From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Mar 1 04:02:23 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:02:23 +0900 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash Message-ID: <49AA6B3F.1080507@ashisuto.co.jp> by Ralph Nader Countercurrents.org (February 27 2009) While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated glacier day by day, the nation's credit unions are a relative island of calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism. Eighty five million Americans belong to credit unions which are not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members who are depositors and borrowers. Your neighborhood or workplace credit union did not invest in these notorious speculative derivatives nor did they offer people "teaser rates" to sign on for a home mortgage they could not afford. Ninety one percent of the 8,000 credit unions are reporting greater overall growth in mortgage lending than any other kinds of consumer loans they are extending. They are federally insured by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for up to $250,000 per account, such as the FDIC does for depositors in commercial banks. They are well-capitalized because of regulation and because they do not have an incentive to go for high-risk, highly leveraged speculation to increase stock values and the value of the bosses' stock options as do the commercial banks. Credit Unions have no shareholders nor stock nor stock options; they are responsible to their owner-members who are their customers. There are even some special low-income credit unions, though not nearly enough to stimulate economic activities in these communities and to provide "banking" services in areas where poor people can't afford or are not provided services by commercial banks. According to Mike Schenk, an economist with the Credit Union National Association, there is another reason why credit unions avoided the mortgage debacle that is consuming the big banks. Credit Unions, Schenk says, are "portfolio lenders. That means they hold in their portfolios most of the loans they originate instead of selling them to investors, so they care about the financial performance of those loans." Mr Schenk allowed that with the deepening recession, credit unions are not making as much surplus and "their asset quality has deteriorated a bit. But that's the beauty of the credit union model. Credit unions can live with those conditions without suffering dire consequences", he asserted. His use of the word "model" is instructive. In recent decades, credit unions sometimes leaned toward commercial bank practices instead of strict cooperative principles. They developed a penchant for mergers into larger and larger credit unions. Some even toyed with converting out of the cooperative model into the shareholder model the way insurance and bank mutuals have done. The cooperative model, whether in finance, food, housing or any other sector of the economy, does best when the owner-cooperators are active in the general operations and directions of their co-op. Passive owners allow managers to stray or contemplate straying from cooperative practices. The one area that is now spelling some trouble for retail cooperatives comes from the so-called "corporate credit unions", a terrible nomenclature, which were established to provide liquidity for the retail credit unions. These large wholesale credit unions are not exactly infused with the cooperative philosophy. Some of them gravitate toward the corporate banking model. They invested in those risky mortgage securities with the money from the retail credit unions. These "toxic assets" have fallen $14 billion among the 28 corporate credit unions involved. So the National Credit Union Administration is expanding its lending programs to these corporate credit unions to a maximum capacity of $41.5 billion. NCUA also wants to have retail credit unions qualified for the TARP rescue program just to provide a level playing field with the commercial banks. Becoming more like investment banks the wholesale credit unions wanted to attract, with ever higher riskier yields, more of the retail credit union deposits. This set the stage for the one major blemish of imprudence on the credit union subeconomy. There are very contemporary lessons to be learned from the successes of the credit union model such as being responsive to consumer loan needs and down to earth with their portfolios. Yet in all the massive media coverage of the Wall Street barons and their lethal financial escapades, crimes and frauds, little is being written about how the regulation, philosophy and behavior of the credit unions largely escaped this catastrophe. There is, moreover, a lesson for retail credit unions. Beware and avoid the seepage or supremacy of the corporate financial model which, in its present degraded overly complex and abstract form, has become what one prosecutor called "lying, cheating and stealing" in fancy clothing. _____ Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and three-time presidential candidate. http://www.countercurrents.org/nader270209.htm http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sun Mar 1 09:10:19 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 08:10:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [A-List] Three Reasons Why Investors Should Worry About Bank Nationalization Message-ID: <535463.46175.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Three Reasons Why Investors Should Worry About Bank Nationalization 4?comments by: Martin Hutchinson March 01, 2009 |?????? http://seekingalpha.com/article/123394-three-reasons-why-investors-should-worry-about-bank-nationalization?source=article_lb_articles ? It?s a tough time to be a bank shareholder. You?re not just worrying about whether the ongoing recession or a further lurch downwards in housing prices is going to decimate the value of your bank?s loan portfolio. You?re also worrying about whether some government ?stress test? or ? worse still ? nationalization is going to destroy most or all of your investment?s remaining value. And finally, if you?re smart, you?re worrying about whether some cockamamie government loan scheme is going to artificially force down the nice juicy interest ?margins your bank is earning on the new loans it makes. Clearly, when it comes to bank nationalization, there?s more to be worried about than most investors realize. Reason No. 1: Nationalization Distorts the Marketplace Let?s start by just talking about nationalization in general. ?If you?re a shareholder in one of the banks I christened ?zombies? last week, then you?ve probably already lost 90% of your investment. You?re also not getting any significant dividends, nor are you likely to get any for at least a couple of years. In a truly free market situation you would already have been wiped out ? your bank ?is only still in existence thanks to the money it raised from last October?s ?Troubled Assets Relief Program? (TARP) preferred-stock sale. Full nationalization ? giving the government 100% of the bank ? would wipe you out altogether; by giving the bank the chance to turn itself around, you may be able to keep some small portion of your shareholding. Thus, bank nationalization is not just a threat to shareholders of the ?zombie? banks that are likely to be the ones nationalized. It is also a threat to the shareholders of healthier banks that will not be nationalized. To understand just why this is true, we first must understand some banking business basics. Reason No. 2: Nationalization Creates Artificial Support The banking business grew to absorb too much of the nation?s output, and now needs to shrink back to its traditional role. The economically healthiest way for that to happen would be for several banks ? the zombies ? to go out of ?business. That would give new market space for all the other banks, allowing them to get new business from ex-zombie bank clients and to take advantage of reduced competition by fattening lending margins. However, banks whose lives are artificially prolonged will get in the way of that healthy development; they soak up good business to pay back the government, or absorb yet more of their losses, and they prevent loan margins from rising to their new competitive level, making it more difficult for healthy banks to pay for the losses on their ?own past mistakes. In other words, if you?re a shareholder in a healthy bank you should object to bank nationalization. Your ideal would be for the sick behemoths to get out of the way and give you more customers and better margins. Nationalization is a particular danger, because the nationalized banks will be forced to increase lending volumes artificially, making their competitors? lives even more difficult. Even more threatening to a healthy bank shareholder, however, would be a new government lending institution, as proposed in U.S. President Barack Obama?s speech Tuesday night. While that institution might be very slow in getting organized and not a particularly intelligent competitor once it did, it would be able to use the resources of the Federal government to make credit-card loans, automobile loans and mortgage loans at subsidized rates. Bank shareholders can hope that it would have a heavy social objective component, concentrating on those borrowers who are ?left out? by the banking system. In that case, it would merely take away customers the banks didn?t really want, scooping up all the high-risk business for itself. However, if this new government-backed lender concentrated on ?making regular loans, competing with the banks on the theory that lending had ?seized up,? it would decimate industry lending margins. Economically, that would prolong the recession as convalescent ?banks found it more difficult to absorb past losses and become fully healthy again. As a bank shareholder, it would use your own taxpayer money to depress artificially your returns as bank shareholder. A truly lousy idea, in other words! Reason No. 3: Stressed Testing Could Overstress Weak Players Finally, there?s ?stress testing.? The Top 19 U.S. banks, presumably including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS), will be stress-tested over the next couple of months, to see how much money they might lose in ?a ?worst-case? recession, in which house prices drop another 25% and growth is minus 3% in 2009 and plus 0.5% in 2010. This is a generally sensible proposal: If executed correctly, this stress-testing will enable the government to identify the clear ?zombies? that require immediate recapitalization, ?and to also hopefully determine which banks among the so-called ?walking wounded? must have government capital, and which ones can survive on their own. The problem is that the ?stress test? may be too severe, particularly ?if it requires banks to be fully capitalized even after stress has been applied. A further 25% drop in house prices is a very severe assumption; house prices are already ?close to their long-term equilibrium in terms of their ratio to earnings, so a 25% further drop would imply a ?bear market? similar to that in stocks. That seems unlikely; the traditional level of U.S. house prices was a rather smaller multiple of earnings than in most other industrial economies, so a sustained drop below that level should meet with an upsurge of new demand from renters who could now afford homes. Conversely, we have really no idea what effect a further 25% drop in house prices ? almost 50% from the peak ? would have on mortgage delinquencies. The only previous ?such event was during the Great Depression, when the mortgage market was far less developed. Stress testers, being cautious, will make assumptions about this that will probably be much too pessimistic. A stress test that is too severe will force even healthy banks into further government shareholdings. Those shareholdings will initially be non-voting preference shares, but will be convertible into common shares at a 10% discount to the stock prices of Feb. 9 ? i.e. at an already depressed level that will dilute common shareholders. They will also be accompanied by restrictions on bonuses, which will disrupt even regional banks? activities in areas such as foreign exchange and bond trading, and by restrictions on dividends, which will slash shareholders? income and probably make share prices vulnerable. Shareholders in healthy banks should thus hope that the government?s ?attention is turned away from the banking sector as soon as possible. As a result of the current flurry of policies, investors can see one clear disaster (the government lending program), one significant problem (nationalization of the zombies), and one huge uncertainty (stress testing). If the recession isn?t already keeping investors awake at night, the government actions certainly will ? From ioriwase at mail.mohawknationnews.com Sun Mar 1 13:34:58 2009 From: ioriwase at mail.mohawknationnews.com (Mohawk Nation News) Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 15:34:58 -0500 Subject: [A-List] MNN We're baaaak!!! Canada Federal Court "judicial chicanery" side-swiped Message-ID: <012e7e57$39873$0cd76492854398@xnote> WE?RE BAAAACK!! ?JUDICIAL CHICANERY? OF FEDERAL COURT OF CANADA SIDE-SWIPED ? Call for investigation! MNN. March 1, 200 9. On June 14, 2008, Kahentinetha and Katenies, two Mohawk women, were viciously attacked at the Cornwall Ontario border by a special squad of about twelve barking Canadian Border Services Agents CBSA dressed for combat. One woman was put into a torture stress situation meant to kill her. She suffered a trauma induced heart attack and is still recovering. The other was severely beaten and held incommunicado without access to medical attention or outside help. She is still recovering from her injuries. Kahentinetha and Katenies live in the Mohawk communities of Akwesasne and Kahnawake. They think that everyone should be able to pass the illegal colonial border without being assaulted or killed. No employee or official has shown any concern for the near fatal assault committed by the CBSA. They filed formal complaints for a full investigation, appropriate charges to be made against the offenders and reasonable compensation for their arrest, assault and illegal jailing. They sent requests to the Hon. Robert Nicholson, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, the Ontario Provincial Police, the RCMP, the Mohawk Akwesasne Police and the CBSA. They all refused to investigate. The two women have no money and no lawyer. They had no choice but to represent themselves. They filed a Federal Court of Canada lawsuit to force the police and government agents to investigate this attempted murder. For $2 they filed a Statement of Claim on the ?Assault, arrest and illegal detention? by Canada Border Services Agents [Kahentinetha & Katenies v. Queen, Section 48, Federal Court Act, T-1309-08]. At first the court registry employees seemed helpful. As time went on they issued misinformation and lost documents to sabotage the lawsuit. The crown?s first response was to file an unprecedented countersuit for Kahentinetha and Katenies to pay for Canada?s costs. To start they wanted over $20,000 on deposit before the case could be tried, plus all subsequent costs thereafter. They justified this by claiming that Kahentinetha and Katenies are ?not residents of Canada?. They based this deceptive false argument on an unsubstantiated article from a newspaper published on the internet that speculated that Katenies lived in the U.S. Kahentinetha and Katenies submitted evidence that they live in Akwesasne and Kahnawake which are located in the portion of the colony of Canada known as ?Quebec?. They are considered residents of Canada by the Canadian government. The court refused to accept the evidence. Kahentinetha and Katenies were pleased with FCC?s order that respects Indigenous jurisdiction over Turtle Island. According to Canada?s own order and laws, the demand for money is a human rights violation and Canada must remove its border control. Prothonotary Mireille Tabib of FCC issued the order that the two women must put $6,500 before the case would proceed. Kahentinetha and Katenies appealed. They argued that Canada cannot claim that Kahnawake and Akwesasne are not part of Canada so as to classify them as ?non-residents? to make them pay court costs, while they treat these communities as parts of Canada, including having a border control in the center. This was a very strong argument. So they stooped to skullduggery. They ?lost? the appeal documents. When the crown did not reply, Kahentinetha phoned the FCC registry. She was told the documents were lost. Then they suddenly found them. Kahentinetha and Katenies were instructed to re-file the appeal and to ask ?for an extension of time?. FCC Judge Francois Lemieux then issued an order denying them the extension of time. He made no ruling on the unconstitutional posting of money by victims of a crime carried out by agents of the state. His deflection made it impossible for the women to appeal. Such a cynical and willful obstruction of justice was unexpected. Kahentinetha and Katenies, having no money, no jobs and no attachable assets, had to abandon the case. Then on February 26, 2009, Kahentinetha filed a brand new suit on the ?Reckless disregard for the safety and security of Indigenous Women at the Canadian Border, Akwesasne? [FCC File No. T-288-09, Kahentinetha v. Queen]. Not forgotten is that men are also abused at the border. Canada continues judicial chicanery with blindness to the rule of law. As a signatory to international human rights instruments, Canada?s Constitution Act, 1982, states everyone is equal before the law. People, no matter what part of the world they come from, cannot be beaten up by state agents with impunity. Hardball bullying that Kahentinetha and Katenies got from the FCC shows that it is impossible for Indigenous to get our issues discussed rationally and resolved according to generally accept Canadian and international legal principles. Canadian and international opinion does not support this high handed and unethical behavior. Kahentinetha is not a Canadian citizen and Kahnawake and Akwesasne are not part of Canada as recognized by Prothonotary Mireille Tabib?s order of 23 October, 2008 [FCC No. T-1309] and by Judge Francois Lemieux?s order of 29 January 2009 [ FCC No. T-1309-08]. The assault can be proven by both civilian and government of Canada witnesses, by medical and hospital records and by videotape evidence which is in the hands of the CBSA. Kahentinetha and Katenies? main purposes for their legal actions are to demand a full and fair investigation of: 1) the assault; 2) the failure to investigate; 3) the loss of documents and unethical treatment by the FCC; and 4) the action to be tried without delay in the FCC at 30 McGill Street, Montreal, Quebec. Canada continues to use its courts as a political weapon to allow its agents to abuse us with impunity. This case cannot be swept under the carpet of judicial chicanery. Ieriwaonni & MNN Staff Mohawk Nation News www.mohawknationnews.com katenies20 at yahoo.com kahentinetha2 at yahoo.com Note: Your financial help is needed and appreciated. Please send your donations by check or money order to ?MNN Mohawk Nation News?, Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0. Nia:wen thank you very much. Go to MNN ?BORDER? category for more stories; New MNN Books Available now! Purchase t-shirts, mugs and more at our CafePressStore http://www.cafepress.com/mohawknews; Subscribe to MNN for breaking news updates http://.mohawknationnews.com/news/subscription.php; Sign Women Title Holders petition! http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Iroquois Cases FCC T-1309-08 and FCC T-288-09, Kahentinetha v. Queen. POLITICAL, JUDICIAL & BUREAUCRATIC ?DOUCE BAGS?: Hon. Robert ?Contemptible-flunkey-who-protects state-criminals-and-other-agents-of-repression? Nicholson, Minister of Justice & Attorney General of Canada, Tel: 613-941-6900, Nicholson.r at parl.gc.ca, Hon. John ??Judicial-hit-man? Sims, Deputy Attorney-General of Canada, Dept. of Justice, 284 Wellington St. TSA-6032, Ottawa Ontario K1A0H8 Tel: 613-946-2774, 613-992-3452, 613-942-4238, L. Bisson, Manager, Ministerial Correspondence Unit mcu at justice.gc.ca; Charles Payette 613-952-3653, Anil Kamal 613-943-2302 Fax: 613-952-6006; Federal Court of Canada, 30 McGill St., Montreal Quebec H2Y 3Z7 Tel: 1-800-927-5499, 514-283-4820, Prothonotary Mireille ?Twisted-judicial-storm-trooping-gate-keeper-with-a-history-of-unconscionable-chicanery-against-Ongwehone? Tabib, Judge Francois ?Rubber-stamping-petti-fogging-cheater? Lemieux; Sgt. J.L. Pettit, RCMP Headquarters, 1200 Vanier Parkway, Ottawa K1A 0R2 Tel: 613-993-7267 Fax: 613-993-0260; Louise Steele, Ontario Provincial Police, 777 Memorial Avenue, Orillia Ontario L3V 7V3 Tel: 705-329- 6051; COLONIAL DOUCHE BAG PUPPETS: Phil Fontaine of the AFN is a partner in CBSA?s Sustainable Development Strategy 2007-9; Chris Kealey, Canada Customs Excise, Immigration Taxation Board, CBSA Media Relations 613-991-5197; President CBSA 613-952-3200, 613-957-0612, CBSA-ASFC at Canada.gc.ca; National Aboriginal Initiative CHRC 204-983-2189 1-866-772-4880 info.com at chrc-ccdp.ca; Canada Customs Port of Entry at Cornwall Island Ontario; Quebec Human Rights presidence at cdpdj.gc.ca; Akwesasne Mohawk Police 613-575-2250 ex 2400; Mohawk Security at the border 613-932-5183, 613-575-2340; Lance Markel, District Director CBSA 613-930-3234, 613-991-1214; Brent Lefebvre, Investigator CBSA; Susan St. Clair, Canadian Human Rights Commission, 344 Slater, Ottawa 613-995-1151, 1-888-214-1090, 613-943-5188; CBSA National Spokesperson 613-957-6500; Quebec Media Relations CBSA 514-350-6130; Chief Mohawk Council Akwesasne 613-575-2250 nbenedict at akwesasne.ca; Minister Stockwell Day, Ottawa 613-995-4432; Melissa Leclair Communications Pub. Safety 613-991-2863. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Mar 1 19:36:06 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:36:06 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Future of Transit Message-ID: <49AB4616.60002@ashisuto.co.jp> Public transportation needs massive investment. Will the Obama administration step up? by Adam Doster and Kate Sheppard In These Times (February 23 2009) More than 2.5 million people live in the Baltimore Metropolitan Area and most never step foot on public transit. The city's bus system is slow and inefficient, and the region supports only two rail lines, a 15.5-mile light rail route that traverses the city from north to south and a heavy rail metro track that runs from the city center to the northwestern suburbs. Both lines serve only a combined 80,000 riders daily. Baltimoreans may not prefer driving, but they have little choice. That's why local mass transit advocates were thrilled in 2002 when a state advisory committee unveiled the Baltimore Region Rail System Plan, an ambitious proposal that called for the construction of six lines extending more than 109 miles. First on tap was the Red Line, a $1 billion high-capacity east-west rail corridor that would connect with the existing train routes and serve 250,000 people who reside in some of the city's most densely populated but underserved neighborhoods. "There could be massive economic reinvestment in those areas, which is badly needed", says Stuart Sirota, a regional planner who helped develop the 2002 plan. But the project has languished since its inception, stuck under multiyear environmental studies (standard practice for new infrastructure projects), a Republican governor unfriendly to transit expansion and a dearth of federal funds. By contrast, during the same period, Maryland moved ahead with an equally expensive plan to widen a 10-mile section of I-95, the major interstate that runs along the East Coast. Classified as an upgrade of existing infrastructure, the highway lobby fast-tracked the project - first proposed in 2002 - through the environmental regulatory process. Today, it's fully funded and well under construction. "Transit has been the poor stepchild of highways", says Sirota. "That's been the status quo over the last forty-plus years, and our region isn't any different". The United States is a nation of cars. For more than sixty years, federal zoning, housing and transportation policies - including President Eisenhower's monumental 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act - have diffused the population and established the automobile as the primary means of travel. Prioritizing highway construction over mass transit was justifiable following World War Two, when gas was cheap and abundant, climate change was not yet understood and cities were struggling to handle population growth. Today, it is a recipe for economic and environmental disaster. Yet the federal government remains in a time warp, prioritizing highway funding even as Americans ditch their cars for seats on trains and buses. This year presents two enormous opportunities to alter the equation: First, the economic recovery package, which will include billions on transit infrastructure, and second, the reauthorization of the surface transportation bill, which could redistribute federal funds. If bureaucratic inertia and a lack of political imagination don't squash substantive reforms, transportation policy could be fundamentally restructured in 2009. But - especially to judge from the stimulus negotiations - that's a big "if". Failing infrastructure In August 2005, President Bush signed into law the current transportation bill - the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) - which will expire September 30 2009. Infamous for its inclusion of the $200 million "Bridge to Nowhere", the $244 billion bill also failed to improve funding for mass transit. Since 1982, transportation funding has broken down this way: eighty percent for roads, twenty percent for mass transit. Nothing changed in 2005, leaving Americans with a national mass transit infrastructure that lacks coherent policy vision and desperately needs major investment. In its 2009 "Report Card for America's Infrastructure Future", the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the United States a "C minus" for its rail network, in part because of the government-owned Amtrak, which the Government Accountability Office recently described as being in "poor financial shape". And the problems for rail are only worsening: Because freight and intercity passenger trains often share tracks, expected ridership increases will stress an already maxed-out system. ASCE estimates that more than $200 billion is needed through 2035 to accommodate this growth. ASCE's mark on US mass transit was even worse: a "D". According to the Federal Transit Administration, $15.8 billion is needed annually to maintain conditions of the nation's transit agencies, while improving to "good" conditions would require an annual $21.6 billion. But in 2008, federal funding for transit totaled just $9.8 billion. Because funding hasn't kept pace with need, what resources are devoted to mass transit generally cover maintenance and upkeep - not expansion. When Congress reauthorized SAFETEA-LU in 2005, it earmarked a mere $1.6 billion a year for the construction of new commuter and light rail systems, less than one percent of the total amount allocated. "Expenditures are far outpacing revenues", says Deron Lovaas, federal transportation policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, "and we're not making any improvements". The pattern creates a staggering backlog. Reconnecting America, which advocates for mass transit, identifies $248 billion in developments that have already been proposed. That's roughly the same amount promised for highways and transit, combined, in the last federal transportation bill. At the current rate of federal investment, it would take 77 years to complete these projects, and that doesn't include the billions of dollars that cities with older systems require to modernize existing transit routes. Not surprisingly, half of all Americans still lack any access to mass transit, and only twenty percent live near high-capacity outlets (rail or rapid bus), even though eighty percent of Americans reside in areas defined as metropolises. Ditch my ride Despite deteriorating infrastructure, commuters keep jumping aboard. Since 1995, public transit ridership has risen a whopping 32 percent, more than double the rate of population growth. In 2007, Americans took 10.3 billion trips on public transportation, the highest number in more than fifty years. The trajectory continued in 2008: Subways, buses, commuter rail and light-rail systems saw a 6.5 percent jump in ridership in the year's third quarter, the largest quarterly upsurge in 25 years. With transit booming, many Americans are ditching their once-beloved cars. The Federal Highway Administration reports thirteen consecutive months of driving decline, with 112 billion less vehicle-miles traveled than in the previous thirteen-month span. The high cost of auto transit accounts for some of the behavioral shift. The American Public Transportation Association (APTA), which represents the bus, rapid transit and commuter-rail systems industry, estimates that, by taking transit instead of driving last year, an average household would have saved $9,499, the equivalent of a year's supply of food. Concern about climate change is also altering transit dynamics. According to APTA, a commuter traveling twenty miles alone by car each day who switches to public transportation would reduce her carbon dioxide emissions by 4,800 pounds per year. "Americans are driving so much less", says Robert Puentes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program. "But they sure haven't stopped traveling". Demand for mass transit will only intensify in the future. When Eisenhower launched his grand highway experiment, not only was the US population smaller and younger, but about half of all households were organized as traditional nuclear families - making cars a natural choice upon which to base a transit system. Not anymore. Today, American households are older (from now until 2030, more people will turn 65 each year than in the previous year), smaller (the share of single person households has edged slightly past the conventional family household) and more attracted to dense, walkable neighborhoods. "We're not building for an Ozzie-and-Harriet world anymore", says David Goldberg, communications director for Transportation For America (T4), a coalition of more than 100 state and sixty national groups advocating transit reform. "For [moving] goods, for people to get to and from work, for the quality of life in these places, there has to be a well-functioning transportation system that offers a wide range of options". 'What do we want?' 'TRANSIT!' Republican pollster Frank Luntz recently found that 94 percent of Americans are concerned about the country's infrastructure and 81 percent would be willing to pay one percent more on their taxes if the money were to go toward infrastructure. They ranked energy infrastructure as their top priority, but eighteen percent listed mass transit as the infrastructure most in need of investment, while passenger rail, bike lanes and pedestrian paths also made it into the top desires. On Election Day, 25 of 33 ballot initiatives to increase local and state taxes for public transportation passed, including an 800-mile high-speed rail line in California that is expected to cost $40 billion by the target completion date in 2030. "The public sees infrastructure as clean water, they see it as school buildings, they see it as bike paths and airports and railways", Luntz said on a conference call with reporters in December 2008. "They do not just see it as repairing highways". After years of neglect, federal lawmakers are finally taking action. In October, Congress approved a five-year, $13 billion reauthorization of Amtrak, almost double its current federal funding level. Senators John Kerry (Dem - Massachusetts) and Arlen Specter (Rep - Pennsylvania) followed that up by introducing a law to fund high-speed rail lines in several key corridors of the country. And House members extended tax benefits to bikers and re-established a federal interagency Bicycle Task Force to promote coordination on bike issues. But these piecemeal reforms pale next to the investments made by other countries. China has opened a new subway system in each of the past six years. And France spends twenty times as much per capita on rail as the United States does. Having outgrown its current transit system, America must reorganize how its people and its goods move in order to ensure prosperity in the future. An October 2008 American Public Transportation Association survey found that 85 percent of public transit systems reported capacity problems and 35 percent were considering service cuts. The long-term cost of inaction is even greater. In a January 2008 report authorized by Congress, the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission concluded that without bold and well-coordinated surface transportation policies, the nation's assets will further deteriorate, greenhouse gas emissions will rise and adverse public health effects will proliferate. "At the moment, the condition of mass transit is perilous", says T4's Goldberg. "This is a huge turning point". Status quo defenders The T4 political coalition has grown mightier in recent years. It now includes the American Public Health Association, which sees mass transit and smart-growth as ways to fight health concerns like obesity. And there's talk that the influential American Association of Retired People might sign on as well, pushed by increasing concern that older Americans need mass transit options. Another notable addition is the National Association of Realtors, which, in the heady days of the McMansion boom, didn't register much concern for mass transit. But as real estate values around transit hubs have exploded, so too has the group's interest. Defending the status quo will be the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the umbrella group for state departments of transportation. In years past, legislators have relied heavily on what highway-friendly state transit officials say they need in funding. AASHTO's highway-heavy stimulus wishlist is a prime example. Florida devoted only one percent of its $6.97 billion request to mass transit; Missouri around five percent of its $800 million request. Even more progressive transit-policy states, such as California and New York, asked for less than half of their funding to go to transit. Road builders and others from the concrete lobby, like the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), will also weigh in. AASHTO and ARTBA have sway in Congress, going back to the days when the country's interstates were a major source of jobs. For 27 years, these groups have preserved their lopsided funding allotment. New approaches needed But even funding for roads is hurting these days. In September 2008, the Federal Highway Trust Fund - which uses the gas tax to fund a majority of road repair projects - went broke, forcing Congress to spend $8 billion to ensure temporary solvency. Yet the fund is expected to run out again later this year, leading even the most conservative transit policymakers to talk about greener options. Some in Congress are lobbying for a simple gas tax increase to fix the highway-funding problem. But that idea doesn't take into account that gasoline-powered cars are becoming increasingly fuel-efficient, much less that battery, biofuel and plug-in hybrid technologies have begun to permeate the market. Another idea is for a mileage tax. Several states are now considering it, and Portland, Oregon, already tried it in 2006 and 2007. Cars were equipped with a mileage counter, and when they filled up at fuel stations, they were levied a tax for the number of miles they had traveled, rather than charged a gas tax at the pump. It was fairly popular with testers - 91 percent of participants liked it more than the gas tax, according to survey by the Oregon Department of Transportation - but the program is not ready to scale nationally. But to reshape policy, NRDC's Lovaas says one method could be to specify that money meant for highway and bridge projects be used only for repair and maintenance. Another policy proposal would include language specifying that repair projects be giving priority over new road construction when funding is distributed. Others are focusing on the percentages: While transit advocates would ideally like a fifty-fifty split between roads and mass transit funding, T4 is lobbying for a sixty-forty split, which would still increase funding for mass transit from its current level. Transit advocates will likely differ over just how far to go in advocating for a better apportionment. Friends of the Earth (FOE) launched a "no new roads" campaign around the stimulus plan, calling instead for cleaner alternatives. But others, like the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), don't necessarily oppose new roads. They only oppose roads and projects that don't address congestion, sprawl and inaccessibility. "In the past, the environmental movement and the smart growth movement have sort of just juxtaposed roads to mass transit", says CNU President and former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist. He argues that road funding should instead be based on whether it creates a network of accessible, user-friendly streets for pedestrians, mass transit and cars. A less-than-stimulating start Meanwhile, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair James Oberstar (Dem - Minnesota) - who will likely have plenty of say in what the House transit package looks like - has sent signals that he'll fight for something tougher than previous transportation bills. His original stimulus proposal called for $85 billion for infrastructure investments, with more than half going to energy and environmental projects and at least $17 billion to mass transit. Of that, $12 billion would go to public transit, and $5 billion for rail. Another $30 billion would go to highways and bridges. Oberstar noted that his plan "creates green-collar jobs and invests in projects that decrease our dependence on foreign oil and address global climate change". However, when the stimulus proposal came out in mid-January, the road money stayed the same but the transportation portion had been reduced by 25 percent. As for rail - for which Oberstar wanted $5 billion - its funding was reduced to $1.1 billion. Transit advocates were able to tack $3 billion more onto the stimulus through an amendment, but the total was still short of what Oberstar originally called for. "How those decisions were made, I don't know", says Jim Berard, communications director for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "It's disappointing that our recommendation was not accepted on the whole, but at the same time we got a good deal for transportation infrastructure and we want to keep the momentum going for this bill". The Senate Appropriations Committee's draft stimulus was even more meager than the House version, providing just $9.5 billion for transit. The chamber then rejected an amendment offered by Senators Patty Murray (Dem - Washington) and Dianne Feinstein (Dem - California) to increase transportation funding by $18 billion - $5 billion for mass transit and $13 billion for highways - by a mere two votes. Instead, lawmakers tacked on an additional $11.5 billion in tax rebates for car purchases, forcing struggling local transit agencies to shore up their riddled budgets in-house. And as In These Times went to press, Senator Barbara Boxer (Dem - California), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, was reportedly co-sponsoring an amendment with notorious climate change skeptic Senator James Inhofe (Rep - Oklahoma) that would throw an additional $50 billion at roads and highways. As Boxer's committee will be responsible for the reauthorization of the transporation bill, the amendment doesn't bode well. "It shows that there's absolutely no new thinking coming out of that committee on the role that transportation needs to play in achieving global warming goals", says FOE's Transportaion Coordinator Colin Peppard. "We need better leadership from the committee that's going to be drafting this bill". Those who favor spending on roads argue that they provide a more immediate stimulus because they're "shovel-ready". But at least $50 billion worth of backlogged repairs are needed for public transit systems, compared to $8.5 billion needed to maintain current road. Yet the stimulus draft gave billions more to roads - meaning much would likely be spent on expanding or building new roads. Meanwhile, despite the fact that Amtrak's northeast corridor alone needs more than $10 billion in repairs, the draft allocated only $1.1 billion for improving all of Amtrak. Yet even this pittance was deemed too generous by Senators Ben Nelson (Dem - Nebraska) and Susan Collins (Rep - Maine), who, as In These Times went to press, had proposed slashing it by $850 million. Berard, however, remains bullish about the coming congressional session. "There will be other times down the road to advocate for more transit funding", he says. "We will be taking a very close look at how to get more for transit in that as well". Though unable to give a sense of dollar figures or percentages, Berard says the preliminary work on the legislation is underway, and legislators plan to move a bill through the House by the end of June. Up in LaHood One of the biggest wild cards on transportation policy is going to be Obama's pick to head the Department of Transportation, the former representative from Illinois, Ray LaHood. The seven-term Republican, who retired this year, served on the House Transportation Committee, though never in a leadership position. In the past few years, he broke from his party when it came to Amtrak. In 2005, he noted in the Peoria Journal-Star that "we've got a good Amtrak system in Illinois and I don't think we want to destroy it by talking about privatization". Last June, he voted for the Saving Energy Through Public Transportation Act, which aimed to promote increased public transportation use. LaHood was also a member of the Congressional Bike Caucus, a group of representatives who work to improve bike infrastructure. But many believe LaHood's nomination was based more on politics than expertise. The Department of Transportation was also the cabinet post where Bush made his token appointment of a Democrat in 2001, and Obama had promised a bipartisan administration. Environmental groups are giving LaHood the benefit of the doubt. "While his overall record on energy and environment issues is poor", says FOE President Brent Blackwelder, "there are reasons to hope he may be open to the visionary transportation policy that is needed to move our country forward". Another major factor will be Carol Browner. Her role as Obama's chief energy and climate adviser - a new position that didn't require Senate confirmation - will likely take some time to flesh out. It seems likely that, given Obama's emphasis on a comprehensive climate plan and Browner's experience as the Environmental Protection Agency administrator during the Clinton administration, she'll also play a key role in transportation policy. Similarly, the White House's focus on climate policy may mean that Obama himself weighs in more on this year's transit bill than did previous presidents. And Vice President Joe Biden, who as a senator famously commuted to and from the Capitol via Amtrak, is no shrinking violet on public transit issues, either. Whether mass transit receives the attention it deserves is a question of political will. In regions across the country, legislators are adjusting to the new demands of commuters. Even in Baltimore, where foot dragging has kept the Red Line shelved for years, progress is being made. In September, the Maryland Transportation Agency released its preliminary Environmental Impact Statement, the first significant step toward applying for federal funding. And new Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon is making sure the city is a key partner in any state negotiations. Federal lawmakers must now find a way to support more projects like Baltimore's and, in doing so, devise a new vision for America's transit system. This year is the perfect opportunity to start. Authors' post-stimulus addendum: Transit advocates pushed hard to improve the grim first draft of the stimulus proposal - and their effort paid off. About $17 billion dollars were devoted to mass transit in the $787 billion bill President Obama signed in mid-February, roughly the same number Representative Oberstar called for in his initial committee recommendations. Not only did Senator Boxer's road amendment die in committee and Senator Nelson's proposed cuts lose out in the face of intense opposition, but local transit agencies will get a boost through an $8.4 billion increase in transit capital assistance grants. The package also includes a hefty $8 billion for high-speed rail, funding that Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly added in the final bargaining sessions. While the resources won't begin to address the enormous investment needs and came at the expense of other stimulative programs - school construction funds and aid to state governments, most notably - it's a reassuring sign that Democrats understand the need to chart a new path during this summer's transportation negotiations. _____ Adam Doster is a senior editor at In These Times and a reporter-blogger for Progress Illinois. Kate Sheppard is the political reporter for the online environmental magazine, Grist.org. She has also written for The American Prospect, Bitch, The Guardian and MSN. http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4262/the_future_of_transit/ http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/4262/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Mar 2 04:53:09 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:53:09 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Great Solvent North Message-ID: <49ABC8A5.2040802@ashisuto.co.jp> by Theresa Tedesco New York Times Op-Ed (February 28 2009) Toronto - Has the world turned upside down? America, the capital of capitalism, is pondering nationalizing a handful of banks. Meanwhile, Canada, whose banking system had long been notorious for its stodgy practices and government coddling, is now being celebrated for those very qualities. The Canadian banking system, which proved resilient in the global economic crisis, is finally getting its day in the sun. A recent World Economic Forum report ranked it the soundest in the world, mostly as the result of its conservative practices. (The United States ranked fortieth.) President Obama has joined the adoring throng. He recently said that Canada has "shown itself to be a pretty good manager of the financial system in the economy in ways that we haven't always been here in the United States". Paul Volcker, former chief of the United States Federal Reserve, commented that what he's arguing for "looks more like the Canadian system than the American system". Most people don't know that the vision behind Canada's banking system, made up of a few large, national banks with branches from coast to coast, actually had its beginnings in the United States. Canada's system is the product of a banking framework inspired by Alexander Hamilton, the first American secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton envisioned the First Bank of the United States, chartered in 1791, as a central bank modeled on the Bank of England. Canadians found inspiration in Hamilton's model, but not all Americans did. In the 1830s, President Andrew Jackson opposed extending the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, perceiving it as monopolistic. Money-lending functions were then assumed by local and state-chartered banks, eventually giving rise to the free-market, decentralized system that America has today. Today, Canada's system remains truer to Hamilton's ideal. The five major chartered banks, the few regional banks and handful of large insurance companies are all regulated by the federal government. Canadian banks are relatively constrained in the amounts they can lend. Canadian banks are required to have a bigger cushion to absorb losses than American banks. In addition, Canadian government regulations protect the domestic banks by limiting foreign competition. They also keep banks broadly owned by public shareholders. Since Canada's financial services sector was deregulated in 1987, permitting the banks to buy brokerage houses, they have enjoyed vast earnings power because of their diverse businesses and operations. And in contrast to the recent shotgun marriages at bargain prices between ailing Wall Street brokerages and American banks, Canadian banks paid top dollar decades ago for profitable, blue-chip investment firms. Canadian banks are known to be risk-averse, and this has served them well. While their American counterparts were loading up their books with risky mortgages, Canadian banks maintained their lending requirements, largely avoiding subprime mortgages. The buttoned-down banks in Canada also tended to keep these types of securities on their books, rather than packaging them and selling them to investors. This meant that the exposures they did have to weak mortgages were more visible to the marketplace. The big five Canadian banks - Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Bank of Montreal - survived the recent turmoil relatively unscathed. Their balance sheets remain intact and their capital ratios are comfortably above requirements. Yes, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government may buy as much as 125 billion Canadian dollars (about $100 billion) worth of mortgages, increasing banks' capacity to lend. But this is small change compared with the scale of Washington's bailout. Few would have predicted that Canadian banks, long derided as among the least autonomous because of stringent government oversight, would emerge from the global mayhem as some of the more independent international players. Since Mr Obama seems to admire the Canadian banking system, his administration might want to take a page out of its playbook. This would entail building a national banking system based on a small number of large, broadly held, centrally and rigorously regulated firms. Imitating the Canadian model would require sweeping consolidation of American banks. This would be a very good thing. Washington had difficulty figuring out the magnitude of the financial crisis because there are so many thousands of banks that it was impossible for regulators to get into all of them. Washington is already on the path to achieving consolidation. Eventually, some of the larger banks into which the government is injecting taxpayer money will probably be deemed beyond help, and will either be allowed to die or be partnered with other banks. The market will take its cues from this stress-testing, and make its own bets on which banks will survive. It's hard to predict how many will have survived when the dust settles, but the new landscape might consist of only fifty or sixty banking institutions. More radically, Washington could take over the licensing of banks from the states, or, at the very least, consider more stringent regulation of global and super-regional banks. After all, the Canadian system is considered successful not only because it has fewer banks to regulate, but because regulation is based on the tenets of safety and soundness. There is no time to waste. Reconfiguring the American banking structure to look more like the Canadian model would help restore much-needed confidence in a beleaguered financial system. Why not emulate the best in the world, which happens to be right next door? At the very least, Hamilton would have approved. _____ Theresa Tedesco is the chief business correspondent for The National Post. