to Hayden, "I don't see why you couldn't make the payments." To which Hayden responded, "See, I have to pay for fuel and food, and I've eaten too many meals in my life to give that up."
Food riots fear after rice price its a high
Sunday, 6 April 2008 3:48 P GMT-05
The increase in rice prices - which some believe could increase by a further 40 per cent in coming months - has matched sharp inflation in other key food products. But with rice relied on by some eight billion people, the impact of a prolonged rice crisis for the world's poor - a large part of whose available income is spent on food - threatens to be devastating.
The Federal Reserve is a Private Financial Institution
Thursday, 3 April 2008 9:46 A GMT-05
Plaintiff, who was injured by vehicle owned and operated by a federal reserve bank, brought action alleging jurisdiction under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The United States District Court for the Central District of California, David W. Williams, J., dismissed holding that federal reserve bank was not a federal agency within meaning of Act and that the court therefore lacked subject-matter jurisdiction. Appeal was taken. The Court of Appeals, Poole, Circuit Judge, held that federal reserve banks are not federal instrumentalities for purposes of the Act, but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations.
Wal-Mart Says, "Our Brain-Damaged Ex-Employees Whose Children Die in the War Can Go Fuck Themselves"
Wednesday, 2 April 2008 12:44 A GMT-05
Like the now-finally-well-reported story of Deborah Shank, the Wal-Mart employee who dared to get severely injured in an accident between her minivan and a semi. Now covered by CNN and on MSNBC by a righteously outraged Keith Olbermann, you can get up to speed pretty quickly at Walmart Watch. The case involves Wal-Mart suing to recoup its health care costs on Shank after Shank won a small settlement from the trucking company whose vehicle hit her. Her health insurance was, of course, entirely inadequate to cover her expenses. The Rude Pundit's favorite morbid detail in the whole sorrowful story is her Memento-like short-term memory loss, so that every time she asks about her son, a soldier, and she's told he was killed in Iraq, it feels to her like she's hearing it for the first time. Now, here's the thing: the accident was Shank's fault. As her attorney explains, "Mrs. Shank was driving her mini van on a straight and level state highway in clear weather during the day and apparently made the decision to turn around and go back the way she had come. She pulled over and pulled back onto the highway to turn around, and as she did so a transport truck coming down the highway saw her, but did not stop or swerve out of the way. It was our position that the driver had enough time and distance to swerve or stop, but he didn't. He struck her broadside. We established with an accident reconstruction expert that the truck driver had had room enough to stop or swerve even though she had pulled out onto the highway, and also that he had been driving somewhat over the speed limit." Shank's attorney was eventually able to prove some liability on the part of the trucker, but the company had the bare minimum of insurance and was allowed to pay less than what the judgment might have been. What happened in the courtroom was a shame, it was fucked up, but, because Shank had been at least partially in the wrong, that part of the story isn't worth arguing about much. But when, three years later, Wal-Mart decided to sue to recover its health plan's outlay for Shank's care, well, that's the point that this becomes as much about our nation's developmentally disabled health care system (in which we can say that Shank shouldn't have even had to be worried about getting health care), and more about Wal-Mart as the vile meatgrinder of a corporate entity it is, as well as the way in which our court system now bows down to fellate its capitalist masters.
Major Grower Ends Crop, Lacking Workers
Sunday, 30 March 2008 9:45 P GMT-05
Keith Eckel, 61, a fourth-generation farmer and the owner of Fred W. Eckel Sons Farms Inc., said he saw a dramatic decline last summer in the number of migrant workers who showed up to pick tomatoes at his 2,000-acre farm in northeastern Pennsylvania. He said Congress' failure to approve comprehensive immigration reform had hindered his ability to hire enough workers to get his crop to the market. Most of Eckel's workers came from Mexico. "There are a number of workers hesitant to travel, legal or illegal, because of the scrutiny they are now under," said Eckel, whose tomatoes have been shipped to supermarkets and restaurants throughout the eastern United States. "So there are less workers crossing state lines."
One in 6 West Virginians is on food stamps
Sunday, 30 March 2008 7:36 P GMT-05
Last month, 274,487 state residents received food stamps. That's up from 246,890 just five years ago, according to data from the state Department of Health and Human Resources. A total of 122,877 of the state's estimated 743,064 households currently receive food stamps. That's up from 105,365 households in 2003.
Blue Collar, Bare Cupboards
Sunday, 30 March 2008 5:01 A GMT-05
Statewide, 11.9 percent of Oregonians are now classified as being “food insecure.” Nationally, the figure is 11.4 percent. Surveys by food banks and food pantries consistently find that high utility bills, gas prices and healthcare costs, along with job loss and inadequate food stamp coverage, are pushing more and more working Americans into reliance on private food charities. Volunteers’ anecdotes back up these findings.
Home Price Decline Steepest in 21 Years
Saturday, 29 March 2008 5:47 P GMT-05
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index shows U.S. home prices fell 11.4 percent in January, its steepest drop since S&P started collecting data in 1987. The decline reported Tuesday means prices have been growing more slowly or dropping for 19 consecutive months. The index tracks the prices of single-family homes in 10 major metropolitan areas in the U.S.
Consumer mood signals recession
Saturday, 29 March 2008 3:37 P GMT-05
U.S. consumers' confidence weakened to the lowest in 16 years in March, pointing to recession, as worries over fading job prospects and rising inflation clouded the outlook, a survey showed on Friday. The Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers said its final index of confidence fell to 69.5 in March -- its lowest since February 1992, when it was at 68.8 -- from the previous month's reading of 70.8.
Boston-area housing slump hits 28 months
Thursday, 27 March 2008 8:07 A GMT-05
Prices now have fallen 11 percent from the peak of the local market in September 2005, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller housing price index.
Income up 6 percent in Mass. last year
Thursday, 27 March 2008 8:04 A GMT-05
Average per person incomes in Massachusetts rose 6 percent in 2007, the eighth fastest rate of growth in the nation, the Commerce Department reported today. Nationally, per capita income rose 5.2 percent.
As economy slides, New Englanders hunker down
Wednesday, 26 March 2008 10:59 A GMT-05
Some are embracing this new austerity in the spirit of that archetypal New Englander Henry David Thoreau, who enjoined his countrymen: "Simplify, simplify." For others, though, these quality-of-life trade-offs stem from a fear that they are one setback away from financial disaster. They are in no mood to split hairs about whether the slump meets the technical definition of a recession. It looks and feels like a recession to them. In this, they reflect a national trend. The consumer confidence index is at its lowest level in five years. A recent USA Today-Gallup poll found a heightened sense of vulnerability even among those not in financial crisis themselves, with 42 percent of respondents rating economic conditions as poor and 55 percent saying that "someone close to them" had lost a job, filed for bankruptcy, faced foreclosure, or been turned down for credit in the preceding three months. That widespread feeling of vulnerability emerged in more than a dozen interviews and responses to an online query by the Globe.
American Refugees are flooding into Canada: Tens of thousands of Americans are now economic refugees
Saturday, 22 March 2008 7:11 P GMT-05
All of this is occurring while: the US government bails out Wall Street; credit card companies raise record amounts of money by issuing shares; the economic crisis draws comparison to the 1929 stock market crash; investigation of predatory banks gets killed; The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. prepares for bank failures; and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta releases a crisis peparedness video. And some thought that Stocking the Root Cellar was only for conspiracy theorists.
Sleepwalking into a Food Nightmare
Thursday, 20 March 2008 10:49 A GMT-05
As the national and global food situation becomes economically precarious, there is real danger that the balance could be tipped, resulting in actual food shortages around the world. The U.S. dollar, which quantifies not only oil sales but also agricultural commodities, continues to fall against just about every other denomination of value. In the U.S., the result is increasing energy costs for farmers as they produce food, truckers to ship it, processors to process it, and retailers to sell it. In short, sharply higher prices at your grocery store. And food constitutes more than three times the 4 percent of household spending used for gasoline. For many around the world, the situation is already resulting in greater consequences than simply reapportioning their discretionary spending. The United Nations has said food prices are expected to remain high until 2010 at the earliest, which could fuel a “new hunger” around the world. Contrasted against the newly wealthy, the “newly hungry” are being plunged into poverty and hunger by sharply climbing prices for basic foods. In some cases, violence has resulted in places like Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Senegal.
Eliot's Mess
Sunday, 16 March 2008 10:57 P GMT-05
While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.
Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.
The Other Reason to Own Gold
Sunday, 16 March 2008 10:38 P GMT-05
Everybody knows that gold is an inflation hedge. That’s why most people buy it. They know from experience that the purchasing power of all national currencies is being constantly eroded by inflation. But they also know that their purchasing power is preserved by owning gold. For example, the price of crude oil has been rising for decades when viewed in terms of dollars or any national currency. But when the cost of a barrel of crude oil is viewed in terms of ounces or grams of gold, its price is essentially unchanged. In other words, the dollar price of crude oil and the dollar price of gold are both rising more or less lockstep.By owning gold instead of US dollars, you can today purchase basically the same amount of crude oil as at any other time since 1945.
Today We're All Irish: Debt Serfdom Comes to America
Sunday, 16 March 2008 10:31 P GMT-05
This is not the only way to run an economy. Until 1913, when the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the European system of debt peonage competed with what was called "the American system" – debt-free government-issued dollars generated by provincial governments to pay their expenses. This "greenback" system was not actually used in the United States after the American colonies became a nation, except during the Civil War; but the "American system" flourished for decades in colonial America. Paper money was issued by local provincial governments not only to pay their own expenses but as commercial loans. The most effective and efficient of these government-issued money systems was in Pennsylvania, where a publicly-owned bank issued paper notes and lent them to farmers. Since this money returned to the government, it did not inflate the money supply; and since the government issued and spent an additional sum of money on public works, enough money was kept in the system to pay the interest on the loans and prevent the debt spiral afflicting the private banking system. The Pennsylvania system worked so well that it completely funded the provincial government without taxes or inflation. Benjamin Franklin and others maintained that the chief reason for the American Revolution was that Parliament forbade the colonies from issuing their own money. Paper money issued by the Revolutionary government got the colonists through the Revolutionary War, but the British heavily counterfeited this money as a deliberate war tactic, and by the end of the war it had been inflated so much that it was nearly worthless. Fear of inflation led the Continental Congress to completely omit paper money from the Constitution, which does not say who can issue paper money or under what circumstances. The private banks filled the breach, and by 1913 the United States had the same private central banking system that England had. Today, the pyramid scheme of lending 10 dollars and requiring 11 back has resulted in the very inflationary spiral the Founding Fathers feared. The money supply is inflated with more and more debt, shrinking the value of the dollars paid to workers and propelling larger and larger portions of the population into debt peonage. If the government were to issue its own money rather than borrowing from banks that issued it, and if this money were used to pay for real goods and services (roads and bridges, sustainable energy development, health services, and the like), demand and supply would remain in balance and inflation would not result. A government with a properly designed and monitored system of publicly-issued money could fund itself without taxes, inflation or debt.
The Root of the Economic Crisis: Dishonesty
Thursday, 13 March 2008 10:53 A GMT-05
As one writer put it: "It’s all smoke and mirrors. The financial system has decoupled from the productive elements of the economy and is now beginning to show disturbing signs of instability."
2008 The Year Of Global Food Crisis (from Sunday Herald)
Tuesday, 11 March 2008 4:59 P GMT-05
IT IS the new face of hunger. A perfect storm of food scarcity, global warming, rocketing oil prices and the world population explosion is plunging humanity into the biggest crisis of the 21st century by pushing up food prices and spreading hunger and poverty from rural areas into cities. Millions more of the world's most vulnerable people are facing starvation as food shortages loom and crop prices spiral ever upwards. And for the first time in history, say experts, the impact is spreading from the developing to the developed world.
Boards change rules to keep big exec bonuses
Tuesday, 11 March 2008 3:57 P GMT-05
Financial company CEOs often talk about needing better incentives to perform. How about this one: You’re lucky to have a job when many of your peers don’t. But that’s not how it’s working in the marketplace. Despite being hard hit by the housing and mortgage slump, some companies — including Washington Mutual Inc. and Toll Brothers Inc. — have made surprising changes in benchmarks for executive bonuses going forward. What they are doing is moving the goal posts in a way that all but guarantees executives will score big paydays. That’s the result when you take out the bad stuff that could drag down compensation and include things that will likely prop it up.
Gas prices rise to new national record, driven by crude oil's own record-breaking rally - Boston.com
Tuesday, 11 March 2008 3:36 P GMT-05
The cost of filling up the family car jumped to a record high Tuesday, adding to the challenges consumers already face with falling home values and rising food prices. Gas prices at the pump rose overnight to a record national average of $3.2272 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. That's a tad higher than the previous record of $3.2265, set last May. A year ago, rising demand and a string of refinery outages had raised concerns about supplies. Now, the soaring price of crude oil is the culprit, propelling gas higher even though supplies are at 15-year highs.
Wheat prices have more than doubled over the last year
Saturday, 1 March 2008 5:39 P GMT-05
Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US
Saturday, 1 March 2008 4:52 P GMT-05
Certain types of mainstream economic behavior are not prudent on a personal level, and are also counterproductive to bridging the Collapse Gap. Any behavior that might result in continued economic growth and prosperity is counterproductive: the higher you jump, the harder you land. It is traumatic to go from having a big retirement fund to having no retirement fund because of a market crash. It is also traumatic to go from a high income to little or no income. If, on top of that, you have kept yourself incredibly busy, and suddenly have nothing to do, then you will really be in rough shape. Economic collapse is about the worst possible time for someone to suffer a nervous breakdown, yet this is what often happens. The people who are most at risk psychologically are successful middle-aged men. When their career is suddenly over, their savings are gone, and their property worthless, much of their sense of self-worth is gone as well. They tend to drink themselves to death and commit suicide in disproportionate numbers. Since they tend to be the most experienced and capable people, this is a staggering loss to society. If the economy, and your place within it, is really important to you, you will be really hurt when it goes away. You can cultivate an attitude of studied indifference, but it has to be more than just a conceit. You have to develop the lifestyle and the habits and the physical stamina to back it up. It takes a lot of creativity and effort to put together a fulfilling existence on the margins of society. After the collapse, these margins may turn out to be some of the best places to live.
Mass. foreclosures rise 128% in January
Friday, 22 February 2008 2:55 A GMT-05
Nearly 800 foreclosures were recorded in January, the highest number of Bay State homes lost during a single month since August 2007, the Warren Group said today.
"Partnership for Protection" -- and for the Destruction of Liberty and, Possibly, of You
Thursday, 14 February 2008 9:47 A GMT-05
From the American Protective League to InfraGard, it has been a long, tortuous road, one which ceaselessly destroyed liberty and individual rights. The ultimate destination has never changed: the installation of an unassailable, enormously privileged ruling elite -- which, no matter the cost in liberty or blood, will get what it wants. You need not despair, and you need not be paralyzed by depression. To change our direction, we must understand fully and completely how we arrived here, and we must appreciate just how dire our predicament is. And to change it, we need a great deal of courage.
Can't Pay Your Mortgage? Trash Your House and Leave
Sunday, 10 February 2008 6:39 P GMT-05
On the lookout for disturbing trends? Here's one for your pile: According to a recent article in Fortune, there has been a noticeable increase in not just fraud but arson that has kept pace with the housing depression. Professionals in the insurance and lending industry are bracing themselves for all manner of similar situations, as homeowners either trash or simply leave their trash lying around their houses, often taking off without even claiming their furniture. This is already a dirty problem in the housing business, with owners, lenders and banks having to figure out a way to stick each other with the check when tenants destroy their property on their way out the door. Woe is the person left behind to clean up the chaos.
Foreclosures: Worst hit zip codes - Feb. 5, 2008
Saturday, 9 February 2008 12:24 P GMT-05
Las Vegas was the hardest hit by foreclosures at the end of 2007. Seven of the top 100 worst hit zip codes last December were in the gaming capital, according to statistics compiled for CNNMoney.com by RealtyTrac, which markets foreclosed properties online.
The Coming Financial Collapse of America (and Why Today's Market Bloodbath is Only a Small Taste of Things to Come...)
Friday, 8 February 2008 4:07 A GMT-05
Much the same will happen to Big Pharma and the massive medical scam right now masquerading as health care in the United States. When the U.S. government can no longer acquire easy debt money, the monopoly-priced spending on pharmaceuticals through Medicare and Medicaid will have to be halted or significantly reformed. Somewhere along the line, somebody might get the idea that we could halt health care spending by 90% in a single decade by simply investing in disease prevention and health education rather than pushing pills and disease. So the good news is that a bankrupt nation will eventually be forced to just say no to Big Pharma's monopoly-priced drugs. So far, not bad, huh? Ending stupid wars and dangerous health care practices is definitely a step in the right direction, and it's all coming our way soon thanks to the inevitably bankruptcy of the U.S. government and the downfall of the U.S. economy. There's nothing like a sobering economic wake-up call to force nations to either reform their ways or face extinction.
Southern California Shanty Town / Tent City
Sunday, 27 January 2008 4:20 P GMT-05
New Trend In Sacramento: 'Intentional Foreclosure'
Sunday, 27 January 2008 4:15 P GMT-05
Linda Caoli helps lots of families on the verge of losing their homes, including a single mom working two jobs to pay her mortgage. "She says Linda the house across the street, same model, with more upgrades sold in foreclosure for $315,000!" explains Linda. Her client isn't the only one thinking about ditching her house to buy the better deal across the street. A number of realtors CBS13 talked to say it's already happening. "Can you imagine if you had a same or similar home and your mortgage was half the price?" asks Linda. This is how it works. Bob paid $420,000 for his home. Then he notices the house across the street, with more upgrades, and is selling for $315,000. So Bob, who has pretty good credit, decides to buy the cheaper house. He can't afford both, so then he walks away from his original home, letting it fall into foreclosure. That will hurt his credit, but he's willing to take the hit for a more affordable home. "Is it wrong to steal when you're hungry? That's an issue that a lot of people are trying to figure out right now," says Linda.