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/opinion/28tedesco.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Mon Mar 2 04:14:44 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:14:44 +1100 Subject: [A-List] Australia: Full agenda for World at a Crossroads conference - Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century | Links Message-ID: <49ABBFA4.40608@greenleft.org.au> World at a Crossroads - Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century Easter 2009, April 10-13 Venue: Sydney Girls High School, Sydney REGISTER NOW AT www.worldatacrossroads.org/register FULL CONFERENCE AGENDA The full conference agenda is inserted below, or visit the following links to view the various topic streams: * Global economic crisis http://www.worldatacrossroads.org/economiccrisis * Climate change & environmental crisis http://www.worldatacrossroads.org/envirostream * Latin American revolution: alternatives to capitalism http://www.worldatacrossroads.org/latinamerica * Resisting imperialism & war http://www.worldatacrossroads.org/warandimperialism * Struggles in Asia and Africa http://www.worldatacrossroads.org/asiaandafrica * Australian radical history & politics http://www.worldatacrossroads.org/australianradicalhistoryandpolitics * Left unity: alliances, movement building & revolutionary organisation http://www.worldatacrossroads.org/leftunity * Marxist fundamentals http://www.worldatacrossroads.org/marxistfundamentals Full agenda and speakers at http://links.org.au/node/918 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 6097 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090302/0200c0ec/attachment.txt From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Mar 2 18:47:39 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:47:39 +0900 Subject: [A-List] [Fwd: [Bill Totten's Weblog] New comment on The Great Solvent North.] Message-ID: <49AC8C3B.2020106@ashisuto.co.jp> -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Bill Totten's Weblog] New comment on The Great Solvent North. Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 10:36:57 -0800 (PST) From: corporatebully To: shimogamo at attglobal.net corporatebully has left a new comment on your post "The Great Solvent North": RBC Bank President Gordon Nixon - Salary $11.73 Million $100,000 - MISTAKE (FISHERMEN'S LOAN) I'm a commercial fisherman fighting the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC Bank) over a $100,000 loan mistake. I lost my home, fishing vessel and equipment. Help me fight this corporate bully by closing your RBC Bank account. There was no monthly interest payment date or amount of interest payable per month on my loan agreement. Date of first installment payment (Principal + interest) is approximately 1 year from the signing of my contract. Demand loan agreements signed by other fishermen around the same time disclosed monthly interest payment dates and interest amounts payable per month.The lending policy for fishermen did change at RBC from one payment (principal + interest) per year for fishing loans to principal paid yearly with interest paid monthly. This lending practice was in place when I approached RBC. Only problem is the loans officer was a replacement who wasn't familiar with these type of loans. She never informed me verbally or in writing about this new criteria. Phone or e-mail: RBC President, Gordon Nixon, Toronto (416)974-6415 RBC Vice President, Sales, Anne Lockie, Toronto (416)974-6821 RBC President, Atlantic Provinces, Greg Grice (902)421-8112 mail to:greg.grice at rbc.com RBC Manager, Cape Breton/Eastern Nova Scotia, Jerry Rankin (902)567-8600 RBC Vice President, Atlantic Provinces, Brian Conway (902)491-4302 mail to:brian.conway at rbc.com RBC Vice President, Halifax Region, Tammy Holland (902)421-8112 mail to:tammy.holland at rbc.com RBC Senior Manager, Media & Public Relations, Beja Rodeck (416)974-5506 mail to:beja.rodeck at rbc.com RBC Ombudsman, Wendy Knight, Toronto, Ontario 1-800-769-2542 mail to:ombudsman at rbc.com Ombudsman for Banking Services & Investments, JoAnne Olafson, Toronto, 1-888-451-4519 mail to:ombudsman at obsi.ca http://www.pfraser.blogspot.com http://www.corporatebully.ca http://www.youtube.com/CORPORATEBULLY http://www.p2pnet.net/story/17877 "Fighting the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC Bank) one customer at a time" Posted by corporatebully to Bill Totten's Weblog at 3:36 AM, March 03, 2009 From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Mar 2 19:54:02 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:54:02 +0900 Subject: [A-List] What Next? Message-ID: <49AC9BCA.6060304@ashisuto.co.jp> Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler Comment on current events by the author of The Long Emergency (2005) www.kunstler.com (March 02 2009) Isn't that a question, though ... The Peak Oil story was never about running out of oil. It was about the collapse of complex systems in a world economy faced by the prospect of no further oil-fueled growth. It was something of a shock to many that the first complex system to fail would be banking, but the process is obvious: no more growth means no more ability to pay interest on credit ... end of story, as Tony Soprano used to say. There was a popular theory among Peak Oilers the last decade that the world would enter a "bumpy plateau" period when the global economy would get beaten down by peak oil, would then revive as "demand destruction" drove down oil prices, and would be beaten down again as oil prices shot up in response - with serial repetitions of the cycle, each beat-down taking economies lower - the only imaginable outcome being some sort of quiet homeostasis. This scenario did not play out as expected. It was predicated on a mistaken assumption that all systems would retain some kind of operational resilience while ratcheting down. Anyway, the banking system was mortally wounded in the first go-round and the behemoth is dying hard. The last desperate act of the banking system in the face of Peak Oil's no-more-growth equation was to engineer species of tradable securities that could produce wealth out of thin air rather than productive activity. This was the alphabet soup of algorithm-derived frauds with vague and confounding names such as credit default swaps (CDSs), collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), structured investment vehicles (SIVs), and, of course, the basic filler, mortgage backed securities. The banking system is now choking to death on these delicacies. The trouble is that the EMT squad brought in to rescue the banking system - that is, governments - can't remove these obstructions from the patient's craw. They don't want to drown in a mighty upchuck of the alphabet soup. The collapse of complex systems is actually predicated on the idea that the systems would mutually reinforce each other's failures. This is now plain to see as the collapse of banking (that is, of both lending and debt service), has led to the collapse of commerce and manufacturing. The next systems to go will probably be farming, transportation, and the oil markets themselves (which constitute the system for allocating and distributing world energy resources). As these things seize up, the final system to go will be governance, at least at the highest levels. If we're really lucky, human affairs will eventually reorganize at a lower scale of activity, governance, civility, and economy. Every week, the failure to recognize the nature of our predicament thrusts us further into the uncharted territory of hardship. The task of government right now is not to prop up doomed systems at their current scales of failure, but to prepare the public to rebuild our systems at smaller scales. The net effect of the failures in banking is that a lot of people have less money than they expected they would have a year ago. This is bad enough, given our habits and practices of modern life. But what happens when farming collapses? The prospect for that is closer than most of us might realize. The way we produce our food has been organized at a scale that has ruinous consequences, not least its addiction to capital. Now that banking is in collapse, capital will be extremely scarce. Nobody in the cities reads farm news, or listens to farm reports on the radio. Guess what, though: we are entering the planting season. It will be interesting to learn how many farmers "out there" in the Cheez Doodle belt are not able to secure loans for this year's crop. My guess is that the disorder in agriculture will be pretty severe this year, especially since some of the world's most productive places - California, northern China, Argentina, the Australian grain belt - are caught in extremes of drought on top of capital shortages. If the US government is going to try to make remedial policy for anything, it better start with agriculture, to promote local, smaller-scaled farming using methods that are much less dependent on oil byproducts and capital injections. This will, of course, require a re-allocation of lands suitable for growing food. Our real estate market mechanisms could conceivably enable this to happen, but not without a coherent consensus that it is imperative to do so. If agri-business as currently practiced doesn't founder on capital shortages, it will surely collapse on disruptions in the oil markets. President Obama at least made a start in the right direction by proposing to eliminate further subsidies to farmers above the $250,000 level. But the situation is really more acute. Surely the US Department of Agriculture already knows about it, but the public may not be interested until the shelves in the Piggly-Wiggly are bare - and then, of course, they'll go apeshit. The recent huge drop in oil prices has left the public once again convinced that the world is drowning in oil - if only the scoundrelly oil companies were forced to deliver it at reasonable prices. The public has been consistently deluded about this for decades. What's missing so far is for the president of the US to lay out the reality of the situation in a dedicated TV address. I know a lot of you think that Jimmy Carter already tried this and failed to make an impression (and ruined his presidency in the process). I guarantee you that Mr Obama will have to do this sometime in the next few years whether he likes or not, and he'd be well-advised to get it done sooner rather than later. And by this I don't mean just vague allusions to "energy independence" or "renewables" in speeches devoted to many other issues. I mean telling the public the plain truth that we'll never offset oil depletion and the intelligent response is to do everything possible to transition to walkable towns and public transit, not to sustain the unsustainable. The alternatives - that is, what we're trying now - is to further delude ourselves into thinking that we can run WalMart and the suburbs by some other means than oil. Despite all our investments in these things, we won't be able to run them by other means, and the news about this had better get out before enormous disappointment turns into titanic rage. If Americans think they've been grifted by Goldman Sachs and Bernie Madoff, wait until they find out what a swindle the so-called "American Dream" of suburban life turns out to be. On this blizzardy Monday in the power centers of America, attention is fixed on the never-ending fiasco of AIG - a company whose main product turned out to be credit default swaps, and is now choking on them. Kibitzers on the sidelines of finance are forecasting a king-hell bear market suckers' rally in the stock markets followed by a belly flop to Dow 4000 or lower. I myself called for Dow 4000 two years ago - and was obviously a bit off on my timing. All this is surely trouble enough. But while your attention is focused on Rick Santelli in the Chicago trader's pit, or Larry Kudlow desperately seeking "mustard seeds" of new growth in financials, try to let one eye stray to the horizon where these other complex systems are working out their next moves. Farming. The oil markets. These are the coming theaters of alarm and distress. _____ My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2009/03/what-next.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From noreply at coha.org Mon Mar 2 13:42:20 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 15:42:20 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Mexican PR Blitz; Unrest in Guadeloupe Message-ID: <20090302204219.5C8883E4248@mx-out.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 6013 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090302/c8262d2d/attachment.txt From annewilliamson at msn.com Mon Mar 2 15:17:44 2009 From: annewilliamson at msn.com (Anne Williamson) Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 17:17:44 -0500 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash In-Reply-To: <49AA6B3F.1080507@ashisuto.co.jp> References: <49AA6B3F.1080507@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: What Ralph fails to mention is the single, greatest reason credit unions are not imploding, ie credit unions do NOT engage in fractional reserve banking as do banks, which was one of the "triumphs" of the Progressive Age. Enjoy the achievement! > Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 20:02:23 +0900 > From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp > To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu > Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash > > > by Ralph Nader > > Countercurrents.org (February 27 2009) > > > While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated > glacier day by day, the nation's credit unions are a relative island of > calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism. > > Eighty five million Americans belong to credit unions which are > not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members who are depositors > and borrowers. Your neighborhood or workplace credit union did not > invest in these notorious speculative derivatives nor did they offer > people "teaser rates" to sign on for a home mortgage they could not afford. > > Ninety one percent of the 8,000 credit unions are reporting greater > overall growth in mortgage lending than any other kinds of consumer > loans they are extending. They are federally insured by the National > Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for up to $250,000 per account, such > as the FDIC does for depositors in commercial banks. > > They are well-capitalized because of regulation and because they do not > have an incentive to go for high-risk, highly leveraged speculation to > increase stock values and the value of the bosses' stock options as do > the commercial banks. > > Credit Unions have no shareholders nor stock nor stock options; they are > responsible to their owner-members who are their customers. > > There are even some special low-income credit unions, though not nearly > enough to stimulate economic activities in these communities and to > provide "banking" services in areas where poor people can't afford or > are not provided services by commercial banks. > > According to Mike Schenk, an economist with the Credit Union National > Association, there is another reason why credit unions avoided the > mortgage debacle that is consuming the big banks. > > Credit Unions, Schenk says, are "portfolio lenders. That means they hold > in their portfolios most of the loans they originate instead of selling > them to investors, so they care about the financial performance of those > loans." > > Mr Schenk allowed that with the deepening recession, credit unions are > not making as much surplus and "their asset quality has deteriorated a > bit. But that's the beauty of the credit union model. Credit unions can > live with those conditions without suffering dire consequences", he > asserted. > > His use of the word "model" is instructive. In recent decades, credit > unions sometimes leaned toward commercial bank practices instead of > strict cooperative principles. They developed a penchant for mergers > into larger and larger credit unions. Some even toyed with converting > out of the cooperative model into the shareholder model the way > insurance and bank mutuals have done. > > The cooperative model, whether in finance, food, housing or any other > sector of the economy, does best when the owner-cooperators are active > in the general operations and directions of their co-op. Passive owners > allow managers to stray or contemplate straying from cooperative practices. > > The one area that is now spelling some trouble for retail cooperatives > comes from the so-called "corporate credit unions", a terrible > nomenclature, which were established to provide liquidity for the retail > credit unions. These large wholesale credit unions are not exactly > infused with the cooperative philosophy. Some of them gravitate toward > the corporate banking model. They invested in those risky mortgage > securities with the money from the retail credit unions. These "toxic > assets" have fallen $14 billion among the 28 corporate credit unions > involved. > > So the National Credit Union Administration is expanding its lending > programs to these corporate credit unions to a maximum capacity of $41.5 > billion. NCUA also wants to have retail credit unions qualified for the > TARP rescue program just to provide a level playing field with the > commercial banks. > > Becoming more like investment banks the wholesale credit unions wanted > to attract, with ever higher riskier yields, more of the retail credit > union deposits. This set the stage for the one major blemish of > imprudence on the credit union subeconomy. > > There are very contemporary lessons to be learned from the successes of > the credit union model such as being responsive to consumer loan needs > and down to earth with their portfolios. Yet in all the massive media > coverage of the Wall Street barons and their lethal financial escapades, > crimes and frauds, little is being written about how the regulation, > philosophy and behavior of the credit unions largely escaped this > catastrophe. > > There is, moreover, a lesson for retail credit unions. Beware and avoid > the seepage or supremacy of the corporate financial model which, in its > present degraded overly complex and abstract form, has become what one > prosecutor called "lying, cheating and stealing" in fancy clothing. > > _____ > > Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and three-time presidential candidate. > > http://www.countercurrents.org/nader270209.htm > > > http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com > http://www.ashisuto.co.jp > > > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 6458 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090302/9562906e/attachment.txt From james.irldaly at ntlworld.com Tue Mar 3 01:58:00 2009 From: james.irldaly at ntlworld.com (james daly) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 08:58:00 -0000 Subject: [A-List] America's Fiscal Collapse -- By Michel Chossudovsky Message-ID: America's Fiscal Collapse By Michel Chossudovsky The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12517 "We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger" ( President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address 24 Feb 2009) "Those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account-to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day-because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government." President Barack Obama, A New Era of Responsibility, the 2010 Budget) "Strong economic medicine" with a "human face" "Promise amid peril." The stated priorities of the Obama economic package are health, education, renewable energy, investment in infrastructure and transportation. "Quality education" is at the forefront. Obama has also promised to "make health care more affordable and accessible", for every American. At first sight, the budget proposal has all the appearances of an expansionary program, a demand oriented "Second New Deal" geared towards creating employment, rebuilding shattered social programs and reviving the real economy. Obama's promise is based on a mammoth austerity program. The entire fiscal structure is shattered, turned upside down. To reach these stated objectives, a significant hike in public spending on social programs (health, education, housing, social security) would be required as well as the implementation of a large scale public investment program. Major shifts in the composition of public expenditure would also be required: i.e. a move out of a war economy, requiring a movement out of military related spending in favour of civilian programs. In actuality, what we are dealing with is the most drastic curtailment in public spending in American history, leading to social havoc and the potential impoverishment of millions of people. The Obama promise largely serves the interests of Wall Street, the defence contractors and the oil conglomerates. In turn, the Bush-Obama bank "bailouts" are leading America into a spiralling public debt crisis. The economic and social dislocations are potentially devastating. Obama's budget submitted to Congress on February 26, 2009 envisages outlays for the 2010 fiscal year (commencing October 1st 2009) of $3.94 trillion, an increase of 32 percent. Total government revenues for the 2010 fiscal year, according to preliminary estimates by the Bureau of Budget, are of the order of $2.381 trillion. The predicted budget deficit (according to the president's speech) is of the order of $1.75 trillion, almost 12 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. War and Wall Street This is a "War Budget". The austerity measures hit all major federal spending programs with the exception of: 1. Defence and the Middle East War: 2. the Wall Street bank bailout, 3. Interest payments on a staggering public debt. The budget diverts tax revenues into financing the war. It legitimizes the fraudulent transfers of tax dollars to the financial elites under the "bank bailouts". The pattern of deficit spending is not expansionary. We are not dealing with a Keynesian style deficit, which stimulates investment and consumer demand, leading to an expansion of production and employment. The "bank bailouts" (involving several initiatives financed by tax dollars) constitute a component of government expenditure. Both the Bush and Obama bank bailouts are hand outs to major financial institutions. They do not not constitute a positive spending injection into the real economy. Quite the opposite. The bailouts contribute to financing the restructuring of the banking system leading to a massive concentration of wealth and centralization of banking power. A large part of the bailout money granted by the Us government will be transferred electronically to various affiliated accounts including the hedge funds. The largest banks in the US will also use this windfall cash to buy out their weaker competitors, thereby consolidating their position. The tendency, therefore, is towards a new wave of corporate buyouts, mergers and acquisitions in the financial services industry. In turn, the financial elites will use these large amounts of liquid assets (paper wealth), together with the hundreds of billions acquired through speculative trade, will be used to buy out real economy corporations (airlines, the automobile industry, Telecoms, media, etc ), whose quoted value on the stock markets has tumbled. In essence, a budget deficit ( combined with massive cuts in social programs) is required to fund the handouts to the banks as well as finance defence spending and the military surge in the Middle East war. Obama's budget envisages: 1. defense spending of $534 billion for 2010, a supplemental 130 billion dollar appropriation for fiscal 2010 for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a supplemental $75.5 billion emergency war funding for the rest of the 2009 fiscal year. Defence spending and the Middle East war, with various supplemental budgets, is (officially) of the order of 739.5 billion. Some estimates place aggregate defence and military related spending at $ 1 trillion+. 2. A bank bailout of the order of $750 billion announced by Obama, which is added on to the 700 billion dollar bailout money already allocated by the outgoing Bush administration under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). The total of both programs is a staggering 1.45 trillion dollars to be financed by the Treasury. It should be understood that the actual amount of cash financial "aid" to the banks is significantly larger than $1.45 trillion. (See Table 2 below). 3. Net Interest on the outstanding public debt is estimated by the Bureau of the Budget) at $164 billion in 2010. The order of magnitude of these allocations is staggering. Under a "balanced budget" criterion --which has been a priority of government economic policy since the Reagan era--, almost all the revenues of the federal government amounting to $2.381 trillion would be used to finance the bank bailout (1.45 trillion), the war ($739 billion) and interest payments on the public debt ($164 billion). In other words, no money would be left over for other categories of public expenditure. TABLE 1 Budgetary allocations to Defence (FY 2009 and 2010), the Bank Bailout and Net Interests on the Public Debt (FY 2010) $ Billions Defence including Supplementary allocations; $534 billion (FY 2010), $130 billion supplemental (FY 2010), $75.5 billion emergency funding (FY2009) 739.5 *Bank bailout (TARP plus Obama) 1450.0 Net Interest 164.0 TOTAL 2353.5 Total Individual (Federal) Income Tax Revenues (FY 2010) 1061.0 Total Federal Government Revenue (FY 2010) 2381.0 Source: Bureau of the Budget and official statements. See A New Era of Responsibility: The 2010 Budget See also Office of Management and Budget * The officially announced bank bailouts to be financed from Treasury Funds. The timing of disbursements could take place over more than one fiscal years fiscal years. The actual value of bank bailout cash injections is substantially higher. The Budget Deficit These three categories of expenditure (Defence, Bank Bailout and Interest on the Public Debt) would virtually swallow up the entire 2010 federal government revenue of 2381.0. billion dollars Moreover, as a basis of comparison, all the revenue accruing from individual federal income taxes ($1.061 trillion), (FY 2010) namely all the money households across America pay in the form of federal taxes, will not suffice to finance the handouts to the banks, which officially are of the order of 1.45 trillion. This amount includes the $ 700 billion (granted during FY 2009) under the TARP program plus the proposed $ 750 billion granted by the Obama administration. While TARP and Obama's proposed bailout are to be disbursed over Fy 2009 and 2010, they nonetheless represent almost half of total government expenditure ( half of Obama's $3.94 trillion budget for fiscal 2010), which is financed by regular sources of revenue ($2381 billion) plus a staggering $1.75 trillion budget deficit, which ultimately requires the issuing of Treasury Bills and government bonds. The feasibility of a large short-term expansion of the public debt at a time of crisis is yet another matter, particularly with interest rates at abysmally low levels. The budget deficit is of the order of 1.75 trillion. Obama acknowledges a 1.3 trillion-dollar budget deficit, inherited from the Bush administration. In actuality, the budget deficit is much larger . The official figures tend to underestimate the seriousness of the budgetary predicament. The $1.75 trillion dollar budget deficit figure is questionable because the various amounts disbursed under TARP and other related bank bailouts including Obama's announced $750 billion aid program to financial institutions are not acknowledged in the government's expenditure accounts. "The aid hasn't been requested formally, but appears in a line item "for potential additional financial stabilization efforts," according to the budget overview. The budget office calculated a $250 billion net cost to taxpayers this year, because it anticipates it would eventually recoup some, though not all, of the money expended to help financial companies. The funds would come on top of the $700 billion rescue package approved last October by Congress. The White House budgets no money for fiscal 2010 and beyond for such aid." (Bloomberg, February 27, 2010) Fiscal Collapse A major crisis of the federal fiscal structure is occurring. The multibillion dollar allocations to the War Budget and to the Wall Street Bank Bailout program backlash on all other categories of public expenditure. The Bush administration's $ 700 billion bailout under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was approved by Congress in October. TARP is but the tip of the iceberg. A panoply of bailout allocations in addition to the $ 700 billion were decided upon prior to Obama assuming office. In November, the federal government's bank rescue program was estimated at a staggering 8.5 trillion dollars, an amount equivalent to more than 50% of the US public debt estimated at 14 trillion (2007). (See table 2 below) Meanwhile, under the Obama budget proposal, 634 billion dollars are allocated to a reserve fund to finance universal health care. At first sight, it appears to be a large amount. But it is to be spent over a ten year period, -- i.e. a modest annual commitment of 63.4 billion. Public spending will be slashed with a view to curtailing a spiralling budget deficit. Health and education programs will not only remain heavily underfunded, they will be slashed, revamped and privatized. The likely outcome is the outright privatization of public services and the sale of State assets including public infrastructure, urban services, highways, national parks, etc. Fiscal collapse leads to the privatization of the State. The fiscal crisis is further exacerbated by the compression of tax revenues resulting from decline of the real economy. Unemployed workers do not pay pay taxes nor do bankrupt firms. The process is cumulative. The solution to the fiscal crisis becomes the cause of further collapse. Structure of The Public Debt This large scale appropriation of liquid money assets under the bank bailouts by a handful of financial institutions serves to increase the public debt overnight. When the US Treasury allocates 700 billion dollars to the Troubled Assets Relief Program, this amount constitutes a budgetary outlay which inevitably must be financed from within the structure of government revenues and expenditures. Unless all other categories of public expenditure including health, education and social services are slashed, the various outlays under the bank bailout will require running a massive budget deficit which in turn will increase the US public debt. America is the most indebted country on earth. The US (federal government) public debt is currently of the order of $14 trillion. This does not include mounting public debts at the state and municipal levels. This US dollar denominated (federal) debt is composed of outstanding treasury bills and government bonds. The public debt, also called "the national debt" is the amount of money owed by the federal government to holders of U.S. debt instruments. US debt instruments are held by American residents as part of their savings portfolio, companies and financial institutions, US government agencies, foreign governments, individuals in foreign countries. but does not include intergovernmental debt obligations or debt held in the Social Security Trust Fund. Types of securities held by the public include, but are not limited to, Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds, TIPS, United States Savings Bonds, and State and Local Government Series securities. The proposed solution becomes the cause of the crisis. The 700 billion bailout under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) combined with the proposed Obama $750 billion aid to financial services industry is but the tip of the iceberg. A panoply of bailout allocations in addition to the 700 billion have been decided upon. Table 2 The Bush Administration's " Bank Bailout" The government's bank rescue program under the Bush administration was estimated at a staggering 8.5 trillion dollars, an amount equivalent to 60% of the Total Gross Federal debt of 14.078 trillion (2010) (See Table 2 above). This amount does not include the "aid" to financial institutions proposed by the Obama administration, including an additional 750 billion dollars in Obama's February 2009 budget proposal. The size of these allocations of liquid assets endangers the very structures of the fiscal and monetary system. The total of Bush bank bailouts (8.5 trillion) can be broken down into funds granted by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Housing Authority. The handouts to the financial institutions financed out of Treasury are government expenditures, to be met either through tax revenues or through the emission of public debt instruments. The disbursements under TARP are categorized by the Bureau of the Budget as part of "a mandatory program" under an Act of the US Congress.. The Treasury's liability, which includes the controversial Troubled Assets Relief Program, was estimated in November 2008 at 1.1 trillion dollars. (See Table 2) Further Treasury allocations, which serve to heighten the burden of the public debt have been envisaged by the Obama administration Spiralling Public Debt Crisis Is the Treasury in a position to finance this mounting budget deficit officially tagged at 1.75 billion through the emission of Treasury bills and government bonds? The largest budget deficit in US history coupled with the lowest interest rates in US history: With the Fed's " near zero" percent discount rate, the markets for US dollar denominated government bonds and Treasury bills are in straightjacket. Moreover, the essential functions of savings (which is central to the functioning of a national economy) is in crisis. . Who wants to invest in US government debt? What is the demand for Treasury bills at exceedingly low interest rates? Table 3 Treasury securities Updated 2/25/2009 This week Month ago Year ago One-Year Treasury Constant Maturity 0.64 0.43 2.10 91-day T-bill auction avg disc rate 0.300 0.150 2.160 182-day T-bill auction avg disc rate 0.495 0.350 2.070 Two-Year Treasury Constant Maturity 0.95 0.77 2.04 Five-Year Treasury Constant Maturity 1.79 1.58 2.89 Ten-Year Treasury Constant Maturity 2.75 2.56 3.85 One-Year MTA 1.633 1.823 4.326 One-Year CMT (Monthly) 0.44 0.49 2.71 Source Bankrate.com The market for US dollar denominated debt instruments is potentially at a standstill, which means that the Treasury lacks the ability to finance its mammoth budget deficit through public debt operations, leading the entire budgetary process into a quandary. The question is whether China and Japan will continue to purchase US dollar denominated debt instruments. Washington is running a public relations campaign to lure Asian investors into buying T-bills and US government bonds. . With the markets for US dollar denominated debt (both domestically and internationally) in crisis, further pressure will be exerted on the Treasury to slash (civilian) public expenditure to the bone, exact user fees for public services and sell off public assets, including State infrastructure and institutions. In all likelihood, this crisis is leading us to the privatization of the State, where activities hitherto under government jurisdiction will be transferred into private hands. Who will be buying State assets at rock bottom prices? The financial elites, which are also the recipients of the bank bailout. Consolidation of the Banks A massive amount of liquidity has been injected into the financial system, from the bailouts but also from pension funds, individual savings, etc. The stated objective of the bank bailout programs is to alleviate the banks' burden of bad debts and non-performing loans. In actuality what is happening is that these massive amounts of money are being used by a handful of institutions to consolidate their position in global banking. The exposure of the banks, largely the result of derivative trade is estimated in the tens of trillions of dollars, to the extent that the amounts and guarantees granted by the Treasury and the Fed will not resolve the crisis. Nor are they intended to resolve the crisis. The mainstream media suggests that the banks are being nationalized as a result of TARP, In fact, it is exactly the opposite: the State is being taken over by the banks, the State is being privatized. The establishment of a Worldwide unipolar financial system is part of the broader project of the Wall Street financial elites to establish the contours of a world government. In a bitter irony, the recipients of the bailout under TARP and Obama's proposed 750 billion aid to financial institutions are the creditors of the federal government. The Wall Street banks are the brokers and underwriters of the US public debt, although they hold only a portion of the debt, they transact and trade in US dollar denominated public debt instruments Worldwide. They act as creditors of the US State. They evaluate the creditworthiness of the US government, they rank the public debt through Moody's and Standard and Poor. They control the US Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board and the US Congress. They oversee and dictate fiscal and monetary policy, ensuring that the state acts in their interest. Since the Reagan era, Wall Street dominates most areas of economic and social policy. It sets the budgetary agenda, ensuring the curtailment of social expenditures. Wall Street preaches balanced budgets but the practice has been lobbying for the elimination of corporate taxes, the granting of handouts to corporations, tax write-offs in mergers and acquisitions etc, all of which lead to a spiralling public debt. Circular and Contradictory Relationship The Federal Reserve system is a privately owned central bank. While the Federal Reserve Board is a government body, the process of money creation is controlled by the 12 Federal Reserve Banks, which are privately owned. The shareholders of the Federal Reserve banks (with the New York Federal Reserve Bank playing a dominant role) are among America's most powerful financial institutions. While the Federal Reserve can create money "out of thin air", the multibillion outlays of the Treasury (including the TARP program) will require the emission of public debt in the form of treasury bills and government bonds. US financial institutions oversee the US public debt. They are involved in the sale of treasury bills and government bonds on financial markets in the US and around the World. But they also hold part of the public debt. In this regard, they are the creditors of the US government. Part of this increased public debt required to rescue the banks will be financed or brokered by the same financial institutions which are the object of the bank rescue plan. We are dealing with a pernicious circular relationship. When the banks pressured the Treasury to assist them in the form of a major bank rescue operation, it was understood from the outset that the banks would in turn assist the Treasury in financing the handouts of which they are the recipients. To finance the bank bailout, the Treasury needs to run a massive budget deficit, which in turn requires a staggering increase of the US public debt. Public opinion has been misled. The US government is in a sense financing its own indebtedness: the money granted to the banks is in part financed by borrowing from the banks. The banks lend money to the government and with the money they lend the government, the Treasury finances the bailout. In turn, the banks impose conditionalities on the management of the US public debt. They dictate how the money should be spent. They impose fiscal responsibility, they dictate massive cuts in social expenditures which result in the collapse and/or privatization of public services. They impose the privatization of urban infrastructure, roads, sewer and water systems, public recreational areas, everything is up for privatization. The recipient banks are the beneficiaries as well as the creditors. As creditors, they will oblige the government a) to slash expenditures b) to run up the public debt through the issuing of treasury bills and government bonds. This public debt crisis is all the more serious because the US federal government does not control monetary policy. All public debt operations go through the Federal reserve, which is in charge of monetary policy, acting on behalf of private financial interests. The government as such has no authority over money creation. This means that public debt operations essentially serve the interests of the banks. Continuity from Bush to Obama The Obama stimulus program constitutes a continuation of the Bush administration's bank bailout packages. The proposed policy solution to the crisis becomes the cause, ultimately resulting in further real economy bankruptcies and a corresponding collapse of the standard of living of Americans. Both the Bush and Obama bank bailouts are intended to come to the rescue of troubled financial institutions, to ensure the payment of "inter-bank" debt operations. In practice, large amounts of money transit through the banking system, from the banks to the hedge funds, to offshore banking havens and back to the banks. The government and the media tend to focus on the ambiguous notion of " inter-bank debts". The identity of the creditors is rarely mentioned. Multi-billion dollar transfers are conducted electronically from one financial entity to another. Where is the money going? Who is collecting these multibillion debts, which are in large part the consequence of financial manipulation and derivative trade? There are indications that the financial institutions are transferring billions of dollars into their affiliated hedge funds. From these hedge funds they can then channel money capital towards the acquisition of real assets. Through what circuitous financial mechanisms were these debts created? Where is the bailout money going? Who is cashing in on the multibillion dollar government bailout money? This process is contributing to an unprecedented concentration of private wealth. Concluding Remarks Financial manipulation is an integral part of the New World Order. It constitutes a powerful means to accumulate wealth. Under the present political arrangement, those responsible for monetary policy are quite deliberately serving the interests of the financiers, to the detriment of working people, leading to economic dislocation, unemployment and mass poverty. This article has focussed on how financial manipulation has served to shatter the structure of US public expenditure. This restructuring of global financial markets and institutions (alongside the pillage of national economies) has enabled the accumulation of vast amounts of private wealth - a large portion of which has been amassed as a result of strictly speculative transactions. This critical drain of billions of dollars of household savings and state tax revenues paralyses the functions of government spending and spurs the accumulation of a public debt, which can no longer be be financed through the emission of US dollar denominated debt. To understand what has happened: follow the money trail of electronic transfers with a view to establishing where the money has gone. What we are dealing with is the fraudulent transfer and confiscation of lifelong savings and pension funds, the fraudulent appropriation of tax revenues to finance the bank bailouts, etc. Tthe monetary system, which is integrated into the State budgetary process has been destabilized. The fundamental relationship between the monetary system and the real economy is in crisis. The creation of money "out thin air" threatens the value of the US dollar as an international currency. Similarly, the financing of a mammoth US budget deficit through dollar denominated debt instruments is impaired as a result of exceedingly low interest rates. Moreover, the process of household savings is undermined with interest rates close to zero. What we have dealt with in this article is one central aspect of an evolving process of global financial collapse. The international payments system is in crisis. The economic prospects are terrifying. Bankruptcies in the US, Canada, the European Union are occurring at an alarming rate. Country level exports have collapsed, leading to a contraction of international trade Reports from the Asian economies indicate a massive increase in unemployment. In China's Pearl River basin in Southern Guangdong province's industrial export processing economy, some 700,000 were laid off in January. In Japan, industrial output has collapsed by more than 20 percent since December. In the Philippines, a country of 90 million people, exports collapsed by more than 40 percent in December. Financial Disarmament There are no solutions under the prevailing global financial architecture. Meaningful policies cannot be achieved without radically reforming the workings of the internaional banking system. What is required is an overhaul of the monetary system including the funcitons and ownership of the central bank, the arrest and prosecution of those involved in financial fraud both in the financial system and in governmental agencies, the freeze of all accounts where fraudulent transfers have been deposited, the cancellation of debts resulting from fraudulent trade and/or market manipulation. . People across the land, nationally and internationally must mobilize. This struggle to democratise the financial and fiscal apparatus must be broad-based and democratic encompassing all sectors of society at all levels, in all countries. What is ultimately required is to disarm the financial establishment: -confiscate those assets which were obtained through fraud and financial manipulation. -restore the savings of households through reverse transfers -return the bailout money to the Treasury, freeze the activities of the hedge funds. . - freeze the gamut of speculative transactions including short-selling and derivative trade. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANNEX Documents Budget of the United States Government Fiscal Year 2010 The Budget Documents A New Era of Responsibility: The 2010 Budget The tables contained in Annex can also be consulted by clicking: Summary Tables See also: http://www.budget.gov http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/pdf/fy10-newera.pdf -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 26076 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090303/beff42db/attachment-0007.jpeg From seanfischer at earthlink.net Tue Mar 3 10:47:56 2009 From: seanfischer at earthlink.net (Sean Fischer) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 12:47:56 -0500 (EST) Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash Message-ID: <12524973.1236102476730.JavaMail.root@mswamui-blood.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Anne, can you please explain for me and any others, what "fractional reserve banking" is? -----Original Message----- >From: Anne Williamson >Sent: Mar 2, 2009 5:17 PM >To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu >Subject: Re: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash > > >What Ralph fails to mention is the single, greatest reason credit unions are not imploding, ie credit unions do NOT engage in fractional reserve banking as do banks, which was one of the "triumphs" of the Progressive Age. Enjoy the achievement! > >> Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 20:02:23 +0900 >> From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp >> To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu >> Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash >> >> >> by Ralph Nader >> >> Countercurrents.org (February 27 2009) >> >> >> While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated >> glacier day by day, the nation's credit unions are a relative island of >> calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism. >> >> Eighty five million Americans belong to credit unions which are >> not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members who are depositors >> and borrowers. Your neighborhood or workplace credit union did not >> invest in these notorious speculative derivatives nor did they offer >> people "teaser rates" to sign on for a home mortgage they could not afford. >> >> Ninety one percent of the 8,000 credit unions are reporting greater >> overall growth in mortgage lending than any other kinds of consumer >> loans they are extending. They are federally insured by the National >> Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for up to $250,000 per account, such >> as the FDIC does for depositors in commercial banks. >> >> They are well-capitalized because of regulation and because they do not >> have an incentive to go for high-risk, highly leveraged speculation to >> increase stock values and the value of the bosses' stock options as do >> the commercial banks. >> >> Credit Unions have no shareholders nor stock nor stock options; they are >> responsible to their owner-members who are their customers. >> >> There are even some special low-income credit unions, though not nearly >> enough to stimulate economic activities in these communities and to >> provide "banking" services in areas where poor people can't afford or >> are not provided services by commercial banks. >> >> According to Mike Schenk, an economist with the Credit Union National >> Association, there is another reason why credit unions avoided the >> mortgage debacle that is consuming the big banks. >> >> Credit Unions, Schenk says, are "portfolio lenders. That means they hold >> in their portfolios most of the loans they originate instead of selling >> them to investors, so they care about the financial performance of those >> loans." >> >> Mr Schenk allowed that with the deepening recession, credit unions are >> not making as much surplus and "their asset quality has deteriorated a >> bit. But that's the beauty of the credit union model. Credit unions can >> live with those conditions without suffering dire consequences", he >> asserted. >> >> His use of the word "model" is instructive. In recent decades, credit >> unions sometimes leaned toward commercial bank practices instead of >> strict cooperative principles. They developed a penchant for mergers >> into larger and larger credit unions. Some even toyed with converting >> out of the cooperative model into the shareholder model the way >> insurance and bank mutuals have done. >> >> The cooperative model, whether in finance, food, housing or any other >> sector of the economy, does best when the owner-cooperators are active >> in the general operations and directions of their co-op. Passive owners >> allow managers to stray or contemplate straying from cooperative practices. >> >> The one area that is now spelling some trouble for retail cooperatives >> comes from the so-called "corporate credit unions", a terrible >> nomenclature, which were established to provide liquidity for the retail >> credit unions. These large wholesale credit unions are not exactly >> infused with the cooperative philosophy. Some of them gravitate toward >> the corporate banking model. They invested in those risky mortgage >> securities with the money from the retail credit unions. These "toxic >> assets" have fallen $14 billion among the 28 corporate credit unions >> involved. >> >> So the National Credit Union Administration is expanding its lending >> programs to these corporate credit unions to a maximum capacity of $41.5 >> billion. NCUA also wants to have retail credit unions qualified for the >> TARP rescue program just to provide a level playing field with the >> commercial banks. >> >> Becoming more like investment banks the wholesale credit unions wanted >> to attract, with ever higher riskier yields, more of the retail credit >> union deposits. This set the stage for the one major blemish of >> imprudence on the credit union subeconomy. >> >> There are very contemporary lessons to be learned from the successes of >> the credit union model such as being responsive to consumer loan needs >> and down to earth with their portfolios. Yet in all the massive media >> coverage of the Wall Street barons and their lethal financial escapades, >> crimes and frauds, little is being written about how the regulation, >> philosophy and behavior of the credit unions largely escaped this >> catastrophe. >> >> There is, moreover, a lesson for retail credit unions. Beware and avoid >> the seepage or supremacy of the corporate financial model which, in its >> present degraded overly complex and abstract form, has become what one >> prosecutor called "lying, cheating and stealing" in fancy clothing. >> >> _____ >> >> Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and three-time presidential candidate. >> >> http://www.countercurrents.org/nader270209.htm >> >> >> http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com >> http://www.ashisuto.co.jp >> >> >> From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Tue Mar 3 14:40:44 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 13:40:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [A-List] Staving off another Great Depression Message-ID: <738374.14591.qm@web180113.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Which side are you on in this class warfare ? Joe Hill Staving off another Great Depression With housing and investment plummeting and unemployment soaring, Americans are firmly behind Obama's economic agenda ????* ????* ????* Dean Baker ????* guardian.co.uk, Monday 2 March 2009 16.00 GMT ????* The Washington policy debates of the last week would almost ?make a casual observer believe that the nation's political leadership is in fact nostalgic for the good old days of the Great Depression when the country suffered double-digit ?unemployment for a decade. The two big news items last week were a batch of absolutely horrible economic reports and the release of President Barack Obama's budget. The media almost completely ignored the former and focused its attention primarily on the latter. So, let's start with the bad news. As can be expected, much of the bad news centred on housing. The National Association of Realtors reported that existing home sales fell below 4.5 million for the first ?time since the mid-90s. They also reported that the median house price dropped another $5,400 in January or 3.1%. Since July, this series shows a drop in the median home price of 18.9%. Other data also showed house prices in a free fall, most notable the commerce department's series on new home sales, which showed a drop of 10% in the median price between ?December and January. With vacant housing units at record levels, and many potential home buyers no longer having the equity in their current homes for a down payment, it is ?difficult to see how this free fall stops any time soon. Housing isn't the only sector that's plummeting. Investment fell at a 28% ?rate in the fourth quarter, the sharpest rate of decline in more than 50 years. New orders have fallen more than 5% in each of the last two months. Along with the collapse of these sectors, the number of new unemployment ?claims just keeps rising. Last week, it was 667,000 new claims. February may show more than 700,000 jobs lost for the month in the report released on Friday. The unemployment ?rate is likely to hit 8% for the month, and it could well be over 9% by the summer. While this bad news was flowing, President Obama released the first budget of his presidency. It is an ambitious document. The proposal calls for directly confronting powerful ?interest groups in order to eliminate important sources of waste in the budget. For example, the budget eliminates subsidies to private insurers in Medicare and drug companies in ?Medicaid. The saving will go toward financing healthcare reform. He also proposes to eliminate the fund managers' tax break that allowed managers of hedge and equity funds (some of the richest people in the country) to pay tax at just a 15% rate. ?Obama proposes to have these Wall Street tycoons subject to the same tax rates as everyone else. There are many other areas where the budget turns to long-neglected areas, most importantly a proposal to establish a cap and trade system to provide incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is not clear that Obama can accomplish the full agenda laid out in his budget, but there is no doubt that he hopes to accomplish a great deal in his term in office. Remarkably, much of the discussion of the budget did not focus on Obama's agenda, but rather his deficit targets. In particular, many commentators questioned whether he would reach his deficit target for 2012 because the economy might be weaker than his budget assumes. The pundits' concern on this point should have caused people to throw ?their television sets, radios and newspapers out the window. Let's suppose that the pundits are correct and the economy sinks farther and later grows more slowly than the Obama administration assumed in planning its budget. Would the pundits have Obama therefore cut more spending and raise more taxes? This would be close to crazy. With the economy plummeting, the first priority of the administration ?and Congress must be to boost the economy. If the unemployment rate is 12% when Obama's first term ends, he can forget ?about getting re-elected, even if the budget is balanced. On the other hand, if he has managed to bring the unemployment rate down to a reasonable level, no one other than a few Washington pundits will be bothered by the deficit that might have been necessary to achieve this result. The electorate is well ahead of the punditry on this issue. The federal ?government is the only force capable of turning the economy around in the near future and sustaining growth. The public recognises this fact and will demand good economic policy even as the punditry continue to push policies that would throw the economy into another depression. ?Even if they have very large megaphones, the punditry are thankfully still a very small minority and unlikely to get their dream. From noreply at coha.org Tue Mar 3 13:40:56 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 15:40:56 -0500 Subject: [A-List] The Status of Latin American Press Rights & A Preview of COHA's Forthcoming Analysis on Cuba Message-ID: <20090303204046.283123E43E8@mx-out2.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 4354 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090303/975c4324/attachment.txt From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Mar 3 16:25:05 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:25:05 +0900 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash In-Reply-To: <12524973.1236102476730.JavaMail.root@mswamui-blood.atl.sa.earthlink.net> References: <12524973.1236102476730.JavaMail.root@mswamui-blood.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <49ADBC51.7020906@ashisuto.co.jp> It simply means banks are allowed to loan, say $100, for every $10 they have in their vaults. And collect interest on that $100. As if a rental agency could rent the same car to ten parties simultaneously, or a hotel could rent the same room to ten couples simultaneously, or a airline or railway could rent the same seat to ten people simultaneously. Sean Fischer wrote: > Anne, can you please explain for me and any others, what "fractional reserve banking" is? > > > -----Original Message----- >> From: Anne Williamson >> Sent: Mar 2, 2009 5:17 PM >> To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu >> Subject: Re: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash >> >> >> What Ralph fails to mention is the single, greatest reason credit unions are not imploding, ie credit unions do NOT engage in fractional reserve banking as do banks, which was one of the "triumphs" of the Progressive Age. Enjoy the achievement! >> >>> Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 20:02:23 +0900 >>> From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp >>> To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu >>> Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash >>> >>> >>> by Ralph Nader >>> >>> Countercurrents.org (February 27 2009) >>> >>> >>> While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated >>> glacier day by day, the nation's credit unions are a relative island of >>> calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism. >>> >>> Eighty five million Americans belong to credit unions which are >>> not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members who are depositors >>> and borrowers. Your neighborhood or workplace credit union did not >>> invest in these notorious speculative derivatives nor did they offer >>> people "teaser rates" to sign on for a home mortgage they could not afford. >>> >>> Ninety one percent of the 8,000 credit unions are reporting greater >>> overall growth in mortgage lending than any other kinds of consumer >>> loans they are extending. They are federally insured by the National >>> Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for up to $250,000 per account, such >>> as the FDIC does for depositors in commercial banks. >>> >>> They are well-capitalized because of regulation and because they do not >>> have an incentive to go for high-risk, highly leveraged speculation to >>> increase stock values and the value of the bosses' stock options as do >>> the commercial banks. >>> >>> Credit Unions have no shareholders nor stock nor stock options; they are >>> responsible to their owner-members who are their customers. >>> >>> There are even some special low-income credit unions, though not nearly >>> enough to stimulate economic activities in these communities and to >>> provide "banking" services in areas where poor people can't afford or >>> are not provided services by commercial banks. >>> >>> According to Mike Schenk, an economist with the Credit Union National >>> Association, there is another reason why credit unions avoided the >>> mortgage debacle that is consuming the big banks. >>> >>> Credit Unions, Schenk says, are "portfolio lenders. That means they hold >>> in their portfolios most of the loans they originate instead of selling >>> them to investors, so they care about the financial performance of those >>> loans." >>> >>> Mr Schenk allowed that with the deepening recession, credit unions are >>> not making as much surplus and "their asset quality has deteriorated a >>> bit. But that's the beauty of the credit union model. Credit unions can >>> live with those conditions without suffering dire consequences", he >>> asserted. >>> >>> His use of the word "model" is instructive. In recent decades, credit >>> unions sometimes leaned toward commercial bank practices instead of >>> strict cooperative principles. They developed a penchant for mergers >>> into larger and larger credit unions. Some even toyed with converting >>> out of the cooperative model into the shareholder model the way >>> insurance and bank mutuals have done. >>> >>> The cooperative model, whether in finance, food, housing or any other >>> sector of the economy, does best when the owner-cooperators are active >>> in the general operations and directions of their co-op. Passive owners >>> allow managers to stray or contemplate straying from cooperative practices. >>> >>> The one area that is now spelling some trouble for retail cooperatives >>> comes from the so-called "corporate credit unions", a terrible >>> nomenclature, which were established to provide liquidity for the retail >>> credit unions. These large wholesale credit unions are not exactly >>> infused with the cooperative philosophy. Some of them gravitate toward >>> the corporate banking model. They invested in those risky mortgage >>> securities with the money from the retail credit unions. These "toxic >>> assets" have fallen $14 billion among the 28 corporate credit unions >>> involved. >>> >>> So the National Credit Union Administration is expanding its lending >>> programs to these corporate credit unions to a maximum capacity of $41.5 >>> billion. NCUA also wants to have retail credit unions qualified for the >>> TARP rescue program just to provide a level playing field with the >>> commercial banks. >>> >>> Becoming more like investment banks the wholesale credit unions wanted >>> to attract, with ever higher riskier yields, more of the retail credit >>> union deposits. This set the stage for the one major blemish of >>> imprudence on the credit union subeconomy. >>> >>> There are very contemporary lessons to be learned from the successes of >>> the credit union model such as being responsive to consumer loan needs >>> and down to earth with their portfolios. Yet in all the massive media >>> coverage of the Wall Street barons and their lethal financial escapades, >>> crimes and frauds, little is being written about how the regulation, >>> philosophy and behavior of the credit unions largely escaped this >>> catastrophe. >>> >>> There is, moreover, a lesson for retail credit unions. Beware and avoid >>> the seepage or supremacy of the corporate financial model which, in its >>> present degraded overly complex and abstract form, has become what one >>> prosecutor called "lying, cheating and stealing" in fancy clothing. >>> >>> _____ >>> >>> Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and three-time presidential candidate. >>> >>> http://www.countercurrents.org/nader270209.htm >>> >>> >>> http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com >>> http://www.ashisuto.co.jp >>> >>> >>> > > > > From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Mar 3 19:11:20 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:11:20 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Small, Green and Good Message-ID: <49ADE348.9090008@ashisuto.co.jp> The role of neglected cities in a sustainable future by Catherine Tumber Boston Review (March / April 2009) Growing up in a small town, I regularly took bus trips with my mom and little sister into "the city": Syracuse. Like most middle-class families in the 1960s, we had only one car, which my dad drove to work. So we would buy our tickets at the village pharmacy, board the Big Dog, and barrel though miles of farms and sparsely developed land until we reached the highway. Nearing the final stretch, we had to endure the stench of the Solvay chemical works to our right, and the creepy mint green of polluted Onondaga Lake on our left. But we would disembark in Syracuse's vibrant downtown, all glittering lights and vertical planes, filled with department stores, jewelry and candy shops, theaters and movie palaces, "ethnic" food, and people who were interestingly not like us. Smaller American cities, places like Syracuse - and Decatur, New Bedford, Kalamazoo, Buffalo, Trenton, Erie, and Youngstown - were once bustling centers of industry and downtown commerce, with wealthy local patrons committed to civic improvements and the arts. In the 1970s they began a decline from which they have not recovered. Today, most are scanted as doleful sites of low-paying service jobs, with shrinking tax bases and little appeal to young professionals or to what urban theorist Richard Florida calls the "creative class". In Syracuse itself the center of gravity has shifted northward, toward Carousel Mall, leaving a ghostly downtown where Rite-Aid, now the largest store, presides over parking lots and abandoned buildings. Historians and economic demographers generally attribute the decline of small-to-mid-size cities of 50,000 to 500,000 souls to deindustrialization, since many sit in the Midwestern Rust Belt or the Northeast. But the history of smaller-city decline is more complex than that. Smaller cities were also victims of post-war development policies better suited to large cities - or rather, that were painful, but less disastrous, for large metropolitan areas. Extraordinary mid-twentieth century changes in transportation, zoning, housing construction, mortgage financing, and domestic taste facilitated the creation of wide swathes of "bourgeois utopias" that now ring our cities far out into the exurbs. They are the products of a radical transformation of land-use policy that extended supply chains with vast highway systems, further separating people from their workplaces, energy producers from consumers, and farmers from their markets. Large cities survived the changes and the resulting onslaught of suburban shopping malls - itself a reaction to extended supply-chains - in the late 1970s. In smaller cities, malls decimated what was left of retail districts already damaged by massive downtown highway systems that choked off commercial centers from surrounding urban neighborhoods. Neglect of the smaller city, as both place and idea, continued through the rest of the century. As large-metropolitan real estate values skyrocketed in the 1990s, big cities attracted millions of dollars in capital improvements and large-scale development. "New Urbanism" among designers and architects, though not in theory intended only for big cities, attracted funding for pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares, mixed-use building, open spaces, and the preservation of historic architecture that enhanced the metropolitan boom. Now, with the call for reducing the urban carbon footprint, cosmopolitan living is going green. Two recent books proposing models for a low-carbon economy - Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded (2008), and Jay Inslee and Bracken Hendricks's Apollo's Fire (2007) - speak throughout of "villages" and "large cities". Not a word for the distinctive role smaller cities might play in a low-carbon world. That is too bad. Smaller cities have idiosyncratic charms of their own - worthy of sustained attention and renewal. And, fortuitously, they have a distinctive and vital role to play in the work of the new century: smaller cities will be critical in the move to local agriculture and the development of renewable energy industries. These tasks will almost certainly require a dramatic rethinking of land-use policy, and smaller cities have assets that large cities lack. Their underused or vacant industrial space and surrounding tracts of farmland make them ideal sites for sustainable land-use policies, or "smart growth". Yet current urban planning models offer little guidance on how we might begin to make those changes. Nor, until recently, has there been a national forum that matches smaller-city renewal initiatives to national needs. The Revitalizing Older Cities Congressional Task Force, formed just last year, held its first national summit (organized by the Northeast-Midwest Institute) in mid-February. Local governments and advocates of eco-sustainability must build on this new conversation for they have a shared stake in the future. Sustainability advocates could be missing the large, strategic, regional and economic advantages smaller cities can offer a national policy over the long term. The Portland, Oregon-based Post Carbon Cities project offers one bold way to start thinking about national policy, with its call for the "relocalization" of cities, a form of decentralization grounded in local food systems and energy resources. An alternative to the traditional idea of "balancing" economic and environmental needs, relocalization aims to maximize both by dramatically reducing reliance on costly and environmentally damaging supply chains - long transportation routes geared to truck or air transportation - while increasing sustainable agriculture and energy security and creating local jobs that cannot be outsourced. Taking energy security first, the smaller cities of the United States, with their large parcels of vacant, relatively low-value property and proximate surrounding land, could serve the alternative energy industry well. Smaller cities are not only more likely to be located near sources of clean energy - such as waterways, forests, and fields - but they can also generate more energy proportionate to their size. One large obstacle for the clean-energy industry and its advocates is that the current energy infrastructure disadvantages them in competition with coal, natural gas, and oil, which together provide about seventy percent of electrical power in the United States. Achieving "grid parity" - the point at which renewable energy is as cheap as or cheaper than power from prevailing sources - is extremely difficult. The grid, built decades ago for local utility monopolies and now used by a deregulated national energy industry, is in a terrible state of disrepair. More immediately, it is oriented toward large "base loads" traveling over long distances to major population centers, a strain that threatens the fragile system. The United States's "third-world grid", as many are now calling it, is particularly unsuited to storing or transferring small, supplementary loads of electricity - the kind of loads produced by renewable energy sources in their current form. Moreover, keeping energy more local has the advantage of limiting grid transmission loss, which can run as high as ten percent. If smaller cities are to reap the benefits of renewable energy development, the transmission and distribution network must be both modernized and decentralized - changes that electrical energy experts agree are necessary anyway. Local contributions to a first-world energy grid would then vary, depending on terrain and natural resources. Hydrokinetic power harvested from underwater ocean currents shows promise in coastal areas. Hydropower from rivers would generate the most electricity in the West and Midwest, where the drop is higher and the water rush more forceful than in other parts of the country. Solar power on a large scale works best in sunny climates, and wind power on the coasts and in the Great Plains. And, according to a Washington Post report, geothermal energy tapped from the thirteen Western states that sit within the trans-Pacific "Ring of Fire" could provide up to half of the nation's current level of electricity output. But smaller contributions from alternative energy sources should not be overlooked. Small hydropower, defined as producing up to ten megawatts of electricity (enough to support 10,000 homes), is underdeveloped in the United States, lagging far behind Canada, Australia, New Zealand, parts of Asia, and the European Union, where it is found mostly in its fast-developing smaller cities. In New England, a number of projects are under way that will generate three megawatts or less, enough to power a hospital, large shopping center, or small factory. As ideal sites for new energy industries, smaller cities would in turn gain from job creation. Alternative energy technologies are in various stages of development, but one thing is already clear: if they work, they will require space that dense metropolitan areas cannot provide. Solar power, which among alternative energies has come closest to achieving grid parity, can make use of rooftops and awnings in big cities, but offers far greater potential when staged on ground mounts on polluted brownfields, suburban greyfields, or open land. One of the world's largest solar farms, sitting on more than one thousand acres in Kramer Junction in California's Mojave Desert, consists of row upon row of solar panels, which power generating stations at the facility. According to the company that operates it, at capacity, it produces enough power (150 megawatts) to support 150,000 homes. A good rule of thumb, at this point, is that one megawatt of solar-generated power requires about eight acres of land. Wind power, unless sited offshore, also requires large tracts of land. And, by definition, biomass and biogas technologies require farm and forest land to generate the raw resources required, as well as space for the physical plant that conducts the conversion. This year BioEnergy Solutions announced a partnership with Vintage Dairy, of Riverdale, California (just outside Fresno) to convert manure from its 5,000 cows into methane by flushing animal waste into an anaerobic-digester, a covered lagoon "equal in size to the area of nearly five football fields and over three stories deep". As ideal sites for new energy industries, smaller cities would in turn gain from job creation. A 2007 American Solar Energy Society report claimed that renewable energy and energy-efficient industries had already created nearly 8.5 million jobs in the United States, a little more than half in indirectly related fields such as accounting, information technology, and trucking. Many are blue-collar jobs in maintenance and manufacturing. A September 2008 proposal from the Apollo Alliance estimates that its New Apollo Program - a renewable energy proposal on a scale akin to that of the Kennedy administration's space program - could create five million "high-quality" green-collar jobs over the next decade. Indeed, many have pointed out that bold low-carbon policy initiatives could launch the next Industrial Revolution. Happily, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, signed by President Obama in February, is consistent with Apollo's aims and suggested funding levels. Smaller American cities could participate creatively in this emerging world. In the past, jurisdictional disputes over land use have plagued urban development in smaller cities, so federal investment in regional transportation and energy infrastructure must include pressure to resolve squabbles. The proximity of abundant, relatively cheap land also gives smaller cities a structural advantage in meeting the growing demand for local, sustainable agriculture. As Michael Pollan demonstrates in his best-selling The Omnivore's Dilemma (2007), agribusiness puts down an enormous carbon footprint. Sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry not only produce more nutritious food and less cruelty to animals, they are also far less dependent on petroleum for long-distance transportation, fertilizer, and neurotoxic pesticides (not to mention antibiotics). Building on the work of organic farmers and environmental activists since the 1970s, Pollan's call for relocalizing agriculture coincides with rising alarm about the perils of climate change and dependence on foreign oil. Even the United Nations, which has long embraced agribusiness as the key to famine prevention, is beginning to recognize the role of sustainable, localized practices in food security. The change in public perceptions has created a critical mass of "locavores", most living in big cities far from the heart of agribusiness, who are driving a growing market for organic products. Farmers' markets, community-supported agriculture, community gardens, and green roofs have become increasingly popular, forcing big supermarket chains to offer local, organic produce. New York City alone went from two farmers' markets in 1979 to more than 45 in 2008. Meanwhile, the appeal of farming, on a smaller, more diversified, independent model, is growing among young adults and mid-life professionals. The number of organic farms in New York State almost doubled between 2003 and 2007, from 404 farms to 735. And the number of people aged 45 to 54 operating farms of under fifty acres shot up by seventy percent. Increasingly, urban professionals are investing in farmland and taking on agricultural work as a second vocation. If urban farming - growing food within city limits or on nearby small-scale market farms - and sustainable agriculture in general are to succeed, however, they must be integrated with the larger workforce and with urban and regional planning. Detroit, home to one of the country's first urban farms, pioneered this work. Today eighty acres throughout the city have been appropriated for agriculture and are under cultivation through the Detroit Garden Resource Program Collaborative. Its member organizations provide training in soil management and crop cultivation, bee-keeping, orchard building, composting, and the like through various faith communities and the local schools, and provide on-the-job training and summer employment to teens and adults. The yield for 2007 was 120 tons of food and promises to grow much higher. The county treasurer's office allowed the nonprofit Urban Farming to grow produce on twenty tax-foreclosed vacant properties in 2008. To some extent, the urban agriculture movement is primarily a big-city phenomenon, not least because large cities have received disproportionate publicity and funding. The W K Kellogg Foundation sponsors one of the larger and more daring philanthropic initiatives. Its Food and Fitness program provided planning grants to nine community-based projects that emphasize access to local food and physical exercise among disadvantaged families. Six of them are located in big cities (including Detroit), two in rural areas, and only one in a smaller city - Holyoke, Massachusetts. Funding and advocacy organizations have nothing against smaller city initiatives. Far from it. Kellogg's Ricardo Salvador notes that "the metaphor of sustainability itself is lots of small communities, whether they are city neighborhoods in densely populated areas or small rural communities". As Daniel Lerch, of Post Carbon Cities puts it: "This is not just an issue of scale. Very soon we'll see cities of any size going down the path of sustainability with regard to food and watershed." By minimizing the importance of scale, however, sustainability advocates could be missing the large, strategic regional and economic advantages smaller cities can offer a national policy over the long term. Martin Bailkey, coauthor of a 2000 Lincoln Institute of Land Policy working paper on the history and viability of entrepreneurial "farming inside cities" says "it shouldn't matter whether farms are fifty or sixty miles from, say, New York City, or ten miles from a smaller city like Madison, Wisconsin". But he notes that post-industrial cities with declining populations, particularly in the Midwest, are better positioned to shift urban land-use policy toward farming. Even more intriguing, he says, is the notion that the "mosaic" of smaller cities located in the heartland could one day anchor a regional agricultural shift from industrial monoculture to more localized biodiversity. Large farms now used for federally subsidized commodity crops - mainly corn and soy - could over time be made available in smaller parcels for market farming on a scale that cannot be undertaken within city limits. The Land Connection, based in Evanston, Illinois, is working to do just that. One program helps heirs to farmland put agricultural easements on their property, and its training and transition programs assist farmers who want to replace monoculture with sustainable, organic practices. Founder Terra Brockman says that some of the newer farmers, who may be first-timers or returning to the family business, "are making the decision to sell in smaller cities ... where the demand didn't exist fifteen years ago". What they need, says Brockman, "is really quite simple: land, trained farmers, local processing facilities (which disappeared in the sixties), and logistical transportation". Why not turn the roof and vast parking lot of Irondequoit Mall into a solar "brightfield", and the indoor space into hydroponic market farms? Developing an effective transportation infrastructure is critical to making smaller cities hubs in a relocalized, agricultural economy. As Kellogg's Gail Imig suggests, it might be easier for smaller cities "to work out local distribution systems for transporting food" than for big cities. Still, federal leadership will be crucial. Gayle Peterson of The Headwaters Group Philanthropic Services - consultants for foundations ranging from Kellogg, Mott, and Weyerhouser to community foundations - says: "There is a huge movement among foundations supporting regional food systems uniting networks of cities and towns in a large agricultural food basket ... but there are as yet no group initiatives that cut across the issues". Her colleague, John Sherman, adds: "If anything significant is to take place, the thrust will have to come from economic development agencies" that can provide government funding and coordinated policy leadership. One nonprofit, the Michigan Land Use Institute (MLUI), is emerging as a model of state and regional planning. One of the projects it supports, The Grand Vision, aims to integrate economic opportunities into a working rural landscape and provide land-use experts to help grassroots groups organize and manage their campaigns. Located in the area around Traverse City, a large town of 14,532 that anchors a "micropolitan statistical area" - a term established in 2003 denoting a new federal census standard - with a population of 131,342, The Grand Vision emerged in 2006 when plans for a highway bypass and bridge around Traverse City met with community protest. With the cooperation of Senators Debbie Stabinow and Carl Levin and US Representative Dave Camp, federal highway funding was diverted to a two-year community-planning process. The process was coordinated by consultants with the full involvement of local citizens, municipal bodies, businesses, environmental groups, and social services agencies, all organized into "charrettes". The final results will be unveiled in May. One of MLUI's highly successful programs is Farm to School, which is part of a growing nationwide movement that connects local farm products with school cafeterias. MLUI links the program to a larger state initiative based on a study showing that helping farmers sell to local supermarkets and farmers' markets could increase net farm income in Michigan by nearly sixteen percent and generate up to 1,889 new jobs. Smaller cities might also be better able than large ones to recover for market-farming pusposes land lost to suburban sprawl. Filmmaker Nancy Rosin - who produced a documentary on the history of Rochester, New York's farmers' market - explains that before the rise of grocery store chains after World War I, small-market farming appealed to working people, particularly immigrants from Italy and Eastern Europe, who brought their horticultural skills with them. They grew food on city lots where they lived and, over time, grew much larger quantities in the adjacent suburbs - or what we would now call suburbs - in particular, Irondequoit, less than ten miles from Rochester's downtown market. A sizeable number, she says, held full-time jobs with companies such as Kodak and became known as "Kodak farmers". By mid-century Irondequoit "had the largest square footage of greenhouse glass in the world to support the demand for food in a climate with long, cold winters". A fifty-something Irondequoit native who blogs for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle brings that world to life: "I grew up in the Flats, on Saint Joseph Street. My dad was born there in the old homestead, his parents farmers. My siblings and I were raised there. Although it had changed from when my dad was growing up, I still remember all the farming that went on down there. The greenhouses, the tractors, listening to the frogs on a hot summer night ... it was like living in the country. A drive through the Flats today shows quite a different story. The farms are gone. There are no tractors going up and down the street with trailers bobbing behind them. The greenhouses are gone. Most of the 'old timers' have passed. There are houses where there were fields and wetlands. There has been a lot of change." By the early 1960s Irondequoit was fast being paved over, making way for homes, highways, and strip malls. In 1963 the once-powerful Irondequoit Grange closed and later became the House of Guitars. The gigantic Irondequoit Mall opened in 1990, and, today, after only eighteen years in business, it is considered officially "dead", with less than fifty percent retail occupancy and an uncertain future. What should become of such worn-out retail outlets, which were multiplying by the thousands across the country even before the current economic downturn? A happier future for a smaller city like Rochester, where Kodak alone shed some 45,000 jobs over the past twenty-five years, may involve the restoration and growth of sustainable food systems. One of Kellogg's earliest Food and Fitness pilot programs tried to do just that on several acres where a small vineyard tended by an Italian family years ago still grows. (The program is currently languishing due to conflicts among the community organizations that originally established it.) A series of community "Vision Plans" similar to those in Traverse City called for continuing an existing program of riverfront development, as well as more affordable housing, mixed-use buildings, and pedestrian-friendly streets - all familiar New Urbanism strategies. One recent charrette also called for tearing down part of the Inner Loop freeway, built in 1965, that circles the downtown business district. Here is another idea: why not turn the roof and vast parking lot of Irondequoit Mall into a solar "brightfield", and the indoor space into hydroponic market farms? Why not rebuild those greenhouses? And why not introduce green job-training programs in Rochester, a city that has one of the highest high-school dropout rates in the nation? There is no question that the infrastructure of large metropolitan areas can and must be redesigned and retrofitted for energy efficiency. And not surprisingly, that is where green urban planners have been focusing their efforts: after all, big cities contribute the largest share of the world's carbon output. But focusing on big cities may also reflect what urban historian James J Connolly calls "metropolitan bias". Even those who have written about smaller urban areas, he argues, have "made little effort to distinguish large and smaller cities from each other", treating them as "essentially interchangeable case studies of developments that unfolded on a national and even an international scale". That model, established by sociologist Louis Wirth's influential 1938 essay "Urbanism as a Way of Life", assumes continued modernization, growth, and centralization of political and economic power in big cities. The idea of the "metropolis as the quintessential urban form" was further reinforced by the postmodern cultural turn, which saw global cities as "sites" for the formation of "transnational" identities; by implication, smaller places