Congress panel wants to grill subprime CEOs on pay
Sunday, 27 January 2008 4:08 P GMT-05
Prince quit in early November as chief executive while Citigroup posted billions of dollars in subprime losses and O'Neal was ousted amid similar circumstances at Merrill Lynch. Despite these problems, Merrill said O'Neal would collect about $161.5 million in stock awards and benefits after leaving.
Report: Subprime Mortgage Crisis Causing African Americans to Experience Greatest Loss of Wealth in Modern U.S. History
Sunday, 27 January 2008 3:58 P GMT-05
A startling new report has predicted the subprime mortgage crisis will cause people of color to lose up to $213 billion, leading to the greatest loss of wealth in modern U.S. history. The figure appears in a new report from United for a Fair Economy called “Foreclosed: The State of the Dream 2008.” The group accuses mortgage lenders of deliberately targeting the poor and people of color with high-cost loans. We speak with Dedrick Muhammad, co-author of the report.
Owners lose home, and pets suffer, too
Saturday, 26 January 2008 9:45 P GMT-05
The wreckage of the subprime mortgage crisis has caused human pain far and wide, but its victims also include a band of seven gentle, woolly-coated huskies. Their owner was a recent widow facing eviction from her foreclosed home. She had brought the dogs to the Animal Rescue League of Boston where she reluctantly signed paperwork surrendering them for adoption. "Those dogs were her life," said Melissa Cox, assistant manager of the Animal Rescue League of Boston. "She lost her husband, her house, and then her beloved dogs."
Australian Markets Lose $300 Billion In 21 Days
Wednesday, 23 January 2008 10:05 A GMT-05
A 10% loss of value in the markets in one day is the very definition of a stock market crash. Yesterday, Australian markets lost 7.3%.
Fire departments struggle as staff, resources shrink
Monday, 24 December 2007 3:22 P GMT-05
At a fatal fire in Gloucester earlier this month, a single ladder operator drove to the blaze alone - a situation that officials there say is common. In the financially troubled town of Randolph, firefighters have been forced to ride alone as well, said Captain Jim Hurley. And firefighters in other communities say they routinely roll to fires with as few as two people onboard ladder trucks or fire engines, leaving one to go into the burning home alone while the other mans the water pumps outside. "It's dangerous - and not just for my men and women, but for the citizens of the community," said Jack Parow, the fire chief in Chelmsford, where as few as two firefighters regularly report to scenes and where layoffs are looming. "We're going to come to a point where there's literally going to be emergency calls that we can't respond to."
Cheering for Ron Paul
Monday, 26 November 2007 2:16 A GMT-05
How damning that it takes a libertarian Republican to remind the leading Democratic candidates of the opportunity costs of a war that most Democrats in Congress voted for. But they don't need to take Paul's word for it; last week, the majority staff of the Joint Economic Committee in Congress came up with similarly startling estimates of the long-term costs of this war.
Forecast: U.S. dollar could plunge 90 pct
Sunday, 25 November 2007 3:01 P GMT-05
Celente -- who forecast the subprime mortgage financial crisis and the dollar's decline a year ago and gold's current rise in May -- told the newspaper the subprime mortgage meltdown was just the first "small, high-risk segment of the market" to collapse. Derivative dealers, hedge funds, buyout firms and other market players will also unravel, he said. Massive corporate losses, such as those recently posted by Citigroup Inc. and General Motors Corp., will also be fairly common "for some time to come," he said.
Income inequality worst since 1920s, according to IRS data
Saturday, 13 October 2007 8:02 P GMT-05
The superrich are gobbling up an ever larger piece of the economic pie, and the poor are seeing their share of earnings shrink: new IRS data shows the top 1 percent of Americans are claiming a larger share of national income than at any time since before the Great Depression.
The War on Pot: America's $42 Billion Annual Boondoggle
Wednesday, 10 October 2007 8:48 A GMT-05
Strangely, government officials love to warn us that some unsavory characters profit off of marijuana sales, while ignoring the obvious: Our prohibitionist laws handed them the marijuana business in the first place, effectively giving marijuana dealers a $113 billion free ride.
Slavery Is Alive and Well in the U.S.
Wednesday, 10 October 2007 8:46 A GMT-05
SS: The same woman told me that some people simply like farmwork because they like being outside and working outside. JB: She should talk to the people I talk to. In Florida, it's a hothouse. It's not farms; it's a factory, and the leaves are full of chemicals, the soil is a chemical swamp, the fruit is full of chemicals. There's so little that has anything to do with nature. It's hotter than hell. Does she know the average farmworker in the U.S. dies at 47 years old, quite often from pesticide poisoning, and earns about $7,500 a year?
Australia's Killing Fields
Wednesday, 3 October 2007 3:02 A GMT-05
Cambodia’s notorious Khmer Rouge regime swept to power in 1975. They emptied the capital city Phnom Penh of its inhabitants within days of their April 17 victory. Thirty-two years later, and thousands of Phnom Penh’s residents are again being forced out of the city, and dumped on empty land in abysmal refugee-camp conditions. But this time, they are not being evicted with the aim of creating a Marxist agrarian utopia, but in the name of development and private enterprise.
After the Khmer Rouge lost power in 1979, Cambodians returned to their capital city in droves. Private property had been abolished under the radical communist regime, and ad hoc squatter communities sprang up all around the city as people occupied what vacant land or buildings they could find. The new government has passed a plethora of progressive laws since 1992, but nevertheless increasing numbers of Cambodians are finding that the land they’ve lived on for decades – and assumed was theirs – has been sold behind their backs. Internationally well-connected individuals are brokering the deals, and the Australian Government is one of the players.
September 11, 2001: Unusual volumes on Put Options just before the attack. Swiss study
Tuesday, 2 October 2007 1:35 A GMT-05
Six years after the attacks, a study has been released by two professors of the university of Zurich on the atypical volumes of put options placed before the attacks on World Trade Centre. The authors, one specialist in derivatives, the other a specialist in econometrics, studied the options to sell (put options), used to speculate on the fall in the price of 20 large American groups.
It's Not Easy Being Ultra-Rich
Wednesday, 26 September 2007 9:37 A GMT-05
That's a side issue though. The real point, which the CEOs and their usual defenders are strangely reticent about making, is that it's damn expensive to be rich, and extravagantly expensive to be super-rich. Before you start playing your air violins, consider the costs of maintaining up to five different homes, some of them up to 45,000 square feet in size, most with swimming pools, tennis courts, guest houses, and wine cellars requiring constant supervision. The poor whine about having no home at all, or maybe a two-bedroom apartment for a family of six. They should just think for one moment of the tribulations involved in running four or more mansions, each with its own full-time staff. There's the problem of getting between them, for example. A friend of mine, of very modest means himself, consults for a billionaire couple who commute between London and Los Angeles by private jet, with their dogs following in a second private jet.
Boston metro average hourly wage: $24.80
Wednesday, 26 September 2007 9:34 A GMT-05
Workers in the Boston-Worcester-Lawrence metropolitan area averaged $24.80 per hour in compensation during October, according to new figures from the federal government. The results are from the National Compensation Survey released by the US Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Taking it to the Streets...and the Hearts and Minds.
Saturday, 1 September 2007 7:08 P GMT-05
They will howl like stuck pigs and no metaphor intended. The time has come for the millions of unsatisfied customers to say, “I want my money back. I want my country back and I want you OFF MY BACK. When you stop the machine… the money stops. Repeat after me, “When you stop the machine, the money stops.” “WHEN YOU STOP THE MACHINE, THE MONEY STOPS!” and then…
Katrina Plus Two Years: This Is Not a Home (Random Thoughts on an Anniversary)
Thursday, 30 August 2007 6:42 A GMT-05
This was a city in America that was left to fend for itself after the largest natural disaster in U.S. history, with money tossed at it like it was a sidewalk drunk with a cup. It is part of America. You fail New Orleans, you fail the nation. And while Mayor Nagin and President Bush talk about people returning, Jean says, "We are moving...I'm tired."
Market Crash Forecast Suggests New 9/11
Tuesday, 28 August 2007 8:39 A GMT-05
A mystery trader risks losing around $1 billion dollars after placing 245,000 put options on the Dow Jones Eurostoxx 50 index, leading many analysts to speculate that a stock market crash preceded by a new 9/11 style catastrophe could take place within the next month.
Sex For Survival
Saturday, 18 August 2007 5:59 P GMT-05
As Iraqi families continue to fall on hard times, some have been forced to make the most painful of decisions – selling their daughters. Abu Ahmed, a handicapped father of five who is himself a widower, sold his daughter Lina to an Iraqi man who came to Iraq to "shop" for sex workers. Abu Ahmed said he could not afford to buy food for his other children. He told Al Jazeera: "I'm sure that whatever she is, at least she is having food to eat. I have three other girls and a son and what they paid me for Lina is enough to raise the remaining ones."
US sparks worldwide panic
Saturday, 11 August 2007 6:38 P GMT-05
THE market's biggest one-day fall in almost six years knocked almost $53 billion off the value of Australia's top 200 companies. The 3.7 per cent lambasting followed last Wednesday's 3.3 per cent fall. They were the two largest one-day falls since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Starbucks Doesn't Know How to Reward Great Employees
Sunday, 5 August 2007 4:53 P GMT-05
If anyone is wondering why people in food service or retail always look so goddamn miserable, my phone call with Starbucks should put your mind at ease. Apparently, a multi-billion dollar company like Starbucks can’t be bothered to shoot an employee who goes above and beyond for customers a $10 bill to thank them for their hard work. Instead, they continue to get rich off of their backs while simultaneously “rewarding” them with meaningless gestures that hold no value in the real world. Those fucking bastards.
Ron Paul: U.S. In "Great Danger" Of Staged Terror
Saturday, 14 July 2007 9:41 A GMT-05
The Congressman concluded by surmising that record lows in approval ratings for Bush, Cheney and Congress showed that, "The American people are alive and well and disgusted yet they haven't had good alternatives....it's justifiable, they are looking for true answers and options and quite frankly I think that's probably one of the reasons why our campaign is growing by leaps and bounds right now."
War Costs Soar by a Third; Total Could Top $1.4 Trillion
Saturday, 7 July 2007 6:19 P GMT-05
It's not just the troops that are surging. War costs are up for American operations in Iraq and Afghanistan* -- way up, more than a third higher than last year. In the first half of this fiscal year, the Defense Department's "average monthly obligations for contracts and pay is running about $12 billion per month, well above the $8.7 billion in FY2006," says a new report, obtained by DANGER ROOM, from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service.
Public-Access TV: Fascism in Action
Wednesday, 4 July 2007 7:47 P GMT-05
In virtually every city in the country a cable company negotiates with the local government — in exchange for monopoly status — to offer its service to the people in that community. There’s so much wrong with this relationship that it’s hard to know where to begin.
Hey Dude, Where's My Vacation?
Sunday, 24 June 2007 7:14 P GMT-05
Americans now work more every year, on average, than workers in any other industrialized country (except for a virtual tie with New Zealand). With women working longer hours each year, the average annual work time for a married couple is growing steadily, and family time -- including the crucial bonding experience of vacations -- has suffered. Full-time workers in much of Europe typically take seven to eight weeks of vacation and holidays each year -- that's double the American average for full-time workers. Overall, the average private sector worker in the United States gets about nine paid vacation days and six paid holidays each year. Low-paid, part-time or small-business workers typically get far fewer, sometimes none. The same holds for paid sick leave: 72 percent of the highest-paid quarter of private sector workers get paid sick days compared to only 21 percent of workers in the lowest-paid quarter.
Modern 'Robin Hood' Sentenced
Sunday, 24 June 2007 5:47 P GMT-05
A German banker who stole money from rich clients to help poor ones has been sentenced to two years and 10 months in prison, a court said Thursday. The 45-year-old, dubbed by German media as a modern day Robin Hood, diverted 2.1 million euros ($2.79 million) to clients he felt were needy while holding a senior position at a savings bank in the southern region of Tauberfranken. "The accused undertook these actions to grant liquidity to clients who, in his view, were short of money and who no longer got loans under the usual money market conditions," said a statement issued by the court in the southern town of Mosbach.
How To Not Hire An American - MUST SEE VIDEO
Friday, 22 June 2007 3:52 A GMT-05
It's on video, believe it or not, and even presented as a selling point to peddle their services by Cohen & Grigsby Law Firm. That's right, this group of attorneys put an entire seminar on how to screw over the American worker on YouTube. Imagine that, a seminar from lawyers on how to make sure one doesn't have to hire an American worker!
War Is a Government Program
Saturday, 2 June 2007 3:55 P GMT-05
June 1 is the 227th anniversary of the birth of Carl von Clausewitz, the influential Prussian military theorist and historian. Clausewitz is best known for writing in his book, On War, “War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.” These words come to mind whenever I hear conservative enthusiasts for the Iraq occupation complain about political interference with military operations. They don’t understand the most basic fact of war: it is a government program. So why aren’t people who claim to be suspicious of other government programs suspicious of war? I can see only two reasons, neither of them flattering: power lust or nationalistic zeal.
How The Ruling Class Thwarts Democracy
Saturday, 2 June 2007 6:45 A GMT-05
The tactic of imperial expansion as domestic diversion, begun in Cuba and the Philippines a century ago, has achieved its ultimate expression in the “War on Terror” and the over 130 countries where our military presence is felt. The cost to Americans is not just measured in our thousands of dead and wounded child soldiers, but in the persistent lack of national health care, decent schools, adequate housing, fair wages and a livable environment. Our dear old republic, the hope of a New World free of aristocracy and injustice, has now fallen so low into the muck of corrupt privilege and imperial pretension that it rivals the excesses of the worst European autocracies. Though we posses powers and riches undreamed of by the Sun King himself, as of the early 21st Century our rulers have done virtually nothing to raise the great mass of Americans out of ignorance and poverty, and much to ensure that they stay there.
Best Buy is sued by Connecticut
Saturday, 26 May 2007 5:04 P GMT-05
The lawsuit accuses Best Buy of denying deals found at the company's Web site, www.BestBuy.com. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said store employees charged customers higher prices found on a lookalike internal Web site. "Best Buy gave consumers the worst deal: a bait-and-switch-plus scheme luring consumers into stores with promised online discounts, only to charge higher in-store prices," Blumenthal said.
The Day Without Farm Workers
Wednesday, 23 May 2007 12:38 A GMT-05
I almost lost my raisin crop two years ago. Last year, pear farmers in Northern California were forced to let fruit rot on trees because there were not enough workers. I try to ripen my peaches to perfection, but lose many when I can’t get pickers; some of my best fruits fall from my trees. Without labor, agriculture will mechanize the process as much as possible, substituting technology and capital for people on the land. This shift is not simply about the invention of a machine, but rather a dramatic change in how things are grown. It means rewarding plant breeders not for great flavor, but instead for fruit that works with machines. I can imagine the ideal machined peaches of the future. Design them so they will simultaneously ripen. (My crews revisit a single tree four to five times, picking only what is ripe at the moment.) Breed a peach with a stem that snaps easily, so a tree can be shaken by a machine. Manufacture fruit that won’t bruise when harvested, picked rock hard to survive a handless system. But there is no technology that can replace the human touch without sacrificing good taste.
Why Working Less is Better for the Globe
Tuesday, 22 May 2007 11:16 A GMT-05
Americans work more hours than anyone else in the industrialized world. According to the United Nations' International Labor Organization, we work 250 hours, or five weeks, more than the Brits, and a whopping 500 hours, or 12 and a half weeks, more than the Germans. So how does ecological damage figure in to the 40-plus workweek?
U.S. media job cuts up 88 percent
Tuesday, 22 May 2007 10:09 A GMT-05
U.S. media job cuts surged 88 percent in 2006 from the previous year, a downsizing trend expected to continue this year, a survey said Thursday. The media industry slashed 17,809 jobs last year, a nearly two-fold increase from the 9,453 cuts in 2005, outplacement consultancy Challenger Gray & Christmas said.
Hookers, spies, cases full of dollars...how BP spent £45m to win 'Wild East' oil rights
Sunday, 13 May 2007 2:19 P GMT-05
Les Abrahams, who led BP's successful bid for a multi-million-pound deal with one of the former Soviet republics, today claims that Browne - who was forced to resign as chief executive last month after the collapse of legal proceedings against The Mail on Sunday - presided over an "anything goes" regime of sexual licence, spying and financial sweeteners.
Racing to the Bottom
Sunday, 6 May 2007 1:22 P GMT-05
With the mendacious predictions which brought about Globalism in the first place, (being implemented without the true consent of the governed), and with America’s economic power declining; here’s the real question. What type of country is America destined to become in the twenty-first century? Perhaps the answer can only be found in the past. Perhaps in Charles Dickens in his novel, A Tale of Two Cities.
Debating a Neocon
Wednesday, 2 May 2007 4:09 P GMT-05
It is truly remarkable how easily KO'ed these neocons are once you step outside the tight little ring of the Republicrats. They've got maybe three combinations, and they are slow as a cow. Everything inside has been ritual combat, so they do very badly when someone actually intends to hit them.
The Property Cops: Homeowner Associations Ban Eco-Friendly Practices
Thursday, 26 April 2007 5:30 P GMT-05
Many homeowners' associations post their covenants on their websites for the convenience of members. Doing some simple searches, I recently found and read a few dozen such documents. They are often highly detailed in describing what is allowed, what is not and what happens if you don't do what you're supposed to do or fail to do what they require. I was looking for rules that affect a home's environmental footprint, and there were plenty. The most common restrictions were ones that prohibit drying clothes outdoors (effectively forcing the use of electric or gas dryers), forbid or restrict the placement of solar devices, dictate industrial-style lawn and landscape care or set a minimum square footage of floor space. Most also ban political signs, which itself can be an important environmental issue.
Prole Notes
Thursday, 26 April 2007 1:31 A GMT-05
So there are a few thoughts from my new proletarian job (which I need, even though it makes me dread every morning… yippee, I get to do backbreaking work to pretty up places for rich people to live!!!). I’m way past too old for this; and thank goodness it’s raining today. But if these random ruminations can provoke a discussion or two, it may be worthwhile after all.
Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water
Wednesday, 25 April 2007 11:14 P GMT-05
All across the United States, municipal water systems are being bought up by multinational corporations, turning one of our last remaining public commons and our most vital resource into a commodity.
The Lesson of Virginia Tech
Wednesday, 25 April 2007 5:48 P GMT-05
We still have not learned that when government outlaws objects, such as guns or drugs, they don’t vanish from society but move into the black market, readily available to those who want them. But let’s assume for the sake of argument that handguns could be eliminated. What would happen? According to firearms authority Clayton Cramer, something worse would take their place: sawed-off shotguns. “[A] sawed-off shotgun is substantially more deadly than a handgun,” Cramer writes. He quotes criminologists James Wright, Peter Rossi, and Kathleen Daly, who said, “The possibility that even a fraction of the predators who now walk the streets armed with handguns would, in the face of a handgun ban, prowl with sawed-off shotguns instead, causes one to tremble.”
The security breach at TJX
Tuesday, 24 April 2007 11:48 P GMT-05
TJX Cos., the Framingham-based owner of T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and other stores, said in January that its computer system had been hacked into, compromising millions of customers' credit card numbers and other personal information.
Don't Arrest, Invest
Saturday, 21 April 2007 6:42 P GMT-05
Jeffery A. Miron finds that by decriminalizing cannabis, the federal government would generate $2.4 billion in federal tax revenue annually, and that an additional $7.7 billion would be saved as the cost of incarceration, policing, and processing offenders. Now, that's too much money to for the human brain to fully conceptualize, given the air quality around April 20th, so your friends at the Prometheus Institute have provided this handy quantitive index in order to show exactly how much the U.S. can earn each year from cannabis decriminalization. The math: $2.4 billion per year + $7.7 billion per year = $10.1 billion gained in total per year. You're welcome.
Super-rich population surged in 2006
Thursday, 19 April 2007 6:34 P GMT-05
The number of US households with a net worth of more than $5 million, excluding their primary residence, surged 23% to surpass one million for the first time in 2006, according to a survey released Tuesday. The Spectrem Group found that the number of US households with more than $5 million rose from 930,000 in 2005. In 1996, just 250,000 households were “super-rich.” Meanwhile, the number of Americans living below the poverty line reached a 10-year high in 2005, the latest year for which numbers are available, with 37 million Americans considered impoverished.
The Federal Reserve Monopoly over Money
Wednesday, 11 April 2007 2:42 P GMT-05
Recently I had the opportunity to question Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke when he appeared before the congressional Joint Economic committee. The topic that morning was the state of the American economy, and many of my colleagues raised questions about how the Fed might better "regulate" things to ease fears of an economic downturn. The tenor of my colleagues' questions suggested that Mr. Bernanke's job is nothing less than to run the U.S. economy, like some kind of Soviet central planner. Certainly it’s true that Mr. Bernanke can drastically affect the economy at the drop of a hat, simply by making decisions about the money supply and interest rates. But why do members of Congress assume this is good? Why do we accept without objection that a small group of people on the Federal Reserve Board wields so much power over our economic well-being? Is centralized, monopoly control over our money even compatible with a supposedly free-market economy?
Tom Toles: Why Aren't Workers Impressed?
Saturday, 7 April 2007 5:14 P GMT-05
The future looks very bleak
Friday, 6 April 2007 11:00 P GMT-05
The crash of the US economy has begun. Although the reasons for the now-accelerating economic fiasco have been in place for decades, the chickens are only now coming home to roost. The murder weapons used to kill the economy are "free trade," outsourcing, illegal immigration, special work visa programs, and unrestrained government spending, which have all contributed to the death of what was just a few decades ago the economic powerhouse of the world.
Ever felt your job was a bit impersonal?
Friday, 6 April 2007 3:03 A GMT-05
For the 1,600 employees of the Broad Ltd air-conditioning factory in Changsha, every day begins in this regimental fashion as they prepare for the morning roll call. Once names have been checked, their voices lift together, echoing around the machinery in the vast warehouse as they sing the company's anthem: "I love the summer and I'm full of energy. I love our customers and I'm making them richer. I love China it's getting stronger and wealthier by the day."
Report: 1 in 3 employees thinking of leaving
Wednesday, 4 April 2007 3:34 P GMT-05
In surveying more than 65 organizations and 50,000 employees over the last few years, Discovery Surveys Inc., a Sharon consulting firm, has concluded that one out of three employees are seriously thinking about leaving their employers.
More companies eliminate executive perks
Friday, 30 March 2007 7:53 P GMT-05
With the arrival of new federal rules requiring greater pay disclosure, more companies are eliminating executive perquisites, from country club fees to Book of the Month Club memberships. In the past, the largest perk packages added hundreds of thousands of dollars to executives' total pay. Now, recent regulatory filings show that companies including Fannie Mae and Sunoco Inc. are cutting back.
Chain says 45 million credit-card numbers, other info stolen
Friday, 30 March 2007 6:13 P GMT-05
The theft by hackers of data from at least 45.7 million credit and debit cards of shoppers at nearly 2,500 discount retailers owned by conglomerate TJX, including Marshalls and TJ Maxx, is believed to be the largest such breach of consumer information ever reported.
Ron Paul: The Tip of the Spear
Friday, 30 March 2007 4:47 P GMT-05
Ron Paul is a civil constitutionalist. He supports the same ideals of peaceful, non-intervention in foreign policy and for the same reasons as did our founding fathers.
A tale of two cases in US "war on terror": Jose Padilla and Chiquita Brands
Friday, 30 March 2007 3:07 A GMT-05
The defendants in this second case are part of a major multinational operation and admit to funneling millions of dollars abroad to finance a murderous terrorist organization. Yet they were allowed to reach a pre-trial plea bargain that included as the penalty a fine amounting to 0.55 percent of their annual revenue. The organization that financed the foreign terrorists has boasted publicly that its global operations have not been affected in the slightest. What is to account for this apparently gross disparity? The answer is simple. In the first case, the defendant was Jose Padilla, born in Brooklyn and raised in a Chicago ghetto before converting to Islam in prison. In the second, the defendants are multimillionaire executives of a multibillion-dollar US-based transnational corporation with a long history of political influence and a prominent role in US foreign policy—Chiquita Brands International, Inc.
Forget Big Tobacco, Big Food Kills
Thursday, 29 March 2007 3:18 P GMT-05
Just as surely as the tobacco industry tried for years—and succeeded—in hooking young kids on its deadly weed, the food industry is spending billions to advertise products that will make the next generation look and live like its porky parents: overweight, and at great risk of debilitating disease and early deaths linked to obesity.
Economy grows at 2.5 percent pace in 4Q
Thursday, 29 March 2007 3:11 P GMT-05
The economy grew at a 2.5 percent pace in the final quarter of last year, healthier than previously thought but still largely caught up in a spell of sluggishness.
Fidelity phasing out its traditional pensions
Thursday, 29 March 2007 1:27 P GMT-05
Fidelity spokeswoman Anne Crowley said the company is taking the steps after internal surveys showed 71 percent of its employees didn't know how they would pay for healthcare in retirement. She said the company's pension plan is currently fully funded to meet its current obligations and said Fidelity thinks the new benefits will "be an improvement, while many companies are cutting back" on retirement benefits. Many troubled companies have eliminated pensions for new workers and sharply reduced other retirement benefits . But a more recent trend has emerged in which financially healthy companies have frozen pension benefits for current workers, eliminated pension plans for new ones, or both. Around one-third of Fortune 100 companies offer traditional pensions to new employees, down from one-half in 2002 and 89 percent in 1985, according to Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc., an Arlington, Va., consulting firm.
Circuit City to Fire 3,400, Rehire Cheaper Workers
Wednesday, 28 March 2007 6:34 P GMT-05
Circuit City Stores Inc., the second-largest U.S. electronics retailer, will fire 3,400 of its highest-paid sales people and hire replacements willing to work for less.
Young African-American Boys Are In Crisis - And Nation Is Silent
Tuesday, 27 March 2007 6:23 P GMT-05
These are children increasingly raised by a single parent. Too often they are starved from the start — of adequate nutrition, adequate health care, adequate learning stimulants that are vital for young minds. They go to overcrowded schools stocked with inexperienced teachers. In school, they face discrimination in discipline and in being slated for special-ed courses. They are underrepresented in advanced-placement courses that are key for college. Some will overcome these odds and make it out. Most will not. They are headed toward jail, not toward Yale. Williams argues we have to change what we’re doing if we want to offer them any hope. The schools — even the schools that he leads — are failing them. “Their No. 1 problem,” he says, “is that they cannot read. If you can’t read, you cannot succeed.”
Former Fed analyst questions M1 currency component spike prior to 9/11
Tuesday, 27 March 2007 5:56 P GMT-05
Whether inquiring about the unusually high put options placed prior to 9/11 on airline companies such as American and United, or the World Trade Center Complex insurance companies such as Axa, Allianz, along with other insurance companies of interests, put options that then most likely made the insiders billions of dollars as a result of these companies’ stock values plummeting after 9/11, or about an unusual spike in the currency component of the M1 in July / August 2001 that appears to be $5 billion denoted in $100 bills – and what the reader is left with is more evidence that prior knowledge of 9/11 was rampant in the United States and that the event could have been prevented but was instead, enabled and exploited.
America's Great Opportunity Has Arrived
Monday, 26 March 2007 10:23 P GMT-05
How many of you are aware that the Federal Reserve is neither Federal nor does it have any reserves? How many people understand that the Federal Reserve is a private banking cartel that is in control of our money?
On India's Growing Violence: "It's Outright War and Both Sides are Choosing Their Weapons"
Monday, 26 March 2007 2:09 P GMT-05
Why Having More No Longer Makes Us Happy
Friday, 23 March 2007 6:27 A GMT-05
Which means, according to new research emerging from many quarters, that our continued devotion to growth above all is, on balance, making our lives worse, both collectively and individually. Growth no longer makes most people wealthier, but instead generates inequality and insecurity. Growth is bumping up against physical limits so profound -- like climate change and peak oil -- that trying to keep expanding the economy may be not just impossible but also dangerous. And perhaps most surprisingly, growth no longer makes us happier. Given our current dogma, that's as bizarre an idea as proposing that gravity pushes apples skyward. But then, even Newtonian physics eventually shifted to acknowledge Einstein's more complicated universe.
Understanding Empire: Hierarchy, Networks and Clients
Wednesday, 21 March 2007 1:59 P GMT-05
The imperial system is much more complex than what is commonly referred to as the “US Empire”. The US Empire, with its vast network of financial investments, military bases, multi-national corporations and client states, is the single most important component of the global imperial system (1). Nevertheless, it is overly simplistic to overlook the complex hierarchies, networks, follower states and clients that define the contemporary imperial system (2). To understand empire and imperialism today requires us to look at the complex and changing system of imperial stratification.
Rep. John Murtha: Four Costly Years at War
Tuesday, 20 March 2007 10:32 P GMT-05
Over 3,200 of our sons and daughters have lost their lives in Iraq and close to 25,000 have been wounded, to include thousands of traumatic brain injuries and hundreds of limb amputations. The cost of disability benefits as a result of this protracted and intense war will be staggering. A recent report by the Harvard University School of Government put the total cost of providing medical care and disability benefits to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan at $350 to $700 billion. While the U.S. continues to deplete its resources in Iraq, our ground forces in the United States are short on training, equipment and personnel. At the beginning of the Iraq war, 80% of all Army units and almost 100% of active combat units were rated at the highest levels of readiness. Just the opposite exists today. General Peter Schoomaker, Army Chief of Staff, said last week during a hearing on the Hill, "We have a strategy right now that is outstripping the means to execute it." General Cody, the Vice Chief, said that the Army's readiness level is "stark."
Think the Nation's Debt Doesn't Affect You? Think Again
Tuesday, 20 March 2007 6:09 P GMT-05
More alarmingly we now rely on foreigners to finance over 40 percent of this debt with the lion's share coming from the Asian central banks. In FY 2006 the current account trade deficit is on track to set yet another record, on the order of $700 billion. To put this in perspective, billionaire investor Warren Buffet points out that, "15 years ago, the U.S. had no trade deficit with China. Now, it's 200 billion dollars." He says if the country does not change course, the rest of the world could end up owning 15 trillion-dollars worth of the United States. That's equal to the value of all American stock.
Mass. home prices still falling
Tuesday, 20 March 2007 5:39 P GMT-05
According to a report issued by the Massachusetts Association of Realtors, February sales for detached single family homes in the state rose 1.2 percent, from 2,380 in February 2006 to 2,409 in February 2007. The median selling price for a single family home fell 4.1 percent to $325,000 in February, down from $339,000 in February 2006, the realtors group said.
Houses cheaper than cars in Detroit
Monday, 19 March 2007 7:02 P GMT-05
With bidding stalled on some of the least desirable residences in Detroit's collapsing housing market, even the fast-talking auctioneer was feeling the stress. "Folks, the ground underneath the house goes with it. You do know that, right?" he offered. After selling house after house in the Motor City for less than the $29,000 it costs to buy the average new car, the auctioneer tried a new line: "The lumber in the house is worth more than that!"
The Smog of Race War in LA
Monday, 19 March 2007 6:55 P GMT-05
In these graffiti-filled, job-emptied neighborhoods, and in the media, receptivity to simplistic race war rhetoric appears to grow in direct proportion to the speed and intensity with which globalization, migration and economic dislocation remake the City of Angels. The rise of Latino power in LA, most recently displayed in the electoral victory of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in 2005 and last year's 2 million-strong immigrant rights march downtown, has taken place just as the once-powerful African-American community has watched its numbers and influence rapidly dwindle. (LA's 428,000 African-Americans now account for less than 11 percent of the city's population.) In the minds of some African-Americans, Latinos, especially poor immigrants, have replaced white racism as the primary cause of the disappearance of LA's robust black middle class in once-great black suburbs like Compton, built on a foundation of industrial and government jobs and reflected in the election of black officials like Mayor Tom Bradley. Since the end of the Bradley era, after the '92 riots announced that everything and nothing had changed in black LA, many explanations for black displacement have arisen -- some of which cast the ascendant Latino majority in a role formerly reserved for whites who fought the rise of black power.
A Third of U.S. Jobs Pay ‘Low Wages’
Monday, 19 March 2007 6:17 P GMT-05
A new analysis has found that some 44 million American jobs – about one out of every three positions in the United States – pays $11.11 per hour or less.
Keeping Our Demons at Bay
Sunday, 18 March 2007 3:17 A GMT-05
Last year, I began to research and write on the case of Pat Tillman. One of the central characters in the Tillman story was Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, who was the regimental executive officer for 75th Ranger Regiment in Afghanistan in 2004 when Tillman was killed by friendly fire. He was also a key figure in the Pentagon’s attempts to first cover up and then spin the fratricide. Kauzlarich was the officer assigned to conduct a second investigation of the circumstances of Tillman’s death. The first investigation—conducted by Capt. Richard Scott—had found criminal negligence and professional incompetence, so a higher-ranking officer was required by law to follow up in the event that a general court-martial would become necessary. Not surprisingly, no one was charged with either crime, though some minor administrative actions were taken, including reassignments out of the Rangers and “letters of reprimand” for two officers. But that is not what this commentary is about. This is about Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, a Washington Post writer and the power of cultural myths.
Told You So
Saturday, 17 March 2007 7:02 P GMT-05
Greed drives the booms and inflates the bubbles. Insiders usually cash out before the bubble bursts, but those suckers someone said were born every minute are lulled into believing that what goes up keeps going up and never comes down. I long ago gave up the belief that you can save people from themselves.
Guest-Worker Caste System
Saturday, 17 March 2007 6:12 P GMT-05
How can we preserve immigrants' vital contribution to our economy while also preventing their workplace vulnerability from undermining American wages and working conditions? The answer is to strengthen the ability of immigrant workers to demand a better deal at work, claiming the same wages and working conditions that similarly-skilled natives command, and in the process ensuring that employers don't prefer immigrants simply because they are more exploitable. A guest worker program, which permanently isolates a class of workers in a separate and unequal program, cannot do this.
The Richest Year in History
Saturday, 17 March 2007 5:49 P GMT-05
Billionaires have it made.So what's new? What's new is that there are lots more of them and they're a lot richer. The number of billionaires around the world grew by 19 percent since last year, up to 946, with a total net worth increasing by 35 percent to $3.5 trillion, according to a report released by Forbes magazine. That's trillion with a "T."
American Gulag: Petty criminals doing hard time
Saturday, 17 March 2007 5:16 P GMT-05
Somewhere around 10 percent of African American men in their 20s live behind bars. In some states, where a single felony conviction is enough to bar the offender from ever being able to vote again, over one quarter of African American males are disenfranchised. Since 1980, a virtual "prison industrial complex" has arisen, with phenomenal rates of new-prison construction abetted by lucrative construction and prison-guard union lobbies. Several states, including California, spend more on prisons than they do on higher education. Despite dramatically falling crime rates over the last 10 years (which most criminologists attribute more to demography -- there have simply been fewer young men of late), prison populations have continued to soar. As the number of truly heinous crimes has fallen, increasingly it is small- time hoodlums, drug users, and mentally ill people who have been drawing long spells behind bars. America today has five times as many prisoners as it did in 1980.
Illegal Immigrants and the Housing Bubble
Saturday, 17 March 2007 4:12 P GMT-05
The question remains: why all the recent immigration? I believe that the answer lies to a large degree with the housing bubble in the United States. The normal number of housing starts is about one million per year, but housing starts have exceeded one million every year since the early 1990s. The housing bubble appeared in the wake of the bursting of the technology stock bubble and only began to unravel in 2006. Housing starts have already returned to normal levels, but are soon likely to go below normal levels. What does this have to do with illegal immigration? Immigrants, particularly illegal Mexican immigrants, have largely found jobs in industries associated with the housing bubble. Immigrants work at jobs in the construction, landscaping, and road construction industries. Employment in the construction industry alone is currently nearly two million jobs above trend (7.7 versus 5.9 million). Of course many of the illegal immigrants are not even counted in such statistics, but just take a look at residential, landscaping, and road construction sites and you are likely to find many non — English-speaking immigrants.
From Sex Workers to Restaurant Workers, the Global Slave Trade Is Growing
Friday, 16 March 2007 11:19 P GMT-05
The commerce in human beings today rivals drug trafficking and the illegal arms trade for the top criminal activity on the planet. The slave trade sits at number three on the list but is closing the gap. The FBI projects that the slave trade generates $9.5 billion in revenue each year, according to the U.S. Department of State's "2004 Trafficking in Persons Report." The International Labour Office, in the 2005 report "A Global Alliance Against Forced Labor," estimates that figure to be closer to a whopping $32 billion annually.
Indentured Servants in America
Friday, 16 March 2007 7:51 P GMT-05
A favorite (and extremely cruel) tactic of employers is the seizure of guest workers' identity documents, such as passports and Social Security cards. That leaves the workers incredibly vulnerable. 'Numerous employers have refused to return these documents even when the worker simply wanted to return to his home country,' the report said. 'The Southern Poverty Law Center also has encountered numerous incidents where employers destroyed passports or visas in order to convert workers into undocumented status.' Without their papers the workers live in abject fear of encountering the authorities, who will treat them as illegals. They are completely at the mercy of the employers.
Rogers: Real Estate in Certain Areas Will Go Down 40% to 50%
Friday, 16 March 2007 7:27 P GMT-05
"Real estate prices will go down 40-50 percent in bubble areas. There will be massive defaults. This time it'll be worse because we haven't had this kind of speculative buying in U.S. history," Rogers said. "When markets turn from bubble to reality, a lot of people get burned."
Illegal immigrants are here to stay
Friday, 16 March 2007 3:10 P GMT-05
SUPPOSE YOU LEARN that a New England manufacturer is exploiting its employees, many of them illegal immigrants, with wretched working conditions. It fines them for talking on the job, refuses to pay overtime, and penalizes them for bathroom breaks of more than two minutes, all in addition to low wages, long hours, and squalid facilities. What do you do? Well, if you're the United States government, you send armed agents to haul the workers off in shackles to a military base 100 miles away, then fly scores of them more than 2,000 miles to a holding pen in Texas. You provide the frightened detainees with little information and no access to lawyers. You act so rashly that many of those you seize are separated from their children and can't get word to spouses or babysitters. You display such ineptitude, in fact, that babies end up in the hospital, dehydrated, after their nursing mothers are taken away.
Do You Dubai?
Wednesday, 14 March 2007 9:02 P GMT-05
Halliburton is correct to jump ship to Dubai, a place proud of its independence and freedom of trade, as well as money laundering capacities. The UAE aspires to be the Switzerland of the region, and perhaps replace Switzerland entirely in an age where it is oil, weapons, and drugs, not gold, that constrain, or fail to constrain, the paper dollar.
U.S. economy leaving record numbers in severe poverty
Wednesday, 14 March 2007 7:29 P GMT-05
The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years. These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate since at least 1975. The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown "more than any other segment of the population," according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
What's Good for Halliburton is Good for ... Dubai
Wednesday, 14 March 2007 6:44 P GMT-05
We know now that when Dick Cheney makes a foreign policy or war policy decision regarding Iraq or Iran or Saudi Arabia, he is really thinking about what it will do for Halliburton and Dubai--and for Dick Cheney. Remember the big brouhaha that arose when a Dubai-based company was in line to take over the operation of several major U.S. ports last year? Members of Congress were in high dudgeon over that and in the end the plan was abandoned. So how do we feel knowing that virtually the entire supply line for our over-extended troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is now in the hands of a Dubai corporation, and that it has its hooks into the central policy arm of our government, Blair House and the Office of the Vice President?
NAFTA Truck "Safety"
Wednesday, 14 March 2007 2:21 A GMT-05
Meanwhile, as the major media continue to avoid reporting anything substantive regarding this issue, The Trucker, an online news site, gave a report in which Todd Spencer, executive vice president of OOIDA, is quoted as saying that "the pilot plan is ignoring homeland security concerns." Testifying before the Senate, he stated: "It is simply abhorrent to think that our government would allow Mexican trucks full access to U.S. highways before all safety, economic and homeland security concerns are completely and appropriately addressed."
Some troopers' pay exceeds governor's
Sunday, 11 March 2007 3:41 P GMT-05
Nearly 6 in 10 State Police officers who work full time at Logan International Airport or on the Massachusetts Turnpike made more last year than either the governor, the state attorney general, or the Suffolk district attorney.
Are US Farm Subsidies Causing Global Starvation?
Friday, 9 March 2007 9:05 P GMT-05
There are roughly 30,000 cotton growers in America who receive billions of our US tax dollars every year through government subsidies. Critics charge this generous financial support may be ruining the livelihoods of tens of millions of cotton growers in the poorest parts of the world. On Friday, March 9, at 8:30 p.m., NOW looks at the tragic global consequences of our subsidies, and at a new farm proposal - supported by President Bush - which seeks to rein in the assistance.
We’ll Lock Up Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses Yearning to Breathe Free
Friday, 9 March 2007 6:21 P GMT-05
This shameful practice of locking up children is bad enough. What’s worse is that it is being done for profit, by the Corrections Corp. of America. CCA is the largest publicly traded private prison operator in the U.S. CCA has close to 70 facilities scattered across the country, recent earnings of $1.33 billion and a gain in its stock-share price of 85 percent in the past year. Industry analysts gush at the profit potential promised by private prisons. Their commodity: human beings.
The Dire Strait
Thursday, 8 March 2007 6:28 P GMT-05
The most valuable piece of real estate in the world is not to be found in New York, London or Tokyo. The world's most valuable real estate is comprised of two imaginary boxes. These boxes are two miles wide and twenty five miles long. They are the international shipping lanes at the apex of the Strait of Hormuz. Each day, tankers carrying 16 million barrels of oil worth $800 million pass through these boxes. If oil is the blood supply of the industrial economy, the Strait of Hormuz is the jugular. In any conflict between the US and Iran, control of those shipping lanes will instantly become the focus of the entire conflict. The main job of the US Navy would be to ensure the Strait remains open. That implies pre-emptive action against any Iranian facility or emplacement capable of launching anti-ship missiles against targets in the area of the Strait.
Without Health Benefits, a Good Life Turns Fragile
Wednesday, 7 March 2007 7:43 P GMT-05
Ms. Readling, a 50-year-old real estate agent, is one of nearly 47 million people in America with no health insurance. Increasingly, the problem affects middle-class people like Ms. Readling, who said she made about $60,000 last year. As an independent contractor, like many real estate agents, Ms. Readling does not receive health benefits from an employer. She tried to buy a policy in the individual insurance market, but — having had cancer — could not obtain coverage, except at a price exceeding $27,000 a year, which was more than she could pay. “I don’t know which was worse, being told that I had cancer or finding that I could not get insurance,” Ms. Readling (pronounced RED-ling) said in an interview in her office, near the tree-lined streets and stately old homes of this city in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. It is well known that the ranks of the uninsured have been swelling; federal figures show an increase of 6.8 million since 2000. But the surprise is that the uninsured are not necessarily the poor, the unemployed and the undocumented. Solidly middle-class people like Ms. Readling are one of the fastest growing subgroups.
Children stranded after immigration raid
Wednesday, 7 March 2007 6:47 P GMT-05
About two-thirds of Michael Bianco Inc.'s 500 employees, mostly women, were detained Tuesday by immigration officials for possible deportation as illegal aliens. As a result, many children weren't picked up from day care or school. Corinn Williams, director of the Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts, estimated about 100 children were left with baby sitters or caretakers. "We're continuing to get stories today about infants that were left behind," she said Wednesday. "It's been a widespread humanitarian crisis here in New Bedford."
Killing To Make A Sale
Tuesday, 6 March 2007 5:56 P GMT-05
On Jan. 10, a neurosurgeon from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio "induced a brain aneurysm in a dog to demonstrate a medical device ... to a group of 20 to 25 salespeople," according to the Associated Press. The dog was later euthanized. This was non-research, purely commercial activity, intended to help eager salespeople pitch their wares, and banned by the clinic's own rules. The incident outraged animal activists, who on Feb. 17 picketed the San Jose, Calif. headquarters of Micrus Endovascular Corp., which arranged the training.
Two oil giants plunge into the wind business
Friday, 2 March 2007 4:08 P GMT-05
Two of the world's leading oil producers have almost overnight joined some of the biggest players in wind power in the United States, accelerating a trend of large corporations investing in the rapidly growing alternative-energy field. As global warming and clean fuels have gained more attention, Shell Oil Co. and BP have accumulated impressive credentials. Shell is one of the nation's top five generators of wind power, while BP's Alternative Energy group -- launched 16 months ago -- aims to develop projects that produce 550 megawatts of electricity this year, one-sixth of the projected US wind energy output in 2007.
Official count: 754,000 believed homeless in U.S.
Friday, 2 March 2007 3:28 P GMT-05
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimated there were 754,000 homeless people in 2005, including those living in shelters, transitional housing and on the street. That's about 300,000 more people than available beds in shelters and transitional housing. The report is the government's latest attempt to count people who are notoriously difficult to track. The estimate is similar to one by an advocacy group in January.
Privatizing the Police Puts Us at Greater Risk
Wednesday, 28 February 2007 5:07 P GMT-05
They wear uniforms, carry weapons and drive lighted patrol cars on private properties like banks and apartment complexes and in public areas like bus stations and national monuments. Sometimes they operate as ordinary citizens and can only make citizen's arrests, but in more and more states they're being granted official police powers. This trend should greatly concern citizens. Law enforcement should be a government function, and privatizing it puts us all at risk.
Bush: Keeping working families poor and disempowered is more important than protecting them ...
Wednesday, 28 February 2007 4:59 P GMT-05
You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a better illustration of the administration's real priorities. Of course, this is part of a pattern of using security issues and "emergency powers" as excuses for naked union-busting. Remember that Reagan called the air-traffic controllers' strike a "peril to national safety" before breaking it (and the union's back). And let's not forget Bush's suspension of the David-Bacon Act while New Orleans was drowning.
‘Independent’ Cabbies Fight for Union Rights
Tuesday, 27 February 2007 8:31 P GMT-05
Although the National Labor Relations Board ruled in 2004 that drivers working for the Friendly Cab Company should be recognized as direct employees, the company is appealing the decision and continues to treat them as "independent contractors." The fight over cab-driver classification in Oakland reflects challenges faced by cab drivers throughout the United States. The cab drivers dispute the classification because their employer controls several aspects of their work but refuses to provide the typical benefits that an employee would get. The cabbies also say Friendly Cab’s appeal of the Board ruling is preventing them from pushing for safer cars and better pay through their union. Because the company is still refusing to recognize them as employees, cab drivers are unable to collectively bargain over their working conditions.
Record number in U.S. relying on public aid
Tuesday, 27 February 2007 7:42 A GMT-05
"If the goal of welfare reform was to get people off the welfare rolls, bravo," said Vivyan Adair, a former welfare recipient who is an assistant professor of women's studies at Hamilton College in upstate New York. "If the goal was to reduce poverty and give people economic and job stability, it was not a success."
Candidates Who Shun Corporate Cash Are Winning
Monday, 26 February 2007 2:07 P GMT-05
The clean-elections approach is not just starry-eyed theory. CE got its first toehold in Maine in the mid-1990s, when people there became aware that corporate lobbyists were effectively running (and ruining) their legislature. A tipping point was when lobbyists for greedheaded trucking corporations squirreled a popular public-safety bill that contained new rest requirements intended to prevent tired, overworked truck drivers from causing crashes. Mainers were outraged that legislators would kow-tow to avaricious industry lobbyists at such deadly public expense.
Once-mocked Netflix rents 1 billionth DVD
Monday, 26 February 2007 1:32 P GMT-05
It took Netflix nearly 7.5 years to mail out 1 billion DVDs, about seven months less than it took McDonald's Corp. to sell 1 billion hamburgers after opening its first restaurant in April 1955.
Employers Asked to Cough Up Paid Sick Days
Thursday, 22 February 2007 5:55 P GMT-05
About 59 million workers nationwide do not have paid sick days, according to a 2004 analysis by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. That means that like Wolfram, they go to work sick, coughing, nauseous and miserable – and often contagious. Eighty-six million workers cannot take a paid day off to care for a sick child or other family member, and must scramble to find friends or relatives to step in. Some people are simply forced to take off work without pay and risk being disciplined or losing their jobs.
Maybe We Deserve to Be Ripped Off By Bush's Billionaires
Wednesday, 21 February 2007 9:07 P GMT-05
On the same day that Britney was shaving her head, a guy I know who works in the office of Senator Bernie Sanders sent me an email. He was trying very hard to get news organizations interested in some research his office had done about George Bush's proposed 2008 budget, which was unveiled two weeks ago and received relatively little press, mainly because of the controversy over the Iraq war resolution. All the same, the Bush budget is an amazing document. It would be hard to imagine a document that more clearly articulates the priorities of our current political elite.
Corporate Globalization Kills
Tuesday, 20 February 2007 8:25 P GMT-05
Globalization is a battering ram for Western corporations. And even when the consequences are literally life or death, companies are eager to utilize the World Trade Organization for their limitless hunger for profits. Take a pending court case in India. It has the potential to adversely affect the health of not only the more than 1 billion Indian citizens but of patients throughout the developing world.
To Restore Democracy : First Abolish Corporate Personhood
Sunday, 18 February 2007 7:25 P GMT-05
But the first step, as always, is awakening people to the root cause of the problems we face - the use of corporate personhood by a handful of the world’s largest enterprises to insinuate themselves into governments and seize control of legislative and regulatory agendas. As enough voters learn the history and realize the consequences of this, the solution - ending corporate personhood - will become more and more possible, and Paine’s and Jefferson’s original idea of democracy representing “we, the people” will come back to life.
Rejoinder to Prof. Perlstein on Legalizing Drugs in New Orleans
Saturday, 17 February 2007 8:44 P GMT-05
It was once said of Israel that there was a perfect match between a people without land, and a land without people. To discuss that point would take us way too far afield. But no words could more accurately describe addicts in the U.S., and indeed in the entire world, on the one hand, and the territory of what used to be New Orleans. Perlstein may not appreciate this, but there are acres and acres, no, square mile after square mile, of empty abandoned houses just waiting for people to repair and occupy them. We are in desperate need of new occupants, who would be willing to work, and this describes to a "T" drug addicts no longer in thrall to exorbitant black market drug prices.
Govt. loan agency lacked Katrina plan; no disaster plan yet
Friday, 16 February 2007 5:08 P GMT-05
Months before Hurricane Katrina, the Small Business Administration deliberately shunned disaster planning that would have sped aid to thousands of companies, according to the Government Accountability Office. A new report details the short-staffing and disarray that led to a backlog of tens of thousands of loan applications. The SBA has yet to clearly plan for another major disaster. The agency has approved just 160,000 of 422,000 victims' applications, forcing many into local loans with higher interest.
US prison population to add 200,000 convicts by 2011: study
Thursday, 15 February 2007 4:35 P GMT-05
The US prison population ballooned eight-fold between 1970 and 2005 and will grow by an additional 192,000 convicts by 2011, according to a new study. The report by the Pew Charitable Trusts said one in 178 US residents will live in prison by 2011 and the increase could cost American taxpayers another 27.5 billion dollars over the next five years in jail spending.
U.S. one of worst places for kids
Thursday, 15 February 2007 4:33 P GMT-05
The United States and Britain ranked at the bottom of a UN survey of child welfare in 21 wealthy countries that assessed everything from infant mortality to whether children ate dinner with their parents. The Netherlands, followed by Sweden, Denmark and Finland, finished at the top; the United States was 20th, and Britain was 21st, the report released Wednesday by UNICEF said.
Foreclosures rip neighborhoods
Thursday, 15 February 2007 4:28 P GMT-05
Foreclosures in Denver since 2003 will log a fivefold increase by the end of the year, a trend that is tearing apart neighborhoods throughout the city. A new city-funded report that tracked the swelling number of foreclosed homes found that once a neighborhood has several foreclosures, it quickly multiplies. That's just the start of the problems, which now are threatening the social and physical fabric of entire neighborhoods.
UMass-Amherst may cost $17,399
Thursday, 15 February 2007 4:08 P GMT-05
The price tag for one school year at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst could rise to $17,399 next fall, a 32 percent increase from four years ago. The UMass Board of Trustees is expected to approve the increase -- which includes tuition, fees, and room and board charges -- at its quarterly meeting next month. Yesterday, the board's finance committee endorsed increases for all five campuses.
The Federal Ripoff
Tuesday, 13 February 2007 7:03 P GMT-05
At the root of most of our problems in the United States is this fact: the people don’t understand what is going on with the government. Obscured by political mythology, the truth that big government and big business dance together at the expense of our liberty and property weighs on few minds. Nothing will be done to eliminate corporate welfare until large numbers of people comprehend the reality that public officials use government to grant favors to businesses that lick their boots. With this whistle-blowing book, Tim Carney has hastened the arrival of that day.
Squandering billions in Iraq while U.S. suffers
Monday, 12 February 2007 5:52 P GMT-05
Our minds boggled last week at U.S. government estimates that President George W. Bush’s so-called “war on terror” (including Afghanistan and Iraq) will cost at least $690 billion US by next year. That’s more than the total cost of World War I, Korea, or Vietnam, and second only to World War II’s $2 trillion. This means that by 2008, Bush’s wars in the Muslim world will have cost each American man, woman and child $2,300.
Rep. grills ex-US leader in Iraq: Where did 363 tons of cash go?
Wednesday, 7 February 2007 2:39 P GMT-05
Over $4 billion in cash, which came from Iraqi oil exports and other sources, was sent by the Federal Reserve to Baghdad on pallets aboard U.S. military planes just before government control was given back to the Iraqis, Reuters says. The bills reportedly weighed hundreds of tons.