are repositories of more provincial, outmoded, and "destructive nationalisms". If we temper the metropolitan bias that pervades the sustainable cities movement, green advantages and opportunities distinctive to smaller cities come into focus. But we first must abandon the perpetual-growth paradigm and, when appropriate, embrace shrinkage, not as decline but as a framework for creative reinvention. Several American cities are taking a cue from Europe's Shrinking Cities project, spurred by radical population decline particularly in the former East German Republic. Youngstown, Ohio, the population of which dropped from 170,000 to 82,000 with the decline of the steel industry, was the first American city to make downsizing a matter of formal policy. The Youngstown 2010 initiative has spent upward of $3 million to date to demolish vacant houses and buildings; open access to the Mahoning River; cut back sewage, plowing, and other costly services; further concentrate the population; and open green space for parks and agriculture. According to the city's chief planner, Anthony Kobak, urban-farming incentives are not yet under consideration. Other so-called weak-market cities have launched similar efforts, with greater emphasis on environmental sustainability. In 2008 nearby Cleveland's Neighborhood Progress, Incorporated announced a major project, supported by a grant from the Surdna Foundation, exploring the possibility of turning vacant city lots into agricultural and renewable energy sites. Similar plans are under way in Flint, Michigan, which now owns ten percent of the city's vacant property through the Genesee County Land Bank. Meanwhile, we need to revisit the cultural mythology about smaller places. Sociologist Kenneth Johnson's 2006 study, which tracked demographic changes in rural America, found that since 2001 rural population gains have swung modestly upward in an "uneven" pattern. "Gains have been greatest", he writes, "in the fringes of metropolitan areas and in rural areas that are proximate to metropolitan areas that include smaller cities and that contain natural and recreational amenities". Johnson's study also contradicts two seemingly intractable stereotypes. Immigrants, particularly Latinos, "are dispersing more widely" and account for much of this small metro growth, thus belying the notion that large urban areas are the exclusive preserve of "transnational" pluralism. And rural does not necessarily equal farming. Johnson shows that "the proportion of the rural workforce employed in manufacturing is nearly double that in agriculture", while "many rural areas have also now become thriving centers of recreation and retirement". A new literature is taking shape that recognizes the distinctive characteristics and potential of smaller cities. From the Journal of Urbanism, launched in March 2008, to recent studies by the Brookings Institution's Jennifer S Vey, to PolicyLink's 2008 report To Be Strong Again: Renewing the Promise in Smaller Industrial Cities, to the work of Ball State University's Center for Middletown Studies, small cities are gradually being taken seriously again. That quiet shift reflects changes in the rest of the world. A 2008 UN population study predicted that, by the end of that year and for the first time in history, half the world would live in urban centers and that the trend toward cities would continue, with most of the growth taking place in cities of less than half a million. China alone is planning to build 400 small cities by 2020, to accommodate its shifting rural population. All of this is attracting attention from urban planners and architects. But the growing interest in smaller cities also reflects an imaginative resizing, a spiritually overdue compression of the gigantic, "unsustainable" ambitions of economic-bubble culture. When it comes to the urban-rural divide, small-to-intermediate-size cities may offer the best of both worlds. For all the rural romanticism of the 1970s-era homesteading movement - or for that matter, the vaunted folksiness of "small-town values" - urban life has its allure. Smaller cities are large enough to offer the diversity, anonymity, and vibrancy of urban culture, as well as levels of density that offer efficiencies of scale. They are also small enough to maintain proximity to sustainable food production and renewable energy resources. An inversion is at work here: placing smaller cities at the center of analysis leads to an imaginative template that is decentralized, deconcentrated, relocalized. One of the Obama campaign's strokes of genius was bypassing big-city power centers, where self-appointed national leaders claim to speak for minorities, and working directly with the decentralized grid of smaller-city community organizations across the land. As policymakers rethink the American agricultural economy and invest in renewable energy, they, too, should be looking at smaller cities. Local and municipal leaders also have much to gain in the twenty-first century if they have the eyes to see it. _____ Catherine Tumber is former news and features editor of The Boston Phoenix, and the author of American Feminism and the Birth of New Age Spirituality (2002). http://bostonreview.net/BR34.2/tumber.php http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Mar 4 06:36:20 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:36:20 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Destined for Failure Message-ID: <49AE83D4.3040104@ashisuto.co.jp> by Jason Peters Orion magazine (November / December 2008) I AM ASTONISHED by the number of academics convinced that the infusion of a few technological electrolytes will cure the pounding hangover sure to punish us for partying so recklessly in the hospitality tents sponsored by Cheap Readily Available Oil. People with five or seven letters after their names are clinging to the delusion that energy and technology are interchangeable, that when one goes into decline the other will arrive to take them up the mountain for a weekend of downhill skiing. This error persists for any number of reasons, among them the fact that higher education has largely become a faith-based institution governed by the motto "In Progress We Trust". But perhaps a more immediate cause is that as participants in an increasingly abstract economy we have simply let ourselves live in a kind of blissful ignorance about oil - how it was formed, what we use it for, how we get it, what and whom we destroy in the process. And so as a teacher I have often wondered whether general-education curricula should include an interdisciplinary course on oil - and whether passing such a course should be a graduation requirement. This is part of a larger question concerning the problem of ecological illiteracy, that unselective pestilence as likely to infect a professor as a frat boy. Too many of the guests and tenants in academia bear a striking resemblance to that clueless freeloader at the end of The Great Gatsby who shows up one night after Gatsby's death, unaware that the party is over. But it is, and it's high time we who teach started saying so, because lean times are coming. For example, our dependence on the food system, which is run by oil from farm to table, will waste no time teaching us a few things about how incompetent we are. That many of us with impeccable academic credentials will be among the first to starve means only that chickens do come home to roost: we are the confessors of an educational creed that dismisses the value of the domestic arts and sends graduates out into a world of surrendered skills and purchased necessities. We are the diploma retailers who have allowed students to assume that the machines and the ungraduated will supply all their real needs. We have let these students major in Getting Ahead. We have strip-mined the local talent, converted it into "graduates", and shipped it to Big Important Places. Deracinated and deracinating vandals that we are, chasers of whatever grant money inflates our egos, we have taught students to be as we are: citizens of every place, which is to say citizens of no place - that is, not citizens at all, but parasites. It's time for something better. On every campus we need large, highly visible vegetable gardens that are tended by everyone who likes to eat; cafeterias that provide, insofar as they can, only local foods; compost heaps steaming next to these cafeterias to remind us to pay our debt to the soil. We need administrators committed to dismantling, not enlarging, our vast system of technological dependencies, and professors committed to living defensibly and responsibly and competently before their students. Our foreign studies programs must become local studies programs. Our new buildings must be made to run on energy sources that will still be available when the buildings turn fifty or a hundred. We can't ignore the problem of ecological illiteracy any longer. It must become a prominent curricular concern all across higher education. And no one should graduate who doesn't know what oil has done for us - and especially what it has done to us: made us fat, lazy, stupid, and incompetent. This won't cut it. _____ Jason Peters teaches English at Augustana College and is the editor of Wendell Berry: Life and Work (2007). LIKE THIS ARTICLE? Orion is ad-free, so help us please by subscribing or making a donation. Orion publishes six thoughtful, inspiring, and beautiful issues a year. Subscribe to Orion Magazine https://subscribe.pcspublink.com/subscribeFormGeneric.asp?track=JBP8&pub=ORIN&term=6 Subscribe to the Paperless Edition http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/mag/orion_digital/ Free Trial Offer https://subscribe.pcspublink.com/subscribeFormGeneric.asp?track=JFTA7&pub=ORIN&term=6 Donate https://app.etapestry.com/hosted/OrionSociety/OnlineDonation.html The Orion Society, 187 Main Street, Great Barrington, Massachusetts 01230 413-528-4422 / Toll Free 888-909-6568 / Toll Free Subscriptions 800-254-3713 http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/3648 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From nmgoro at gmail.com Wed Mar 4 11:04:37 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 19:04:37 +0100 Subject: [A-List] Are we facing the mother of all bubbles? Message-ID: <2fa158550903041004q55d7ce88o75ca6c6e974bf770@mail.gmail.com> Against anything received economic knowledge would suggest, the currency of the USofAm is increasing its value. Of course, many explanations can and should be advanced. I suggest what I think is the most concrete one. Am I too stupid in thinking that after recycling itself through the most bizarre boulevards ("emerging" countries, dot.coms, unpayable mortgages, etc.) we are witnessing the ultimate recycling of global excess surplus? Are we not beginning to see the DOLLAR BUBBLE? I am just asking. Those less plainclothes than yours truly may -and I hope they will- give some hints. -- N?stor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a From sabri_oncu at yahoo.com Wed Mar 4 11:04:45 2009 From: sabri_oncu at yahoo.com (Sabri Oncu) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 10:04:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash Message-ID: <534091.16623.qm@web111508.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Anne: > What Ralph fails to mention is the single, greatest reason > credit unions are not imploding, ie credit unions do NOT > engage in fractional reserve banking as do banks, which was > one of the "triumphs" of the Progressive Age. Enjoy the achievement! Can you explain this in some detail, Anne? Don't they also keep some of the deposits in reserves and lend the rest? In other words, aren't they also in the short term borrowing, long term lending business? Best, Sabri From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Mar 4 12:36:27 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:36:27 -0800 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash In-Reply-To: <534091.16623.qm@web111508.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <534091.16623.qm@web111508.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49AED83B.4010901@gmail.com> Sabri Oncu wrote: > > > Can you explain this in some detail, Anne? Don't they also keep some of the deposits in reserves and lend the rest? In other words, aren't they also in the short term borrowing, long term lending business? > > Best, > Sabri > > A picture would be worth a few words here: http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee241/photobastard/non-borrowedreservesofdepositoryins.jpg Right about the time of the Bear Stearns incident... The NON-borrowed reserves for the Fed, a historical chart, published by the St. Louis branch... There ARE NONE ('reserves', the fed's namesake) currently. What was it James Kunstler said? ?liquidity! liquidity!" "My favorite moment was seeing Treasury Secretary Paulson and one of his fellow shaved-head deputies at a press conference rostrum frantically trying to calm the news media rabble like a couple of extraplanetary high priests from a Star Trek episode - the batteries having run down in their laser wands, and their incantations (?liquidity! liquidity!) veering into mystifying glossolalia." http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/01/fullblown-panic.html A couple of other illustrative examples: Shock and disbelief (Personally, I disbelieve Greenspan's morals ethics, and words): http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee241/photobastard/Crymearivergreenspan.jpg But Obama has a 'plan': http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee241/photobastard/NoDrapes.jpg The Guardian's liveblogging of Obama's speech that was taken from is hilarious, and to the point on every point: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/deadlineusa/2009/feb/25/barack-obama-obama-administration No drapes on those corporate jets! Got That? NO... DRAPES! Personally, I' think they're all doing this: http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee241/photobastard/BurnCandle.jpg ...and if these jokers aren't very careful, Obama's adoring masses: http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee241/photobastard/WelcomingCommittee.jpg ..will quite quickly become an ugly mob when their credit cards no longer work and they "need" to buy that made in Malaysia Plasma Big Screen Tee Vee to watch Bill O'Really(sic) on. From annewilliamson at msn.com Tue Mar 3 18:18:11 2009 From: annewilliamson at msn.com (Anne Williamson) Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 20:18:11 -0500 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash In-Reply-To: <49ADBC51.7020906@ashisuto.co.jp> References: <12524973.1236102476730.JavaMail.root@mswamui-blood.atl.sa.earthlink.net> <49ADBC51.7020906@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: Sean, Fractional Reserve Banking is what got us into this mess - it's a system whereby credit creation is exploded by the banks....imagine an inverted pyramid, only the point having any value, and layers and layers of fiat money credit are piled on top. The footnote from Contagion below explains the system in its essence - when you get to the bottom of the example, realize that the 70,000 will be lent and deposited into other bank accounts, whose banks can then explode the fiat money (and then lend it!) in the same way as the original 10,000 cheque, ad nauseum. Very quickly a mountain of debt is built on a single Fed transaction: Here?s how an ordinary transaction involving a citizen, the Fed and a commercial bank works: the central bank buys most usually old existing government bonds, though in principle it can buy any public asset, through what are known as the Fed?s ?Open Market Operations.? When the Fed makes a purchase, the Fed writes a check on the Federal Reserve system out of thin air. The recipient - let?s say in this case a private citizen who sold a warehouse business to the Fed - goes to his commercial bank and deposits the central bank?s check. The commercial bank of the depositor then takes the check to the central bank, says, ?Put it into my reserve account,? thereby increasing the bank?s required reserves with the central bank, which then allows it to pile a multiple of checkable money created out of thin air on top of the actual note value of the original check created out of thin air from the central bank. Neat, huh? Out of a $10,000 deposit in a bank, $1,000 goes to the vaults, $2,000 to the bank?s reserve account with the central bank, and the remainder is exploded into $70,000 of checkable money the bank can lend. Hope this helps, Anne -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 3149 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090303/53503532/attachment.txt From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Tue Mar 3 19:57:25 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:57:25 +1100 Subject: [A-List] What's new at Links: John Bellamy Foster, Michael Lebowitz on Marx, economic crisis, Venezuela, Philippines, Pakistan, Caribbean strikes, Marx the ecologist, Tamils, Zimbabwe Message-ID: <49ADEE15.5010802@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: John Bellamy Foster, Michael Lebowitz on Marx, economic crisis, Venezuela, Philippines, Pakistan, Caribbean strikes, Marx the ecologist, Tamils, Zimbabwe * * * Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed (http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to consider an article, please send it to links at dsp.org.au *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links/. * * * John Bellamy Foster: `A whole different kind of struggle is emerging' John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. He is the coauthor with Fred Magdoff of The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences, recently published by Monthly Review Press. This interview was conducted by Mike Whitney and first appeared at Dissident Voice. It has been posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with Whitney's permission. * Read more `Let us rediscover Marx' -- Two talks on Michael Lebowitz's `Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class' By Michael A. Lebowitz [Michael Lebowitz will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets.] February 16, 2009 -- It is well known that when Karl Marx heard what people calling themselves Marxists were saying, he commented, ``all I know is that I am not a Marxist''. It is not as well known, however, that Marx had little respect for disciples in general. A theory disintegrates, he said, when disciples try to ``explain away'' problems in the theory -- when they engage in ``crass empiricism'', use ``phrases in a scholastic way'', and employ ``cunning argument'' to support the theory. A theory disintegrates, he said, when the point of departure of the disciples is ``no longer reality'' but the theory that the master produced. * Read more Economic crisis: Skyrocketing unemployment in Asia hits women and young people hardest By Reihana Mohideen [Reihana Mohideen will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets.] February 23, 2009 -- Recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) reports on global and regional employment trends paint a stark picture of rapidly increasing unemployment in 2008; the situation is expected to worsen in 2009 with the prediction of massive job losses. The message is clear: workers and the poor are already paying heavily for the capitalist economic crisis. Especially hard hit are working-class and poor women and young people. * Read more Venezuela: Referendum victory advances process of change By Chris Kerr Caracas, February 20, 2009 -- "Today we opened wide the gates of the future ... Truth against lies [and] the dignity of the homeland has triumphed", Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez insisted to tens of thousands of celebrating supporters after Venezuelans voted to amend the constitution to end term limits on all elected politicians -- allowing Chavez to stand for re-election in 2012.'' ``Venezuela will not return to its past of indignity", Chavez stated, referring to the four decades of alternating rule by two corrupt parties that followed the overthrow of a military dictatorship in 1958. * Read more Pakistan: Punjab provincial government deposed; PPP resorts to dictatorial measures By Farooq Tariq Lahore, February 27, 2009 -- The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leadership has a problem on its hands. There are not many ways to defend the governor of Punjab's ruling on February 25, which imposed a two-month suspension of the Punjab Assembly. The most respected and moderate leader of PPP and chairperson of the Senate, Mian Raza Rubani, justified the decision by saying that it was necessary to stop the ``prevailing state of anarchy''. * Read more General strike shakes France's Caribbean colonies Introduction by Richard Fidler February 26, 2009 -- Life on the Left -- The general strike in two French colonies in the Caribbean is firm, with no end in sight. It began in Guadeloupe on January 20 and spread to neighbouring Martinique on February 5 as a protest against the high cost of living and, more generally, the gross inequality between the conditions of the black population and a tiny white elite, descendants of slaveholders, who control most industry and agriculture. * Read more Karl Marx the ecologist By Simon Butler February 21, 2009 -- As the world economy spirals down into its deepest crisis since the great depression, the writings of Karl Marx have made a return to the top seller lists in bookstores. In his native Germany, the sales of Marx's works have trebled. His theories have been treated with contempt by conservative economists and historians. Yet, in the context of the latest economic downturn, even a few mainstream economists have been compelled to ask whether Marx was right after all. Marx argued that capitalism is inherently unstable, fraught with contradictions and prone to deep crises. Only a move to a democratic socialist society, where ordinary people are empowered to make the key decisions about the economy and society themselves, can open the path to genuine freedom and liberation. * Read more Australian Tamils call for ceasefire in Sri Lanka -- sign the crisis statement In an attempt to put an urgent stop to the humanitarian catastrophe, a group of young Tamil Australians have written a Sri Lankan Crisis Statement for the wider Australian community to sign. * Read more Venezuela: A balance sheet of the constitutional referendum victory By Gonzalo Villanueva Venezuela's February 15 constitutional amendment referendum, which proposed to modify the existing constitution to allow politicians to stand for re-election without restrictions, was triumphant. However, the referendum was more than a legal amendment - the removal of term limits - it was a political issue: to continue the revolutionary project or not? The Venezuelan people have convincingly signalled their desire to continue with the Bolivarian process, under the leadership of Hugo Chavez. The victory undoubtedly opens a path to advance and deepen the Bolivarian Revolution. * Read more Australia: Full agenda for World at a Crossroads conference - Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century World at a Crossroads - Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century Sydney, Australia, April 10-13 * Read more A spectre haunts imperialism ... a rebirth of the left By Kavita Krishnan [Kavita Krishnan will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets.] February 25, 2009 -- The people of the United States (through their vote for US President Barack Obama and ``change'') and Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi alike may have given George W. Bush (and all he stood for) the boot - but India's Congress Party wants to give Bush the Bharat Ratna![1] Congress Party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi, addressing the annual general meeting of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), declared, "Give Bharat Ratna to Bush. I don't know what the rules are but I will officially do something." * Read more Zimbabwe socialists: Fight for fresh elections under a new people-driven constitution! February 6, 2009 -- The International Socialist Organisation Zimbabwe (ISOZ) has consistently argued for the last few years that the poor and working people would pay dearly if they naively followed the false calls for "change" championed by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and its imperialist-supported civic society allies, and subordinated their organisations to the same. * Read more * Read more Philippines: 'We need system change', says military rebel By Peter Boyle February 19, 2009 -- Major Jason Aquino is one of the 28 officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines charged with allegedly attempting a mutiny in February 2006. Aquino was detained on February 22 that year and held incommunicado in a windowless cell for five months. I met Major Aquino and several other detained rebel officers in Camp Aguinaldo in early February 2009. They were all outspoken against the grossly corrupt government of Philippines President Gloria Arroyo, and their years of incarceration (as yet without being convicted of a single crime) have only deepened their politicisation. But Major Aquino -- who has studied the speeches and writings of Fidel Castro and read everything he can get his hands on about the revolution in Venezuela led by Hugo Chavez -- wanted to make it clear a that he was "not a reformist". * Read more * * * Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information, experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 _______________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 18078 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090304/1ed71dbd/attachment.txt From nscchicago at igc.org Tue Mar 3 23:09:28 2009 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 00:09:28 -0600 Subject: [A-List] NOT JUST CHANGE FOR JUSTICE TOWARD A NEW FOREIGN POLICY NACLA/LASC Message-ID: <038A56B0E78442A0851B97E2B0A9A3C9@NSCCHICAGO> Tom Baker here and please visit the LASC web at www.lasolidarity.org The LASC web page says it why we have these three titles The readings are timely expert, with strong understanding, feet on the ground experience. Chicago, we host NACLA/LASC in April. Stay tuned. exciting organizing is going on now, Mexico Solidarity in the lead with students activists at NEIU. The fourth is from The Cuban Five that the US Human Rights Report is out and guess what is scrupously omitted And from the UK, workers have taken bold action while labor bosses show who they are. The writer suggests We the People Have Leapfrogged our Leaders. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 2104 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090304/96d861c7/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 4008 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090304/96d861c7/attachment-0001.jpeg -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Sean Hannley" Subject: [LASolidarity] The New Bolivian Constitution Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 13:29:58 -0500 Size: 17125 Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090304/96d861c7/attachment-0005.eml -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Sean Hannley" Subject: [LASolidarity] Impunity in Colombia Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 13:25:41 -0500 Size: 19595 Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090304/96d861c7/attachment-0006.eml -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Sean Hannley" Subject: [LASolidarity] 10 Years of Hugo Chavez, Perspectives on the Bolivarian Revolution Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 13:15:43 -0500 Size: 19327 Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090304/96d861c7/attachment-0007.eml -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: nealbetty at aol.com Subject: [ChicagoCubaList-serve] The February 25, 2009 U.S. Human Rights Report... Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 11:45:25 EST Size: 27055 Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090304/96d861c7/attachment-0008.eml -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Cort Greene Subject: [socialist_youth] Class battles on the order of the day Date: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 10:26:09 -0600 Size: 22775 Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090304/96d861c7/attachment-0009.eml From tboyle at rosehill.net Tue Mar 3 19:11:13 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:11:13 -0800 Subject: [A-List] America's Fiscal Collapse -- By Michel Chossudovsky In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: James, thanks for posting this Chossudovsky, he's one of my favorite analysts. I think his report, this time, is mostly about the financial industry and the US federal budget. However, isn't there an even bigger picture? Unsustainable and deflationary flows of money out of the U.S. to pay for oil, and everything else., preceded the financial collapse. But the words "oil" and "trade deficit" etc. don't appear in his report. The top level analysis might be that outflows from the US became so large that the creation of debt-money could not keep up, so, the engine (domestic economy) starved for fuel and stalled. Yeahhh, the *form* of the stall was the housing collapse, banking collapse, collapse in federal finance etc. That's interesting but the root cause of the stall was the domestic economy running out of money. Money went out of circulation, because the country is addicted to oil, and because domestic production of goods and services collapsed due to high costs, caused by the excessive domestic demand, in turn, caused by the printing of $trillions of dollars particularly since the 911 crisis. The trade deficits have been very large, for decades. Somehow, they were sustained by a combination of printing money for a one-way trip to the vaults of foreign central banks, investors, etc, and by inflows of money (including financial inflows such as purchases of mortgages/derivatives, and savings of arriving immigrants, etc. net of black money outflows from tax cheats and for drug purchases) So the whole ugly thing kind of went bellyup for a lot of reasons, you know all of them... Todd. At 12:58 AM 3/3/2009, james daly wrote: > America's Fiscal Collapse > > By Michel Chossudovsky > > The url address of this article is: >www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12517 > > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 2390 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090303/8d467723/attachment.txt From tboyle at rosehill.net Wed Mar 4 10:53:27 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:53:27 -0800 Subject: [A-List] NYT: Those submarines could kill millions of people. We must "retain" them. Message-ID: How indifferent are the NYT editors, to the deliberate and planned deaths of millions of people, almost all of them completely innocent civilians? This is exemplary of U.S. culture of nationalist supremacism, racism, and militarism. Todd Boyle. Kirkland WA. http://rosehill.net When Nuclear Subs Collide New York Times Editorial February 24, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/opinion/24tue2.html Two nuclear missile submarines ? one British, one French ? armed with a likely total of well more than 100 thermonuclear warheads collided under the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month. It?s a terrifying reminder of how many of these hugely destructive weapons are still routinely deployed and how little thought is given to keeping them as safe and secure as possible. Two decades after the end of the cold war, all of the nuclear powers have been inexcusably negligent about rethinking nuclear strategies, sharply reducing arsenals and eliminating needlessly risky practices, including some that contributed to this month?s collision. Fortunately, the damage to the submarines was minor, and the warheads were not compromised. British and French missiles, like those of the United States, are protected against accidental launch or detonation of their warheads. But a stronger impact could have sent both subs and their crews to the bottom and possibly dispersed plutonium into surrounding waters. The warheads on the two submarines that collided could, if ever launched, kill millions of people. And Britain and France together have far fewer than 1,000 nuclear warheads in their arsenals. The United States and Russia still have more than 20,000. President Obama must move quickly to revive arms negotiations with the Russians ? committing to deep reductions both in deployed weapons and the many thousands more in storage. He must then bring the British, French and Chinese into the talks. The most important missiles to retain in any shrinking arsenal would be those based on submarines. Because they are quiet and constantly moving, they are essentially invulnerable to pre- emptive attack; there is less pressure to use them or lose them. That advantage is also at the root of this month?s accident. The four nuclear navies operating in the Atlantic ? American, British, French and Russian ? refuse to disclose any information about which parts of the ocean their missile submarines operate in. Such accidents are rare. But they can and should be made rarer. That can be done without compromising security. All that would have to happen is for the nuclear navies to agree on respective cruising depths (like airplanes do to prevent midair collisions). Their actual locations would remain secret; they could be anywhere in the Atlantic. And these assigned depths could even be rotated every few months between the navies so that no one could possibly feel advantaged or disadvantaged. As long as we depend on nuclear weapons for our security, we will have to live with uncomfortable risks. Governments must keep those risks to an absolute minimum by eliminating thousands of weapons that no longer have any military justification and insisting on the highest possible safety standards. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 3741 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090304/cb6ba1f2/attachment.txt From barmy_basket at yahoo.es Wed Mar 4 14:17:55 2009 From: barmy_basket at yahoo.es (peripatetic) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:17:55 +0100 Subject: [A-List] Are we facing the mother of all bubbles? In-Reply-To: <2fa158550903041004q55d7ce88o75ca6c6e974bf770@mail.gmail.com> References: <2fa158550903041004q55d7ce88o75ca6c6e974bf770@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49AEF003.4050803@yahoo.es> from: *Ten Major Threats Facing The Dollar in 2009 */by Eric deCarbonnel/ /http://jsmineset.com/index.php/2009/03/04/ten-major-threats-facing-the-dollar-in-2009/ / ....Treasuries and the dollar, January 2009. The current rally in treasuries and the dollar is the latest in a long line of bubbles. Those same commentator which got it wrong on previous occasions are now predicting months of deflation and a new multi-year bull market for the dollar (worst prediction ever). Out of all the bubbles so far, this current rally in treasuries and the dollar is the most ridiculous. The fundamentals behind the dollar, as outlined in this article, are horrendous. There is simply no rational reason to believe the dollar will retain an ounce of value by the end of 2009. Side note on how to deal deflationists When faced with a deflationist (one of those individuals who believe in months of deflation and a dollar bull market), ask them this: who is going to finance our trade deficit and bailouts? If they say the world or foreign nations, then list off all the countries with trade deficits who will not be financing the US: Japan, India, Saudi Arabia, Russia, most European countries (with the possible exception of Germany), other oil producers, etc. If they insist on the notion that China alone will pick up the tab for everything, point out that during the great depression, when the US had massive manufacturing overcapacity, America shut down factories rather than extend credit to over indebted foreign nations. N?stor Gorojovsky wrote: > Against anything received economic knowledge would suggest, the > currency of the USofAm is increasing its value. > > Of course, many explanations can and should be advanced. I suggest > what I think is the most concrete one. > > Am I too stupid in thinking that after recycling itself through the > most bizarre boulevards ("emerging" countries, dot.coms, unpayable > mortgages, etc.) we are witnessing the ultimate recycling of global > excess surplus? > > Are we not beginning to see the DOLLAR BUBBLE? > > I am just asking. Those less plainclothes than yours truly may -and I > hope they will- give some hints. > > http://webabuser.blogspot.com From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Mar 4 14:31:38 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:31:38 -0800 Subject: [A-List] Rumsfeld was Sooooo 20th Century Message-ID: <49AEF33A.2090006@gmail.com> So much for smaller, lighter, faster... http://www.upi.com/Security_Industry/2009/03/03/21st_century_world_needs_millions_of_soldiers_to_protect_borders/UPI-86241236092370/ http://www.upi.com/Security_Industry/2009/03/04/21st_century_wars_will_need_large_land_armies/UPI-36101236188396/ From seanfischer at earthlink.net Wed Mar 4 16:26:30 2009 From: seanfischer at earthlink.net (Sean Fischer) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 18:26:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash Message-ID: <8962365.1236209190090.JavaMail.root@mswamui-bichon.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Anne, Thank you for taking a minute to explain this to me. From my limited knowledge of banking, economics, and finance, it seems I am having trouble understanding the differences between what is truly considered an asset vs. liability? Sean -----Original Message----- >From: Anne Williamson >Sent: Mar 3, 2009 8:18 PM >To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu >Subject: Re: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash > > >Sean, > >Fractional >Reserve Banking is what got us into this mess - it's a system whereby >credit creation is exploded by the banks....imagine an inverted >pyramid, only the point having any value, and layers and layers of fiat >money credit are piled on top. The footnote from Contagion >below explains the system in its essence - when you get to the bottom >of the example, realize that the 70,000 will be lent and deposited into >other bank accounts, whose banks can then explode the fiat money (and >then lend it!) in the same way as the original 10,000 cheque, ad nauseum. Very quickly a mountain of debt is built on a single Fed transaction: > > > Here?s how an ordinary transaction involving a >citizen, the Fed and a commercial bank works: >the central bank buys most usually old existing government bonds, though >in principle it can buy any public asset, through what are known as the Fed?s >?Open Market Operations.? When the >Fed makes a purchase, the Fed writes a check >on the Federal Reserve system out of thin >air. The recipient - let?s say in >this case a private citizen who sold a warehouse business to the Fed - goes to >his commercial bank and deposits the central bank?s check. The commercial bank of the depositor then >takes the check to the central bank, says, ?Put it into my reserve account,? >thereby increasing the bank?s required reserves with the central bank, which >then allows it to pile a multiple of checkable money created out of thin air on top of the actual >note value of the original check created out >of thin air from the central bank. >Neat, huh? Out of a $10,000 >deposit in a bank, $1,000 goes to the vaults, $2,000 to the bank?s reserve >account with the central bank, and the remainder is exploded into $70,000 of >checkable money the bank can lend. > > >Hope this helps, > >Anne > > From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Mar 4 16:53:07 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:53:07 -0800 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash In-Reply-To: <8962365.1236209190090.JavaMail.root@mswamui-bichon.atl.sa.earthlink.net> References: <8962365.1236209190090.JavaMail.root@mswamui-bichon.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <49AF1463.6000307@gmail.com> Sean Fischer wrote: > Anne, > > Thank you for taking a minute to explain this to me. From my limited knowledge of banking, economics, and finance, it seems I am having trouble understanding the differences between what is truly considered an asset vs. liability? > > Sean > > > I'm going to crack a joke here,even if it's really not funny. Here goes... The post de-regulation 'banks' don't know the difference either. How CAN you tell when you're talking 'derivatives' of an index of derivatives of 'futures'... ? I think they have stables of corporate liability lawyers and 'risk managers' advise them on what's what, and like most of the corporate ethic... It's all 'situational', and the risk 'defer-able' (up till recently, when American finance met it's collective 'margin call'). If the situation makes them and their shareholders/investors $$$ it's an asset. If it loses money... liability. I have nothing more to say until I've spoken to my lawyer. From seanfischer at earthlink.net Wed Mar 4 16:56:25 2009 From: seanfischer at earthlink.net (Sean Fischer) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 18:56:25 -0500 (EST) Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash Message-ID: <21147375.1236210985888.JavaMail.root@mswamui-bichon.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Bill, Thats a real nice trick, sounds a lot like a time share in Hawaii a friend once mentioned he considered, I told him he was a fool. Then it was a $400,000 dollar piece of property, and the owner (who did not own title) was selling 20 people time slots for $50,000 dollars each. Using your example numbers below: how does the depositor (or group of depositors) have a guarantee that if one decides to withdrawal their entire $110 deposit on demand, that the bank can cover the entire withdrawal? Was this the point of the original post, that the commercial bank could only rob Peter to pay Paul for a while and this methodology comes with big risks if there is a run on the money, whereas a credit union is not legally allowed to lend money based on 'Fractional Reserve Banking' practices? Sean -----Original Message----- >From: Bill Totten >Sent: Mar 3, 2009 6:25 PM >To: Sean Fischer , The A-List >Subject: Re: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash > >It simply means banks are allowed to loan, say $100, for every $10 they >have in their vaults. And collect interest on that $100. As if a rental >agency could rent the same car to ten parties simultaneously, or a hotel >could rent the same room to ten couples simultaneously, or a airline or >railway could rent the same seat to ten people simultaneously. > > >Sean Fischer wrote: >> Anne, can you please explain for me and any others, what "fractional reserve banking" is? >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >>> From: Anne Williamson >>> Sent: Mar 2, 2009 5:17 PM >>> To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu >>> Subject: Re: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash >>> >>> >>> What Ralph fails to mention is the single, greatest reason credit unions are not imploding, ie credit unions do NOT engage in fractional reserve banking as do banks, which was one of the "triumphs" of the Progressive Age. Enjoy the achievement! >>> >>>> Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 20:02:23 +0900 >>>> From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp >>>> To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu >>>> Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash >>>> >>>> >>>> by Ralph Nader >>>> >>>> Countercurrents.org (February 27 2009) >>>> >>>> >>>> While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated >>>> glacier day by day, the nation's credit unions are a relative island of >>>> calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism. >>>> >>>> Eighty five million Americans belong to credit unions which are >>>> not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members who are depositors >>>> and borrowers. Your neighborhood or workplace credit union did not >>>> invest in these notorious speculative derivatives nor did they offer >>>> people "teaser rates" to sign on for a home mortgage they could not afford. >>>> >>>> Ninety one percent of the 8,000 credit unions are reporting greater >>>> overall growth in mortgage lending than any other kinds of consumer >>>> loans they are extending. They are federally insured by the National >>>> Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for up to $250,000 per account, such >>>> as the FDIC does for depositors in commercial banks. >>>> >>>> They are well-capitalized because of regulation and because they do not >>>> have an incentive to go for high-risk, highly leveraged speculation to >>>> increase stock values and the value of the bosses' stock options as do >>>> the commercial banks. >>>> >>>> Credit Unions have no shareholders nor stock nor stock options; they are >>>> responsible to their owner-members who are their customers. >>>> >>>> There are even some special low-income credit unions, though not nearly >>>> enough to stimulate economic activities in these communities and to >>>> provide "banking" services in areas where poor people can't afford or >>>> are not provided services by commercial banks. >>>> >>>> According to Mike Schenk, an economist with the Credit Union National >>>> Association, there is another reason why credit unions avoided the >>>> mortgage debacle that is consuming the big banks. >>>> >>>> Credit Unions, Schenk says, are "portfolio lenders. That means they hold >>>> in their portfolios most of the loans they originate instead of selling >>>> them to investors, so they care about the financial performance of those >>>> loans." >>>> >>>> Mr Schenk allowed that with the deepening recession, credit unions are >>>> not making as much surplus and "their asset quality has deteriorated a >>>> bit. But that's the beauty of the credit union model. Credit unions can >>>> live with those conditions without suffering dire consequences", he >>>> asserted. >>>> >>>> His use of the word "model" is instructive. In recent decades, credit >>>> unions sometimes leaned toward commercial bank practices instead of >>>> strict cooperative principles. They developed a penchant for mergers >>>> into larger and larger credit unions. Some even toyed with converting >>>> out of the cooperative model into the shareholder model the way >>>> insurance and bank mutuals have done. >>>> >>>> The cooperative model, whether in finance, food, housing or any other >>>> sector of the economy, does best when the owner-cooperators are active >>>> in the general operations and directions of their co-op. Passive owners >>>> allow managers to stray or contemplate straying from cooperative practices. >>>> >>>> The one area that is now spelling some trouble for retail cooperatives >>>> comes from the so-called "corporate credit unions", a terrible >>>> nomenclature, which were established to provide liquidity for the retail >>>> credit unions. These large wholesale credit unions are not exactly >>>> infused with the cooperative philosophy. Some of them gravitate toward >>>> the corporate banking model. They invested in those risky mortgage >>>> securities with the money from the retail credit unions. These "toxic >>>> assets" have fallen $14 billion among the 28 corporate credit unions >>>> involved. >>>> >>>> So the National Credit Union Administration is expanding its lending >>>> programs to these corporate credit unions to a maximum capacity of $41.5 >>>> billion. NCUA also wants to have retail credit unions qualified for the >>>> TARP rescue program just to provide a level playing field with the >>>> commercial banks. >>>> >>>> Becoming more like investment banks the wholesale credit unions wanted >>>> to attract, with ever higher riskier yields, more of the retail credit >>>> union deposits. This set the stage for the one major blemish of >>>> imprudence on the credit union subeconomy. >>>> >>>> There are very contemporary lessons to be learned from the successes of >>>> the credit union model such as being responsive to consumer loan needs >>>> and down to earth with their portfolios. Yet in all the massive media >>>> coverage of the Wall Street barons and their lethal financial escapades, >>>> crimes and frauds, little is being written about how the regulation, >>>> philosophy and behavior of the credit unions largely escaped this >>>> catastrophe. >>>> >>>> There is, moreover, a lesson for retail credit unions. Beware and avoid >>>> the seepage or supremacy of the corporate financial model which, in its >>>> present degraded overly complex and abstract form, has become what one >>>> prosecutor called "lying, cheating and stealing" in fancy clothing. >>>> >>>> _____ >>>> >>>> Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and three-time presidential candidate. >>>> >>>> http://www.countercurrents.org/nader270209.htm >>>> >>>> >>>> http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com >>>> http://www.ashisuto.co.jp >>>> >>>> >>>> >> >> >> >> From sabri_oncu at yahoo.com Wed Mar 4 17:23:35 2009 From: sabri_oncu at yahoo.com (Sabri Oncu) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 16:23:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash Message-ID: <114221.72608.qm@web111515.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> All responses are fine, but none answers my question. I am not asking what fractional reserve banking means, since I already teach what it means to my students. What I am interested in learning is what credit unions do any differently than the commercial banks? Best, Sabri From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Mar 4 17:52:08 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:52:08 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Proceeds of Crime Message-ID: <49AF2238.8090206@ashisuto.co.jp> The US and British governments have created a private prison industry which preys on human lives. by George Monbiot Guardian (March 03 2009) It's a staggering case; more staggering still that it has scarcely been mentioned on this side of the ocean. Last week two judges in Pennsylvania were convicted of jailing some 2000 children in exchange for bribes from private prison companies. Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan sent children to jail for offences so trivial that some of them weren't even crimes. A 15 year-old called Hillary Transue got three months for creating a spoof web page ridiculing her school's assistant principal. Mr Ciavarella sent Shane Bly, then 13, to boot camp for trespassing in a vacant building. He gave a 14 year-old, Jamie Quinn, 11 months in prison for slapping a friend during an argument, after the friend slapped her. The judges were paid $2.6 million by companies belonging to the Mid Atlantic Youth Services Corp for helping to fill its jails {1, 2, 3}. This is what happens when public services are run for profit. It's an extreme example, but it hints at the wider consequences of the trade in human lives created by private prisons. In the US and the UK they have a powerful incentive to ensure that the number of prisoners keeps rising. The United States is more corrupt than the UK, but it is also more transparent. There the lobbyists demanding and receiving changes to judicial policy might be exposed, and corrupt officials identified and prosecuted. The UK, with a strong tradition of official secrecy and a weak tradition of scrutiny and investigative journalism, has no such safeguards. The corrupt judges were paid by the private prisons not only to increase the number of child convicts but also to shut down a competing prison run by the public sector. Taking bribes to bang up kids might be novel; shutting public facilities to help private companies happens - on both sides of the water - all the time. The Wall Street Journal has shown how, as a result of lobbying by the operators, private jails in Mississippi and California are being paid for non-existent prisoners {4, 5}. The prison corporations have been guaranteed a certain number of inmates. If the courts fail to produce enough convicts, they get their money anyway. This outrages taxpayers in both states, which have cut essential public services to raise these funds. But there is a simple means of resolving this problem: you replace ghost inmates with real ones. As the Journal, seldom associated with raging anti-capitalism, observes, "prison expansion [has] spawned a new set of vested interests with stakes in keeping prisons full and in building more ? The result has been a financial and political bazaar, with convicts in stripes as the prize" {6}. Even as crime declines, law-makers are pressed by their sponsors to increase the rate of imprisonment. The US has, by a very long way, the world's highest proportion of people behind bars: 756 prisoners per 100,000 people {7}, or just over one per cent of the adult population {8}. Similarly wealthy countries have around one-tenth of this rate of imprisonment. Like most of its really bad ideas, the last Conservative government imported private jails from the US. As Stephen Nathan, author of a forthcoming book about prison privatisation in the UK, has shown, the notion was promoted by the Select Committee on Home Affairs, which in 1986 visited prisons run by the Corrections Corporation of America. When the corporation told them that private provision in the US improved prison standards and delivered good value for money, the committee members failed to check its claims. They recommended that the government should put the construction and management of prisons out to tender "as an experiment" {9}. Encouraged by the committee's report, the Corrections Corporation of America set up a consortium in Britain with two Conservative party donors, Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd and John Mowlem & Co, to promote privately financed prisons over here. The first privately-run prison in the UK, Wolds, was opened by the Danish security company Group 4 in 1992. In 1993, before it had had a chance to evaluate this experiment, the government announced that all new prisons would be built and run by private companies. The Labour party, then in opposition, was outraged. John Prescott promised that "Labour will take back private prisons into public ownership - it is the only safe way forward" {10}. Jack Straw stated that "it is not appropriate for people to profit out of incarceration. This is surely one area where a free market certainly does not exist." He too promised to "bring these prisons into proper public control and run them directly as public services" {11}. But during his first seven weeks in office, Jack Straw renewed one private prison contract and launched two new ones. A year later he announced that all new prisons in England and Wales would be built and run by private companies, under the private finance initiative (PFI). Today the UK has a higher proportion of prisoners in private institutions than the US {12}. This is the only country in Europe whose jails are run on this model. So has prison privatisation here influenced judicial policy? As we discovered during the recent lobbying scandal in the House of Lords, there's no way of knowing. Unlike civilised nations, the UK has no register of lobbyists; we are not even entitled to know which lobbyists ministers have met {13}. But there are some clues. The former home secretary, John Reid, previously in charge of prison provision, has become a consultant to the private prison operator G4S {14}. The government is intending to commission a series of massive Titan jails under PFI. Most experts on prisons expect them to be disastrous, taking inmates further away from their families (which reduces the chances of rehabilitation) and creating vast warrens in which all the social diseases of imprisonment will fester. Only two groups want them built: ministers and the prison companies: they offer excellent opportunities to rack up profits. And the very nature of PFI, which commits the government to paying for services for 25 or thirty years whether or not they are still required creates a major incentive to ensure that prison numbers don't fall. The beast must be fed. And there's another line of possible evidence. In the two countries whose economies most resemble the UK's - Germany and France - the prison population has risen quite slowly. France has 96 inmates per 100,000 people, an increase of fourteen per cent since 1992. Germany has 89 prisoners per 100,000: 25% more than in 1992 but nine per cent less than in 2001. But the UK now locks up 151 out of every 100,000 inhabitants: 73% more than in 1992 and twenty per cent more than in 2001 {15}. Yes our politicians have barely come down from the trees, yes we are still governed out of the offices of the Daily Mail, but it would be foolish to dismiss the likely influence of the private prison industry. This revolting trade in human lives creates a permanent incentive to lock people up; not because prison works; not because it makes us safer, but because it makes money. Privatisation appears to have locked this country into mass imprisonment. www.monbiot.com References: 1. Amy Goodman, 17th February 2009. How Two Former PA Judges Got Millions in Kickbacks to Send Juveniles to Private Prisons. Democracy Now! http://www.alternet.org/rights/127461/amy_goodman:_how_two_former_pa_judges_got_millions_in_kickbacks_to_send_juveniles_to_private_prisons/ 2. The Economist, 26th February 2009. Bad judges: the lowest of the low. 3. Stephanie Chen, 24th February 2009. Pennsylvania rocked by 'jailing kids for cash' scandal. CNN. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/23/pennsylvania.corrupt.judges/index.html 4. Bryan Gruley, 6th September 2001. Prison Building Spree Creates Glut of Lockups. Wall Street Journal. 5. Joseph T Hallinan, 6th November 2001. Going Backwards. Wall Street Journal. 6. Bryan Gruley, ibid. 7. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/worldbrief/wpb_country.php?country=190 8. The total prison population at the end of 2007 (see above) was 2,293,157. The most recent figure for the adult population I can find - 217.8 million - was produced by the US Census Bureau in 2004. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/001703.html 9. Stephen Nathan, 2003. Prison Privatization in the United Kingdom. Published in Capitalist Punishment: Prison Privatization & Human Rights. Clarity Press, Inc., Atlanta. 10. John Prescott, 1994, quoted by Stephen Nathan, ibid. 11. Jack Straw, 8th March 1995, quoted by Stephen Nathan, ibid. 12. 7.2% in the US, 11% in the UK. http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/subsection.asp?id=268 13. The Committee on Standards in Public Life, cited by the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee, 5th January 2009. Lobbying: Access and influence in Whitehall. Volume I, para 187. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmpubadm/36/36i.pdf 14. Security Oracle, 18th December 2008. G4S Appoints John Reid As Group Consultant. http://www.securityoracle.com/news/G4S-Appoints-John-Reid-As-Group-Consultant_14833.html 15. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/worldbrief/ Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/03/03/the-proceeds-of-crime/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Mar 4 18:02:56 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:02:56 -0800 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash In-Reply-To: <114221.72608.qm@web111515.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <114221.72608.qm@web111515.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49AF24C0.7060804@gmail.com> Sabri Oncu wrote: > All responses are fine, but none answers my question. > I am not asking what fractional reserve banking means, > since I already teach what it means to my students. What > I am interested in learning is what credit unions do any > differently than the commercial banks? > > Best, > Sabri > > > > > > This from the Federal Reserve: A bank is a for-profit organization. Banks hold deposits, make loans, pay checks, and provide other related services for the public. They collect funds from three sources: demand, savings, and time deposits; short-term borrowings from other banks; and equity capital. A credit union is a not-for-profit financial cooperative that makes personal loans and offers other consumer banking services to individuals sharing a common bond or affiliation, such as a common employer. Because credit unions operate as not-for-profit institutions, they are exempt from both federal and local taxes. Consequently, credit unions can charge below-market rates on loans while paying higher rates to savers. A credit union gets its operating funds from shares purchased by individual owners, who are members. It also pays dividends (representing the payment of interest) out of earnings. http://www.federalreserve.gov/generalinfo/faq/faqbkinfo.htm#11 Here's the writeup from one CU: ALTERNATIVES FEDERAL CREDIT UNION INVESTMENT POLICY Date of Last Review and Update by Board: July 27 2006 The purposes and objectives of this investment policy are to ensure that Credit Union surplus funds are maintained in safe, liquid, legal, income-earning vehicles consistent with the credit union's overall asset- liability management ("ALM") strategy and member demands for cash. In no event will investment activity be undertaken if the same ALM, liquidity, and earnings objectives can be attained through issuance of member loans. Investment strategy within the constraints of this policy is formulated by Budget Committee. The members of the Budget Committee are appointed by the Board for one year terms at the first Board meeting after the Annual Membership Meeting. The Committee will consist of: Treasurer (chair), two Board members, CFO, CEO, (and other CU members as appointed). Meetings of this committee are held monthly with additional meetings on an as-needed basis. No member of the Committee, Board and their immediate families may receive anything of value in connection with investment transactions. The Budget Committee will review this policy annually. The Directors are responsible for results of the portfolio and should be well informed. The investment managers must understand investments they are allowed to purchase. The CEO is authorized to execute transactions consistent with the Budget Committee's overall strategy. All investment transactions will be reviewed by the Budget Committee and reported to the Board quarterly. The reports to the Committee will include a listing of all investments, market value prices, and unrealized gain/loss. All investments qualifying for accounting treatment mandated by FASB 115 will be considered as ?available-for-sale?unless specifically classified ?held to maturity" by the Budget Committee and reported to the Board. Market trading is specifically prohibited by this policy. The authorized signers on investment accounts are: William Myers CEO Joseph Welch CFO Mary Ziegler Director of Consumer Lending This includes Corporate Central accounts, wire transfers, and non-local investments. To control concentration risk, funds committed to any individual investment or investment transaction may not exceed 25% of the credit union's total investment portfolio or $500,000, whichever is lesser (with the exception of investments at Members United). Investment maturities will be structured within the overall portfolio in a fashion consistent with the credit union's liquidity and ALM needs. Generally, this will include maintenance of a Page 2 average of 1% total assets in same-day accessible investments (such as corporate daily accounts) and the laddering of term investment maturities to minimize liquidity and interest rate risks. In order to minimize idle cash, it is expected that a Line of Credit will be accessed occasionally for overnight and short term needs. The investment portfolio will be generally structured in a even maturity ladder, with 5% of assets maturing each year. The more investable funds the longer the extension of the ladder. This provides for continuous liquidity, yield, and scalability as the investment pool shrinks or grows. Investments are required by policy to comply with all applicable rules and regulations, including all safety and soundness considerations. The Credit Union will not invest in multiple indexed, or reverse indexed securities or derivative mortgage securities. Credit Risk will be further controlled by investing in only the following 100% principal insured authorized investments: 1. US Treasury bills, note and bonds 2. US Agency obligations, including FHLB, FHLMC, FNMA, SLMA, and SBA a. Secondary bids should be price checked with two brokers. b. Price checking need not be performed on new issue securities which are sold everywhere at par. 3. Domestic bank and savings loan certificates a. The institution must have a minimum of 3% unimpaired equity and positive earnings at the time of investment. b. Price checking of CDs is by subscription to a rate service which updates offering electronically daily. 4. Investments and deposits with federally insured credit unions. 5. Money market funds as permissible for federal credit unions. 6. Corporate capital shares and corporate deposits over $100,000. Uninsured investments in a corporate credit union are permitted a. Quarterly review of financial statements of the institution or the analysis of a third party rater. 7. Uninsured investments in CUSOs subject to the limitations of the Federal Credit Union Act. Each individual investment must have prior Board approval PDF: http://www.alternatives.org/Board/investpol.pdf Google html cache: http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:ZaAPCdG5tToJ:www.alternatives.org/Board/investpol.pdf+financial+investment+restrictions+on+credit+unions&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&lr=lang_en&client=firefox-a From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Wed Mar 4 19:03:24 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 18:03:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [A-List] The Language of Looting Message-ID: <596071.18746.qm@web180106.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> What "Nationalize the Banks" and the "Free Market" Really Mean in Today's Looking-Glass World The Language of Looting By MICHAEL HUDSON "Banking shares began to plunge Friday morning after Senator Dodd, ?the Connecticut Democrat who is chairman of the banking committee, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that he was concerned the government might ?end up nationalizing some lenders ?at least for a short time.? Several other prominent policy makers ? including Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina ? have echoed that view recently.? --Eric Dash, ?Growing Worry on Rescue Takes a Toll on Banks,? The New York Times, February 20, 2009 How is it that Alan? Greenspan, free-market lobbyist for Wall Street, recently announced that he favored nationalization of America?s banks ? and indeed, mainly the biggest ?and most powerful? Has the old disciple of Ayn Rand gone Red in the night? Surely not. The answer is that the rhetoric of ?free markets,? ?nationalization? and even ?socialism? (as in ?socializing the losses?) has been turned into the language of deception to help the financial sector mobilize government power to support ?its own special privileges. Having undermined the economy at large, Wall Street?s public relations think tanks are now dismantling the language itself. Exactly what does ?a free market? mean? Is it what the classical economists advocated ? a market free from monopoly power, business fraud, political insider dealing and special privileges for vested interests ? a market protected by the ?rise in public regulation from the Sherman Anti-Trust law of 1890 to the Glass-Steagall Act and other New Deal legislation? Or is it a market free for predators to exploit ?victims without public regulation or economic policemen ? the kind of free-for-all market that the Federal Reserve and Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) have created over the past decade or so? It seems incredible that people should accept today?s neoliberal idea of ?market freedom? in the sense of neutering government watchdogs, Alan Greenspan-style, letting Angelo Mozilo at Countrywide, Hank Greenberg at AIG, Bernie Madoff, Citibank, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers loot without hindrance or sanction, plunge the economy into crisis and then use Treasury bailout money to pay the highest salaries and bonuses in U.S. history. Terms that are the antithesis of ?free market? also are being turned into the opposite of what they historically have meant. Take today?s discussions about nationalizing the banks. For over a century nationalization has meant public takeover of monopolies or other sectors to operate them in the public interest rather than leaving them so special interests. But when neoliberals use the word ?nationalization? they mean a bailout, a government giveaway to the financial interests. Doublethink and doubletalk with regard to ?nationalizing? or ?socializing? the banks and other sectors is a travesty of political and economic discussion from the 17th through mid-20th centuries. Society?s basic grammar of thought, the vocabulary to discuss political and economic topics, is being turned inside-out in an effort to ward off discussion of the policy solutions posed by the classical economists and political philosophers that made Western civilization ?Western.? Today?s clash of civilization is not really with the Orient; it is with our own past, with the Enlightenment itself and its evolution into classical political economy and Progressive Era social reforms aimed at freeing society from the surviving trammels of European feudalism. What we are seeing is propaganda designed to deceive, to distract attention from economic reality so as to promote the property and financial interests from whose predatory grasp classical economists set out to free the world. What is being attempted is nothing less than an attempt to destroy the intellectual and moral edifice of what took Western civilization eight centuries to develop, from the 12th century Schoolmen ?discussing Just Price through 19th and 20th century classical economic value theory. Any idea of ?socialism from above,? in the sense of ?socializing the risk,? is old-fashioned oligarchy ? kleptocratic statism from above. Real nationalization occurs when governments act in the public interest to take over private property. The 19th-century program to nationalize the land (it was the first plank of the Communist Manifesto) did not mean anything remotely like the government taking over estates, paying off their mortgages at public expense and then giving it back to the former landlords free and clear of encumbrances and taxes. It meant taking the land and its rental income into the public domain, and leasing it out at a user fee ranging from actual operating cost to a ?subsidized rate or even freely as in the case of streets and roads. Nationalizing the banks along these lines would mean that the government would supply the nation?s credit needs. The Treasury would become the source of new money, replacing commercial bank credit. Presumably this credit would be lent out for economically and socially productive purposes, not merely to inflate asset prices while loading down households and business with debt as has occurred under today?s commercial bank lending policies. How neoliberals falsify the West?s political history The fact that today?s neoliberals claim to be the intellectual descendants of Adam Smith make it necessary to restore a more accurate historical perspective. ?Their concept of ?free markets? is the antithesis of Smith?s. It is the opposite of that of the classical political economists down through John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx ?and the Progressive Era reforms that sought to create markets free of extractive rentier claims by special interests whose institutional power can be traced back to medieval Europe and its age of military conquest. Economic writers from the 16th through 20th centuries recognized that free markets required government oversight to prevent monopoly pricing and other charges levied by special privilege. By contrast, today?s neoliberal ideologues are public relations advocates for vested interests to depict a ?free market? is one free of government regulation, ??free? of anti-trust protection, and even of protection against fraud, as evidenced by the SEC?s refusal to move against Madoff, Enron, Citibank et al.). The neoliberal ideal of free markets is thus basically that of a bank robber or embezzler, wishing for a world without police so as to be sufficiently free to siphon off other peoples? money without constraint. The Chicago Boys in Chile realized that markets free for predatory ?finance and insider privatization could only be imposed at gunpoint. These free-marketers closed down every economics department in Chile, every social science department ?outside of the Catholic University where the Chicago Boys held sway. Operation Condor arrested, exiled or murdered tens of thousands of academics, intellectuals, labor leaders and artists. Only by totalitarian control over the academic curriculum and public media backed by an active secret police and army could ?free markets? neoliberal style be imposed. The resulting privatization at gunpoint became an exercise in what Marx called ?primitive accumulation? ?? seizure of the public domain by political elites backed by force. It is a free market William-the-Conqueror or Yeltsin-kleptocrat style, with property parceled out to the companions of the political or military leader. All this was just the opposite of the kind of free markets that Adam Smith had in mind when he warned that businessmen rarely get together but to plot ways to fix markets to their ?advantage. This is not a problem that troubled Mr. Greenspan or the editorial writers of the New York Times and Washington Post. There really is no kinship between their neoliberal ideals and those of the Enlightenment political philosophers. For them to promote an idea of free markets as ones ?free? for political insiders to pry away the public domain for themselves is to lower an intellectual Iron Curtain on the history of economic thought. The classical economists and American Progressives envisioned markets free of economic rent and interest ? free of rentier overhead charges and monopoly price gouging, ?free of land-rent, interest paid to bankers and wealthy financial institutions, and free of taxes to support an oligarchy. Governments were to base their tax systems on collecting the ?free lunch? of economic rent, headed by that of favorable locations supplied by nature and given market value by public investment in transportation and other infrastructure, not by the efforts of landlords themselves. The argument between Progressive Era reformers, socialists, anarchists and individualists thus turned on the political strategy of how best to free markets from debt and rent. Where they differed was on the best political means to achieve it, above all the role of the state. There was broad agreement that the state was controlled by vested interests inherited from feudal Europe?s military conquests and the world that was ?colonized by European military force. The political question at the turn of the 20th century was whether peaceful democratic reform could overcome the political and even military resistance wielded by the Old Regime using violence to retain its ?rights.? The ensuing political revolutions were grounded in the Enlightenment, in the legal philosophy of men such as John Locke, political economists such as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Marx. Power was to be used to free markets from the predatory property and financial systems inherited from feudalism. Markets were to be free of privilege and free lunches, so that people would obtain income and wealth only by their own labor and enterprise. This was the essence of the labor theory of value and its complement, the concept of economic rent as the excess of market price over socially necessary cost-value. Although we now know that markets and prices, rent and interest, contractual formalities and nearly all the elements of economic enterprise originated in the ?mixed economies? of Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BC and continued throughout the mixed public/private economies of classical antiquity, the discussion was so politically polarized that the idea of a mixed economy with checks and balances received scant attention a century ago. Individualists believed that all that shrinking central governments would shrink the control mechanism by which the vested interests extracted wealth without work or enterprise of their own. Socialists saw that a strong government was needed to protect society from the attempts of property and finance to use their gains to monopolize economic and political power. Both ends of the political spectrum aimed at the same objective ? to bring prices down to actual costs of production. The common aim was to maximize economic efficiency so as to pass on the fruits of the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions to the population at large. ?This required blocking the rentier class of interlopers from grabbing the public domain and controlling the allocation of resources. Socialists did not believe this could be done without taking the state?s political and legal power into their own hands. Marxists believed that a revolution was necessary to reclaim property rent for the public domain, and to enable governments to create their own credit rather than borrow at interest from commercial bankers and wealthy ?bondholders. The aim was not to create a bureaucracy but to free society from the surviving absentee ownership power of the vested property and financial interests. All this history of economic thought has been as thoroughly expunged from today?s academic curriculum as it has from popular discussion. Few people remember the great debate at the turn of the 20th century: Would the world progress fairly quickly from Progressive Era reforms to outright socialism ? public ownership of basic economic infrastructure, natural monopolies (including the banking system) and the land itself (and to Marxists, of industrial capital as well)? Or, could the liberal reformers of the day ? individualists, land taxers, classical economists in the tradition of Mill, and American institutionalists such as Simon Patten ? retain capitalism?s basic structure and private property ownership? If they could do so, they recognized that it would have to be in the context of regulating markets and introducing progressive taxation of wealth and income. This was the alternative to outright ?state? ownership. Today?s extreme ?free market? idea is a dumbed-down caricature of this position. All sides viewed the government as society?s ?brain,? its forward planning organ. Given the complexity of modern technology, humanity would shape its own evolution. Instead of evolution occurring by ?primitive accumulation,? it could be planned deliberately. Individualists countered that no human planner was sufficiently imaginative to manage the complexity ?of markets, but endorsed the need to strip away all forms of unearned income ? economic rent and the rise in land prices that Mill called the ?unearned increment.? This involved government regulation to shape markets. A ?free market? was an active political creation and required regulatory vigilance. As public relations advocates for the vested interests and special rentier privilege, today?s ?neoliberal? advocates of ?free? markets seek to maximize economic rent ? the free lunch of price in excess of cost-value, not to free markets from rentier charges. So misleading a pedigree only could be achieved by outright suppression of knowledge of what Locke, Smith and Mill really wrote. Attempts to regulate ?free markets? and limit monopoly pricing and privilege are conflated with ?socialism,? even with Soviet-style bureaucracy. The aim is to deter the ?analysis of what a ?free market? really is: a market free of unnecessary costs: monopoly rents, property rents and financial charges for credit that governments can create freely. Political reform to bring market prices in line with socially necessary cost-value was the great economic issue of the 19th century. The labor theory of intrinsic cost-value found its ?counterpart in the theory of economic rent: land rent, monopoly price gouging, interest and other returns to special privilege that increased market prices purely by institutional property claims. The discussion goes all the way back to the medieval churchmen defining Just Price. The doctrine originally was applied to the proper fees that bankers could charge, and later was extended to land rent, then to the monopolies that governments created and sold off to creditors in an attempt to extricate themselves from debt. Reformists and more radical socialists alike sought to free capitalism of its egregious inequities, above all its legacy from Europe?s Dark Age of military conquest when invading warlords seized lands and imposed an absentee landlord class to receive the rental income, which was used to finance wars of further land acquisition. As matters turned out, hopes that industrial capitalism could reform itself along progressive lines to purge itself of its legacy from ?feudalism have come crashing down. World War I hit the global economy like a comet, pushing it into a new trajectory and catalyzing its evolution into an unanticipated form of finance capitalism. It was unanticipated largely because most reformers spent so much effort advocating progressive policies that they neglected what Thorstein Veblen called the vested interests. Their ?Counter-Enlightenment is creating a world that would have been deemed a dystopia a century ago ? something so pessimistic that no futurist dared depict a world run by venal and corrupt bankers, protecting as their prime customers the monopolies, real estate speculators and hedge funds whose economic rent, financial gambling and asset-price inflation is turned into a flow of interest in today?s rentier economy. Instead of industrial capitalism increasing capital formation we are seeing finance capitalism strip capital, and instead of the promised world of leisure we are being drawn into one of debt peonage. The financial travesty of democracy The financial sector has redefined democracy by claiming claims that the ?Federal Reserve must be ?independent? from democratically elected representatives, in order to act as the bank lobbyist in Washington. This makes the financial sector exempt from the democratic political process, despite the fact that today?s economic planning is now centralized in the banking system. The result is a regime of insider dealings and oligarchy ? rule by the wealthy few. The economic fallacy at work is that bank credit is a veritable factor of ?production, an almost Physiocratic source of fertility without which growth could not occur. The reality is that the monopoly right to create interest-bearing bank credit is a free transfer from society to a privileged elite. The moral is that when we see a ?factor of production? that has no actual labor-cost of production, it is simply an institutional privilege. So this brings us to the most recent debate about ?nationalizing? or ?socializing? the banks. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) so far has been used for the following uses that I think can be truly deemed anti-social, not ?socialist? in any form. By the end of last year, $20 billion was used to pay bonuses and salaries ?to financial mismanagers, despite the plunge of their banks into negative equity. And to protect their interests, these banks continued to pay lobbying fees to persuade legislators to give them yet more special privileges. While Citibank and other major institutions threatened to bring the financial system crashing down by being ?too big to fail,? over $100 billion of TARP funds was used to make ?them even bigger. Already teetering banks bought affiliates that had grown by making irresponsible and outright fraudulent loans. Bank of America bought Angelo Mozilo?s Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch, while JP Morgan Chase bought Bear Stearns and other big banks bought WaMu and Wachovia. Today?s policy is to ?rescue? these giant bank conglomerates by enabling ?them to ?earn? their way out of debt ? by selling yet more debt to an already over-indebted U.S. economy. The hope is to re-inflate real estate and other asset prices. But do we really want to let banks ?pay back taxpayers? by engaging in yet more predatory financial practices ?vis-?-vis the economy at large? It threatens to maximize the margin of market price over direct costs of production, by building in higher financial charges. This is just the opposite policy from trying to bring prices for housing and infrastructure in line with technologically necessary costs. It certainly is not a policy to make the U.S. economy more globally competitive. The Treasury?s plan to ?socialize? the banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions is simply to step in and take bad loans off their books, shifting the loss onto ?the public sector. This is the antithesis of true nationalization or ?socialization? of the financial system. The banks and insurance companies quickly got over their initial knee-jerk fear that a government bailout would occur on terms that would wipe out their bad management, along with the stockholders and bondholders who backed this bad management. ?The Treasury has assured these mismanagers that ?socialism? for them is a free gift. The primacy of finance over the rest of the economy will be affirmed, leaving management in place and giving stockholders a chance to recover by earning more from the economy at large, with yet more tax favoritism. (This means yet heavier taxes shifted onto consumers, raising their living costs accordingly.) The bulk of wealth under capitalism ? as under feudalism ?always has come primarily from the public domain, headed by the land and formerly public utilities, capped most recently by the Treasury?s debt-creating power. In effect, the Treasury creates a new asset ($11 trillion of new Treasury bonds and guarantees, e.g. the? $5.2 trillion to Fannie and Freddie). Interest on these bonds is to be paid by new levies on labor, not on property. This is what is supposed to re-inflate housing, stock and bond prices ? the money freed from property and corporate taxes will be available to be capitalized into yet new loans. So the revenue hitherto paid as business taxes will still be paid ? in the form of interest ? while the former taxes will still be collected, but from labor. The fiscal-financial burden ?thus will be doubled. This is not a program to make the economy more competitive or raise living standards for most people. It is a program to polarize the U.S. economy even further between finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) at the top and labor at the bottom. Neoliberal denunciations of public regulation and taxation as ?socialism? is ?really an attack on classical political economy ? the ?original? liberalism whose ideal was to free society from the parasitic legacy of feudalism. A truly socialized Treasury policy ?would be for banks to lend for productive purposes that contribute to real economic growth, not merely to increase overhead and inflate asset prices by enough to extract interest charges. Fiscal policy would aim to minimize rather than maximizing the price of home ownership and doing business, by basing the tax system on collecting the rent that is ?now being paid out as interest. Shifting the tax burden off wages and profits onto rent and interest was the core of classical political economy in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as the Progressive Era and Social Democratic reform movements in the United States and Europe prior ?to World War I. But this doctrine and its reform program has been buried by the rhetorical smokescreen organized by financial lobbyists seeking to muddy the ideological waters sufficiently to mute popular opposition to today?s power grab by finance capital and monopoly capital. Their alternative to true nationalization and socialization of finance is debt peonage, oligarchy and neo-feudalism. They have called this program ?free markets.? Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist. A Distinguished Research ?Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., ?Pluto Press, 2002) He can be reached via his website, mh at michael-hudson.com From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Mar 4 21:27:02 2009 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 22:27:02 -0600 Subject: [A-List] America's Fiscal Collapse -- By Michel Chossudovsky Message-ID: On Tue, 03 Mar 2009 at 18:11:13 -0800 Todd Boyle queried: "James, thanks for posting this Chossudovsky, he's one of my favorite analysts. I think his report, this time, is mostly about the financial industry and the US federal budget. However, isn't there an even bigger picture?" **Yes, there is a bigger picture . . . Is A Major War A Possibility In 2009? The Historical Antecedents Richard Menec ============== Fresh Ink is an alternative news service and sister project of Booksinternationale.com. Join us! http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink ============== From menecraj at shaw.ca Wed Mar 4 21:42:34 2009 From: menecraj at shaw.ca (Richard Menec) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 22:42:34 -0600 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash Message-ID: <712DC54DCF664687B7E0DA083C834053@agingCHS072729> On Wed, 04 Mar 2009 at 15:53:07 -0800 Leighm wrote: "I'm going to crack a joke here,even if it's really not funny. Here goes... The post de-regulation 'banks' don't know the difference either. . . ." **Got it..... Here's another:: Q: "What's the difference between a stock market and a toilet? A: In a stock market the paper falls first and the crash comes later (translation: value of stocks/bonds falls first, then shit hits the fan) Richard Menec ============== Fresh Ink is an alternative news service and sister project of Booksinternationale.com. Join us! http://booksinternationale.info/mailman/listinfo/freshink ============== From noreply at coha.org Wed Mar 4 13:12:57 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 15:12:57 -0500 Subject: Guantánamo: An Opportunity for Improving U.S.-Latin American Relations Message-ID: <20090304201238.B18BE3E4E0D@mx-out2.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 4469 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090304/abaf3852/attachment.txt From tboyle at rosehill.net Wed Mar 4 16:09:46 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:09:46 -0800 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash In-Reply-To: References: <12524973.1236102476730.JavaMail.root@mswamui-blood.atl.sa.earthlink.net> <49ADBC51.7020906@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: Credit Unions are allowed to loan out 90% of their demand deposits, identically to commercial banks. Are they not? See the Federal Reserve page, http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm#table1 Which indicates the reserve requirement since Jan. 2009 has been 10%. Here is their explanation: "Note. Required reserves must be held in the form of vault cash and, if vault cash is insufficient, also in the form of a deposit maintained with a Federal Reserve Bank. An institution that is a member of the Federal Reserve System must hold that deposit directly with a Reserve Bank; an institution that is not a member of the System can maintain that deposit directly with a Reserve Bank or with another institution in a pass-through relationship. Reserve requirements are imposed on commercial banks, savings banks, savings and loan associations, credit unions, U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks, Edge corporations, and agreement corporations. " The effect of this practice (lending depositors' money instead of holding it in the bank) is that those loans are redeposited into a bank somewhere, by the borrower or his suppliers, very quickly. Resulting in total deposits 190% instead of the original 100. So, some banks quickly deposit 9, and loan 81. Then it comes back again, so they reserve 8 and loan 72, etc until the money in circulation has been multiplied, I think 10 times the original deposit. See the video "Money As Debt" it's online in multiple different places. 