The Project for the New American Disaster
Tuesday, 6 February 2007 9:02 A GMT-05
Increase defense spending? The United States spends billions more on "defense" than is needed to defend her borders. The United States is protected both to the east and west by vast oceans and has non-hostile neighbors to the north and south. No nation in the world could seriously contemplate an invasion of U.S. borders as a matter of foreign policy. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were not a militaristic act of a hostile state but a brutal terrorist attack of a privately funded, fringe group of radicals scorned and feared by many of the Middle Eastern nations. It was not an invasion. It was not a state-sponsored act of war. What PNAC actually means is: increase "military spending for offense" and for the benefit of the military industrial complex in order to serve aggressive pursuit of a bigger empire.
The Welfare State: Shredding Society
Tuesday, 6 February 2007 5:40 A GMT-05
The welfare state has also created an incentive for people to have a higher rate of time preference. Unemployment insurance and welfare benefits reduce the necessity of people to save. This results in a change in the habits and outlook of people. Compounding this mindset is the Federal Reserve’s inflationary monetary policy and artificially reduced interest rates, incentivizing the "I want it now" mentality that has resulted in America’s culture of debt.
From Afghanistan to Iraq: Connecting the Dots with Oil
Monday, 5 February 2007 6:36 P GMT-05
The long-held suspicions about George Bush's wars are well-placed. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not prompted by the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. They were not waged to spread democracy in the Middle East or enhance security at home. They were conceived and planned in secret long before September 11, 2001 and they were undertaken to control petroleum resources.
Democrats in Congress set sights on unpaid taxes
Monday, 5 February 2007 4:18 P GMT-05
According to an article in Monday's New York Times, Democrats in Congress are "hoping to finance an ambitious agenda without raising taxes" by collecting part of the $300 billion estimated to be lost every year due to unreported earnings. However, a struggle is shaping up between the Democrats, who rely on IRS statements that it would be easy to collect an additional $50 to $100 billion a year, and the Bush administration, which believes that no more than $10 billion could realistically be gained by tightening up on tax cheats.
Fewer jobs added; jobless rate climbs
Friday, 2 February 2007 4:14 P GMT-05
The nation's unemployment rate climbed to a four-month high of 4.6 percent as somewhat wary employers added fewer new jobs in January. Wage gains were more modest.
Bush adds limited funding for 9/11 victims to federal budget
Wednesday, 31 January 2007 8:23 P GMT-05
New York Rep. Vito Fossella, a Republican, said the administration next week will propose spending at least $25 million more to fund a Sept. 11-related health care program at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan and a related effort for New York firefighters. "It's a breakthrough," said Fossella. "For the first time in the federal budget there will be a down payment to provide for funding for continued treatment and monitoring for 9/11 responders who need our help."
Homelessness Mounting Among Kids, Families
Monday, 29 January 2007 5:07 P GMT-05
Children and families are the fastest growing segments of the homeless population, according to advocates, who say this serious social problem driven by poverty and a scarcity of affordable housing is not widely recognized by the public.
Annie Nelson on the ‘Fuel That Doesn’t Kill Us’
Monday, 29 January 2007 4:04 P GMT-05
Truthdig: So ... you can actually drive on recycled cooking oil? Nelson: Yes, the diesel engine was designed to run on peanut and hemp oil, not petroleum. But then again Rudolf Diesel disappeared over the Atlantic. It never was intended to run on petroleum, and in fact I think an interesting connection is if you go—if you check out the Prohibition era, when the government was going after stills that were on farms and such, a lot of those stills were producing ethanol and biodiesel for—mainly ethanol—for farm production, for their machinery. That’s what happened. There were so many people involved in it, in that whole deal, that Prohibition was probably a whole lot less about alcohol and a whole lot more about killing the renewable energy possibilities. Obviously the petroleum companies were behind it.
Childhood poverty comes at great cost to U.S. economy
Saturday, 27 January 2007 7:52 P GMT-05
Children who grow up poor in the United States cost the economy $500 billion a year because they are less productive, earn less money, commit more crimes and have more health-related expenses, according to a new study.
The Living Reality of Military-Economic Fascism
Saturday, 27 January 2007 5:17 P GMT-05
In countries such as the United States, whose economies are commonly, though inaccurately, described as "capitalist" or "free-market," war and preparation for war systematically corrupt both parties to the state-private transactions by which the government obtains the bulk of its military goods and services.
The Forgotten American Dead: Rural America Pays the President's Price in Iraq
Saturday, 27 January 2007 3:45 P GMT-05
What does this mean? Just over 3,000 Americans have died in Iraq. If the U.S. population is 300 million, then that's just 0.001% of it. Add into this the fact that the American dead come disproportionately from the most forgotten, least attended to parts of our country, from places that often have lost their job bases; consider that many of them were under or unemployed as well as undereducated, that they generally come from struggling, low-income, low-skills areas. Given that we have an all-volunteer military (so that not even the threat of a draft touches other young Americans), you could certainly say that the President's war in Iraq -- and its harm -- has been disproportionately felt. If you live in a rural area, you are simply far more likely to know a casualty of the war than in most major metropolitan areas of the country.
Girl, 6, Embodies Cambodia's Sex Industry
Saturday, 27 January 2007 11:09 A GMT-05
The precise scale of Cambodia's sex trade is difficult to quantify. International organizations - such as UNICEF, ECPAT and Save the Children - say that anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 women and children are involved. An estimated 30 percent of the sex workers in Phnom Penh are under the age of 18, according to the United Nations. The actual figure may be much higher, activists say.
Wal-Mart to pay $33M for OT violations
Thursday, 25 January 2007 5:49 P GMT-05
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will pay more than $33 million in back wages to thousands of employees after turning itself in to the Labor Department for paying too little in overtime, according to an agreement announced Thursday by the U.S. Labor Department. Wal-Mart said the department's review of its overtime calculations also found it had overpaid about 215,000 hourly workers during the last five years. The company said it will not seek to recover any overpayments.
State housing slump deepens
Thursday, 25 January 2007 5:44 P GMT-05
The number of single-family homes sold in Massachusetts fell 16.6 percent in December from December 2005 and the median selling price declined 5.4 percent to $335,000 as the slowdown in the state's housing market continued.
The Empire Turns Its Guns on the Citizenry
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 4:59 P GMT-05
Surveying the deplorable situation, the National Law Journal concluded: "Criminals have been turned into instruments of law enforcement, while law enforcement officers have become criminal co-conspirators."
Minimum Wage Rises, Sky Does Not Fall
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 1:10 A GMT-05
A visit to Washington state, which has the highest minimum wage in the country, reveals a booming economy with none of the problems Big Business had been warning about.
Travel to U.S. off 17 pct since 9/11
Wednesday, 24 January 2007 12:28 A GMT-05
Since the September 11 attacks, the United States has tightened security measures and toughened its visa and entry requirements. As a result, the country was ranked as the world's most unfriendly to visitors in a survey conducted last year of travelers from 16 nations. "Our economic security is suffering from a drastic decline in overseas travelers and we are missing an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen America's image around the globe," said Stevan Porter, president of Intercontinental Hotels Group and chairman of the association's Discover America Partnership. "We are in the midst of a travel crisis."
Mass. home sales slump continues
Monday, 22 January 2007 6:21 P GMT-05
Massachusetts single-family housing sales had their worst December since 1991, and the median sale price for a single family home fell 8.1 percent to $310,000 in December 2006. The December median sale price is the lowest monthly figure since March 2004.
We want tortillas, we don't bread
Sunday, 21 January 2007 9:07 A GMT-05
One speaker called for the immediate resignation of the secretary of the economy because prices for many daily needs—corn, eggs, diesel, gasoline--are rising. Demonstrations are happening across the country every day. The PRD is organizing a big protest on February 1. “We are demanding the fall of prices or the fall of Calderón,” said one PRD speaker. “We are demanding food sovereignty. We are not going to eat at McDonald’s or eat the crappy tortillas that Wal-Mart sells.”
Globalization in Retreat?
Thursday, 18 January 2007 9:54 P GMT-05
But now Sebastian Mallaby, the influential pro-globalization commentator of the Washington Post, complains that "trade liberalization has stalled, aid is less coherent than it should be, and the next financial conflagration will be managed by an injured fireman." In fact, the situation is worse than he describes. The IMF is practically defunct. Knowing how the Fund precipitated and worsened the Asian financial crisis, more and more of the advanced developing countries are refusing to borrow from it or are paying ahead of schedule, with some declaring their intention never to borrow again. These include Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, and Argentina. Since the Fund's budget greatly depends on debt repayments from these big borrowers, this boycott is translating into what one expert describes as "a huge squeeze on the budget of the organization."
Foreclosures Up 35% from '05 - '06; Subprime to Blame
Thursday, 18 January 2007 5:29 P GMT-05
Jumping the Loan Shark
Thursday, 18 January 2007 1:39 A GMT-05
According to U.S. Census data, the average college graduate earns about $1 million more over his lifetime than the average high school graduate. That's a pretty good payoff for the investment in tuition, whether the money is borrowed at the rate promised by the Democrats (3.4 percent), at the current government-subsidized rate (6.8 percent), or even at the market rate (now ranging between 7 percent and 11 percent). Advocates of increased aid worry that the average college student carries a debt of almost $18,000 when he graduates. But owing the cost of a Hyundai Sonata for a loan that yields an extra $20,000 or so in earnings every year does not seem like a bad deal. It's certainly a better investment than the Hyundai.
I hate to say Bush is right about anything, but ...
Wednesday, 17 January 2007 10:20 A GMT-05
And it is not just US corporations any more. The US government is now captive to multinational corporations who seek to use US military power to enhance their dominance of the world economy. So here we are, holding the bag for these folks who could not care less what happens to the US citizenry. They have mobile capital, while we are stuck here in the "homeland." They can run, while we have to stay and accept the consequences of their actions. If the US becomes inhospitable due to retaliation by the rest of the world, these corporate criminals will just move somewhere else and buy assets in currencies other than the US dollar. In fact, evidence indicates that this is already happening.
Bush Breaks 150-Year History of Higher US Taxes in Wartime
Wednesday, 17 January 2007 7:13 A GMT-05
It was once considered Americans' patriotic duty: enduring extraordinary tax increases in wartime to help finance the fight.
Not today. Iraq is the only major U.S. conflict, except for the 1846-48 Mexican-American War, in which citizens haven't been asked to make a special financial sacrifice. President George W. Bush opposes tax increases, even as the costs escalate far beyond predictions and he calls for more troops.
Medicare for All: The Only Sound Solution to Our Healthcare Crisis
Tuesday, 16 January 2007 6:17 P GMT-05
To add substance to these observations, consider the following: Not only are 47 million Americans uninsured (approximately 18.5 percent of the insurable market), 41 percent of Americans with incomes of $20,000 to $40,000 did not have health insurance for at least part of 2005, up from 28 percent in 2001; 53 percent with incomes under $20,000 lack health insurance. The number of people without health insurance rose 16.6 percent from 2001 to 2005; average health insurance premiums for a family of four are $10,880, which exceeds the annual gross income of $10,712 for a full-time, minimum-wage worker; lack of insurance causes 18,000 excess deaths a year; people without health insurance have 25 percent higher mortality rates; and, 59 percent of uninsured people with chronic conditions such as asthma or diabetes skip medicine or go without care.
U.S. investors send their cash packing
Tuesday, 16 January 2007 3:38 P GMT-05
Lured by red-hot gains in foreign markets, investors poured money into international stock mutual funds at a record-shattering pace in 2006. Investors flooded international stock funds with an estimated $150 billion last year, according to TrimTabs.com, which tracks flows of money into and out of mutual funds. An estimated $180 billion flowed into stock funds of all types.
The Pentagon as an Energy-Protection Racket
Tuesday, 16 January 2007 12:01 A GMT-05
Powerful, potentially planet-altering trends like this do not occur in a vacuum. The rise of Energo-fascism can be traced to two overarching phenomena: an imminent collision between energy demand and energy supplies, and the historic migration of the center of gravity of planetary energy output from the global north to the global south.
Euro displaces dollar in bond markets
Monday, 15 January 2007 9:15 P GMT-05
The data consolidate news last month that the value of euro notes in circulation had overtaken the dollar for the first time. Outstanding debt issued in the euro was worth the equivalent of $4,836bn at the end of 2006 compared with $3,892bn for the dollar, according to International Capital Market Association data.
Why the US Is Not Leaving Iraq: The Booming Business of War Profiteers
Monday, 15 January 2007 6:48 P GMT-05
The Pentagon contractors are both as a major driving force to the war on Iraq and a major obstacle to the withdrawal of US led forces. The rise of the fortunes of the major Pentagon contractors can be measured, in part, by the growth of the Pentagon budget since President George W. Bush arrived in the White House: it has grown by more than 50 percent, from nearly $300 billion in 2001 to almost $455 billion in 2007. (These figures do not include the Homeland Security budget, which is $33 billion for the 2007 fiscal year alone, and the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are fast approaching $400 billion.) Large Pentagon contractors have been the main beneficiaries of this windfall. For example, a 2004 study by The Center for Public Integrity revealed that, for the 1998–2003 period, one percent of the biggest contractors won 80 percent of all defense contracting dollars. The top ten got 38 percent of all the money. Lockheed Martin topped the list at $94 billion, Boeing was second with $81 billion, Raytheon was third (just under $40 billion), followed by Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics with nearly $34 billion each.
Man aims to become licensed hemp farmer
Monday, 15 January 2007 6:41 P GMT-05
Last month, the state Agriculture Department finished its work on rules farmers may use to grow industrial hemp, a cousin of marijuana that does not have the drug's hallucinogenic properties. The sturdy, fibrous plant is used to make an assortment of products, ranging from paper, rope and lotions to car panels, carpet backing and animal bedding. Applicants must provide latitude and longitude coordinates for their proposed hemp fields, furnish fingerprints and pay at least $202 in fees, including $37 to cover the cost of criminal record checks.
Patrick proposes new fee on criminals
Monday, 15 January 2007 4:23 A GMT-05
Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, which represents inmates, said about 85 percent of convicted criminals in Massachusetts earn less than $11,000 a year at the time of their convictions. In prison, only about 10 percent of inmates work, earning $1.50 a day. "While this may sound logical initially," Walker said of the proposed fee, "most defendants are indigent and are already assessed a number of fees. Those who are sent to prison have to pay to see doctors, and get haircuts, and who ends up paying? Their families."
War on Iraq: Tax the Rich, End the War
Saturday, 13 January 2007 8:38 P GMT-05
The Democrats can tax our way out of the war. This would be a Victory Over Terror tax to be levied on incomes of $5 million a year or more. It should be a surcharge of 20 percent over and above what people in that rarified income bracket are already paying. It should be levied on all income, regardless of what form it takes, so it would include stock options, jet plane rides, company-paid-for health and life insurance, retirement programs, golden parachutes, the use of apartments in Paris, cars and drivers.
Ten Ways to Make Hollywood Hate Your Cinematic Masterpiece
Saturday, 13 January 2007 8:34 P GMT-05
But as J. Hoberman wrote in the Village Voice last month, Universal has done everything it can to bury its treasure, treating the movie "like a communicable disease." Dumped in limited release on Christmas Day and finally released wide this past weekend to just 1,200 theaters, "Children of Men" still managed to come in third, after "Night at the Museum" and "The Pursuit of Happyness." It has also been included on several critics' top-10 lists, and is currently ranked number one on the New York Times' viewing poll.
Sticking it to low-skilled workers
Saturday, 13 January 2007 7:00 P GMT-05
Legal wage minimums kill all kinds of entry-level jobs, particularly those that would teach young people basic work habits and the benefits of effort. That's why there are no kids cleaning your windows at gas stations or working as ushers at movie theaters. Those jobs are extinct now because they are worth less than the legislated minimum. Who is helped by that?
Three New Deals: Why the Nazis and Fascists Loved FDR
Saturday, 13 January 2007 6:43 P GMT-05
Critics of Roosevelt's New Deal often liken it to fascism. Roosevelt's numerous defenders dismiss this charge as reactionary propaganda; but as Wolfgang Schivelbusch makes clear, it is perfectly true. Moreover, it was recognized to be true during the 1930s, by the New Deal's supporters as well as its opponents.
The Minimum Wage is Just the Minimum: A Call for Moral Outrage
Saturday, 13 January 2007 4:16 P GMT-05
While we’re on the subject, we should be outraged that Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli is getting paid $210 million dollars to not work, money that could be going Home Depot’s workers, some of whom start with hourly salaries around $7.25 an hour. By the way, in 2005, Nardelli received $37,862,312 in total compensation, which works out to about $18,203.03 an hour. Nardelli is cashing in on Home Depot while many of his employees can’t even afford to have a home. Where is our outrage? The list goes on. There were more than 10.2 million cosmetic surgery procedures performed in the United States in 2005---including 324,000 liposuctions, 298,000 nose jobs and 291,000 breast enhancements. In all, wealthy Americans spent over $8.4 billion dollars on plastic surgery last year while over 46 million Americans didn’t even have health insurance and millions more struggled to pay rising premiums. Where is our outrage?
Conspiracy theories
Friday, 12 January 2007 5:21 P GMT-05
There is money to be made by putting down men in the name of empowering women. As long as it is entertaining to see a pretty woman kicking a man in the balls, or appealing to a frustrated female ego to see a man dominated (and many times I've heard this leveled criticism with the genders reversed), it will be a staple of the entertainment and advertising industries. Portraying women as the perpetual victims of dominating men will always appeal to chivalry in men and the empathy of women. These are long term, and positive, characteristics of our society. (BTW, how often do we think in terms of women being chivalrous or men being empathic?) We don't need any consipracy theory. We don't need to hypothesize the existence of a conscious, controlling force driving this.