30 minutes well spent. Todd At 05:18 PM 3/3/2009, Anne Williamson wrote: >Sean, > > >Fractional Reserve Banking is what got us into this mess - it's a >system whereby credit creation is exploded by the banks....imagine >an inverted pyramid, only the point having any value, and layers and >layers of fiat money credit are piled on top. The footnote from >Contagion below explains the system in its essence - when you get to >the bottom of the example, realize that the 70,000 will be lent and >deposited into other bank accounts, whose banks can then explode the >fiat money (and then lend it!) in the same way as the original >10,000 cheque, ad nauseum. Very quickly a mountain of debt is built >on a single Fed transaction: > > > > Here's how an ordinary transaction involving a citizen, the Fed > and a commercial bank works: the central bank buys most usually > old existing government bonds, though in principle it can buy any > public asset, through what are known as the Fed's "Open Market > Operations." When the Fed makes a purchase, the Fed writes a > check on the Federal Reserve system out of thin air. The recipient > - let's say in this case a private citizen who sold a warehouse > business to the Fed - goes to his commercial bank and deposits the > central bank's check. The commercial bank of the depositor then > takes the check to the central bank, says, 'Put it into my reserve > account,' thereby increasing the bank's required reserves with the > central bank, which then allows it to pile a multiple of checkable > money created out of thin air on top of the actual note value of > the original check created out of thin air from the central > bank. Neat, huh? Out of a $10,000 deposit in a bank, $1,000 goes > to the vaults, $2,000 to the bank's reserve account with the > central bank, and the remainder is exploded into $70,000 of > checkable money the bank can lend. > >Hope this helps, > >Anne > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 3938 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090304/1c425242/attachment.txt From annewilliamson at msn.com Wed Mar 4 17:24:39 2009 From: annewilliamson at msn.com (Anne Williamson) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 19:24:39 -0500 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash In-Reply-To: <49AF1463.6000307@gmail.com> References: <8962365.1236209190090.JavaMail.root@mswamui-bichon.atl.sa.earthlink.net> <49AF1463.6000307@gmail.com> Message-ID: Leigh, It's not the derivatives per se that are the problem - they really are just the traditional, 19th century "time bets" used mostly by farmers and miners to stabilize their businesses...they are actually useful devices for productive people and concerns. The problem lies in leverage -- 40 to 1? Believe you me, no farmer or miner ever took on that sort of risk! But, instead, live with the very real risks of their actual businesses every moment of every day. Anne > Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 15:53:07 -0800 > From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com > To: seanfischer at earthlink.net; a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu > Subject: Re: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash > > Sean Fischer wrote: > > Anne, > > > > Thank you for taking a minute to explain this to me. From my limited knowledge of banking, economics, and finance, it seems I am having trouble understanding the differences between what is truly considered an asset vs. liability? > > > > Sean > > > > > > > > I'm going to crack a joke here,even if it's really not funny. > > Here goes... > > The post de-regulation 'banks' don't know the difference either. > > How CAN you tell when you're talking 'derivatives' of an index of > derivatives of 'futures'... ? > > I think they have stables of corporate liability lawyers and 'risk > managers' advise them on what's what, and like most of the corporate > ethic... It's all 'situational', and the risk 'defer-able' (up till > recently, when American finance met it's collective 'margin call'). > > If the situation makes them and their shareholders/investors $$$ it's an > asset. > > If it loses money... liability. > > I have nothing more to say until I've spoken to my lawyer. > > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 2184 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090304/34f40efa/attachment.txt From annewilliamson at msn.com Wed Mar 4 17:27:56 2009 From: annewilliamson at msn.com (Anne Williamson) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 19:27:56 -0500 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash In-Reply-To: <114221.72608.qm@web111515.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <114221.72608.qm@web111515.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Credit Unions can not pyramid money on reserves with the central bank; instead, they can loan only from their deposit base, which is one of real capital (private savings) not credit (govt-created fiat money). > Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 16:23:35 -0800 > From: sabri_oncu at yahoo.com > To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu > Subject: Re: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash > > > All responses are fine, but none answers my question. > I am not asking what fractional reserve banking means, > since I already teach what it means to my students. What > I am interested in learning is what credit unions do any > differently than the commercial banks? > > Best, > Sabri > > > > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 985 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090304/4867e4ef/attachment.txt From annewilliamson at msn.com Wed Mar 4 17:40:36 2009 From: annewilliamson at msn.com (Anne Williamson) Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 19:40:36 -0500 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash In-Reply-To: <49AED83B.4010901@gmail.com> References: <534091.16623.qm@web111508.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> <49AED83B.4010901@gmail.com> Message-ID: Well, all financial institutions borrow short and lend long to my knowledge. The point is credit unions can not pyramid money, therefore they are lending their private depositors' savings, real capital, not extending and creating credit based on govt-provided paper money (which is all digital these days, of course.) A really good book on just how poisonous the system is and which discusses the details of the operation is Rothbard's "The Case Against the Fed." Follow that one up with "Banks, the Federal Reserve and American Foreign Policy," two truly life-changing books, each of which can be read and absorbed in the course of a casual weekend's reading. You, Sabri, are a sophisticated reader of things financial, but Rothbard wrote these books for the layman so they are excellent for list members who have interests and expertise outside of finance. Alternatively, mises.org has Murray's "What Has Government Done to Our Money?" online, no charge - another brief and excellent primer for the general reader. -A. > Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 11:36:27 -0800 > From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com > To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu > Subject: Re: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash > > Sabri Oncu wrote: > > > > > > Can you explain this in some detail, Anne? Don't they also keep some of the deposits in reserves and lend the rest? In other words, aren't they also in the short term borrowing, long term lending business? > > > > Best, > > Sabri > > > > > > A picture would be worth a few words here: > > http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee241/photobastard/non-borrowedreservesofdepositoryins.jpg > > Right about the time of the Bear Stearns incident... The NON-borrowed > reserves for the Fed, a historical chart, published by the St. Louis > branch... There ARE NONE ('reserves', the fed's namesake) currently. > > What was it James Kunstler said? > > ?liquidity! liquidity!" > > "My favorite moment was seeing Treasury Secretary Paulson and one of his > fellow shaved-head deputies at a press conference rostrum frantically > trying to calm the news media rabble like a couple of extraplanetary > high priests from a Star Trek episode - the batteries having run down in > their laser wands, and their incantations (?liquidity! liquidity!) > veering into mystifying glossolalia." > > http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2008/01/fullblown-panic.html > > A couple of other illustrative examples: > > Shock and disbelief (Personally, I disbelieve Greenspan's morals ethics, > and words): > http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee241/photobastard/Crymearivergreenspan.jpg > > But Obama has a 'plan': > http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee241/photobastard/NoDrapes.jpg > > The Guardian's liveblogging of Obama's speech that was taken from is > hilarious, and to the point on every point: > http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/deadlineusa/2009/feb/25/barack-obama-obama-administration > > No drapes on those corporate jets! Got That? NO... DRAPES! > > Personally, I' think they're all doing this: > http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee241/photobastard/BurnCandle.jpg > > ...and if these jokers aren't very careful, Obama's adoring masses: > http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee241/photobastard/WelcomingCommittee.jpg > > ..will quite quickly become an ugly mob when their credit cards no > longer work and they "need" to buy that made in Malaysia Plasma Big > Screen Tee Vee to watch Bill O'Really(sic) on. > > > > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 4108 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090304/b0c5ac2d/attachment.txt From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Mar 5 03:18:18 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:18:18 +0900 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash In-Reply-To: <21147375.1236210985888.JavaMail.root@mswamui-bichon.atl.sa.earthlink.net> References: <21147375.1236210985888.JavaMail.root@mswamui-bichon.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <49AFA6EA.7080502@ashisuto.co.jp> No, Sean, it's much worse than that. The banks are loaning the same money to ten different customers at the same time, expecting or hoping that no more than one customer will demand conversion into hard currency (bills or coins). In your example, the owner is presummably is selling twenty customers TWENTY DIFFERENT time slots for $50,000 dollars each. To be comparable to what the banks do, your owner would be selling THE SAME time slot to twenty different customers for $50,000 dollars each, expecting or hoping only one customer would show up to use the time slot s/he bought. Bill Sean Fischer wrote: > Bill, > > Thats a real nice trick, sounds a lot like a time share in Hawaii a friend once mentioned he considered, I told him he was a fool. Then it was a $400,000 dollar piece of property, and the owner (who did not own title) was selling 20 people time slots for $50,000 dollars each. > > Using your example numbers below: how does the depositor (or group of depositors) have a guarantee that if one decides to withdrawal their entire $110 deposit on demand, that the bank can cover the entire withdrawal? > > Was this the point of the original post, that the commercial bank could only rob Peter to pay Paul for a while and this methodology comes with big risks if there is a run on the money, whereas a credit union is not legally allowed to lend money based on 'Fractional Reserve Banking' practices? > > Sean > > -----Original Message----- >> From: Bill Totten >> Sent: Mar 3, 2009 6:25 PM >> To: Sean Fischer , The A-List >> Subject: Re: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash >> >> It simply means banks are allowed to loan, say $100, for every $10 they >> have in their vaults. And collect interest on that $100. As if a rental >> agency could rent the same car to ten parties simultaneously, or a hotel >> could rent the same room to ten couples simultaneously, or a airline or >> railway could rent the same seat to ten people simultaneously. >> >> >> Sean Fischer wrote: >>> Anne, can you please explain for me and any others, what "fractional reserve banking" is? >>> >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>>> From: Anne Williamson >>>> Sent: Mar 2, 2009 5:17 PM >>>> To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu >>>> Subject: Re: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash >>>> >>>> >>>> What Ralph fails to mention is the single, greatest reason credit unions are not imploding, ie credit unions do NOT engage in fractional reserve banking as do banks, which was one of the "triumphs" of the Progressive Age. Enjoy the achievement! >>>> >>>>> Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 20:02:23 +0900 >>>>> From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp >>>>> To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu >>>>> Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> by Ralph Nader >>>>> >>>>> Countercurrents.org (February 27 2009) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> While the reckless giant banks are shattering like an over-heated >>>>> glacier day by day, the nation's credit unions are a relative island of >>>>> calm largely apart from the vortex of casino capitalism. >>>>> >>>>> Eighty five million Americans belong to credit unions which are >>>>> not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members who are depositors >>>>> and borrowers. Your neighborhood or workplace credit union did not >>>>> invest in these notorious speculative derivatives nor did they offer >>>>> people "teaser rates" to sign on for a home mortgage they could not afford. >>>>> >>>>> Ninety one percent of the 8,000 credit unions are reporting greater >>>>> overall growth in mortgage lending than any other kinds of consumer >>>>> loans they are extending. They are federally insured by the National >>>>> Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for up to $250,000 per account, such >>>>> as the FDIC does for depositors in commercial banks. >>>>> >>>>> They are well-capitalized because of regulation and because they do not >>>>> have an incentive to go for high-risk, highly leveraged speculation to >>>>> increase stock values and the value of the bosses' stock options as do >>>>> the commercial banks. >>>>> >>>>> Credit Unions have no shareholders nor stock nor stock options; they are >>>>> responsible to their owner-members who are their customers. >>>>> >>>>> There are even some special low-income credit unions, though not nearly >>>>> enough to stimulate economic activities in these communities and to >>>>> provide "banking" services in areas where poor people can't afford or >>>>> are not provided services by commercial banks. >>>>> >>>>> According to Mike Schenk, an economist with the Credit Union National >>>>> Association, there is another reason why credit unions avoided the >>>>> mortgage debacle that is consuming the big banks. >>>>> >>>>> Credit Unions, Schenk says, are "portfolio lenders. That means they hold >>>>> in their portfolios most of the loans they originate instead of selling >>>>> them to investors, so they care about the financial performance of those >>>>> loans." >>>>> >>>>> Mr Schenk allowed that with the deepening recession, credit unions are >>>>> not making as much surplus and "their asset quality has deteriorated a >>>>> bit. But that's the beauty of the credit union model. Credit unions can >>>>> live with those conditions without suffering dire consequences", he >>>>> asserted. >>>>> >>>>> His use of the word "model" is instructive. In recent decades, credit >>>>> unions sometimes leaned toward commercial bank practices instead of >>>>> strict cooperative principles. They developed a penchant for mergers >>>>> into larger and larger credit unions. Some even toyed with converting >>>>> out of the cooperative model into the shareholder model the way >>>>> insurance and bank mutuals have done. >>>>> >>>>> The cooperative model, whether in finance, food, housing or any other >>>>> sector of the economy, does best when the owner-cooperators are active >>>>> in the general operations and directions of their co-op. Passive owners >>>>> allow managers to stray or contemplate straying from cooperative practices. >>>>> >>>>> The one area that is now spelling some trouble for retail cooperatives >>>>> comes from the so-called "corporate credit unions", a terrible >>>>> nomenclature, which were established to provide liquidity for the retail >>>>> credit unions. These large wholesale credit unions are not exactly >>>>> infused with the cooperative philosophy. Some of them gravitate toward >>>>> the corporate banking model. They invested in those risky mortgage >>>>> securities with the money from the retail credit unions. These "toxic >>>>> assets" have fallen $14 billion among the 28 corporate credit unions >>>>> involved. >>>>> >>>>> So the National Credit Union Administration is expanding its lending >>>>> programs to these corporate credit unions to a maximum capacity of $41.5 >>>>> billion. NCUA also wants to have retail credit unions qualified for the >>>>> TARP rescue program just to provide a level playing field with the >>>>> commercial banks. >>>>> >>>>> Becoming more like investment banks the wholesale credit unions wanted >>>>> to attract, with ever higher riskier yields, more of the retail credit >>>>> union deposits. This set the stage for the one major blemish of >>>>> imprudence on the credit union subeconomy. >>>>> >>>>> There are very contemporary lessons to be learned from the successes of >>>>> the credit union model such as being responsive to consumer loan needs >>>>> and down to earth with their portfolios. Yet in all the massive media >>>>> coverage of the Wall Street barons and their lethal financial escapades, >>>>> crimes and frauds, little is being written about how the regulation, >>>>> philosophy and behavior of the credit unions largely escaped this >>>>> catastrophe. >>>>> >>>>> There is, moreover, a lesson for retail credit unions. Beware and avoid >>>>> the seepage or supremacy of the corporate financial model which, in its >>>>> present degraded overly complex and abstract form, has become what one >>>>> prosecutor called "lying, cheating and stealing" in fancy clothing. >>>>> >>>>> _____ >>>>> >>>>> Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and three-time presidential candidate. >>>>> >>>>> http://www.countercurrents.org/nader270209.htm >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com >>>>> http://www.ashisuto.co.jp >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>> >>> >>> > > > From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Mar 5 05:10:18 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:10:18 +0900 Subject: [A-List] How Two Former Pennslyvania Judges Got Millions in Kickbacks to Send Juveniles to Private Prisons Message-ID: <49AFC12A.9030709@ashisuto.co.jp> by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! AlterNet (February 17 2009) Amy Goodman: An unprecedented case of judicial corruption is unfolding in Pennsylvania. Several hundred families have filed a class-action lawsuit against two former judges who have pleaded guilty to taking bribes in return for placing youths in privately owned jails. Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan are said to have received $2.6 million for ensuring that juvenile suspects were jailed in prisons operated by the companies Pennsylvania Child Care and a sister company, Western Pennsylvania Child Care. Some of the young people were jailed over the objections of their probation officers. An estimated 5,000 juveniles have been sentenced by Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2002. In addition to the jailing of the youths, the judges also admitted to helping "facilitate" the construction of private jails. The attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Martin Carlson, unveiled the charges last month. Martin Carlson: These payments were made to the judges, it is alleged, in return for discretionary acts by the judges favoring these businesses, acts relating to the construction, expansion, operation of these juvenile facilities and acts relating to the placement of juveniles in these facilities. Amy Goodman: On Thursday, Judges Ciavarella and Conahan entered guilty pleas on charges of wire fraud and income tax fraud. They're currently free on a $1 million bail bond pending sentencing. Their plea agreements call for jail sentences of more than seven years. No charges have been filed against the private prisons that paid the bribes. Pennsylvania's Supreme Court has appointed an outside judge to review all the cases tried by Ciavarella and Conahan. But the case has prompted calls for broader reforms of the juvenile justice system in Pennsylvania and nationwide. We're joined now by two of the thousands of youths jailed by the corrupt judges. On the line with us from Scranton, Pennsylvania, eighteen-year-old Jamie Quinn is with us. She spent more than eleven months in a privately run juvenile prison camp after being sentenced by Judge Mark Ciavarella as a first-time offender. Also on the line in the nearby town of Wilkes-Barre is twenty-two-year-old Kurt Kruger. Another first-time offender, he spent more than four months in a privately run prison - juvenile prison camp after also being sentenced by Judge Ciavarella. And joining us in a studio in Philadelphia is Bob Schwartz. He is a co-founder and executive director of the Juvenile Law Center, which helped expose the corrupt judges and is now involved in the class-action suit brought on behalf of the jailed youths' families. We asked PA Child Care, the main private jail company linked to the bribes, to come on the broadcast. We were directed to an attorney who didn't respond to our request. Bob Schwartz, let's start with you. When did all this begin to be revealed? How did it all happen? Bob Schwartz: Thanks, Amy, and thanks for having Kurt, Jamie and me on your show. This has been going on, we believe, in Luzerne County since 2003. It came to Juvenile Law Center's attention a couple of years ago, when we heard from the mother of one of the girls whom we ended up representing, a young woman named Hillary Transue, who was brought into court, found guilty, sent away for an internet parody of an assistant principal at her high school. Her mother found us, and when we were able to bring a habeas corpus petition on Hillary's behalf, she told our attorneys that she wasn't the only one who had been locked up by Judge Ciavarella, that there were lots of other kids in the same situation. That was a couple of years ago. And we began investigating and found that Luzerne County had half of the waivers of counsel in Pennsylvania of all the cases in which lawyers were waived by young people in juvenile court. Hillary had, unknown to her, signed a paper, her mother had signed a paper, giving up her right to a lawyer. That made the ninety-second hearing that she had in front of Judge Ciavarella pretty much of a kangaroo court. So, she was sent away. We investigated and last year, about a year ago, brought a petition before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court asking them to take a look at all of the cases in which kids were tried and adjudicated delinquent and many sent away without a lawyer. We thought that was the problem. That turned out to be the tip of the iceberg. When we filed, it turned out that the FBI began its investigation and found the corruption that you spoke about at the top of this segment. AG: And just very briefly, Hillary - explain what she did. A cartoon? BS: She had done a - I think a MySpace parody ? of an assistant principal, a paragraph or two, with internet humor of an adolescent variety, finishing by saying, "I hope that Mrs Smith" - or Jones - "has a sense of humor". It turned out that the assistant principal didn't, we gather, at least, complained to the police, who filed a harassment petition against Hillary. This is the kind of case, like Kurt's and like Jamie's, that never should have been in court in the first place, let alone get to a trial. Juvenile court is not designed for this kind of adolescent misbehavior. The cases should have been diverted entirely. Instead, Hillary and Kurt and Jamie and thousands of others were used by the court for profit, while many people over many years stood by watching. AG: I want to go to Jamie Quinn right now. Jamie, welcome to Democracy Now! Jamie Quinn: Thank you. AG: It's good to have you with us. Are you speaking to us from your house? JQ: Yes. AG: So, you were in jail for almost a year. Where were you imprisoned? What was the name of this juvenile prison camp? JQ: Well, first, I was told that I was only going to be at PA Child Care for up to three days. I was there for a week and then got sent to a military boot camp called VisionQuest in Quincy Township. It's about an hour and a half away. And I spent most of my time there. And then I got FTA'ed from there and sent back to PA Child Care - AG: And "FTA'ed" means ? ? JQ: Failure to adjust. And then I got sent back to PA Child Care, was there for about two weeks, because they said they couldn't find a bed for me, and they didn't know where to place me. And then I went to a step-down program. They told me I needed to go there in order to be able to go back into the community. And I went to Wilkes-Barre, a place in Wilkes-Barre which is called Bridgeview. AG: Now, just step back for a second, Jamie. JQ: OK. AG: Tell us why you were convicted. JQ: Well, I was about fourteen years old, and I got into an argument with one of my friends. And all that happened was just a basic fight. She slapped me in the face, and I did the same thing back. There was no marks, no witnesses, nothing. It was just her word against my word. My only charges were simple assault and harassment. And I didn't even know that charges were pressed against me until I had to go down to the intake and probation and fill out a whole bunch of paperwork. AG: Wait. So that is what you went to jail for almost a year for? JQ: Yes. AG: How old were you? JQ: I was fourteen, turning fifteen, and my court hearing was December 20th, three days before my birthday. ... AG: We're talking about the case of two judges who have pled guilty to receiving $2.6 million in return for placing youths in privately owned jails. Today, we're speaking with two of those youths. Jamie Quinn just told us her story. We now turn to Kurt Kruger. Kurt, tell us how you ended up in one of these privately run juvenile prison camps for more than four months. How did you get there? Kurt Kruger: Well, first off, thank you for having us. Basically, I was with a girl who was shoplifting DVDs from a Wal-Mart, local Wal-Mart, and we were caught, and I was considered the lookout. And it was basically just stupid kid stuff. The police came to the Wal-Mart and then called our parents. A week after this happened at Wal-Mart, they sent us letters that we were to appear in the probation office for interviews so they could decide court dates. And I then, after that interview, moved out of my father's house because of personal problems. And at some point, a appearance in court did come to my house, a letter did come to my house, but I had no contact with my father, so I had no idea. The only idea I had of anything that was going on was that the girl who I was with, who was actually the one shoplifting, never received a letter of a court appearance or anything, never heard anything else about the case. So I thought that it was done and over with. I was living with a friend for awhile, and I started going to school in the fall. I was eighteen at the time when I started going to school. I was seventeen when the incident occurred at Wal-Mart. I was in school one day, and I was called up to the probation officer's office in the school, and there was a police officer there waiting for me, and he handcuffed me and led me out of the school and put me in the squad car and drove me up to PA Child Care in Pittston. Since it was a Friday, I had to wait over the weekend to go in front of Judge Ciavarella, so I spent three days in PA Child Care, thinking the entire time that I screwed up but I was just going to get probation, at the worst. And I was then sentenced in a ninety-second hearing. I was sentenced to Camp Adams for a minimum of ninety days. And I was never offered a lawyer, never explained my rights to a lawyer or what benefits it would have. I was just sent away to Camp Adams for at least ninety days, and I spent the better part of four-and-a-half months there. AG: And tell us about the judge, Mark Ciavarella, who sent you there and your reaction when you heard that he pled guilty. KK: Shock, I guess. I mean, it was expected that he was going to plead guilty for this last week, but when all of this first started coming up, it was just absolute shock, because I had thought that I had just gotten a raw deal, that, you know, maybe possibly he was in a bad mood that day or something. I had never thought that the scope and the scale of this entire - of this entire investigation and what has come of it. AG: How old were you when you went to jail? KK: I was eighteen at the time. AG: Jamie, how did going to jail for almost a year, after your fight with your friend - how did that affect your life? JQ: It affected me dramatically. I mean, you know, you think it wouldn't, but it really has. I mean, I've lost friends over this. People looked at me different when I came out, thought I was a bad person, because I was gone for so long. My family started splitting up, and in my personal opinion, I think it's because I was away and got locked up and was, I thought, getting, you know, punished for what I had did, which I don't think I should have. And I was just - I'm still struggling in school, because the schooling system in facilities like these places are just horrible. Everybody gets put in the same level, and it's just horrible. I'm still struggling. I'm graduating this year. And math is still not my favorite subject. I was like an A-B student before I went, and now I'm just struggling with Bs and Cs. AG: You began cutting yourself in jail? JQ: Yes. AG: Why do you think you started doing that? JQ: Honestly ? I didn't even know what it was until I was sent to VisionQuest. And I was never depressed, I was never put on meds before. I went there, and they just started putting meds on me, and I didn't even know what they were. They said if I didn't take them, I wasn't following my program. So, in my opinion, I think that it was the meds at the time. I mean, I was never medicated in my life nor diagnosed with depression. And that's what I believe happened. AG: You were sent to the hospital three times - JQ: Yes. AG: - during that almost year? JQ: Yeah, Chambersburg Hospital. AG: Bob Schwartz, the plan now, and how much representation do young people have in Pennsylvania? BS: Well, in most Pennsylvania counties, almost all kids have a lawyer all the time. Pennsylvania law requires all youth to have a lawyer at the time of the first hearing before a detention officer to a judge at every subsequent hearing. Pennsylvania has granted kids, in many ways, more rights to lawyers than many states. On the other hand, in Luzerne County, that was a right that was largely ignored. Lawyers doing their job would get in the way of this railroad from the bar or the court to Pennsylvania Child Care and other placements that was taking place in Luzerne County at the time. One of the things that we hope that will come out of this is that it will be much harder for any youth to appear before any judge without a lawyer in this state. Meanwhile, there are several proceedings that are happening at the same time. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has finally agreed to hear the case. They took the case after the attorney acted at the end of January, and there will now be an examination of all 5,000 or so cases that took place in Luzerne County from 2003 forward. There are also going to be multiple civil rights actions in federal court in Scranton, going after not only the judges but others who conspired with them to hurt kids like Jamie and Kurt. What happened to them should never happen to a child in the United States of America. AG: And the role of the police in the schools, very briefly, in this, Bob Schwartz? BS: Well, the police were ordered to make an arrest. You know, it really varies in so many ways. They were obviously told in Kurt's case to bring him to court, because there was a court warrant issued, because he had failed to appear for a hearing that he didn't know about. They might have acted differently, but certainly the probation department and the court should have acted differently. The probation department was intimidated by the judges. They are court employees. And one of the things that the information of the attorney claims is that Judge Ciavarella and Judge Conahan had probation officers change their recommendations, ordered them to change their recommendations, in order to make sure that they had enough kids to fill slots at these childcare facilities. AG: And the childcare facilities themselves? They paid the bribes. BS: They paid, and the federal proceedings will bring to light what their role actually was. Right now, they have not been charged criminally, but they are inevitably a defendant in every civil rights proceeding. AG: So, we're talking about 5,000 kids like Jamie, like Kurt. How much jail time do these judges face? BS: They've pled and are expecting to get eighty-seven months in federal prison. That's a little more than seven years, if the judge accepts the plea bargain. AG: Jamie, how do you feel about that? JQ: It just makes me really question other authority figures and people that we're supposed to look up to and trust. I mean, Ciavarella has been a judge for a long time, from what I know, and a well-respected one, is what I thought. And obviously not. It just really makes me question and not trust other people. I mean, if someone like Judge Ciavarella could do this, then it makes me believe that anyone can betray the law and - I don't know. AG: And Kurt, your final comment? KK: Well, basically, I just want to say that finally there's some sort of closure, for me, at least, coming from the lawsuits from the Juvenile Law Center. There's at least a little bit of closure for me, and I hope that's the same case for everyone who's involved. AG: Well, Kurt Kruger and Jamie Quinn, thanks so much for being with us, and Bob Schwartz, as well. I want to turn now to the commentary that alerted us to this story, of Mumia Abu-Jamal. He's been on Pennsylvania's death row for more than twenty-five years. Mumia Abu-Jamal: "With Judges Like These". In Pennsylvania's Luzerne County, there are nine judges of the Court of Common Pleas. Two of them just pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to convict and sentence juveniles to a private prison, so that they could get kickbacks from the prisons' builders and owners. According to published accounts, Judge Mark A Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael T Conahan sent hundreds of boys and girls to the private facility and pocketed some $2.5 million in kickbacks. This was accomplished not merely because of the venal greed of the judges, but because virtually none of the children were provided with legal representation. When the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center filed a petition in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, calling the county's practice of adjudicating and sentencing some 250 kids to jail without legal representation unconstitutional, the state's highest court denied the petition on January 8th. A month later, they changed their minds, vacating the denial. What transpired in the interim? Well, for one thing, the two judges pleaded guilty to federal charges of wire service fraud. Hundreds of children get sucked into jail after clearly unconstitutional proceedings with no legal representation, and the state supreme court doesn't even raise an eyebrow. The media reports on this outrage, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court expresses a little interest. This is the nature of judging these days, when even kids are expendable fodder for the prison-industrial complex. Luzerne County is the state's tenth largest county with just over 300,000 souls. At least 22 percent of their judges have admitted being corrupt in the sordid business of selling the freedom of poor children for profit. From rasherrs at eircom.net Thu Mar 5 05:37:25 2009 From: rasherrs at eircom.net (Paddy Hackett) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 12:37:25 -0000 Subject: [A-List] Economic Crash and Ireland Message-ID: <000001c99d8f$25290820$6f7b1860$@net> Hi The world capitalist economy has plunged into a sustained economic depression. The signs are that this depression shall be deep and prolonged. The principal way by which capitalism can come out of the depression is by reducing both the living standards and employment conditions of the working class. The only other solution is social revolution involving the seizure of power by the working class from the capitalist class necessitating the establishment of a world communist federation. Because of the peculiarities of the Irish situation: booms powered by bubbles and a Fianna Fail dominated government that instead of storing up its surplus revenue, in anticipation of future contingencies, largely squandered it. These funds were largely used to bribe the electorate into voting the Fianna Fail party back into power. It was also used to support its capitalist friends such as Irish property developers and bankers. Since the outset of the depression the same Irish government has been engaged in a sustained attack on the working class. It endeavours to achieve this by splitting the working class --pitting worker against worker. By maximising the fragmentation of the working class it is rendered more vulnerable to crushing defeat. Immigrant workers are split from indigenous workers; public workers from private workers; female workers from male workers; unskilled workers from skilled workers etc. In its current attack the government has singled out the public sector workers. To achieve a cut back in the income of these workers it has actively led a sustained campaign against them entailing the polarisation of pubic and private worker. This is the basis from which it has imposed substantial pension levy on the public worker. Success here will render it easier for the state to reinforce this cutback with ensuing cutbacks in the incomes of the entire working class. Its declared intention of widening and further increasing income tax within the next month is irrefutable evidence of this. The government also hopes to continue the reorganisation of the public sector work force. "An Bord Snip" with its mandate to focus on slashing employee numbers and spending within the public service forms part of this plan. The consequent reorganisation and diminution of the public service will lead to a weaker and harder pressed workforce. It is hoped to ultimately reduce the public service worker more or less to the same condition as that of the average factory or shop worker. Then capitalism will have a cheaper and more docile workforce. The European bourgeoisie is watching this conflict with keen interest. Cowan will be Europe's new hero should he succeed in defeating the public sector workers and indeed the working class in Ireland as a whole. His success may provide them with encouragement to attempt to impose similar conditions on their own public sector. The present struggle in Ireland is not just a local matter. It also has a European dimension that may influence events in the European Union. In view of this it is imperative that the working class meet this capitalist onslaught, led by its state, with stiff resistance and the correct politics. Working class action must involve strikes culminating in the general strike together with the setting up of workers' councils for the organisation and administration of economic, social and political life. In the struggle the conservative unions must be replaced by communist unions. In connection with this communists must struggle to set up workplace committees as a means of organising against the bosses and the leadership of the conservative trade unions. In solidarity with the working class in Ireland the European working class must strenuously resist their own ruling class too in the struggle for power. The government has been actively encouraging the mass immigration of workers into the Irish Republic on an unprecedented scale. This is but a further way of promoting more division within the working class. Immigration is a social engineering device intended to drive down the price of labour power through competition. It is also intended to hinder the prospects of the working class in Ireland evolving into a unified revolutionary class force. The working class based in Ireland must overcome this division by endeavouring to create unity among migrant and indigenous sections of the working class in Ireland on a principled revolutionary basis. None of the political elements represented in the Oireachtas can offer a solution other than essentially the same solution as that of the Fianna Fail Party. They are all bourgeois in character including the Labour Party, the Green Party and Sinn Fein. They simply attempt to dress the same solution up in different clothes. They all actively support a solution to the capitalist crisis at the expense of the working class. The leader of the Labour Party, Eamon Gilmore, has expressed his opposition to strike action and does not reject a pension levy in principle. Neither is he, in principle, against increased taxation being imposed on the working class. He merely calls for "fairness" in taxation. The Labour Party and Fine Gael claim that the cut backs in the living standards of the working class are necessary and correct. Their difficulty with Fianna Fail is their alleged lack of fairness together with the unscrupulous way in which they are imposed. The opposition of Fine Gael and Labour hinges on matters of ethics. Fine Gael presents itself as free from corruption unlike Fianna Fail. They oppose the form as opposed to the substance of Fianna Fail's politics. They thereby present a false opposition since ethically there can be no essential difference between the parties. Fine Gael and Labour would be largely as dirty as Fianna Fail were they in government under the same conditions as Fine Fail. It also claims that it would make a more competent party than Fianna Fail. Again this is a rather derivative difference and of no significance. In effect the main party in power and the opposition are similar. Consequently the opposition concentrate their opposition around matters of corruption and competence. These constitute matters of secondary importance that obstruct the healthy development of class politics. The voluntary reduction of salaries by high profile figures from the business and media world is merely a ploy designed to exert further pressure on the working class to accept living standards. The growing army of the unemployed means that the production of surplus value, total profits, has diminished. This means that fewer resources exist from which to pay for state expenditure. This forces the state to cut spending, increase taxes and borrowing. Borrowing is a form of future taxation with a difference. Interest must be paid which amounts to an addition to future taxation. This constitutes a further deduction from total profits which further adversely affects investment conditions. This tends to bring about a downwards spiral. Consequently the Irish economy is forced to further contract in order to reproduce the conditions for recovery. Spending cuts, taxation and borrowing must be further increased. The present depression is a result of the bourgeoisie's refusal to let the economic system follow its "natural" cyclical downswing whereby capitalism cleanses itself of less profitable forms of capital. This leads to a restoration of profitability and greater sustained economic activity. Instead the capitalist class through the medium of its state modified the downswings through counter-cyclical interventionist activity. The ruling class fear a generalised depression because its destabilising consequences may lead to revolution. In general the more the cyclical behaviour of capitalism is modified and prevented from completing its "natural" cycle the greater, more intense the crisis. The evidence suggests that the capitalist social system has plunged into depression. No amount of state intervention can arrest it from assuming an acute form this time round. We have now entered a new historical epoch. Politics can never be the same again. Under these new conditions of sustained and deep stagnation the class struggle sharpens. Consequently capitalism's obsolescent character becomes increasingly visible. At present the leadership of the working class (trade union and political leadership) has been offering solutions intended to rescue capitalism from its demise. Capitalism can only be rescued at the expense of the working class. There exist no significant political forces advocating a solution necessitating the transcendence of capitalism. Communists must endeavour to create communist current within the working class. This can begin by organising circles of communist intellectuals. Such a communist intelligentsia conducts an intellectual struggle to propagate communist doctrine. As this intelligentsia develops and spreads its influence it has the basis for linking into the more advanced sections of the working class to form a communist strand within the working class. This is the basis on which a revolutionary communist movement can be built. Under the present critical conditions a communist movement would draw up an action plan as the basis for struggle against this sustained attack on the working class. From rasherrs at eircom.net Thu Mar 5 05:44:01 2009 From: rasherrs at eircom.net (Paddy Hackett) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 12:44:01 -0000 Subject: [A-List] Economic Crisis and Ireland In-Reply-To: <000001c99d8f$25290820$6f7b1860$@net> References: <000001c99d8f$25290820$6f7b1860$@net> Message-ID: <000101c99d90$0f340a50$2d9c1ef0$@net> Hi The world capitalist economy has plunged into a sustained economic depression. The signs are that this depression shall be deep and prolonged. The principal way by which capitalism can come out of the depression is by reducing both the living standards and employment conditions of the working class. The only other solution is social revolution involving the seizure of power by the working class from the capitalist class necessitating the establishment of a world communist federation. Because of the peculiarities of the Irish situation: booms powered by bubbles and a Fianna Fail dominated government that instead of storing up its surplus revenue, in anticipation of future contingencies, largely squandered it. These funds were largely used to bribe the electorate into voting the Fianna Fail party back into power. It was also used to support its capitalist friends such as Irish property developers and bankers. Since the outset of the depression the same Irish government has been engaged in a sustained attack on the working class. It endeavours to achieve this by splitting the working class --pitting worker against worker. By maximising the fragmentation of the working class it is rendered more vulnerable to crushing defeat. Immigrant workers are split from indigenous workers; public workers from private workers; female workers from male workers; unskilled workers from skilled workers etc. In its current attack the government has singled out the public sector workers. To achieve a cut back in the income of these workers it has actively led a sustained campaign against them entailing the polarisation of pubic and private worker. This is the basis from which it has imposed substantial pension levy on the public worker. Success here will render it easier for the state to reinforce this cutback with ensuing cutbacks in the incomes of the entire working class. Its declared intention of widening and further increasing income tax within the next month is irrefutable evidence of this. The government also hopes to continue the reorganisation of the public sector work force. "An Bord Snip" with its mandate to focus on slashing employee numbers and spending within the public service forms part of this plan. The consequent reorganisation and diminution of the public service will lead to a weaker and harder pressed workforce. It is hoped to ultimately reduce the public service worker more or less to the same condition as that of the average factory or shop worker. Then capitalism will have a cheaper and more docile workforce. The European bourgeoisie is watching this conflict with keen interest. Cowan will be Europe's new hero should he succeed in defeating the public sector workers and indeed the working class in Ireland as a whole. His success may provide them with encouragement to attempt to impose similar conditions on their own public sector. The present struggle in Ireland is not just a local matter. It also has a European dimension that may influence events in the European Union. In view of this it is imperative that the working class meet this capitalist onslaught, led by its state, with stiff resistance and the correct politics. Working class action must involve strikes culminating in the general strike together with the setting up of workers' councils for the organisation and administration of economic, social and political life. In the struggle the conservative unions must be replaced by communist unions. In connection with this communists must struggle to set up workplace committees as a means of organising against the bosses and the leadership of the conservative trade unions. In solidarity with the working class in Ireland the European working class must strenuously resist their own ruling class too in the struggle for power. The government has been actively encouraging the mass immigration of workers into the Irish Republic on an unprecedented scale. This is but a further way of promoting more division within the working class. Immigration is a social engineering device intended to drive down the price of labour power through competition. It is also intended to hinder the prospects of the working class in Ireland evolving into a unified revolutionary class force. The working class based in Ireland must overcome this division by endeavouring to create unity among migrant and indigenous sections of the working class in Ireland on a principled revolutionary basis. None of the political elements represented in the Oireachtas can offer a solution other than essentially the same solution as that of the Fianna Fail Party. They are all bourgeois in character including the Labour Party, the Green Party and Sinn Fein. They simply attempt to dress the same solution up in different clothes. They all actively support a solution to the capitalist crisis at the expense of the working class. The leader of the Labour Party, Eamon Gilmore, has expressed his opposition to strike action and does not reject a pension levy in principle. Neither is he, in principle, against increased taxation being imposed on the working class. He merely calls for "fairness" in taxation. The Labour Party and Fine Gael claim that the cut backs in the living standards of the working class are necessary and correct. Their difficulty with Fianna Fail is their alleged lack of fairness together with the unscrupulous way in which they are imposed. The opposition of Fine Gael and Labour hinges on matters of ethics. Fine Gael presents itself as free from corruption unlike Fianna Fail. They oppose the form as opposed to the substance of Fianna Fail's politics. They thereby present a false opposition since ethically there can be no essential difference between the parties. Fine Gael and Labour would be largely as dirty as Fianna Fail were they in government under the same conditions as Fine Fail. It also claims that it would make a more competent party than Fianna Fail. Again this is a rather derivative difference and of no significance. In effect the main party in power and the opposition are similar. Consequently the opposition concentrate their opposition around matters of corruption and competence. These constitute matters of secondary importance that obstruct the healthy development of class politics. The voluntary reduction of salaries by high profile figures from the business and media world is merely a ploy designed to exert further pressure on the working class to accept living standards. The growing army of the unemployed means that the production of surplus value, total profits, has diminished. This means that fewer resources exist from which to pay for state expenditure. This forces the state to cut spending, increase taxes and borrowing. Borrowing is a form of future taxation with a difference. Interest must be paid which amounts to an addition to future taxation. This constitutes a further deduction from total profits which further adversely affects investment conditions. This tends to bring about a downwards spiral. Consequently the Irish economy is forced to further contract in order to reproduce the conditions for recovery. Spending cuts, taxation and borrowing must be further increased. The present depression is a result of the bourgeoisie's refusal to let the economic system follow its "natural" cyclical downswing whereby capitalism cleanses itself of less profitable forms of capital. This leads to a restoration of profitability and greater sustained economic activity. Instead the capitalist class through the medium of its state modified the downswings through counter-cyclical interventionist activity. The ruling class fear a generalised depression because its destabilising consequences may lead to revolution. In general the more the cyclical behaviour of capitalism is modified and prevented from completing its "natural" cycle the greater, more intense the crisis. The evidence suggests that the capitalist social system has plunged into depression. No amount of state intervention can arrest it from assuming an acute form this time round. We have now entered a new historical epoch. Politics can never be the same again. Under these new conditions of sustained and deep stagnation the class struggle sharpens. Consequently capitalism's obsolescent character becomes increasingly visible. At present the leadership of the working class (trade union and political leadership) has been offering solutions intended to rescue capitalism from its demise. Capitalism can only be rescued at the expense of the working class. There exist no significant political forces advocating a solution necessitating the transcendence of capitalism. Communists must endeavour to create communist current within the working class. This can begin by organising circles of communist intellectuals. Such a communist intelligentsia conducts an intellectual struggle to propagate communist doctrine. As this intelligentsia develops and spreads its influence it has the basis for linking into the more advanced sections of the working class to form a communist strand within the working class. This is the basis on which a revolutionary communist movement can be built. Under the present critical conditions a communist movement would draw up an action plan as the basis for struggle against this sustained attack on the working class. Paddy Hackett From annewilliamson at msn.com Thu Mar 5 06:33:50 2009 From: annewilliamson at msn.com (Anne Williamson) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 08:33:50 -0500 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash In-Reply-To: <7alt5i$3na3kn@ipo3smtp.cc.utah.edu> References: <12524973.1236102476730.JavaMail.root@mswamui-blood.atl.sa.earthlink.net> <49ADBC51.7020906@ashisuto.co.jp> <7alt5i$3na3kn@ipo3smtp.cc.utah.edu> Message-ID: Yes, the regulations have recently changed in order to flood the system with more and more liquidity when the problem is one of insolvency - that is the controversy. Now, the credit unions will become part of the problem. -A. Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 15:09:46 -0800 To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu From: tboyle at rosehill.net Subject: Re: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash Credit Unions are allowed to loan out 90% of their demand deposits, identically to commercial banks. Are they not? See the Federal Reserve page, http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm#table1 Which indicates the reserve requirement since Jan. 2009 has been 10%. Here is their explanation: "Note. Required reserves must be held in the form of vault cash and, if vault cash is insufficient, also in the form of a deposit maintained with a Federal Reserve Bank. An institution that is a member of the Federal Reserve System must hold that deposit directly with a Reserve Bank; an institution that is not a member of the System can maintain that deposit directly with a Reserve Bank or with another institution in a pass-through relationship. Reserve requirements are imposed on commercial banks, savings banks, savings and loan associations, credit unions, U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks, Edge corporations, and agreement corporations. " The effect of this practice (lending depositors' money instead of holding it in the bank) is that those loans are redeposited into a bank somewhere, by the borrower or his suppliers, very quickly. Resulting in total deposits 190% instead of the original 100. So, some banks quickly deposit 9, and loan 81. Then it comes back again, so they reserve 8 and loan 72, etc until the money in circulation has been multiplied, I think 10 times the original deposit. See the video "Money As Debt" it's online in multiple different places. 30 minutes well spent. Todd At 05:18 PM 3/3/2009, Anne Williamson wrote: Sean, Fractional Reserve Banking is what got us into this mess - it's a system whereby credit creation is exploded by the banks....imagine an inverted pyramid, only the point having any value, and layers and layers of fiat money credit are piled on top. The footnote from Contagion below explains the system in its essence - when you get to the bottom of the example, realize that the 70,000 will be lent and deposited into other bank accounts, whose banks can then explode the fiat money (and then lend it!) in the same way as the original 10,000 cheque, ad nauseum. Very quickly a mountain of debt is built on a single Fed transaction: Here?s how an ordinary transaction involving a citizen, the Fed and a commercial bank works: the central bank buys most usually old existing government bonds, though in principle it can buy any public asset, through what are known as the Fed?s ?Open Market Operations.? When the Fed makes a purchase, the Fed writes a check on the Federal Reserve system out of thin air. The recipient - let?s say in this case a private citizen who sold a warehouse business to the Fed - goes to his commercial bank and deposits the central bank?s check. The commercial bank of the depositor then takes the check to the central bank, says, ?Put it into my reserve account,? thereby increasing the bank?s required reserves with the central bank, which then allows it to pile a multiple of checkable money created out of thin air on top of the actual note value of the original check created out of thin air from the central bank. Neat, huh? Out of a $10,000 deposit in a bank, $1,000 goes to the vaults, $2,000 to the bank?s reserve account with the central bank, and the remainder is exploded into $70,000 of checkable money the bank can lend. Hope this helps, Anne -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 4526 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090305/e6695c88/attachment.txt From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Thu Mar 5 11:17:06 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leigh Meyers) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 10:17:06 -0800 Subject: [A-List] Will $30 *BILLION* help? Auditors To GM: 'stem your losses and stop burning cash' or "substantial doubt" about survival outside bankruptcy Message-ID: GM auditors raise doubt on viability DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Corp on Thursday said its auditors had raised "substantial doubt" about its ability to survive outside bankruptcy if it fails to stem its losses and stop burning cash. The "going concern" warning from the struggling U.S. automaker had been expected, but underscored the stakes for GM as it seeks up to $30 billion in U.S. government aid to restructure outside a court-supervised bankruptcy process. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/05/AR2009030501507.html From nmgoro at gmail.com Thu Mar 5 14:43:21 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 18:43:21 -0300 Subject: [A-List] Solidarity requested (in Spanish, short intro in English) Message-ID: <2fa158550903051343m6534eaf5md304810b8974c16c@mail.gmail.com> The Mauricio Macri regime in Buenos Aires City is launching an ethnic and social cleansing campaign by means of illegal gangs of thugs, hooligans on pay by the local government, who "clean away" settlers in non-owned nor rented buildings. Drug dealing is one of the pretexts used. Comrades of Patria y Pueblo and the Aukache Social Organization are confronting this extreme right wing Ayn Randian despot. Every support will be welcome. Some of our comrades, and other comrades, have been accused of dealing in drugs while they defended 130 families from these illegal evictions. Once in the Police Station, they were released immediately but the Macri Chief of Cabinet has been claiming on TV that they were sellers of "paco", a most mortal and cheap form of cocaine designed for children... Films and photographs are available upon request at AgrupAukache at gmail.com Those who can help, please send your signature to the following statement of solidarity to lorenaaukache at yahoo.com.ar **************************** La VERDAD sobre el DESALOJO de SAN TELMO (Av. Paseo Colon) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Los abajo firmantes nos solidarizamos con la Agrupaci?n Aukache, patoteada por los grupos de tareas de Macri/Michetti ?y calumniada por el Jefe de Gabinete de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodr?guez Larreta. M?s de diez a?os de trayectoria y lucha por los desamparados del barrio de La Boca constituyen un historial de dignidad que dif?cilmente pueda esgrimir uno solo de los ministros del actual gobierno de la Ciudad. VIOLENTO DESALOJO DE M?S 100 FAMILIAS EN PASEO COLON 1588 QUE NADIE SE EQUIVOQUE: LOS BARRABRAVAS DE MACRI Y MICHETTI SE PREPARAN PARA ARREMETER CONTRA LA POBLACION DE LA CIUDAD El macrismo mostr? sus intenciones el viernes 27 de febrero en la violenta y arbitraria expulsi?n de los residentes de Paseo Colon 1588. Los barrabravas de la UCEP, ?fuerza de choque anticirujas? como la defini? ?Perfil?, irrumpieron a las 5 de la ma?ana aduciendo una orden administrativa de su jefe, el Ministro de Espacio P?blico Juan Pablo Piccardo, y del Ministerio de Justicia y Seguridad. La instrucci?n no los habilitaba para matonear ni expulsar a nadie, pero cumplieron a las trompadas el designio del ni?o bien de Barrio Parque y su ladero Horacio Rodr?guez Larreta: ?limpiar? de pobres una vivienda ocupada, sin ofrecer alternativa habitacional ni, mucho menos, un plan oficial de promoci?n del empleo productivo para terminar con la indigencia. Esta brutal violencia se inicia con una campa?a de amedrentamiento y extorsi?n, acompa?ada de amenazas de muerte telef?nicas. Ya el mi?rcoles, personal del Ministerio de Desarrollo Social empez? a difundir entre las familias la falsa noticia de que exist?a una orden judicial de desalojo, que se har?a efectiva el viernes. Los gestores del macrismo ofrec?an una rid?cula e insuficiente suma a condici?n de retirarse del lugar donde estaban viviendo. El apriete se fue endureciendo con el paso de las horas, pero enfrent? resistencia masiva. Solo cedieron a la extorsi?n menos de 20 familias. El resto exigi? la orden judicial para permitir el ingreso del funcionariado municipal. Por medio de una cadena medi?tica sugerentemente uniforme, el gobierno municipal, a trav?s de ?Despacito y en Silencio? Horacio Rodr?guez Larreta intent? difamar a sus victimas y a los apresados, acus?ndolos de vender drogas. Si el objetivo era terminar con el tr?fico, que las familias denunciaban como v?ctimas que eran, ?por qu? no termin? el operativo el mi?rcoles, cuando se meti? presos a los pocos malvivientes que todo el mundo identificaba salvo, notablemente, las autoridades municipales y del orden? Porqu? Rodr?guez Larreta acusa de traficantes a integrantes de Aukache y a vecinos del lugar? Porqu? finge ignorar que en realidad Aukache, como tantas organizaciones sociales del barrio, se opone rotundamente al tr?fico de drogas? Porqu? omite decir que los apresados salieron en libertad en menos de seis horas, con el solo cargo -falso por lo dem?s- de ?atentado y resistencia a la autoridad?? Rodr?guez Larreta miente e injuria por televisi?n para justificar lo injustificable. Miente tambi?n, y a sabiendas, el Subsecretario de Desarrollo Social, Acevedo, cuando afirma que los compa?eros de Aukache y los integrantes de la Asamblea de San Telmo manten?an como rehenes a las familias. Quienes toman rehenes son los funcionarios de un gobierno que coloca a los humildes entre el fuego que calcina criaturas en Su?rez y Brown, y las patotas que los agreden en las calles. Miente la Ministra de Desarrollo Social Mar?a Eugenia Vidal cuando felicita a sus funcionarios por el ?ejemplar operativo?. Mienten ante todo Mauricio Macri y Gabriela Michetti. A la infamia suman la hipocres?a. Incre?blemente, la infanter?a de la Polic?a Federal en determinado momento reparti? golpes sin interesarse por los gritos de ni?os, beb?s y reci?n nacidos. Para colmo, meti? presos a ocho compa?eros. Ante la resistencia popular frente a sus pol?ticas procesistas, el macrismo recurre al chantaje, la injuria, la mentira y, si el caso lo hace necesario, a sus barrabravas, n?cleo futuro de la polic?a que desea dirigir. Esta banda ven?a entren?ndose ya con pateaduras y violencias diarias contra los sin techo que viv?an en las plazas p?blicas, y llegaron a la cumbre del hero?smo apu?eteando a los docentes en las movilizaciones del a?o pasado. Esta vez volvieron a demostrar su ?eficacia? como patota oficial de los privilegiados. El resultado final, hasta este momento, es sencillo: m?s de 300 habitantes de la ciudad de Buenos Aires ya no tienen hogar; pibes y pibas no saben si podr?n seguir acerc?ndose a los clubes donde, desde hace a?os, ven?an integr?ndose a la sociedad; a dos d?as del inicio de las clases; no saben a qu? escuela asistir?n. Macri y sus acompa?antes sonr?en satisfechos. Ahora, m?s all? de las acciones judiciales que corresponda, pondremos en juego todos los recursos legales y recurriremos a la movilizaci?n de los ciudadanos contra un gobierno decidido a tratarlos como animales. Se adjuntan im?genes identificatorias, y otro material est? disponible a pedido, y ser? presentado ante las autoridades y magistrados pertinentes. Si se permite que el macrismo siga desplegando sus alas, pronto la Ciudad de Buenos Aires ser? un infierno matoneril. Hoy solo lastiman. Ma?ana podr?n matar. Si alguien piensa que las bandas se detendr?n en los m?s pobres, es mejor que se desenga?e. El macrismo es el Proceso con careta humana. Adhesiones: Multisectorial de La Boca - Asoc. Artistas Pl?sticos de Caminito - PC. Congreso Extraordinario - PC la Boca - AG. Vecinos de La Boca - UB Orgullosamente Peronista - Asoc. Gente del Sur - Movimiento Libres del Sur - Movimiento Barrios de Pie - Frente Transversal - Partido de la Victoria - Movimiento Unidad Popular / MUP - Centro de Actividades Sociales / CAS - Asoc. Manos Solidarias - Vecinos autoconvocados del barrio - Cte. Pol?tica 17 de Agosto - Coop. Grafica Patricios - Partido Patria y Pueblo - M.T.L. La Boca - Peronismo 26 de Julio Cap. Fed. - P. Sol - Comedor Los Pibes - Comedor Copitos - Peronismo Militante - UTE - Daniel Portas - Luis D'Elia / FTV - Horacio Gonz?lez - Norberto Galasso - Diputado Nacional Jorge Coscia - Diputado Nacional Hector Recalde - Edgardo Mu?oz / Srio. de Org. del Sind. Dragado y Balizamiento CGT - Luis Farinello - Juventud de UTE - Juventud de la CTA Nacional - Frente Barrial 19 de Diciembre - Agrupaci?n Nacional ?Mart?n Fierro - CTERA Capital - Movimiento Evita Capital - Ana Agulla - JP Evita Capital - C?tedra Nacional de Econom?a Arturo Jauretche - Espacio Social y Comunal COMUNArte - Centro Social y Cultural Rodolfo Puiggros - Agrupaci?n Universitaria La Vertiente - Teatro Catalinas Sur - Centro de Estudios Nacionales Arturo Jauretche - Carolina Listeri / ?FTV Cap. Fed. - Lista de Discusi?n Reconquista Popular - La Vallese / Consejo Directivo de la Fac. de Cs. Sociales - Asociaci?n Juntas y Juntos Somos Mas - Cooperativa El Sol - Cooperativa CAS Ldta. - Cooperativa Manzanas de las Luces - Sec. de Rel. Obrero estudiantil de la FUA - Secretar?a de Extensi?n del CeCSO / UBA - Agrupaci?n Universitaria DEMOS - Agrup. Univ. La Scalabrini ?Fac. de Filosof?a y Letras - Organizaci?n Popular Los Fogoneros - Radio Gr?fica - Marcelo Saravia / Uruguay - Gabriel Fern?ndez / Dir. Se?al Medios y Question Latinoam?rica - Mart?n Garc?a - Eduardo Dimas Berrozpe ?/ Srio. Nac. de Prensa: Asoc. Bancaria (S.E.B.) - Militancia Comunista - Alejandro Fagiani / Srio. de Cultura de la seccional Bs. As. S.E.B. - Radio Ahijuna 94.7 / Quilmes - Alberto Ferraresi - Srio. Gral. de la Asoc. ?Arg. de Farmacia CGT - Mat?as Rodeiro / Docente UBA - Causa Popular / Cordoba - Nora Palancio Zapiola / Periodista - Biblioteca Popular de Barracas - Daniel Sandoval / Pte.: Circulo Bolivariano Jaime Nevares (Neuqu?n) - Agrup. Territorial German Abdala CTA - Foro Permanente por el Derecho a una Vivienda Digna - Centro Comunitario Madre Esperanza - Peronismo Independiente - FAETS (Fed. Arg. Estudiantes de Trabajo Social) - Movimiento Universitario Evita - UES - Enrique Arrosagaray - Dir. Gral. de DDHH- Municipalidad de Avellaneda - Ricardo Forster - Soberan?a y Liberaci?n / Alberto Lapolla, Marcelo Arbit, Jorge Rachid, Ana Lorenzo - Agrupaci?n Causa Nacional - Gabriel H. Rubinstein - Hugo Carpenzano / C?rdoba - Mario Alberto Gurioli ?/ C?rdoba - Soledad Signetto / Rosario - Cecilia Litichever - Jaquelina Anapo - Jos? Mar?a Cavalleri / Salta - Ra?l Isman / Docente - Julieta Guerberof - Juan Francisco Natalizio - Maximiliano Gustavo Vieites - Dora de la Vega / C?rdoba - Creactivar Redes Comunitarias - Diego Oliveira, Fabi?n Cabanellas / Agrupaci?n Juan Jos? Valle (Ensenada) - Sergio Andr?s Traversi / Sindicato Empleados de Comercio - Fernando Adri?n Cosentino / Movimiento Peronista de Base (Alte Brown) Contin?an las firmas? Si Ud. desea expresar su solidaridad env?enos: Nombre completo institucional o nombre y apellido. Contactos: Agrupaci?n Aukache: 4307-1010 Rub?n Rosmarino: 15-6-247-2071 Lorena Vazquez: 15-6-247-5077 ? ? ?Yahoo! Cocina Recetas pr?cticas y comida saludable http://ar.mujer.yahoo.com/cocina/ ________________________________________ SI RECONQUISTA-POPULAR LE RESULTA ?TIL, CONSIDERE LA POSIBILIDAD DE BRINDARLE APOYO FINANCIERO. HAGA UN DEP?SITO EN LA CUENTA 3-72081/5 DEL BANCO FRANC?S, O CONT?CTESE CON recpopad at gmail.com ________________________________________ INFORMACI?N SOBRE LA LISTA Y SUSCRIPCIONES POR V?A INTERNET: ?http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/reconquista-popular. SUSCRIPCI?N POR CORREO ELECTR?NICO: env?e un mensaje escribiendo 'help' en el asunto (no escriba nada en el cuerpo del mensaje) a reconquista-popular-request at lists.econ.utah.edu EL CORREO ELECTR?NICO DE LA PERSONA QUE ADMINISTRA LA LISTA ES: reconquista-popular-admin at lists.econ.utah.edu TODOS LOS MENSAJES DE ESTA LISTA QUEDAN ARCHIVADOS Y PUEDEN CONSULTARSE EN: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/reconquista-popular/ ________________________________________ Lista de correo electr?nico Reconquista-Popular Reconquista-Popular at lists.econ.utah.edu http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/reconquista-popular -- N?stor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Thu Mar 5 15:19:04 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leigh Meyers) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 14:19:04 -0800 Subject: [A-List] Because The Use Of Economic Statistics Has Become A Serious 'Tool Of Tyranny'... Message-ID: [March 05 2009] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Because The Use Of Economic Statistics Has Become A Serious 'Tool Of Tyranny'... An Overview Of How The 'New' (old?) Economy Might Bypass The 'Squeeze' ArchiveDOTorg: http://www.archive.org/details/tth_090305 My Site: http://leighm.net/wp/2009/03/05/tth_090305/ In... 'other' news... Vamping on Thomas Pynchon's 'paranoid proverb': "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone ISN'T following you"... Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T being threatened... North Korea is making threatening noises at South Korea, warning them that their heightend vigilance during the massive war games between the US and South Korean militaries, including naval forces, may cause danger to the South's civilian aviation. On the other hand, *SOME PEOPLE* say if the US stopped the 'games' with the huge amount of naval artillery shelling that occurs during these exercises, the South Korea bronze and brass industries would collapse. A late breaking 'twit': Canadian Government: Sea Shepard Conservation Society vessel Farley Mowat ordered sold sans hearing after confiscation/arrest of crew for "crime" of witnessing and documenting killing of seals under Canadian 'Seal Protection' regulations. http://tinyurl.com/bm46rs ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From michael.hudson at earthlink.net Thu Mar 5 15:23:50 2009 From: michael.hudson at earthlink.net (Michael Hudson) Date: Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:23:50 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Solidarity requested (in Spanish, short intro in English) In-Reply-To: <2fa158550903051343m6534eaf5md304810b8974c16c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Nestor, Iceland is near to repudiating its debt, after England used anti-terrorist laws to seize its assets in Britain. I'm in charge of drafting the international-law grounds for debt repudiation. Also, looking for other governments as allies -- even to the point of withdrawing from the IMF and World Bank. Any suggestions on how to link up with Argentina's experience in this area? Michael Hudson On 3/5/09 4:43 PM, "N?stor Gorojovsky" wrote: > The Mauricio Macri regime in Buenos Aires City is launching an ethnic > and social cleansing campaign by means of illegal gangs of thugs, > hooligans on pay by the local government, who "clean away" settlers > in non-owned nor rented buildings. > > Drug dealing is one of the pretexts used. > > Comrades of Patria y Pueblo and the Aukache Social Organization are > confronting this extreme right wing Ayn Randian despot. Every support > will be welcome. Some of our comrades, and other comrades, have been > accused of dealing in drugs while they defended 130 families from > these illegal evictions. Once in the Police Station, they were > released immediately but the Macri Chief of Cabinet has been claiming > on TV that they were sellers of "paco", a most mortal and cheap form > of cocaine designed for children... > > Films and photographs are available upon request at AgrupAukache at gmail.com > > Those who can help, please send your signature to the following > statement of solidarity to lorenaaukache at yahoo.com.ar > > **************************** > > La VERDAD sobre el DESALOJO de SAN TELMO (Av. Paseo Colon) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > Los abajo firmantes nos solidarizamos con la Agrupaci?n Aukache, > patoteada por los grupos de tareas de Macri/Michetti ?y calumniada por > el Jefe de Gabinete de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodr?guez > Larreta. M?s de diez a?os de trayectoria y lucha por los desamparados > del barrio de La Boca constituyen un historial de dignidad que > dif?cilmente pueda esgrimir uno solo de los ministros del actual > gobierno de la Ciudad. > > VIOLENTO DESALOJO DE M?S 100 FAMILIAS EN PASEO COLON 1588 > > QUE NADIE SE EQUIVOQUE: LOS BARRABRAVAS DE MACRI Y MICHETTI > SE PREPARAN PARA ARREMETER CONTRA LA POBLACION DE LA CIUDAD > > El macrismo mostr? sus intenciones el viernes 27 de febrero en la > violenta y arbitraria expulsi?n de los residentes de Paseo Colon 1588. > Los barrabravas de la UCEP, ?fuerza de choque anticirujas? como la > defini? ?Perfil?, irrumpieron a las 5 de la ma?ana aduciendo una orden > administrativa de su jefe, el Ministro de Espacio P?blico Juan Pablo > Piccardo, y del Ministerio de Justicia y Seguridad. La instrucci?n no > los habilitaba para matonear ni expulsar a nadie, pero cumplieron a > las trompadas el designio del ni?o bien de Barrio Parque y su ladero > Horacio Rodr?guez Larreta: ?limpiar? de pobres una vivienda ocupada, > sin ofrecer alternativa habitacional ni, mucho menos, un plan oficial > de promoci?n del empleo productivo para terminar con la indigencia. > > Esta brutal violencia se inicia con una campa?a de amedrentamiento y > extorsi?n, acompa?ada de amenazas de muerte telef?nicas. Ya el > mi?rcoles, personal del Ministerio de Desarrollo Social empez? a > difundir entre las familias la falsa noticia de que exist?a una orden > judicial de desalojo, que se har?a efectiva el viernes. Los gestores > del macrismo ofrec?an una rid?cula e insuficiente suma a condici?n de > retirarse del lugar donde estaban viviendo. > > El apriete se fue endureciendo con el paso de las horas, pero enfrent? > resistencia masiva. Solo cedieron a la extorsi?n menos de 20 familias. > El resto exigi? la orden judicial para permitir el ingreso del > funcionariado municipal. Por medio de una cadena medi?tica > sugerentemente uniforme, el gobierno municipal, a trav?s de ?Despacito > y en Silencio? Horacio Rodr?guez Larreta intent? difamar a sus > victimas y a los apresados, acus?ndolos de vender drogas. > > Si el objetivo era terminar con el tr?fico, que las familias > denunciaban como v?ctimas que eran, ?por qu? no termin? el operativo > el mi?rcoles, cuando se meti? presos a los pocos malvivientes que todo > el mundo identificaba salvo, notablemente, las autoridades municipales > y del orden? Porqu? Rodr?guez Larreta acusa de traficantes a > integrantes de Aukache y a vecinos del lugar? Porqu? finge ignorar que > en realidad Aukache, como tantas organizaciones sociales del barrio, > se opone rotundamente al tr?fico de drogas? Porqu? omite decir que los > apresados salieron en libertad en menos de seis horas, con el solo > cargo -falso por lo dem?s- de ?atentado y resistencia a la autoridad?? > > Rodr?guez Larreta miente e injuria por televisi?n para justificar lo > injustificable. Miente tambi?n, y a sabiendas, el Subsecretario de > Desarrollo Social, Acevedo, cuando afirma que los compa?eros de > Aukache y los integrantes de la Asamblea de San Telmo manten?an como > rehenes a las familias. Quienes toman rehenes son los funcionarios de > un gobierno que coloca a los humildes entre el fuego que calcina > criaturas en Su?rez y Brown, y las patotas que los agreden en las > calles. > > Miente la Ministra de Desarrollo Social Mar?a Eugenia Vidal cuando > felicita a sus funcionarios por el ?ejemplar operativo?. Mienten ante > todo Mauricio Macri y Gabriela Michetti. A la infamia suman la > hipocres?a. Incre?blemente, la infanter?a de la Polic?a Federal en > determinado momento reparti? golpes sin interesarse por los gritos de > ni?os, beb?s y reci?n nacidos. Para colmo, meti? presos a ocho > compa?eros. > > Ante la resistencia popular frente a sus pol?ticas procesistas, el > macrismo recurre al chantaje, la injuria, la mentira y, si el caso lo > hace necesario, a sus barrabravas, n?cleo futuro de la polic?a que > desea dirigir. Esta banda ven?a entren?ndose ya con pateaduras y > violencias diarias contra los sin techo que viv?an en las plazas > p?blicas, y llegaron a la cumbre del hero?smo apu?eteando a los > docentes en las movilizaciones del a?o pasado. Esta vez volvieron a > demostrar su ?eficacia? como patota oficial de los privilegiados. > > El resultado final, hasta este momento, es sencillo: m?s de 300 > habitantes de la ciudad de Buenos Aires ya no tienen hogar; pibes y > pibas no saben si podr?n seguir acerc?ndose a los clubes donde, desde > hace a?os, ven?an integr?ndose a la sociedad; a dos d?as del inicio de > las clases; no saben a qu? escuela asistir?n. Macri y sus acompa?antes > sonr?en satisfechos. > > Ahora, m?s all? de las acciones judiciales que corresponda, pondremos > en juego todos los recursos legales y recurriremos a la movilizaci?n > de los ciudadanos contra un gobierno decidido a tratarlos como > animales. Se adjuntan im?genes identificatorias, y otro material est? > disponible a pedido, y ser? presentado ante las autoridades y > magistrados pertinentes. > > Si se permite que el macrismo siga desplegando sus alas, pronto la > Ciudad de Buenos Aires ser? un infierno matoneril. Hoy solo lastiman. > Ma?ana podr?n matar. Si alguien piensa que las bandas se detendr?n en > los m?s pobres, es mejor que se desenga?e. El macrismo es el Proceso > con careta humana. > > Adhesiones: > Multisectorial de La Boca - Asoc. Artistas Pl?sticos de Caminito - PC. > Congreso Extraordinario - PC la Boca - AG. Vecinos de La Boca - UB > Orgullosamente Peronista - Asoc. Gente del Sur - Movimiento Libres del > Sur - Movimiento Barrios de Pie - Frente Transversal - Partido de la > Victoria - Movimiento Unidad Popular / MUP - Centro de Actividades > Sociales / CAS - Asoc. Manos Solidarias - Vecinos autoconvocados del > barrio - Cte. Pol?tica 17 de Agosto - Coop. Grafica Patricios - > Partido Patria y Pueblo - M.T.L. La Boca - Peronismo 26 de Julio Cap. > Fed. - P. Sol - Comedor Los Pibes - Comedor Copitos - Peronismo > Militante - UTE - Daniel Portas - Luis D'Elia / FTV - Horacio Gonz?lez > - Norberto Galasso - Diputado Nacional Jorge Coscia - Diputado > Nacional Hector Recalde - Edgardo Mu?oz / Srio. de Org. del Sind. > Dragado y Balizamiento CGT - Luis Farinello - Juventud de UTE - > Juventud de la CTA Nacional - Frente Barrial 19 de Diciembre - > Agrupaci?n Nacional > ?Mart?n Fierro - CTERA Capital - Movimiento Evita Capital - Ana Agulla > - JP Evita Capital - C?tedra Nacional de Econom?a Arturo Jauretche - > Espacio Social y Comunal COMUNArte - Centro Social y Cultural Rodolfo > Puiggros - Agrupaci?n Universitaria La Vertiente - Teatro Catalinas > Sur - Centro de Estudios Nacionales Arturo Jauretche - Carolina > Listeri / ?FTV Cap. Fed. - Lista de Discusi?n Reconquista Popular - La > Vallese / Consejo Directivo de la Fac. de Cs. Sociales - Asociaci?n > Juntas y Juntos Somos Mas - Cooperativa El Sol - Cooperativa CAS Ldta. > - Cooperativa Manzanas de las Luces - Sec. de Rel. Obrero estudiantil > de la FUA - Secretar?a de Extensi?n del CeCSO / UBA - Agrupaci?n > Universitaria DEMOS - Agrup. Univ. La Scalabrini ?Fac. de Filosof?a y > Letras - Organizaci?n Popular Los Fogoneros - Radio Gr?fica - Marcelo > Saravia / Uruguay - Gabriel Fern?ndez / Dir. Se?al Medios y Question > Latinoam?rica - Mart?n Garc?a - Eduardo Dimas Berrozpe > ?/ Srio. Nac. de Prensa: Asoc. Bancaria (S.E.B.) - Militancia > Comunista - Alejandro Fagiani / Srio. de Cultura de la seccional Bs. > As. S.E.B. - Radio Ahijuna 94.7 / Quilmes - Alberto Ferraresi - Srio. > Gral. de la Asoc. ?Arg. de Farmacia CGT - Mat?as Rodeiro / Docente UBA > - Causa Popular / Cordoba - Nora Palancio Zapiola / Periodista - > Biblioteca Popular de Barracas - Daniel Sandoval / Pte.: Circulo > Bolivariano Jaime Nevares (Neuqu?n) - Agrup. Territorial German Abdala > CTA - Foro Permanente por el Derecho a una Vivienda Digna - Centro > Comunitario Madre Esperanza - Peronismo Independiente - FAETS (Fed. > Arg. Estudiantes de Trabajo Social) - Movimiento Universitario Evita - > UES - Enrique Arrosagaray - Dir. Gral. de DDHH- Municipalidad de > Avellaneda - Ricardo Forster - Soberan?a y Liberaci?n / Alberto > Lapolla, Marcelo Arbit, Jorge Rachid, Ana Lorenzo - Agrupaci?n Causa > Nacional - Gabriel H. Rubinstein - Hugo Carpenzano / C?rdoba - Mario > Alberto Gurioli > ?/ C?rdoba - Soledad Signetto / Rosario - Cecilia Litichever - > Jaquelina Anapo - Jos? Mar?a Cavalleri / Salta - Ra?l Isman / Docente > - Julieta Guerberof - Juan Francisco Natalizio - Maximiliano Gustavo > Vieites - Dora de la Vega / C?rdoba - Creactivar Redes Comunitarias - > Diego Oliveira, Fabi?n Cabanellas / Agrupaci?n Juan Jos? Valle > (Ensenada) - Sergio Andr?s Traversi / Sindicato Empleados de Comercio > - Fernando Adri?n Cosentino / Movimiento Peronista de Base (Alte > Brown) > > Contin?an las firmas? > > Si Ud. desea expresar su solidaridad env?enos: > Nombre completo institucional o nombre y apellido. > > Contactos: > Agrupaci?n Aukache: 4307-1010 > Rub?n Rosmarino: 15-6-247-2071 > Lorena Vazquez: 15-6-247-5077 > > > > > > ? ? ?Yahoo! Cocina > Recetas pr?cticas y comida saludable > http://ar.mujer.yahoo.com/cocina/ > > ________________________________________ > > SI RECONQUISTA-POPULAR LE RESULTA ?TIL, CONSIDERE LA POSIBILIDAD DE > BRINDARLE APOYO FINANCIERO. HAGA UN DEP?SITO EN LA CUENTA 3-72081/5 > DEL BANCO FRANC?S, O CONT?CTESE CON recpopad at gmail.com > > ________________________________________ > INFORMACI?N SOBRE LA LISTA Y SUSCRIPCIONES POR V?A INTERNET: > ?http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/reconquista-popular. > > SUSCRIPCI?N POR CORREO ELECTR?NICO: > env?e un mensaje escribiendo 'help' > en el asunto (no escriba nada en el cuerpo del mensaje) > a reconquista-popular-request at lists.econ.utah.edu > > EL CORREO ELECTR?NICO DE LA PERSONA QUE ADMINISTRA LA LISTA ES: > > reconquista-popular-admin at lists.econ.utah.edu > > TODOS LOS MENSAJES DE ESTA LISTA QUEDAN ARCHIVADOS Y PUEDEN CONSULTARSE EN: > > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/reconquista-popular/ > ________________________________________ > > Lista de correo electr?nico Reconquista-Popular > Reconquista-Popular at lists.econ.utah.edu > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/reconquista-popular > > From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Mar 5 17:26:20 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 09:26:20 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Global Collapse Message-ID: <49B06DAC.1030406@ashisuto.co.jp> A Non-Orthodox View by Walden Bello ZNet (February 22 2009) This is the longer version of an essay by the author released by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on February 06 2009. Week after week, we see the global economy contracting at a pace worse than predicted by the gloomiest analysts. We are now, it is clear, in no ordinary recession but are headed for a global depression that could last for many years. The Fundamental Crisis: Overaccumulation Orthodox economics has long ceased to be of any help in understanding the crisis. Non-orthodox economics, on the other hand, provides extraordinarily powerful insights into the causes and dynamics of the current crisis. From the progressive perspective, what we are seeing is the intensification of one of the central crises or "contradictions" of global capitalism: the crisis of overproduction, also known as overaccumulation or overcapacity. This is the tendency for capitalism to build up, in the context of heightened inter-capitalist competition, tremendous productive capacity that outruns the population's capacity to consume owing to income inequalities that limit popular purchasing power. The result is an erosion of profitability, leading to an economic downspin. To understand the current collapse, we must go back in time to the so-called Golden Age of Contemporary Capitalism, the period from 1945 to 1975. This was a period of rapid growth both in the center economies and in the underdeveloped economies - one that was partly triggered by the massive reconstruction of Europe and East Asia after the devastation of the Second World War, and partly by the new socioeconomic arrangements and instruments based on a historic class compromise between Capital and Labor that were institutionalized under the new Keynesian state. But this period of high growth came to an end in the mid-1970s, when the center economies were seized by stagflation, meaning the coexistence of low growth with high inflation, which was not supposed to happen under neoclassical economics. Stagflation, however, was but a symptom of a deeper cause: the reconstruction of Germany and Japan and the rapid growth of industrializing economies like Brazil, Taiwan, and South Korea added tremendous new productive capacity and increased global competition, while income inequality within countries and between countries limited the growth of purchasing power and demand, thus eroding profitability. This was aggravated by the massive oil price rises of the seventies. The most painful expression of the crisis of overproduction was global recession of the early 1980s, which was the most serious to overtake the international economy since the Great Depression, that is, before the current crisis. Capitalism tried three escape routes from the conundrum of overproduction: neoliberal restructuring, globalization, and financialization Escape Route #1: Neoliberal Restructuring Neoliberal restructuring took the form of Reaganism and Thatcherism in the North and Structural Adjustment in the South. The aim was to invigorate capital accumulation, and this was to be done by (1) removing state constraints on the growth, use, and flow of capital and wealth; and (2) redistributing income from the poor and middle classes to the rich on the theory that the rich would then be motivated to invest and reignite economic growth. The problem with this formula was that in redistributing income to the rich, you were gutting the incomes of the poor and middle classes, thus restricting demand, while not necessarily inducing the rich to invest more in production. In fact, it could be more profitable to invest in speculation. In fact, neoliberal restructuring, which was generalized in the North and south during the eighties and nineties, had a poor record in terms of growth: Global growth averaged 1.1 percent in the 1990s and 1.4 percent in the 1980s, compared with 3.5 percent in the 1960s and 2.4 percent in the 1970s, when state interventionist policies were dominant. Neoliberal restructuring could not shake off stagnation. Escape Route #2: Globalization The second escape route global capital took to counter stagnation was "extensive accumulation" or globalization, or the rapid integration of semi-capitalist, non-capitalist, or pre-capitalist areas into the global market economy. Rosa Luxemburg, the famous German radical economist, saw this long ago in her classic The Accumulation of Capital (1913) as necessary to shore up the rate of profit in the metropolitan economies. How? By gaining access to cheap labor, by gaining new, albeit limited, markets, by gaining new sources of cheap agricultural and raw material products, and by bringing into being new areas for investment in infrastructure. Integration is accomplished via trade liberalization, removing barriers to the mobility of global capital, and abolishing barriers to foreign investment. China is, of course, the most prominent case of a non-capitalist area to be integrated into the global capitalist economy over the last 25 years. By the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, roughly forty to fifty percent of the profits of US corporations came from their operations and sales abroad, especially in China. The problem with this escape route from stagnation is that it exacerbates the problem of overproduction because it adds to productive capacity. A tremendous amount of manufacturing capacity has been added in China over the last 25 years, and this has had a depressing effect on prices and profits. Not surprisingly, by around 1997, the profits of US corporations stopped growing. According to one calculation, the profit rate of the Fortune 500 went from 7.15 in 1960-69 to 5.30 in 1980-90 to 2.29 in 1990-99 to 1.32 in 2000-2002. By the end of the 1990s, with excess capacity in almost every industry, the gap between productive capacity and sales was the largest since the Great Depression. Escape Route #3: Financialization Given the limited gains in countering the depressive impact of overproduction via neoliberal restructuring and globalization, the third escape route - financialization - became very critical for maintaining and raising profitability. With investment in industry and agriculture yielding low profits owing to overcapacity, large amounts of surplus funds have been circulating in or invested and reinvested in the financial sector - that is, the financial sector is turning on itself. The result is an increased bifurcation between a hyperactive financial economy and a stagnant real economy. As one financial executive noted in the pages of the Financial Times, "there has been an increasing disconnection between the real and financial economies in the last few years. The real economy has grown ... but nothing like that of the financial economy - until it imploded". What this observer does not tell us is that the disconnect between the real and the financial economy is not accidental - that the financial economy exploded precisely to make up for the stagnation owing to overproduction of the real economy. One indicator of the super-profitability of the financial sector is that while profits in the US manufacturing sector came to one percent of US gross domestic product (GDP), profits in the financial sector came to two percent. Another is the fact that forty percent of the total profits of US financial and non-financial corporations is accounted for by the financial sector although it is responsible for only five percent of US gross domestic product (and even that is likely to be an overestimate). The problem with investing in financial sector operations is that it is tantamount to squeezing value out of already created value. It may create profit, yes, but it does not create new value - only industry, agricultural, trade, and services create new value. Because profit is not based on value that is created, investment operations become very volatile and prices of stocks, bonds, and other forms of investment can depart very radically from their real value - for instance, the stock of Internet startups may keep rising to heights unknown, driven mainly by upwardly spiraling financial valuations. Profits then depend on taking advantage of upward price departures from the value of commodities, then selling before reality enforces a "correction", that is a crash back to real values. The radical rise of prices of an asset far beyond real values is what is called the formation of a bubble. Profitability being dependent on speculative coups, it is not surprising that the finance sector lurches from one bubble to another, or from one speculative mania to another. Because it is driven by speculative mania, finance-driven capitalism has experienced about 100 financial crises since capital markets were deregulated and liberalized in the 1980s, the most serious before the current crisis being the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. Dynamics of the Subprime Implosion The current Wall Street collapse has its roots in the Technology Bubble of the late 1990s, when the price of the stocks of Internet startups skyrocketed, then collapsed, resulting in the loss of $7 trillion worth of assets and the recession of 2001 to 2002. The loose money policies of the Fed under Alan Greenspan had encouraged the Technology Bubble, and when it collapsed into a recession, Greenspan, trying to counter a long recession, cut the prime rate to a 45-year low of one percent in June 2003 and kept it there for over a year. This had the effect of encouraging another bubble - the real estate bubble. As early as 2002, progressive economists were warning about the real estate bubble. However, as late as 2005, then Council of Economic Advisers Chairman and now Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke attributed the rise in US housing prices to "strong economic fundamentals" instead of speculative activity. Is it any wonder that he was caught completely off guard when the Subprime Crisis broke in the summer of 2007? The subprime mortgage crisis was not a case of supply outrunning real demand. The "demand" was largely fabricated by speculative mania on the part of developers and financiers that wanted to make great profits from their access to foreign money - most of it Asian and Chinese in origin - that flooded the US in the last decade. Big ticket mortgages were aggressively sold to millions who could not normally afford them by offering low "teaser" interest rates that would later be readjusted to jack up payments from the new homeowners. How did problematic mortgages become such a massive problem? The reason is that these assets were then "securitized" - that is converted into spectral commodities called "collateralized debt obligations" (CDOs) that enabled speculation on the odds that the mortgage would not be paid. These were then traded by the mortgage originators working with different layers of middlemen who understated risk so as to offload them as quickly as possible to other banks and institutional investors. These institutions in turn offloaded these securities onto other banks and foreign financial institutions. The idea was to make a sale quickly, get your money upfront, and make a tidy profit, while foisting the risk on the suckers down the line - the hundreds of thousands of institutions and individual investors that bought the mortgage-tied securities. This was called "spreading the risk", and it was actually seen as a good thing because it lightened the balance sheet of financial institutions, enabling them to engage in other lending activities. When the interest rates were raised on the subprime loans, adjustable mortgage, and other housing loans, the game was up. There are about four million subprime mortgages which will likely go into default in the next two years, and five million more defaults from adjustable rate mortgages and other "flexible loans" that were geared to snag the most reluctant potential homebuyer will occur over the next several years. But securities whose value run into as much as $2 trillion had already been injected, like virus, into the global financial system. Global capitalism's gigantic circulatory system was fatally infected. And, as with a plague, we don't know who and how many are fatally infected until they keel over because the whole financial system has become so non-transparent owing to lack of regulation. For Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, Bank of America, and Citigroup, the losses represented by these toxic securities simply overwhelmed their reserves. Iceland's banks and many European financial institutions have since joined the list of victims. Some, like Lehman Brothers, have been allowed to die, but most have been kept alive with massive injections of taxpayers' cash by governments that want the banks to lend to keep the real economy going. Collapse of the Real Economy But instead of performing their primordial task of lending to facilitate productive activity, the banks are holding on to their cash or buying up rivals to strengthen their financial base. Not surprisingly, with global capitalism's circulatory system seizing up, it was only a matter of time before the real economy would contract, as it has with frightening speed in the last few weeks. Woolworth, a retail icon, has folded in Britain, the US auto industry is on emergency care, and even mighty Toyota has suffered an unprecedented decline in its profits. With American consumer demand plummeting, China and East Asia have seen their goods rotting on the docks, bringing about a sharp contraction of their economies and massive layoffs. Globalization has ensured that economies that went up together in the boom would also go down together, with unparalleled speed, in the bust, the end of which is nowhere to be discerned. _____ Walden Bello is professor at the University of the Philippines, Diliman; senior analyst at Focus on the Global South; and president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition. He can be reached at waldenbello at yahoo.com . This article was first published by the Philippine Daily Inquirer on February 11 2009, and it is reproduced here for educational purposes. Source: MR Zine http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bello200209.html http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/20638 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From sabri_oncu at yahoo.com Thu Mar 5 18:25:00 2009 From: sabri_oncu at yahoo.com (Sabri Oncu) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 17:25:00 -0800 (PST) Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash Message-ID: <613811.13453.qm@web111511.