Jury: Punitive damages in Katrina case
Thursday, 11 January 2007 9:39 P GMT-05
A jury on Thursday awarded $2.5 million in punitive damages to a couple who sued State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. for denying their claim after Hurricane Katrina, a decision that could benefit hundreds of other homeowners challenging insurers for refusing to cover billion of dollars in storm damage.
Study: 744,000 Are Homeless in US
Thursday, 11 January 2007 7:14 P GMT-05
Nevada had the highest share of its population homeless, about 0.68 percent. It was followed by Rhode Island, Colorado, California and Hawaii.
Paper: 'Blood and oil; How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches'
Wednesday, 10 January 2007 11:42 P GMT-05
"Supporters say the provision allowing oil companies to take up to 75 per cent of the profits will last until they have recouped initial drilling costs," the article continues. "After that, they would collect about 20 per cent of all profits, according to industry sources in Iraq. But that is twice the industry average for such deals."
Filling up on Sweetened Research
Wednesday, 10 January 2007 9:19 P GMT-05
In his 1996 book "Smokescreen," former New York Times science reporter Philip Hilts wrote about how the tobacco industry manipulated research and attacked scientific data linking cigarettes to cancer. "We know perfectly well that company executives are not making actual scientific arguments about tobacco and disease," Hilts wrote. "They are simply making any arguments that might raise any doubt possible " to guarantee "a lack of broad urgency on the topic." A decade later, obesity is on the road to catching up with smoking as a leading cause of death in the United States. Today's children may face a lower life expectancy than their parents. There is fresh evidence that an industry linked to the crisis, the beverage industry, is engaging in tobacco tactics. It clearly hopes to maintain a lack of broad urgency.
Social Security Agreement With Mexico Rleased After 3 1/2 Year Freedom of Information Act Battle
Tuesday, 9 January 2007 6:55 P GMT-05
The Totalization Agreement could allow millions of illegal Mexican workers to draw billions of dollars from the U.S. Social Security Trust Fund.
Who benefits from escalating chaos in Iraq?
Monday, 8 January 2007 8:25 P GMT-05
We get into trouble by not following the precepts of liberty or obeying the rule of law. Preemptive, undeclared wars fought under false pretenses are a road to disaster. If a full declaration of war by Congress had been demanded as the Constitution requires, this war never would have been fought. If we did not create credit out of thin air as the Constitution prohibits, we never would have convinced taxpayers to support this war directly from their pockets. How long this financial charade can go on is difficult to judge, but when the end comes it will not go unnoticed by any American.
Made in New Bedford: a suit designer retools
Sunday, 7 January 2007 9:11 P GMT-05
Last year the Joseph Abboud suit factory did something not seen in at least a decade in this old textile capital: It added jobs. The men's suit designer expanded its workforce nearly 20 percent to 590 employees and is investing millions of dollars in a sleek new production system at a time when other apparel makers have shrunk or disappeared from the struggling seaside city.
Extortion in Port Chester
Saturday, 6 January 2007 5:17 P GMT-05
A case out of Port Chester, N.Y., illustrates the danger. In 1999 the Village of Port Chester and the development firm G&S Port Chester agreed to embark on a $100 million 27-acre redevelopment project in which dilapidated buildings would be torn down in favor of stores, a movie complex, and other amenities. Under the agreement the Village government gave G&S sole authority to obtain properties in the project area both through negotiation and eminent domain. Only G&S can build there, and any profits from the project belong to the developer. (See the Christian Science Monitor story here.) This smells bad enough already, but it gets worse because Bart Didden, who owns property that is partly in the project area, wants to build a CVS drugstore. The local Village planning board said okay, but under the redevelopment agreement G&S has veto power. Rather than vetoing the plan, however, G&S made Didden an offer: You can build your store if you fork over $800,000 or make G&S a 50 percent partner.
Employers add 167,000 jobs in December
Friday, 5 January 2007 4:40 P GMT-05
The latest snapshot of the nation's employment climate, released Friday by the Labor Department, showed that the jobs market ended 2006 on a strong note and provided fresh evidence that the troubled housing and automotive sectors aren't dragging down employment across the country. The tally of new jobs added to the economy last month exceeded analysts' forecasts for a gain of around 115,000 and was the best showing since September. Analysts were predicting the politically sensitive jobless rate would remain unchanged from November, which it did.
The Right Minimum Wage
Friday, 5 January 2007 3:35 P GMT-05
... the minimum wage should be the same everywhere: $0. Labor is a commodity; governments make messes when they decree commodities' prices. Washington, which has its hands full delivering the mail and defending the shores, should let the market do well what Washington does poorly. But that is a good idea whose time will never come again.
Plum Puddings
Wednesday, 3 January 2007 11:17 A GMT-05
It is amusing that a CEO who made $140 billion worth of stock value evaporate during his tenure would be regarded as worthy of a performance bonus. But the sweetest little sugar plums in the stocking are the $576,573 worth of medical and dental coverage (so Hank doesn't have to wait in some emergency room with a bunch of illegal Mexican sheet-rockers), and finally the $305,644 that McKinnell will get for paid vacation days he didn't take.
The Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2006
Wednesday, 3 January 2007 4:59 A GMT-05
Imperial arrogance – the road to chaos
Tuesday, 2 January 2007 5:08 P GMT-05
Don't credit the neocons with any deep ideological thinking in their way of going about conquering the world. The United States must obviously be an empire, its military must be invincible and the country must continue to be by far the wealthiest country in the world. Of course we are the most powerful and the world has to see it clearly and tremble with awe and fear. We are also the moral beacon to the world; we alone know what has to be done to save our moral values, our high-minded law and order high priests read the gospel of righteousness to the world.
An All-Consuming 'War on Terror'
Monday, 1 January 2007 7:01 P GMT-05
The dimensions of the war on terror are still expanding rapidly in the face of a small - if not entirely absent - domestic terrorist threat. But politicians, forced into playing Chicken Little to avoid seeming to suffer from a "pre-9/11 mentality," can offer no break on spending or war-on-terror rhetoric. Neither have universities and the press. While universities rush to the counter-terror trough, it's as good as it gets for the press. "Hurricane Osama," the real storm of the century, is always just about to hit - and never goes away. Every false alarm of another 9/11 attack on the way sends the news media into paroxysms of sensationally foreboding, emergency-mode coverage, helping enliven the credibility of hundreds of TV episodes, films and potboiler novels with the same plot: maniacal, brilliant Middle Eastern terrorists poised to strike but for the heroics of a few bold souls operating within a generally incompetent government. Americans have learned that the Iraq war was a disastrous mistake. But they have yet to be able even to imagine the truth about the war on terror more generally. As long as politicians and pundits justify alternatives to the present course in Iraq by invoking the need to fight the war on terror more effectively, the United States will remain, as Osama bin Laden observed in his November 2004 videotape, trapped in a maelstrom of waste, worry, and witch hunt that "bleeds America to the point of bankruptcy."
Hey, buddy, can you spare a Euro
Sunday, 31 December 2006 10:17 P GMT-05
The Chinese are well aware of America's deepening financial morass, and they are not going to get stuck with billions of worthless American dollars as the bottom falls out. And my friends, unless our do-nothing Congress acts soon to reverse this looming economic disaster, the once-mighty dollar will wind up like the post-World War One German Mark -- worthless! Even as we speak, the dollar is losing value. Watching my fellow citizens driving their late model unpaid gas-guzzling monuments to testosterone like so many lemmings to the shopping malls to buy Chinese made junk, most of which will be in the garbage not long after the shopping frenzy is over, is just too depressing to behold.
Highway Robbery
Sunday, 31 December 2006 5:51 P GMT-05
After privatization, tolls on the Indiana Toll Road and the Chicago Skyway immediately doubled. Drivers unable to afford the tolls now use alternate roads, increasing congestion and pollution. But these severely negative impacts to the public don't concern MIG Cintra, the Australian and Spanish corporations that operate these toll roads. MIG Cintra's motivator is greed. MIG Cintra prohibits any competition with its toll roads. It forbids any expansion of adjacent roads. And when MIG Cintra took over the Indiana Toll Road, the 600 people formerly employed by the Indiana Department of Transportation were told to start looking for new jobs. MIG Cintra holds a locked down monopoly where states must pay protection cash to a toll road mafia led by Goldman Sachs, foreign corporations, and super rich investors.
A coming of age for the European currency
Saturday, 30 December 2006 12:47 A GMT-05
Earlier this month, the value of euro notes pushed through the €600bn (£402bn; $787bn) level – roughly double the value of the then-national currencies in circulation at the end of 2001. The signs are that in December the currency came of age by overtaking the US dollar in terms of the value of notes in circulation. The figures used for the comparison by the Financial Times include notes held in the vaults of commercial banks but exclude reserves of notes held by central banks.
The End of the West as We Know It?
Friday, 29 December 2006 6:51 P GMT-05
The question now facing us is whether global capitalism and Western democracy can follow the Stern report's recommendations, and make the limited economic adjustments necessary to keep global warming within bounds that will allow us to preserve our system in a recognizable form; or whether our system is so dependent on unlimited consumption that it is by its nature incapable of demanding even small sacrifices from its present elites and populations.
Households: Worst Financial Shape Since WWII
Friday, 29 December 2006 6:16 P GMT-05
Conversely, homeowner’s equity – which represents the amount a person actually owns in real estate –- is at a post WWII record low.
Living in America’s Fringe Economy
Friday, 29 December 2006 5:08 P GMT-05
Maria Guzman and her family are part of the 10% of U.S. households -- more than 12 million -- that have no relationship with a bank, savings institution, credit union, or other mainstream financial service provider. Being "unbanked," the Guzmans turn to the fringe economy for check cashing, bill payment, short-term pawn or payday loans, furniture and appliance rentals, and a host of other financial services. In each case, they face high user fees and exorbitant interest rates. Without credit, the Guzmans must buy a car either for cash or through a "buy-here/pay-here" (BHPH) used car lot. At a BHPH lot they are saddled with a 28% annual percentage rate (APR) on a high-mileage and grossly overpriced vehicle. They also pay weekly, and one missed payment means a repossession. Since the Guzmans have no checking account, they use a check-casher who charges 2.7% for cashing their monthly $1,500 in payroll checks, which costs them $40.50 a month or $486 a year.
The Deadbeat Dad Myth
Tuesday, 26 December 2006 8:55 P GMT-05
The system right now is failing children on so many levels it’s hard to determine who is to blame. On one hand, I’d like to blame the Fathers. If this were happening to women, they’d be writing letters, organizing marches, and voting new people into office. Say what you will about women, but bitches can organize. Fathers seem to be rolling over and dying, but then again, can you blame them? Turning your life into a war zone for a child you’ve barely gotten time to bond with who may just end up hating you anyway seems like a foolish and daunting task.
Heady Days for Makers of Weapons
Tuesday, 26 December 2006 8:34 P GMT-05
THESE are very good times for military contractors. Profits are up, their stocks are rising and Pentagon spending is reaching record levels.
Kibbutz finds a US market
Tuesday, 26 December 2006 7:42 P GMT-05
According to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, about 30 percent of American adults are obese -- more than 60 million people, and counting. That health crisis is Afikim's business opportunity. The kibbutz factory, which designed its first scooters 15 years ago for elderly and infirm kibbutz residents who could no longer walk or bike to the store or communal meal hall, has super sized its latest top-line, four-wheel, battery-powered scooter, upgrading the motor and replacing a two-person bench with a single bucket seat. The model, which previously had been marketed in Israel to carry two or three passengers, has been reconfigured to move a single passenger weighing as much as 500 pounds.
Up to 500 killed in Lagos fuel blast
Tuesday, 26 December 2006 4:45 P GMT-05
Up to 500 people were burned alive on Tuesday when fuel from a vandalized pipeline exploded in Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, emergency workers said.
Massachusetts housing market continues its decline in November
Tuesday, 26 December 2006 3:53 P GMT-05
The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman, said the single-family home median sale price fell 6.5 percent, decreasing to $315,000 in November from $337,000 in November 2005. Last month's median is down more than 13 percent from the $364,000 peak registered in June 2005, and has now dropped in eight of the last nine months.
9/11 and the Greenberg Familia
Tuesday, 26 December 2006 1:27 A GMT-05
Given the involvement of the Greenbergs and Silverstein, and other commercial entities that stood to profit hugely, it is difficult to believe 9/11 occurred at the hands of 19 rag-tag Muslims with box-cutters and the help of their leader, Osama bin Laden, sitting in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan with his laptop and dialysis equipment. The real reasons behind 9/11 were financial greed and the willingness to demonize Muslims for the “Pearl Harbor-type” act that would instigate America to wage a war on terror, pursuing PNAC’s (Project for a New American Century) goal of World Hegemony.
Crime about to rise and swamp prisons, warns Blair team
Monday, 25 December 2006 10:29 P GMT-05
A document drawn up by Tony Blair's strategy unit warns that a slowdown in economic growth is threatening to reverse recent falls in crime. It predicts that the jail population could rise by 25 per cent, topping 100,000 within the next five years, and outstripping the planned rate of growth in prison places. It says the Government should consider drastic crime-curbing remedies used abroad, such as rationing the amount of alcohol people can buy, a ban on alcohol advertising, ID chip implants, the use of bounty hunters and "chemical castration" for sex offenders. The 60-page report, Policy Review: Crime, Justice and Cohesion, written last month, also makes controversial observations about social cohesion. In a blow to Labour's record, it speaks of a growing wealth gap, saying: "The very poorest have got poorer since 1997."
Is Racism Real?
Monday, 25 December 2006 9:31 P GMT-05
In the Simpson case, many whites could not understand why blacks would be so suspicious of the police. They did not grasp how differently people of color experience life in this country. They did not understand the enormous inequalities that characterize the way people of color are often treated by police and courts in the United States.
Yes, Oil From Venezuela
Monday, 25 December 2006 1:15 A GMT-05
Even though doing business with Venezuela has been very good for capitalists, the issue at hand is Chávez and his politics of socialism. Before we accept the characterizations of him as a socialist threat to our way of life, we ought to look at our own country -- ironically, a system of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor.
Cocaine on 94 Percent of Spanish Banknotes
Sunday, 24 December 2006 5:37 P GMT-05
Cocaine now sells for as little as 60 euros ($80) a gram, or 5 euros ($7) a line, and it is regularly used by 1.6 percent of Spaniards, up from 0.9 percent in 1999, a government report said this month. Law enforcement agencies say cocaine is getting cheaper and more popular in Europe because of efforts to boost production by Colombian paramilitaries and rebels who need money for weapons. Spain is a major entry point to Europe for the smugglers.
Overtime gives prison guards fat salary
Sunday, 24 December 2006 1:49 A GMT-05
The biggest payout to a corrections officer for the fiscal year that ended in June was $252,570, which went to a lieutenant. That's more than the salaries of the corrections chief, who makes $225,000, and Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who declined what would be a $206,500 paycheck this year.
Schwarzenegger has vowed to reform the nation's largest prison system, which incarcerates almost 174,000 people in 33 prisons that were designed to hold 100,000. He has announced a plan to ease crowding by building prisons, rehabilitating prisoners to cut down on repeat offenders and reviewing sentencing laws that lock up many nonviolent criminals.
Toyota set to overtake GM in 2007
Friday, 22 December 2006 4:18 P GMT-05
Toyota Motor Corp. <7203.T> expects to produce a record 9.42 million vehicles next year, a 4 percent rise that should take it past General Motors Corp. as the world's biggest auto maker.
The Highwaymen
Wednesday, 20 December 2006 11:27 A GMT-05
Indeed, private road operators often insist on noncompete clauses that limit governments from expanding nearby roads. In 2003, Orange County bought back the lease for a set of pay-to-drive express lanes in the median of Route 91, just so it could finally expand the adjacent road. Toll road companies can even get governments to do their enforcement for them: In July 2004, the consortium that owns Toronto's 407 etr, a 67-mile highway that relies on transponders and cameras to collect tolls, sued the provincial government to force it to deny license plate renewals to motorists who hadn't paid their tolls. In the end, the consortium, which included mig and Cintra, was successful.
Fucked New Orleans (A Seemingly Endless Series)
Wednesday, 20 December 2006 10:04 A GMT-05
Meanwhile, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, with a delicious sense of irony, is going to raze 4500 housing units in the city, making way for private development of the land and far less housing for the poor. It would cost less than a day in Iraq to repair the four largest complexes. Sure, they may have been shitholes, but a shithole to call home is better than no home at all. And it ain't as if the residents were promised fuckin' Valhalla in exchange for the demolition. The poor in New Orleans are like the Indians of old, removed from place to place when it becomes inconvenient to keep them where you put them in the first place.
Inflation roars back with 2 percent wholesale price jump
Tuesday, 19 December 2006 7:46 P GMT-05
US inflation made a surprise comeback in November with a surprising 2.0 percent rise in wholesale prices, the biggest monthly jump in 30 years, the government has reported. The Labor Department's producer price index (PPI) was far ahead of Wall Street expectations of a 0.5 percent rise and showed strong increases in a wide range of goods.
Twistedchick's Free Speech Zone -- December 18th, 2006
Monday, 18 December 2006 6:20 P GMT-05
You want to know what goes on in the much-discussed American detention in Iraq from the inside? Ask an American who was held and treated badly because he was a whistle-blower who didn't like what he saw in the Iraqi security firm he worked for. His reward: 97 days of detention, sleep deprivation, noise, exposure to cold and more.
More Americans hungry, homeless in 2006- mayors
Monday, 18 December 2006 4:35 P GMT-05
"The face of hunger and homelessness right now ... is young children, young families," said the conference's president, Douglas Palmer, the mayor of Trenton, New Jersey. The survey of 23 cities found civic and government groups received, on average, 7 percent more requests for food aid in 2006 than in 2005, following a 12 percent jump in 2005. Requests for shelter rose by an average of 9 percent in 2006, with requests from families with children rising by 5 percent. More than half the cities said family members often had to split up to stay in different shelters.
The Global Dominance Group: 9/11 Pre-Warnings
Saturday, 16 December 2006 1:03 P GMT-05
The leadership class in the US is now dominated by a neo-conservative group of people with the shared goal of asserting US military power worldwide. This global dominance group, in cooperation with major military contractors, has become a powerful force in world military unilateralism and US political processes. This research study is an attempt to identify the general parameters of those who are the key actors supporting a global dominance agenda and how collectively this group has benefited from the events of September 11, 2001 and irregularities in the 2004 presidential election. This study examines how interlocking public private partnerships, including the corporate media, public relations firms, military contractors, policy elites, and government officials, jointly support a US military global domination agenda. We ask the traditional sociological questions regarding who wins, who decides, and who facilitates action inside the most powerful military-industrial complex in the world.
The Cash Cows of Personal Debt
Saturday, 16 December 2006 12:58 P GMT-05
When card users are late making payments, as the complex algorithms used by card issuers predict they will, interest rates rise dramatically and multiple user fees are added to the monthly bill. Millions of card users spend most of their income paying exorbitant user fees, without reducing the balance or reducing it only minimally. The bankers are raking in billions, while working class families are becoming debt slaves to the predatory capitalists of the credit card industry. This was made possible with the blessings of Congress operating under the influence of the corporate lobbyists that swarm on Capitol Hill like maggots on a corpse. Bankruptcy laws that once provided working people a way out of debt are no longer available to them as an avenue of escape. It should be noted, however, that bankruptcy courts remain open to corporations and provide them with debt relief, a chance to start over with a clean slate.
More Deaths by Government
Wednesday, 13 December 2006 7:04 P GMT-05
The present article is dedicated to further expanding this critique of Rummel and Courtois. Here, we go beyond the War to Prevent Southern Secession (1861-1865), and roadway fatalities, to consider a whole host of other governmental causes of death of innocent people.
Economic Apartheid Kills
Wednesday, 13 December 2006 5:36 P GMT-05
If Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street financial giant, distributed all its compensation dollars equally among the company’s 25,647 workers, every employee in the firm would have received just about $500,000 so far this year. But compensation at Wall Street’s biggest firms gets divided anything but equally. A new federal report says the top-heavy income distribution is squeezing out the middle class. Wall Street’s top 1,000 investment bankers will average somewhere between $2 million and $3 million in bonuses this year, more than 10 times their $100,000 to $250,000 salaries. Is overpaying CEOs a crime? A five-judge panel in Germany punted on that question by accepting a settlement in the first case ever to bring criminal charges against corporate directors for lavishing excessive pay on company executives. Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann, Germany’s most powerful banker, will pay out of his own pocket a $4.2 million fine, without having to plead guilty to charges that he helped engineer a $31 million bonus six years ago for Klaus Esser, the top executive at Mannesmann, a German mobile phone company. Ackermann and other directors at Mannesmann, prosecutors charged, had violated their fiduciary duty to watch out for shareholders. If convicted, Ackermann could have faced 10 years in jail.
Retail sales surge in November
Wednesday, 13 December 2006 3:24 P GMT-05
The nation's retailers saw sales rise by 1 percent last month, following three straight months of lackluster performance. Sales were flat in August and had fallen in September and October. The November gain, which was the best showing since a 1.4 percent increase in July, was coming at a critical time at the start of the holiday shopping season.
Defending the Indefensible: Torture and the American Empire
Wednesday, 13 December 2006 3:19 P GMT-05
One reason that the Bush Administration can claim with a straight face that the U.S. does not torture is, of course, because all the top members of the Bush White House are world-class liars. The question here is, why? Why are they, first of all, rather openly employing torture? And secondly, what does this fact tell us about what is up with this brave new world of unspeakable horrors so thinly disguised that no one except the misinformed and gullible would believe the cover stories?
Another Iraq Casualty: U.S. Auto Industry
Wednesday, 13 December 2006 2:54 P GMT-05
Obviously, this crisis requires urgent, intense national action. Are we prepared to let the auto industry die? If not, what steps can be taken to relieve the burdens of their health care and pension costs? What should be expected from the automakers in return in terms of investment, jobs guarantees, fuel efficiency and alternative-fuel cars? What penalties or incentives should be provided to the oil industry to force proliferation of alternative-fuel pumps in gas stations? How does all this fit into a concerted drive for energy independence? Yet when the CEOs of the auto industry sought to meet with George W. Bush before the election, he canceled two meetings with them. When they finally met, an obviously distracted president gave them all of one hour, and nothing was decided.
1 in 7 Mexican workers employed in the U.S.: report
Monday, 11 December 2006 6:02 P GMT-05
Batalova said the increase in numbers had to do with economic reasons, with more immigrants looking for a better life in the United States, but also with the increased enforcement at the U.S.-Mexican border. "It became more dangerous to cross the border, and that caused a 'lock in' effect," Batalova told Reuters in a telephone interview. Up to 9.4 percent of the all persons born in Mexico were living in the United States in 2005, according to the report. In the same year, 14 percent of Mexican workers had jobs on U.S. soil, compared to 2.5 percent of Canadians.
Gazprom 'wins $22B Shell gas plan'
Monday, 11 December 2006 4:52 P GMT-05
Royal Dutch Shell has offered to cede control of the $22 billion Sakhalin-2 project, Russia's biggest single foreign investment, to state gas monopoly Gazprom after months of government pressure, industry sources said. Such a deal would appear to mark a victory for the Kremlin, determined to wrest control over the "commanding heights" of the Russian economy, and a retreat by Shell. Agreement in principle was reached at talks last week for Shell to reduce its 55 percent holding to a blocking stake of at least one-quarter in the world's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, the sources told Reuters.
GAO: The status quo is unsustainable
Sunday, 10 December 2006 8:23 P GMT-05
It's clear from the strength of the language used that Walker feels that this is not being taken seriously at any level. How much coverage do you suppose the mainstream media will give it?
Bay State's labor force diminishing
Sunday, 10 December 2006 5:57 P GMT-05
The study blames the workforce decline in part on the widely discussed exodus of college-educated young people who are leaving the state because they cannot afford housing here. But it highlighted a less explored trend: Health, retail, and service jobs, which are traditionally filled by women, are growing, while factory and manual labor jobs are disappearing, leaving lower-skilled men with few options.
Suburban poverty on the rise as more settle outside cities
Sunday, 10 December 2006 5:48 P GMT-05
The suburban poor outnumbered their inner-city counterparts for the first time last year, with more than 12 million suburban residents living in poverty, according to a study of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas released Thursday. "Economies are regional now," said Alan Berube, who co-wrote the report for the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "Where you see increases in city poverty, in almost every metropolitan area, you also see increases in suburban poverty."
Banning Wal–Mart is Bad for San Diego
Saturday, 9 December 2006 5:33 P GMT-05
Wal–Mart is a lightning rod that attracts petty tyrants who attempt to limit the choices of their neighbors. The latest lighting strike occurred in San Diego when the city council voted to essentially ban Wal–Mart Supercenter stores. If implemented, such a ban would be bad for San Diego’s economy and its consumers.
Car Mileage - 1908 Ford Model T: 25 MPG, 2004 EPA Average All Cars: 20.8 Miles Per Gallon
Saturday, 9 December 2006 8:47 A GMT-05
And when it comes to energy, most of the world still depends largely on huge, polluting coal and oil generation plants not much more efficient than those of 100 years ago. How can it be that we've had such dramatic, almost miraculous advances in so many fields, while the energy and transportation sectors have had so little progress? Could it be that greed and the desire for economic and political control have kept the profit-rich energy and transportation sectors from developing as rapidly as they might have in a more open climate, where big money did not suppress technological breakthroughs?
Multinationals are Selling the Country Short
Friday, 8 December 2006 8:58 P GMT-05
So what's going on here, how have multinational drug companies been able to gouge us for years selling expensive drugs and then avoid paying tax on their astronomical profits? The answer is simple. For companies in certain businesses, such as pharmaceuticals, it is very easy to simply "invent" the price a company charges their U.S.business for buying the company's product which they manufacture in another country. And if they charge enough, poof; all the profit vanishes from the US, or Canada, or any other regular jurisdiction and end up in a corporate tax-haven. And that means American and Canadian tax payers don't get their fair share. Many multinational corporations essentially have two sets of bookkeeping. One set, with artificially inflated transfer prices is what they use to prepare local tax returns, and show auditors in high-tax jurisdictions, and another set of books, in which management can see the true profit and lost statement, based on real cost of goods, are used for the executives to determine the actual performance of their various operations.
Top-Level Insiders Selling Their Stock
Friday, 8 December 2006 7:48 P GMT-05
In cases of the very rich, such as Microsoft's Bill Gates and Google's top brass, the executives are selling a whopping $63 for each $1 of stock they bought, says a report by Bloomberg. In November alone, leaders of public companies dumped $8.4 billion worth of stock they owned as insiders, most of it awarded as compensation, bonuses or other management incentives. But the vast majority of the executives put their windfall cash to work elsewhere, with just $133 million being plowed back into purchases of more company stock.
Fight Terrorism: Legalize Heroin
Friday, 8 December 2006 4:04 P GMT-05
If opium production were legalized, pharmaceutical companies rather than al Qaeda terrorists would be running the opium show in the Helmand Province, creating booming local economies and raising the living standards of Afghan peasants. Then Bayer or Dowpharma or Sandoz rather than Osama bin Laden would be profiting from the $11 billion Americans spend on heroin each year. Note that none of those companies currently sells heroin, and terrorists don’t manufacture headache tablets, despite the enormous profit potential in both businesses.
The Fight to Reclaim America from Retail Giants
Friday, 8 December 2006 3:27 P GMT-05
Although pervasive in its influence today, this consumer identity is a relatively recent invention. It only became a powerful force in U.S. politics in the years after World War II. To a large degree, it was created and propagated by the first generation of chain retailers-companies like A&P, Kroger, and Woolworth-which encountered such strong public opposition in the 1920s and 30s as to call into doubt their continued existence. The chains responded with a massive PR campaign that managed to transform American citizens into consumers-a sharply circumscribed identity that corporations have used to augment their power ever since.
Richest tenth own 85% of world's assets
Thursday, 7 December 2006 6:31 A GMT-05
The richest 10 per cent of adults accounted for 85 per cent of assets. The bottom 50 per cent of the world’s adults owned barely 1 per cent of global wealth. Among high-income nations, the amounts varied from $37,000 per person in New Zealand to $86,369 in Germany and $109,418 in the Netherlands. In terms of wealth distribution the US was among the most unequal, whereas Japan had one of the lowest levels of inequality. Britain ranked with Russia, Indonesia and Pakistan in wealth inequality.
Richest 2% own 'half the wealth'
Thursday, 7 December 2006 3:18 A GMT-05
The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of all household wealth, according to a new study by a United Nations research institute.
Prisons' military gear factories take flak
Wednesday, 6 December 2006 3:42 A GMT-05
Thousands of federal prison in mates have been working overtime the past three years, filling Pentagon contracts for everything from radio components to body armor. The inmates work for Federal Prison Industries, a nonprofit Jus tice Department subsidiary that does business as UNICOR and sold more than $750 million worth of goods to the federal government last year.
Denver housing market in free-fall as foreclosures eclipse record
Tuesday, 5 December 2006 9:51 P GMT-05
With one month left in the year, foreclosures have already eclipsed the record set during the 1988 oil industry collapse which sent Colorado's economy into a tail-spin.
State hemorrhages factory jobs
Wednesday, 29 November 2006 9:13 P GMT-05
The number of manufacturing jobs in New York fell by 26 percent during the first half of the decade, a new census report shows.
Almost every major category of goods-producing employment contributed to the loss of 191,000 jobs between 2000 and 2005. Apparel manufacturing was the hardest hit.
AP Analysis: Firms Crimping Oil Supplies
Monday, 27 November 2006 8:07 P GMT-05
The analysis, based on data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, indicates that the industry slacked off supplying oil and gasoline during the prolonged price boom between early 1999 and last summer, when prices began to fall. The industry counters that it's been working hard to meet untiring demand. It faults output quotas set by Mideast oil powers, global competition for oil from booming economies like China's, and domestic challenges like depleting wells, clean-air rules, and hurricanes. They do make things harder. Yet the AP analysis found evidence of at least an underwhelming industry performance in supplying the domestic market, when profits should have made investment capital plentiful:
The Great Thanksgiving Hoax
Saturday, 25 November 2006 12:47 A GMT-05
To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that was the end of famines.
Number of U.S. hungry falls, first drop in 6 years
Saturday, 18 November 2006 1:17 A GMT-05
The number of people struggling with hunger in the United States fell in 2005, the first such decline in six years, the Agriculture Department said yesterday.
Congressman: American Concentration Camps "On The Books"
Monday, 13 November 2006 9:26 P GMT-05
Ron Paul's comments echo those of Former World Bank Vice President, Chief Economist and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, who two weeks ago predicted a global economic crash within 24 months - unless the current downturn is successfully managed. Asked if the situation was being properly handled Stiglitz emphatically responded "no," and also drew ominous parallels to the development of the NAFTA Superhighway and the North American Union.
A&A: Give us another chance: Cab company asks City Council to consider granting them a license
Monday, 13 November 2006 9:19 P GMT-05
In sworn affidavits obtained by the Malden Observer, several customers write that Malden Police cruisers barricaded A&A cabs in the driveways of their homes and forced them to call Malden Taxi cabs for service instead. Police Chief Kenneth Coye said the affidavits "exaggerated" the incidents, but that police have stepped in while A&A attempted to pick up customers in Malden. A 2003 city ordinance states that if a cab is not licensed in Malden, it is only allowed to operate in the city if the fare is picked up outside of city limits. The ordinance also prevents an unlicensed company from returning to the city to pick up a fare they've previously dropped off.
How Government Destroys Moral Character
Saturday, 11 November 2006 6:36 P GMT-05
Among the recipients, the prevailing attitude seems to be the one expressed by Tulare County farmer Charles Fisher: “Whether it’s right or wrong, if they are offering it, you’re foolish to turn it down.” In that single sentence, Fisher has encapsulated the rotten core of the welfare state and concisely expressed how it destroys moral character. The swag is there for the taking. Financial gain trumps moral probity. Don’t be a chump; take the money.
How 'Sweatshops' Help the Poor
Saturday, 11 November 2006 6:29 P GMT-05
It is never the workers in countries like Honduras who protest the existence of a new factory there built by a Nike or a General Motors. The people there benefit as consumers as well as workers, since there are more (and cheaper) consumer goods manufactured and sold in their country (as well as in other parts of the world). Capital investment of this sort is infinitely superior to the alternative – foreign aid – which always empowers the governmental recipients of the "aid," making things even worse for the private economies of "aid" recipients. Market-based capital investment is always far superior to politicized capital allocation. Moreover, if the foreign investment fails, the economic burden falls on the investors and stockholders, not the poor Third World country.
Report: Foreclosures up 17 percent nationwide
Saturday, 11 November 2006 7:30 A GMT-05
Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and the Denver-Aurora, Colo. metro areas saw the highest growth in foreclosure activities. One in every 80 Detroit households had a property enter some stage of foreclosure, while in Fort Lauderdale it was one in every 88 households and one in every 90 homes in Denver.
Lower pump prices fuel political conspiracy theories
Tuesday, 7 November 2006 7:11 P GMT-05
"It seems that always right before election time, prices go down. It may not be a coincidence," Carmolinga said on a recent Friday as he paid $2.47 a gallon at a Shell station in Long Beach. In mid-July, the car dealership employee would have paid nearly $1 more per gallon.
Report: US losing travelers to Europe
Tuesday, 7 November 2006 5:17 P GMT-05
The World Travel Market 2006 report, conducted by Euromonitor International and released yesterday, said total business arrivals to the United States fell by 10 percent to 7 million in the 2004-2005 period, while the number of business visitors to Europe grew by 8 percent, to 84 million.
The corporate and economic reasons for war
Tuesday, 31 October 2006 7:27 P GMT-05
The story of our lives, the story of the serial wars since the end of the 19th century are but a narrative -- a narrative that carefully avoids the underlying corporate and economic reasons for war. The details are hidden in plain sight, but are never presented as a continuum. If the media did their journalistic duty, we would see that all the wars are but pieces of one continuous whole.
A Superpower in Decline: America's Middle Class Has Become Globalization's Loser
Sunday, 29 October 2006 6:37 P GMT-05
There are essentially three exclusive characteristics whose simultaneous development have served as the foundations of the United States's success up until now -- and they only appear in this particular combination in America. They are not only the country's biggest strengths, but also its greatest weaknesses. It's worth scrutinizing them more closely.
Home Price Drop Is Largest in 35 Years
Thursday, 26 October 2006 6:45 P GMT-05
The Commerce Department reported that the median price for a new home sold in September was $217,100, a drop of 9.7 percent from September 2005. It was the lowest median price for a new home since September 2004 and the sharpest year-over-year decline since December 1970. The weakness in new home prices was even sharper than a 2.5 percent fall in the price of existing homes last month, which had been the biggest drop on record.
Exxon Mobil posts $10.49B profit in 3Q
Thursday, 26 October 2006 4:08 P GMT-05
Oil industry behemoth Exxon Mobil's earnings rose to $10.49 billion in the third quarter, the second-largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company. Its shares briefly rose to a 52-week high.
Troops in debt can't go overseas
Saturday, 21 October 2006 11:29 P GMT-05
The Pentagon contends financial problems can distract personnel from their duties or make them vulnerable to bribery and treason. As a result, those who fall heavily into debt can be stripped of the security clearances they need to go overseas.
Unseen toll / The cost of the Iraq war is out of control
Monday, 16 October 2006 7:00 P GMT-05
According to the Congressional Research Service, Congress already has appropriated $437 billion for war, not including $70 billion approved by the Senate as part of next year's record-breaking Pentagon budget. That's half a trillion dollars -- about three-quarters of it for Iraq, 20 percent for Afghanistan and 5 percent for increased security against terrorism at other foreign bases.
Jobless man asks judge for jail time
Saturday, 14 October 2006 12:05 A GMT-05
A man who couldn't find steady work came up with a plan to make it through the next few years until he could collect Social Security: He robbed a bank, then handed the money to a guard and waited for police. On Wednesday, Timothy J. Bowers told a judge a three-year prison sentence would suit him, and the judge obliged.