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Anne: > Well, all financial institutions borrow short and lend long to > my knowledge. Yes, and, hence, the so-called shadow banking system. > The point is credit unions can not pyramid money, therefore > they are lending their private depositors' savings, real > capital, not extending and creating credit based on govt-provided > paper money (which is all digital these days, of course.) But, they create money by lending their private depositors' savings, too, right? They collect, say, $100, keep $10 in their reserves and lend the remaining $90 for the long term. Now, the borrower(s) of that $90 can go to another credit union and deposit it there. Or pay someone else that money in return for some good or service and that person can deposit it in another credit union. That credit union then keeps $9 in its reserves and lends the remaining $81 for the long term. And the game continues, until that initial $100 becomes $1000 after infinitely many rounds like this. When the reserve requirement is 10%, the initial money grows 10 times. When the reserve requirementt is 1%, the initial money grows 100 times. When the reserve requirement is 0.1%, the initial money grows 1000 times. When there is no reserve requirement, the initial money grows indefinitely. So, credit unions can pryramid money, too. It all depends on how much they keep in their reserves. There must be some other explanation to their surviving the crash. Best, Sabri From nmgoro at gmail.com Thu Mar 5 19:51:50 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 23:51:50 -0300 Subject: [A-List] Solidarity requested (in Spanish, short intro in English) In-Reply-To: References: <2fa158550903051343m6534eaf5md304810b8974c16c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2fa158550903051851p68c9d291gc7da4b39a7f41586@mail.gmail.com> Dear Michael, will return on this issue next week. What I sorely need now is solidarity in our struggle with this Macri guy. Do you think Kucinich would endorse our petition? As you may guess, it would be a hell of a support if we could put an US Congressman against a local pro-US Quisling. Best. El d?a 5 de marzo de 2009 19:23, Michael Hudson escribi?: > Nestor, Iceland is near to repudiating its debt, after England used > anti-terrorist laws to seize its assets in Britain. > ? ?I'm in charge of drafting the international-law grounds for debt > repudiation. Also, looking for other governments as allies -- even to the > point of withdrawing from the IMF and World Bank. > ? ?Any suggestions on how to link up with Argentina's experience in this > area? > Michael Hudson > > > On 3/5/09 4:43 PM, "N?stor Gorojovsky" wrote: > >> The Mauricio Macri regime in Buenos Aires City is launching an ethnic >> and social cleansing campaign by means of illegal gangs of thugs, >> hooligans on pay by the local government, ?who "clean away" settlers >> in non-owned nor rented buildings. >> >> Drug dealing is one of the pretexts used. >> >> Comrades of Patria y Pueblo and the Aukache Social Organization are >> confronting this extreme right wing Ayn Randian despot. Every support >> will be welcome. Some of our comrades, and other comrades, have been >> accused of dealing in drugs while they defended 130 families from >> these illegal evictions. Once in the Police Station, they were >> released immediately but the Macri Chief of Cabinet has been claiming >> on TV that they were sellers of ?"paco", a most mortal and cheap form >> of cocaine designed for children... >> >> Films and photographs are available upon request at AgrupAukache at gmail.com >> >> Those who can help, please send your signature to the following >> statement of solidarity to lorenaaukache at yahoo.com.ar >> >> **************************** >> >> La VERDAD sobre el DESALOJO de SAN TELMO (Av. Paseo Colon) >> >> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> Los abajo firmantes nos solidarizamos con la Agrupaci?n Aukache, >> patoteada por los grupos de tareas de Macri/Michetti ?y calumniada por >> el Jefe de Gabinete de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodr?guez >> Larreta. M?s de diez a?os de trayectoria y lucha por los desamparados >> del barrio de La Boca constituyen un historial de dignidad que >> dif?cilmente pueda esgrimir uno solo de los ministros del actual >> gobierno de la Ciudad. >> >> VIOLENTO DESALOJO DE M?S 100 FAMILIAS EN PASEO COLON 1588 >> >> QUE NADIE SE EQUIVOQUE: LOS BARRABRAVAS DE MACRI Y MICHETTI >> SE PREPARAN PARA ARREMETER CONTRA LA POBLACION DE LA CIUDAD >> >> El macrismo mostr? sus intenciones el viernes 27 de febrero en la >> violenta y arbitraria expulsi?n de los residentes de Paseo Colon 1588. >> Los barrabravas de la UCEP, ?fuerza de choque anticirujas? como la >> defini? ?Perfil?, irrumpieron a las 5 de la ma?ana aduciendo una orden >> administrativa de su jefe, el Ministro de Espacio P?blico Juan Pablo >> Piccardo, y del Ministerio de Justicia y Seguridad. La instrucci?n no >> los habilitaba para matonear ni expulsar a nadie, pero cumplieron a >> las trompadas el designio del ni?o bien de Barrio Parque y su ladero >> Horacio Rodr?guez Larreta: ?limpiar? de pobres una vivienda ocupada, >> sin ofrecer alternativa habitacional ni, mucho menos, un plan oficial >> de promoci?n del empleo productivo para terminar con la indigencia. >> >> Esta brutal violencia se inicia con una campa?a de amedrentamiento y >> extorsi?n, acompa?ada de amenazas de muerte telef?nicas. Ya el >> mi?rcoles, personal del Ministerio de Desarrollo Social empez? a >> difundir entre las familias la falsa noticia de que exist?a una orden >> judicial de desalojo, que se har?a efectiva el viernes. Los gestores >> del macrismo ofrec?an una rid?cula e insuficiente suma a condici?n de >> retirarse del lugar donde estaban viviendo. >> >> El apriete se fue endureciendo con el paso de las horas, pero enfrent? >> resistencia masiva. Solo cedieron a la extorsi?n menos de 20 familias. >> El resto exigi? la orden judicial para permitir el ingreso del >> funcionariado municipal. Por medio de una cadena medi?tica >> sugerentemente uniforme, el gobierno municipal, a trav?s de ?Despacito >> y en Silencio? Horacio Rodr?guez Larreta intent? difamar a sus >> victimas y a los apresados, acus?ndolos de vender drogas. >> >> Si el objetivo era terminar con el tr?fico, que las familias >> denunciaban como v?ctimas que eran, ?por qu? no termin? el operativo >> el mi?rcoles, cuando se meti? presos a los pocos malvivientes que todo >> el mundo identificaba salvo, notablemente, las autoridades municipales >> y del orden? Porqu? Rodr?guez Larreta acusa de traficantes a >> integrantes de Aukache y a vecinos del lugar? Porqu? finge ignorar que >> en realidad Aukache, como tantas organizaciones sociales del barrio, >> se opone rotundamente al tr?fico de drogas? Porqu? omite decir que los >> apresados salieron en libertad en menos de seis horas, con el solo >> cargo -falso por lo dem?s- de ?atentado y resistencia a la autoridad?? >> >> Rodr?guez Larreta miente e injuria por televisi?n para justificar lo >> injustificable. Miente tambi?n, y a sabiendas, el Subsecretario de >> Desarrollo Social, Acevedo, cuando afirma que los compa?eros de >> Aukache y los integrantes de la Asamblea de San Telmo manten?an como >> rehenes a las familias. Quienes toman rehenes son los funcionarios de >> un gobierno que coloca a los humildes entre el fuego que calcina >> criaturas en Su?rez y Brown, y las patotas que los agreden en las >> calles. >> >> Miente la Ministra de Desarrollo Social Mar?a Eugenia Vidal cuando >> felicita a sus funcionarios por el ?ejemplar operativo?. Mienten ante >> todo Mauricio Macri y Gabriela Michetti. A la infamia suman la >> hipocres?a. Incre?blemente, la infanter?a de la Polic?a Federal en >> determinado momento reparti? golpes sin interesarse por los gritos de >> ni?os, beb?s y reci?n nacidos. Para colmo, meti? presos a ocho >> compa?eros. >> >> Ante la resistencia popular frente a sus pol?ticas procesistas, el >> macrismo recurre al chantaje, la injuria, la mentira y, si el caso lo >> hace necesario, a sus barrabravas, n?cleo futuro de la polic?a que >> desea dirigir. Esta banda ven?a entren?ndose ya con pateaduras y >> violencias diarias contra los sin techo que viv?an en las plazas >> p?blicas, y llegaron a la cumbre del hero?smo apu?eteando a los >> docentes en las movilizaciones del a?o pasado. Esta vez volvieron a >> demostrar su ?eficacia? como patota oficial de los privilegiados. >> >> El resultado final, hasta este momento, es sencillo: m?s de 300 >> habitantes de la ciudad de Buenos Aires ya no tienen hogar; pibes y >> pibas no saben si podr?n seguir acerc?ndose a los clubes donde, desde >> hace a?os, ven?an integr?ndose a la sociedad; a dos d?as del inicio de >> las clases; no saben a qu? escuela asistir?n. Macri y sus acompa?antes >> sonr?en satisfechos. >> >> Ahora, m?s all? de las acciones judiciales que corresponda, pondremos >> en juego todos los recursos legales y recurriremos a la movilizaci?n >> de los ciudadanos contra un gobierno decidido a tratarlos como >> animales. Se adjuntan im?genes identificatorias, y otro material est? >> disponible a pedido, y ser? presentado ante las autoridades y >> magistrados pertinentes. >> >> Si se permite que el macrismo siga desplegando sus alas, pronto la >> Ciudad de Buenos Aires ser? un infierno matoneril. Hoy solo lastiman. >> Ma?ana podr?n matar. Si alguien piensa que las bandas se detendr?n en >> los m?s pobres, es mejor que se desenga?e. El macrismo es el Proceso >> con careta humana. >> >> Adhesiones: >> Multisectorial de La Boca - Asoc. Artistas Pl?sticos de Caminito - PC. >> Congreso Extraordinario - PC la Boca - AG. Vecinos de La Boca - UB >> Orgullosamente Peronista - Asoc. Gente del Sur - Movimiento Libres del >> Sur - Movimiento Barrios de Pie - Frente Transversal - Partido de la >> Victoria - Movimiento Unidad Popular / MUP - Centro de Actividades >> Sociales / CAS - Asoc. Manos Solidarias - Vecinos autoconvocados del >> barrio - Cte. Pol?tica 17 de Agosto - Coop. Grafica Patricios - >> Partido Patria y Pueblo - M.T.L. La Boca - Peronismo 26 de Julio Cap. >> Fed. - P. Sol - Comedor Los Pibes - Comedor Copitos - Peronismo >> Militante - UTE - Daniel Portas - Luis D'Elia / FTV - Horacio Gonz?lez >> - Norberto Galasso - Diputado Nacional Jorge Coscia - Diputado >> Nacional Hector Recalde - Edgardo Mu?oz / Srio. de Org. del Sind. >> Dragado y Balizamiento CGT - Luis Farinello - Juventud de UTE - >> Juventud de la CTA Nacional - Frente Barrial 19 de Diciembre - >> Agrupaci?n Nacional >> ?Mart?n Fierro - CTERA Capital - Movimiento Evita Capital - Ana Agulla >> - JP Evita Capital - C?tedra Nacional de Econom?a Arturo Jauretche - >> Espacio Social y Comunal COMUNArte - Centro Social y Cultural Rodolfo >> Puiggros - Agrupaci?n Universitaria La Vertiente - Teatro Catalinas >> Sur - Centro de Estudios Nacionales Arturo Jauretche - Carolina >> Listeri / ?FTV Cap. Fed. - Lista de Discusi?n Reconquista Popular - La >> Vallese / Consejo Directivo de la Fac. de Cs. Sociales - Asociaci?n >> Juntas y Juntos Somos Mas - Cooperativa El Sol - Cooperativa CAS Ldta. >> - Cooperativa Manzanas de las Luces - Sec. de Rel. Obrero estudiantil >> de la FUA - Secretar?a de Extensi?n del CeCSO / UBA - Agrupaci?n >> Universitaria DEMOS - Agrup. Univ. La Scalabrini ?Fac. de Filosof?a y >> Letras - Organizaci?n Popular Los Fogoneros - Radio Gr?fica - Marcelo >> Saravia / Uruguay - Gabriel Fern?ndez / Dir. Se?al Medios y Question >> Latinoam?rica - Mart?n Garc?a - Eduardo Dimas Berrozpe >> ?/ Srio. Nac. de Prensa: Asoc. Bancaria (S.E.B.) - Militancia >> Comunista - Alejandro Fagiani / Srio. de Cultura de la seccional Bs. >> As. S.E.B. - Radio Ahijuna 94.7 / Quilmes - Alberto Ferraresi - Srio. >> Gral. de la Asoc. ?Arg. de Farmacia CGT - Mat?as Rodeiro / Docente UBA >> - Causa Popular / Cordoba - Nora Palancio Zapiola / Periodista - >> Biblioteca Popular de Barracas - Daniel Sandoval / Pte.: Circulo >> Bolivariano Jaime Nevares (Neuqu?n) - Agrup. Territorial German Abdala >> CTA - Foro Permanente por el Derecho a una Vivienda Digna - Centro >> Comunitario Madre Esperanza - Peronismo Independiente - FAETS (Fed. >> Arg. Estudiantes de Trabajo Social) - Movimiento Universitario Evita - >> UES - Enrique Arrosagaray - Dir. Gral. de DDHH- Municipalidad de >> Avellaneda - Ricardo Forster - Soberan?a y Liberaci?n / Alberto >> Lapolla, Marcelo Arbit, Jorge Rachid, Ana Lorenzo - Agrupaci?n Causa >> Nacional - Gabriel H. Rubinstein - Hugo Carpenzano / C?rdoba - Mario >> Alberto Gurioli >> ?/ C?rdoba - Soledad Signetto / Rosario - Cecilia Litichever - >> Jaquelina Anapo - Jos? Mar?a Cavalleri / Salta - Ra?l Isman / Docente >> - Julieta Guerberof - Juan Francisco Natalizio - Maximiliano Gustavo >> Vieites - Dora de la Vega / C?rdoba - Creactivar Redes Comunitarias - >> Diego Oliveira, Fabi?n Cabanellas / Agrupaci?n Juan Jos? Valle >> (Ensenada) - Sergio Andr?s Traversi / Sindicato Empleados de Comercio >> - Fernando Adri?n Cosentino / Movimiento Peronista de Base (Alte >> Brown) >> >> Contin?an las firmas? >> >> Si Ud. desea expresar su solidaridad env?enos: >> Nombre completo institucional o nombre y apellido. >> >> Contactos: >> Agrupaci?n Aukache: 4307-1010 >> Rub?n Rosmarino: 15-6-247-2071 >> Lorena Vazquez: 15-6-247-5077 >> >> >> >> >> >> ? ? ?Yahoo! Cocina >> Recetas pr?cticas y comida saludable >> http://ar.mujer.yahoo.com/cocina/ >> >> ________________________________________ >> >> SI RECONQUISTA-POPULAR LE RESULTA ?TIL, CONSIDERE LA POSIBILIDAD DE >> BRINDARLE APOYO FINANCIERO. HAGA UN DEP?SITO EN LA CUENTA 3-72081/5 >> DEL BANCO FRANC?S, O CONT?CTESE CON recpopad at gmail.com >> >> ________________________________________ >> INFORMACI?N SOBRE LA LISTA Y SUSCRIPCIONES POR V?A INTERNET: >> ?http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/reconquista-popular. >> >> SUSCRIPCI?N POR CORREO ELECTR?NICO: >> env?e un mensaje escribiendo 'help' >> en el asunto (no escriba nada en el cuerpo del mensaje) >> a reconquista-popular-request at lists.econ.utah.edu >> >> EL CORREO ELECTR?NICO DE LA PERSONA QUE ADMINISTRA LA LISTA ES: >> >> reconquista-popular-admin at lists.econ.utah.edu >> >> TODOS LOS MENSAJES DE ESTA LISTA QUEDAN ARCHIVADOS Y PUEDEN CONSULTARSE EN: >> >> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/reconquista-popular/ >> ________________________________________ >> >> Lista de correo electr?nico Reconquista-Popular >> Reconquista-Popular at lists.econ.utah.edu >> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/reconquista-popular >> >> > > > > -- N?stor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Mar 6 05:08:08 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:08:08 +0900 Subject: [A-List] A Planet at the Brink Message-ID: <49B11228.5060504@ashisuto.co.jp> Will Economic Brushfires Prove Too Virulent to Contain? by Michael T Klare ZNet (March 01 2009) The global economic meltdown has already caused bank failures, bankruptcies, plant closings, and foreclosures and will, in the coming year, leave many tens of millions unemployed across the planet. But another perilous consequence of the crash of 2008 has only recently made its appearance: increased civil unrest and ethnic strife. Someday, perhaps, war may follow. As people lose confidence in the ability of markets and governments to solve the global crisis, they are likely to erupt into violent protests or to assault others they deem responsible for their plight, including government officials, plant managers, landlords, immigrants, and ethnic minorities. (The list could, in the future, prove long and unnerving.) If the present economic disaster turns into what President Obama has referred to as a "lost decade", the result could be a global landscape filled with economically-fueled upheavals. Indeed, if you want to be grimly impressed, hang a world map on your wall and start inserting red pins where violent episodes have already occurred. Athens (Greece), Longnan (China), Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Riga (Latvia), Santa Cruz (Bolivia), Sofia (Bulgaria), Vilnius (Lithuania), and Vladivostok (Russia) would be a start. Many other cities from Reykjavik, Paris, Rome, and Zaragoza to Moscow and Dublin have witnessed huge protests over rising unemployment and falling wages that remained orderly thanks in part to the presence of vast numbers of riot police. If you inserted orange pins at these locations - none as yet in the United States - your map would already look aflame with activity. And if you're a gambling man or woman, it's a safe bet that this map will soon be far better populated with red and orange pins. For the most part, such upheavals, even when violent, are likely to remain localized in nature, and disorganized enough that government forces will be able to bring them under control within days or weeks, even if - as with Athens for six days last December - urban paralysis sets in due to rioting, tear gas, and police cordons. That, at least, has been the case so far. It is entirely possible, however, that, as the economic crisis worsens, some of these incidents will metastasize into far more intense and long-lasting events: armed rebellions, military takeovers, civil conflicts, even economically fueled wars between states. Every outbreak of violence has its own distinctive origins and characteristics. All, however, are driven by a similar combination of anxiety about the future and lack of confidence in the ability of established institutions to deal with the problems at hand. And just as the economic crisis has proven global in ways not seen before, so local incidents - especially given the almost instantaneous nature of modern communications - have a potential to spark others in far-off places, linked only in a virtual sense. A Global Pandemic of Economically Driven Violence The riots that erupted in the spring of 2008 in response to rising food prices suggested the speed with which economically-related violence can spread. It is unlikely that Western news sources captured all such incidents, but among those recorded in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were riots in Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, and Senegal. In Haiti, for example, thousands of protesters stormed the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince and demanded food handouts, only to be repelled by government troops and UN peacekeepers. Other countries, including Pakistan and Thailand, quickly sought to deter such assaults by deploying troops at farms and warehouses throughout the country. The riots only abated at summer's end when falling energy costs brought food prices crashing down as well. (The cost of food is now closely tied to the price of oil and natural gas because petrochemicals are so widely and heavily used in the cultivation of grains.) Ominously, however, this is sure to prove but a temporary respite, given the epic droughts now gripping breadbasket regions of the United States, Argentina, Australia, China, the Middle East, and Africa. Look for the prices of wheat, soybeans, and possibly rice to rise in the coming months - just when billions of people in the developing world are sure to see their already marginal incomes plunging due to the global economic collapse. Food riots were but one form of economic violence that made its bloody appearance in 2008. As economic conditions worsened, protests against rising unemployment, government ineptitude, and the unaddressed needs of the poor erupted as well. In India, for example, violent protests threatened stability in many key areas. Although usually described as ethnic, religious, or caste disputes, these outbursts were typically driven by economic anxiety and a pervasive feeling that someone else's group was faring better than yours - and at your expense. In April, for example, six days of intense rioting in Indian-controlled Kashmir were largely blamed on religious animosity between the majority Muslim population and the Hindu-dominated Indian government; equally important, however, was a deep resentment over what many Kashmiri Muslims experienced as discrimination in jobs, housing, and land use. Then, in May, thousands of nomadic shepherds known as Gujjars shut down roads and trains leading to the city of Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, in a drive to be awarded special economic rights; more than thirty people were killed when the police fired into crowds. In October, economically-related violence erupted in Assam in the country's far northeast, where impoverished locals are resisting an influx of even poorer, mostly illegal immigrants from nearby Bangladesh. Economically-driven clashes also erupted across much of eastern China in 2008. Such events, labeled "mass incidents" by Chinese authorities, usually involve protests by workers over sudden plant shutdowns, lost pay, or illegal land seizures. More often than not, protestors demanded compensation from company managers or government authorities, only to be greeted by club-wielding police. Needless to say, the leaders of China's Communist Party have been reluctant to acknowledge such incidents. This January, however, the magazine Liaowang (Outlook Weekly) reported that layoffs and wage disputes had triggered a sharp increase in such "mass incidents", particularly along the country's eastern seaboard, where much of its manufacturing capacity is located. By December, the epicenter of such sporadic incidents of violence had moved from the developing world to Western Europe and the former Soviet Union. Here, the protests have largely been driven by fears of prolonged unemployment, disgust at government malfeasance and ineptitude, and a sense that "the system", however defined, is incapable of satisfying the future aspirations of large groups of citizens. One of the earliest of this new wave of upheavals occurred in Athens, Greece, on December 6 2008, after police shot and killed a fifteen year-old schoolboy during an altercation in a crowded downtown neighborhood. As news of the killing spread throughout the city, hundreds of students and young people surged into the city center and engaged in pitched battles with riot police, throwing stones and firebombs. Although government officials later apologized for the killing and charged the police officer involved with manslaughter, riots broke out repeatedly in the following days in Athens and other Greek cities. Angry youths attacked the police - widely viewed as agents of the establishment - as well as luxury shops and hotels, some of which were set on fire. By one estimate, the six days of riots caused $1.3 billion in damage to businesses at the height of the Christmas shopping season. Russia also experienced a spate of violent protests in December, triggered by the imposition of high tariffs on imported automobiles. Instituted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to protect an endangered domestic auto industry (whose sales were expected to shrink by up to fifty percent in 2009), the tariffs were a blow to merchants in the Far Eastern port of Vladivostok who benefited from a nationwide commerce in used Japanese vehicles. When local police refused to crack down on anti-tariff protests, the authorities were evidently worried enough to fly in units of special forces from Moscow, 3,700 miles away. In January, incidents of this sort seemed to be spreading through Eastern Europe. Between January 13th and 16th, anti-government protests involving violent clashes with the police erupted in the Latvian capital of Riga, the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, and the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. It is already essentially impossible to keep track of all such episodes, suggesting that we are on the verge of a global pandemic of economically driven violence. A Perfect Recipe for Instability While most such incidents are triggered by an immediate event - a tariff, the closure of local factory, the announcement of government austerity measures - there are systemic factors at work as well. While economists now agree that we are in the midst of a recession deeper than any since the Great Depression of the 1930s, they generally assume that this downturn - like all others since World War II - will be followed in a year, or two, or three, by the beginning of a typical recovery. There are good reasons to suspect that this might not be the case - that poorer countries (along with many people in the richer countries) will have to wait far longer for such a recovery, or may see none at all. Even in the United States, 54% of Americans now believe that "the worst" is "yet to come" and only seven percent that the economy has "turned the corner", according to a recent Ipsos/McClatchy poll; fully a quarter think the crisis will last more than four years. Whether in the Russia, China, or Bangladesh, it is this underlying anxiety - this suspicion that things are far worse than just about anyone is saying - which is helping to fuel the global epidemic of violence. The World Bank's most recent status report, Global Economic Prospects 2009, fulfills those anxieties in two ways. It refuses to state the worst, even while managing to hint, in terms too clear to be ignored, at the prospect of a long-term, or even permanent, decline in economic conditions for many in the world. Nominally upbeat - as are so many media pundits - regarding the likelihood of an economic recovery in the not-too-distant future, the report remains full of warnings about the potential for lasting damage in the developing world if things don't go exactly right. Two worries, in particular, dominate Global Economic Prospects 2009: that banks and corporations in the wealthier countries will cease making investments in the developing world, choking off whatever growth possibilities remain; and that food costs will rise uncomfortably, while the use of farmlands for increased biofuels production will result in diminished food availability to hundreds of millions. Despite its Pollyanna-ish passages on an economic rebound, the report does not mince words when discussing what the almost certain coming decline in First World investment in Third World countries would mean: "Should credit markets fail to respond to the robust policy interventions taken so far, the consequences for developing countries could be very serious. Such a scenario would be characterized by ... substantial disruption and turmoil, including bank failures and currency crises, in a wide range of developing countries. Sharply negative growth in a number of developing countries and all of the attendant repercussions, including increased poverty and unemployment, would be inevitable." In the fall of 2008, when the report was written, this was considered a "worst-case scenario". Since then, the situation has obviously worsened radically, with financial analysts reporting a virtual freeze in worldwide investment. Equally troubling, newly industrialized countries that rely on exporting manufactured goods to richer countries for much of their national income have reported stomach-wrenching plunges in sales, producing massive plant closings and layoffs. The World Bank's 2008 survey also contains troubling data about the future availability of food. Although insisting that the planet is capable of producing enough foodstuffs to meet the needs of a growing world population, its analysts were far less confident that sufficient food would be available at prices people could afford, especially once hydrocarbon prices begin to rise again. With ever more farmland being set aside for biofuels production and efforts to increase crop yields through the use of "miracle seeds" losing steam, the Bank's analysts balanced their generally hopeful outlook with a caveat: "If biofuels-related demand for crops is much stronger or productivity performance disappoints, future food supplies may be much more expensive than in the past". Combine these two World Bank findings - zero economic growth in the developing world and rising food prices - and you have a perfect recipe for unrelenting civil unrest and violence. The eruptions seen in 2008 and early 2009 will then be mere harbingers of a grim future in which, in a given week, any number of cities reel from riots and civil disturbances which could spread like multiple brushfires in a drought. Mapping a World at the Brink Survey the present world, and it's all too easy to spot a plethora of potential sites for such multiple eruptions - or far worse. Take China. So far, the authorities have managed to control individual "mass incidents", preventing them from coalescing into something larger. But in a country with a more than two-thousand-year history of vast millenarian uprisings, the risk of such escalation has to be on the minds of every Chinese leader. On February 2nd, a top Chinese Party official, Chen Xiwen, announced that, in the last few months of 2008 alone, a staggering twenty million migrant workers, who left rural areas for the country's booming cities in recent years, had lost their jobs. Worse yet, they had little prospect of regaining them in 2009. If many of these workers return to the countryside, they may find nothing there either, not even land to work. Under such circumstances, and with further millions likely to be shut out of coastal factories in the coming year, the prospect of mass unrest is high. No wonder the government announced a $585 billion stimulus plan aimed at generating rural employment and, at the same time, called on security forces to exercise discipline and restraint when dealing with protesters. Many analysts now believe that, as exports continue to dry up, rising unemployment could lead to nationwide strikes and protests that might overwhelm ordinary police capabilities and require full-scale intervention by the military (as occurred in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 1989). Or take many of the Third World petro-states that experienced heady boosts in income when oil prices were high, allowing governments to buy off dissident groups or finance powerful internal security forces. With oil prices plunging from $147 per barrel of crude oil to less than $40 dollars, such countries, from Angola to shaky Iraq, now face severe instability. Nigeria is a typical case in point: When oil prices were high, the central government in Abuja raked in billions every year, enough to enrich elites in key parts of the country and subsidize a large military establishment; now that prices are low, the government will have a hard time satisfying all these previously well-fed competing obligations, which means the risk of internal disequilibrium will escalate. An insurgency in the oil-producing Niger Delta region, fueled by popular discontent with the failure of oil wealth to trickle down from the capital, is already gaining momentum and is likely to grow stronger as government revenues shrivel; other regions, equally disadvantaged by national revenue-sharing policies, will be open to disruptions of all sorts, including heightened levels of internecine warfare. Bolivia is another energy producer that seems poised at the brink of an escalation in economic violence. One of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, it harbors substantial oil and natural gas reserves in its eastern, lowland regions. A majority of the population - many of Indian descent - supports President Evo Morales, who seeks to exercise strong state control over the reserves and use the proceeds to uplift the nation's poor. But a majority of those in the eastern part of the country, largely controlled by a European-descended elite, resent central government interference and seek to control the reserves themselves. Their efforts to achieve greater autonomy have led to repeated clashes with government troops and, in deteriorating times, could set the stage for a full-scale civil war. Given a global situation in which one startling, often unexpected development follows another, prediction is perilous. At a popular level, however, the basic picture is clear enough: continued economic decline combined with a pervasive sense that existing systems and institutions are incapable of setting things right is already producing a potentially lethal brew of anxiety, fear, and rage. Popular explosions of one sort or another are inevitable. Some sense of this new reality appears to have percolated up to the highest reaches of the intelligence community. In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on February 12th, Admiral Dennis C Blair, the new Director of National Intelligence, declared, "The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications ... Statistical modeling shows that economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one to two year period" - certain to be the case in the present situation. Blair did not specify which countries he had in mind when he spoke of "regime-threatening instability" - a new term in the American intelligence lexicon, at least when associated with economic crises - but it is clear from his testimony that officials are closely watching dozens of shaky nations in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central Asia. Now go back to that map on your wall with all those red and orange pins in it and proceed to color in appropriate countries in various shades of red and orange to indicate recent striking declines in gross national product and rises in unemployment rates. Without sixteen intelligence agencies under you, you'll still have a pretty good idea of the places that Blair and his associates are eyeing in terms of instability as the future darkens on a planet at the brink. _____ Michael T Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Metropolitan Books, 2008). This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing, co-founder of the American Empire Project, author of The End of Victory Culture (2007), and editor of The World According to Tomdispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (2008). http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20728 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From annewilliamson at msn.com Thu Mar 5 08:23:20 2009 From: annewilliamson at msn.com (Anne Williamson) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 10:23:20 -0500 Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash In-Reply-To: References: <12524973.1236102476730.JavaMail.root@mswamui-blood.atl.sa.earthlink.net> <49ADBC51.7020906@ashisuto.co.jp> <7alt5i$3na3kn@ipo3smtp.cc.utah.edu> Message-ID: Yesterday, I misquoted the legal case that determined bank deposits are loans to the bank. (My library is in storage and I was going by memory -- apologies.) The correct case name is Foley v. Hill and Others, decided by the House of Lords in 1848. Here is a quote from Lord Cottenham that explains the thinking behind the decision: "The money placed in the custody of a banker is, to all intents and purposes, the money of the banker, to do with as he pleases; he is guilty of no breach of trust in employing it; he is not answerable to the principal if he puts it into jeopardy, if he engages in a hazardous speculation; he is not bound to keep it or deal with it as the property of his principal; but he is, of course, answerable for the amount, because he has contracted." (And then the bank collapses, and the lenders - depositors - are left with no recourse, despite the banker being answerable for "the amount") The case and its implications are discussed in The Case Against the Fed, pg.s 40-45 in the section entitled "Problems for the Fractional-Reserve Banker: The Criminal Law." The case and its import to banking practice is discussed in greater detail in: Murray N. Rothbard, The Mystery of Banking and Milnes Holden, The Law and Practice of Banking, vol. 1, Banker and Customer Again, apologies for any confusions my poor memory may have engendered. The FDIC can not guarantee all bank accounts, it is arithmetically impossible as I fear we might all learn through practical experience...nonetheless, an article in yesterday's WSJ reports on FDIC head Shelia Blair's increase in banking fees to fund the service (along with lots and lots of taxpayer dough via congress), which will claim the entire profits of last year from small, well-run regional banks, which are not seeking bailouts - the very banks which should be encouraged to prosper, not penalized for the imprudent and bad actions of NYC's money center banks....just another example of an unintended consequence of government intervention/scam/politicization. From: annewilliamson at msn.com To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 08:33:50 -0500 Subject: Re: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash Yes, the regulations have recently changed in order to flood the system with more and more liquidity when the problem is one of insolvency - that is the controversy. Now, the credit unions will become part of the problem. -A. Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2009 15:09:46 -0800 To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu From: tboyle at rosehill.net Subject: Re: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash Credit Unions are allowed to loan out 90% of their demand deposits, identically to commercial banks. Are they not? See the Federal Reserve page, http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm#table1 Which indicates the reserve requirement since Jan. 2009 has been 10%. Here is their explanation: "Note. Required reserves must be held in the form of vault cash and, if vault cash is insufficient, also in the form of a deposit maintained with a Federal Reserve Bank. An institution that is a member of the Federal Reserve System must hold that deposit directly with a Reserve Bank; an institution that is not a member of the System can maintain that deposit directly with a Reserve Bank or with another institution in a pass-through relationship. Reserve requirements are imposed on commercial banks, savings banks, savings and loan associations, credit unions, U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks, Edge corporations, and agreement corporations. " The effect of this practice (lending depositors' money instead of holding it in the bank) is that those loans are redeposited into a bank somewhere, by the borrower or his suppliers, very quickly. Resulting in total deposits 190% instead of the original 100. So, some banks quickly deposit 9, and loan 81. Then it comes back again, so they reserve 8 and loan 72, etc until the money in circulation has been multiplied, I think 10 times the original deposit. See the video "Money As Debt" it's online in multiple different places. 30 minutes well spent. Todd At 05:18 PM 3/3/2009, Anne Williamson wrote: Sean, Fractional Reserve Banking is what got us into this mess - it's a system whereby credit creation is exploded by the banks....imagine an inverted pyramid, only the point having any value, and layers and layers of fiat money credit are piled on top. The footnote from Contagion below explains the system in its essence - when you get to the bottom of the example, realize that the 70,000 will be lent and deposited into other bank accounts, whose banks can then explode the fiat money (and then lend it!) in the same way as the original 10,000 cheque, ad nauseum. Very quickly a mountain of debt is built on a single Fed transaction: Here?s how an ordinary transaction involving a citizen, the Fed and a commercial bank works: the central bank buys most usually old existing government bonds, though in principle it can buy any public asset, through what are known as the Fed?s ?Open Market Operations.? When the Fed makes a purchase, the Fed writes a check on the Federal Reserve system out of thin air. The recipient - let?s say in this case a private citizen who sold a warehouse business to the Fed - goes to his commercial bank and deposits the central bank?s check. The commercial bank of the depositor then takes the check to the central bank, says, ?Put it into my reserve account,? thereby increasing the bank?s required reserves with the central bank, which then allows it to pile a multiple of checkable money created out of thin air on top of the actual note value of the original check created out of thin air from the central bank. Neat, huh? Out of a $10,000 deposit in a bank, $1,000 goes to the vaults, $2,000 to the bank?s reserve account with the central bank, and the remainder is exploded into $70,000 of checkable money the bank can lend. Hope this helps, Anne -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 6984 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090305/b36e09fb/attachment.txt From awbarnor3 at gmail.com Thu Mar 5 16:28:23 2009 From: awbarnor3 at gmail.com (Dr. Albert Walter Barnor) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 15:28:23 -0800 Subject: [A-List] NOTIFICATION LETTER FROM DR. ALBERT WALTER BARNOR Message-ID: <200903052325.n25NPjtT029249@engepol.com> From: Dr. Albert Walter Barnor Accra, Ghana. I am Dr. Albert Walter Barnor from Accra Ghana in West Africa. I am an accountant and a banker by profession wonderfully married with kids. I am the Director of International Banking Department of International Commercial Bank Ltd and currently holding the post of Head of the Vetting Committee of the Millennium Challenge Account which is a Payment Scheme initiated by the newly inaugurated president of Ghana to offset all due payments payable to all contactors. As the head of the Vetting Committee, I have the opportunity of transferring US$15 Million Dollars from the left over funds with your assistance and co-operation since we have settled and paid all the beneficiaries of which we used part of the money that was set aside for this disbursement scheme yet we have left over funds. At this occurrence, I have decided to safely transfer the sum of US$15 Million Dollars to your custody via bank-to-bank transfer for us to share evenly. I will send you further details of the transaction will be forwarded to you as soon as I receive your FULL NAMES, CONTACT ADDRESS, TELEPHONE and MOBILE NUMBERS. If you follow my directives, the fund will be transferred to your account within Fourteen (14) working days and will be shared 50% - 50%. Trusting to hear from you immediately Thank you, Dr. Albert Walter Barnor From michael.hudson at earthlink.net Fri Mar 6 08:06:06 2009 From: michael.hudson at earthlink.net (Michael Hudson) Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:06:06 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Solidarity requested (in Spanish, short intro in English) In-Reply-To: <2fa158550903051851p68c9d291gc7da4b39a7f41586@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: I'm sure he's sympathetic, but what can a U.S. Congressman do? Foreign countries are almost invisible to the media here. Michael On 3/5/09 9:51 PM, "N?stor Gorojovsky" wrote: > Dear Michael, will return on this issue next week. > > > What I sorely need now is solidarity in our struggle with this Macri guy. > > Do you think Kucinich would endorse our petition? > > As you may guess, it would be a hell of a support if we could put an > US Congressman against a local pro-US Quisling. > > Best. > > El d?a 5 de marzo de 2009 19:23, Michael Hudson > escribi?: >> Nestor, Iceland is near to repudiating its debt, after England used >> anti-terrorist laws to seize its assets in Britain. >> ? ?I'm in charge of drafting the international-law grounds for debt