Getting the Little Things Wrong
Wednesday, 11 October 2006 8:30 P GMT-05
Licensure of automobiles (among other forms of licensure!) is just an income-producing racket. It’s a business. For about 120 bux, total, I got the two dandy stickers now adorning my license plates. What makes it a state business, instead of a legitimate one, is that I had no option of declining to purchase these costly little devices.
'Competition' with China is Killing U.S.
Wednesday, 11 October 2006 6:48 A GMT-05
In fact, not only does Congress not protest Chinese human rights violations, it refuses even to stop giving subsidies to American corporations that move domestic jobs to China. I remember Vermont's Bernie Sanders explaining to me how that whole deal works. "I'll ask a company like GE why we should give them money, if they won't promise to stop moving American jobs to China," he told me. "And they'll say, 'Look, we're going to China, one way or another. But if you don't give us the money, we'll move there faster.' They're very honest about it."
White-Collar Workers Unite!
Tuesday, 10 October 2006 6:18 P GMT-05
Barbara Ehrenreich's new organization seeks better health care, insurance and debt relief for unemployed and underemployed professionals.
Today's special: Post turtle and boiled Rice
Monday, 9 October 2006 5:26 P GMT-05
Well, we have Condoleezza Rice running all over the place like a one-armed paperhanger in a hurricane, trying to command the tide not to come in. She talks to the Iraqis, the Egyptians, the Saudis, and they all listen politely, and then it's business as usual. The casualties mount, the equipment is worn out, and the civil war that can't be happening is happening. We're spending two-billion dollars a month on this loser, and the "fund raiser-in-chief" still babbles about victory. Afghanistan is a lost cause, and we're rattling sabers at Iran. In sum, it US against THEM.
N. Korea Nuke Test Shocks World Markets
Monday, 9 October 2006 5:10 P GMT-05
The Cost of War: Hidden from Purview
Sunday, 8 October 2006 6:55 P GMT-05
Emergency supplementals and bridge funds do not go through the normal process in either branch of the government. They are drawn up in the Defense Department outside the usual Programming, Planning, and Budgeting system, are not offset by any other budgetary reductions inside the uniformed services, and generally move quickly from the Pentagon to the White House with minimal scrutiny. As a result, as Comptroller General David Walker testified in July, “neither DOD nor Congress knows how much the war on terror is costing or how appropriated funds are being used.” The Defense Department has ignored two successive pieces of legislation seeking detailed reporting on how the emergency funds have actually been spent. In effect, there is only a minimal effort to scrutinize budget request in advance, or spending, after the fact, for a quarter of the Pentagon’s resources.
Is $10 trillion bubble ready to burst?
Sunday, 8 October 2006 4:19 P GMT-05
The $10 trillion housing market is on the skids. Sales of new homes have plummeted, and now prices are following. According to an article posted Sept. 25 on MarketWatch.com, a Dow Jones Web site, “The collapsing U.S. housing market crossed another milestone in August, as the median sales price of existing homes fell for the first time in 11 years and for just the sixth time in the past 38 years, the National Association of Realtors said Monday.”
The War Against Wages
Friday, 6 October 2006 6:23 P GMT-05
If you want to see how the war against wages is being fought, and what it's doing to working Americans and their families, consider the latest news from Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart already has a well-deserved reputation for paying low wages and offering few benefits to its employees; last year, an internal Wal-Mart memo conceded that 46 percent of its workers' children were either on Medicaid or lacked health insurance. Nonetheless, the memo expressed concern that wages and benefits were rising, in part ''because we pay an associate more in salary and benefits as his or her tenure increases.'' The problem from the company's point of view, then, is that its workers are too loyal; it wants cheap labor that doesn't hang around too long, but not enough workers quit before acquiring the right to higher wages and benefits. Among the policy changes the memo suggested to deal with this problem was a shift to hiring more part-time workers, which ''will lower Wal-Mart's health care enrollment.'' And the strategy is being put into effect. ''Investment analysts and store managers,'' reports The New York Times, ''say Wal-Mart executives have told them the company wants to transform its work force to 40 percent part-time from 20 percent.'' Another leaked Wal-Mart memo describes a plan to impose wage caps, so that long-term employees won't get raises. And the company is taking other steps to keep workers from staying too long: in some stores, according to workers, ''managers have suddenly barred older employees with back or leg problems from sitting on stools.'' It's a brutal strategy.
USA Today/Gallup Poll: 42% of Americans Believe Bush Administration Manipulating Gas Prices to Help GOP
Thursday, 28 September 2006 3:46 P GMT-05
A USA Today/Gallup poll conducted September 15-17 reveals that an astounding 42% of Americans believe that the current drop in prices at the pump are the direct result of manipulation by the Bush administration.
Mass. home prices fall 6.1% as downturn gathers speed
Wednesday, 27 September 2006 6:06 A GMT-05
The downturn in the Massachusetts housing market gained momentum in August, with the median price of a single-family home falling 6.1 percent, to $352,000, and the number of sales down 21.6 percent from last year, the Massachusetts Association of Realtors said yesterday.
U.S. Economy Losing Its Global Dominance
Monday, 25 September 2006 3:29 P GMT-05
The share of global exports purchased by U.S. consumers and businesses fell to 17.9 percent in 2005 from 21.8 percent in 2000 as demand increased in the European Union, Japan and emerging markets in Asia and Eastern Europe. Exporting nations in Europe and Asia are poised to grab a larger share of world markets with trade agreements that do not include the United States.
It's the Maniupulated Economy, Stupid
Sunday, 24 September 2006 3:58 P GMT-05
Using his research and recent gas price drops as a guide, Henwood accurately predicted last Thursday that it "wouldn't be surprising to see his approval numbers rise into the mid-40s." Polls over the weekend showed Bush's approval climbing all the way to 44%, his highest in a year.
If America's So Great, Where's Our Health Care?
Sunday, 24 September 2006 3:54 P GMT-05
Among politicians and pundits, a universal, publicly funded system is off the table. But Americans in increasing numbers know what their leaders seem not to -- that the United States is the only industrialized nation where such stories as Joel's and Kiki's can happen.
And most Americans know why: the United States leaves the health of its citizens at the mercy of an expensive, patchwork system where some get great care while others get none at all.
The overwhelming majority -- 75 percent, according to an October 2005 Harris Poll -- want what people in other wealthy countries have: the peace of mind of universal health insurance.
Housing: A Picture is Worth 1000 Words - Bonddad
Friday, 22 September 2006 4:04 P GMT-05
A picture is worth a thousand words. In the case of the current economic environment, a picture is worth a thousand words. Below are some charts and graphs of the current housing market and the households who purchase housing. These graphs indicate there are problems ahead.
Insurance Horror Stories
Friday, 22 September 2006 3:23 P GMT-05
Between 2000 and 2005, the number of Americans with private health insurance coverage fell by 1 percent. But over the same period, employment at health insurance companies rose a remarkable 32 percent. What are all those extra employees doing?
Now we know at least part of the answer: they’re working harder than ever at identifying people who really need medical care, and ensuring that they don’t get it. In the past, they mainly concentrated on screening out applicants likely to get sick. Now, it seems, they’re also devoting a lot of effort to finding pretexts for revoking insurance after they’ve already granted it.
War, Murder, Rape... All for Your Cell Phone
Friday, 15 September 2006 7:03 A GMT-05
Everyone's heard about the human rights abuses in African gold and diamond mines. But when it comes to their ultra-cool, razor-thin cell phones, American consumers won't get the message.
A Sweatshop Behind Bars
Wednesday, 13 September 2006 10:40 P GMT-05
The nation's prison industry now employs more people than any Fortune 500 corporation except General Motors. Is prison labor rehab or corporate slavery?
The Disgraceful Plight Of American Poor
Wednesday, 13 September 2006 10:30 P GMT-05
With full-time workers earning less, adjusted for inflation, than at any time since 1973, health care costs going up three times as fast as wages, with insurance companies writing our national policies on health care while health care prices are growing exponentially, it would be wise to pay attention to this growing crisis within our own nation rather than continuing to re-establish a feudal society in the Land of the Free. The people in Washington, DC, who make the decisions for us all, are totally oblivious of the hardships which are borne by the working poor, instead having developed the attitude of Marie Antoinette that, having no bread, the poor should just "eat cake". In the long run, the results may be the same.
A Map of How Far Median Incomes Have Fallen Under Bush
Tuesday, 5 September 2006 4:03 A GMT-05
While Michigan is probably suffering the most of any state in the union, only four states and the District of Columbia have shown any increase in median incomes. Every other state - 46 in total - have shown drops! This is a national trend where corporations are doing well but workers are getting fucked.
Many Entry-Level Workers Feel Pinch of Rough Market
Monday, 4 September 2006 5:05 P GMT-05
This Labor Day, the 45 million young people in the nation’s work force face a choppy job market in which entry-level wages have often trailed inflation, making it hard for many to cope with high housing costs and rising college debt loads.
Wages slump in Bay State, Dems lambaste Mitt
Monday, 4 September 2006 4:52 P GMT-05
Median hourly wages dropped more in Massachusetts in two years than in any other state, according to a new Labor Day report, and critics say that spells trouble for Gov. Mitt Romney as he campaigns for his next job - commander in chief.
Soldiers Die, CEOs Prosper
Sunday, 3 September 2006 2:26 P GMT-05
There is no evidence of a contractor having a soul in the 13th annual Executive Excess CEO survey by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank, and the Boston-based United for a Fair Economy. The report found that 34 defense CEOs have been paid nearly $1 billion since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. As soldiers have died in displaying personal patriotism, the pay gap between soldiers and defense CEOs has exploded. Before 9/11, the gap between CEOs of publicly traded companies and army privates was already a galling 190 to 1. Today, it is 308 to 1. The average army private makes $25,000 a year. The average defense CEO makes $7.7 million.
Economy Adds More Jobs in August Than in July
Friday, 1 September 2006 4:09 P GMT-05
The economy added more jobs in August than it did in July, and the national unemployment rate ticked down a tenth of a point. But the average American worker is logging fewer hours on the job and wage gains are minimal, according to new statistics released today.
Minimum wage hike claims first casualty
Friday, 1 September 2006 3:41 P GMT-05
I would have liked to continue working at $6 per hour, and Hope College was willing to pay me that. But the state of Michigan says I do not have the right to work for that amount of money. Hope College and I are not allowed to negotiate a contract that is satisfactory to both of us.
Oil Company CEO Pay Averaged $32.7 Million in 2005, Study Says
Friday, 1 September 2006 2:00 P GMT-05
Rising prices and profits translated into pay packages for oil company chief executive officers that are nearly three times the size of similarly sized businesses, a new study from two watchdog groups said.
Nightmare Mortgages
Friday, 1 September 2006 1:00 P GMT-05
After prolonging the boom, these exotic mortgages could worsen the bust. They also betray such a lack of due diligence on the part of lenders and borrowers that it raises questions of what other problems may be lurking. And most of the pain will be borne by ordinary people, not the lenders, brokers, or financiers who created the problem.
The Great Housing Crash of '07
Friday, 1 September 2006 11:51 A GMT-05
All the indicators are now pointing in the wrong direction. Consumer confidence is down, inventory is at a 10 year high, and the number of homes sold in July was 22% lower than last year. As Paul Ashworth, chief economist at Capital Economics said, "Things seem to be getting worse very quickly. Freefall is a strong word, but I think it's the right one to use here." (UK Guardian)
US data show one in eight Americans in poverty
Thursday, 31 August 2006 6:23 P GMT-05
In the world's biggest economy one in eight Americans and almost one in four blacks lived in poverty last year, the US Census Bureau said on Tuesday, releasing a figure virtually unchanged from 2004.
War on Iraq: Blatantly Boasting War Profiteers
Wednesday, 30 August 2006 5:36 P GMT-05
Upbeat reports such as these have helped make Wall Street bullish on defense. The IPS/UFE study found that the top 34 military contractors had a 48 percent increase in their share prices between the end of 2000 and the end of 2005. By contrast, the S&P 500 dropped 5 percent during that period.
Counties Eye Nuke Plants, Utilities Eye Govt. Handouts
Tuesday, 29 August 2006 4:59 P GMT-05
A Maryland county recently offered $300 million in property tax breaks to a nuclear-energy company to build a reactor, in a move environmentalists say reflects a resurgence of the nuclear industry.
Spanish firm to build and run new PFI toll road in Texas
Monday, 28 August 2006 11:32 P GMT-05
Because it would provide a connection all the way between Canada and Mexico, the project is also described as the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) super highway.
Numbers show a second-rate US
Monday, 28 August 2006 11:27 P GMT-05
Christopher Ruhm, an economist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, attributes the relatively poor performance of the US in many social areas to a matter of choice
Ten months after Katrina: Gutting New Orleans
Monday, 28 August 2006 9:48 P GMT-05
Not a single dollar of federal housing repair or home reconstruction money has made it to New Orleans yet. Tens of thousands are waiting. Many wait because a full third of homeowners in the New Orleans area had no flood insurance. Others wait because the levees surrounding New Orleans are not yet as strong as they were before Katrina and fear re-building until flood protection is more likely. Fights over the federal housing money still loom because Louisiana refuses to clearly state a commitment to direct 50 percent of the billions to low and moderate income families.
Did Insiders Milk Terror Plot For Criminal Trading?
Sunday, 27 August 2006 4:03 P GMT-05
Did criminal insider speculators with informants inside the British intelligence apparatus take advantage of their foreknowledge of the announcement of a foiled terror plot to place put options on airline stocks, reaping the benefits of their subsequent fall?
Bush officials allowed sweatshops in US territory in exchange for football tickets
Sunday, 27 August 2006 3:43 P GMT-05
The important part here is that the official being bribed was handling issues in the Northern Marianas Islands — which have been run for years as the deepest pit of sweatshop hell. Factories in the Northern Marianas are guilty of forced labor, human rights abuses, and even forced abortions... and because it's a U.S. territory, the goods produced by these exploited workers can be proudly labeled "Made In The U.S.A."
Study: Hybrid cars will pay for themselves over time
Sunday, 27 August 2006 3:23 P GMT-05
"High gas prices and generous tax credits now offset the high sales prices of some hybrids, assuming owners keep their hybrids for a few years," said Alex Rosten, an analyst with Edmunds.com.
Get Sick, Go Broke
Sunday, 27 August 2006 2:03 P GMT-05
We reported that about half of all bankruptcies occurred in the financial aftermath of a medical problem. What really chapped the insurance industry, however, was our finding that about three-quarters of these families had some form of health insurance at the onset of their illnesses or accidents. We concluded that not even the insured were safe in America.
The Six Faces of the Terrorist; The One Face of Bureaucracy
Sunday, 27 August 2006 1:29 P GMT-05
In some way, too — and this is unthinkable — the security state actually benefits from disastrous mistakes that result in loss of life. These allow the bureaucracy to say: we told you so; we should have had more money and power.
Wal-Mart Licks Its Wounds
Friday, 25 August 2006 7:34 P GMT-05
Furthermore, the Wal-Mart business model increasingly betrays what was once the operating principle of American capitalism, as explained by Henry Ford the First: You've got to pay your workers enough so that they can buy your product; that's what keeps the system going. When the American majority can't buy the very goods they manufacture or sell, that system is cruising for a bruising.
A Little Poverty Never Hurt Anybody
Thursday, 24 August 2006 5:51 P GMT-05
Wage slaves and sweat shop laborers have supplanted serfs and chattel slaves. Five major corporations comprise 90% of the mass media in the United States. What are their specialties? Shaping public opinion to maintain the illusion that one of the world’s most rapacious and bellicose nations is a “benevolent superpower” and enticing those who fall prey to their charms to experience a virtually insatiable desire to acquire more material possessions. A brain-washed complacent citizenry perpetually ready to go on a buying binge is a wet dream for the ruling elite.
Federal Pay: Myth and Realities
Saturday, 19 August 2006 1:54 P GMT-05
Many federal bureaucrats are indeed hardworking, but new statistics show that they are anything but underpaid.
The Estate Tax and Political Blackmail
Friday, 4 August 2006 12:15 A GMT-05
It's nothing short of political blackmail to claim that the only way for minimum wage workers to get a raise is if we enact a tax giveaway to the richest Americans.
Debtors' Hell
Wednesday, 2 August 2006 1:58 P GMT-05
An excellent expose by The Boston Globe of the predatory tactics used by the debt collection machinery in Massachusetts. Reads like a frontline report from the war on the poor.
Death at the Supermarket
Monday, 31 July 2006 11:45 A GMT-05
Yet very little attention was given to the one possible motive which the media has barely focused on: Michael Ford, the killer, was apparently “teased” and "harassed" by coworkers for being Muslim.
Saudi king offers Lebanon $1.5bn
Tuesday, 25 July 2006 8:00 P GMT-05
Experts estimate the damage to the Lebanese economy at around $2bn, with investors and tourists fleeing, and believe that the government is set to lose out on $600m in earnings.
The High Cost of Being Poor
Tuesday, 25 July 2006 4:56 P GMT-05
If you're rich, you might want to stay that way. It's a whole lot cheaper than being poor.
Study Documents 'Ghetto Tax' Being Paid by the Urban Poor
Wednesday, 19 July 2006 6:55 P GMT-05
Those were just two examples among several cited in a report Tuesday showing that poor urban residents frequently pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year in extra costs for everyday necessities. The study said some of the disparities were due to real differences in the cost of doing business in poor areas, some to predatory financial practices and some to consumer ignorance.
With Jobs to Do, Louisiana Parish Turns to Inmates
Thursday, 6 July 2006 4:16 P GMT-05
The prison system converts a substantial segment of the population into a commodity that is in desperately short supply — cheap labor — and local-jail inmates are integrated into every aspect of economic and social life.
The Big Waste
Tuesday, 4 July 2006 5:56 P GMT-05
For the cost of fighting the war in Iraq one day, we could do any of the following: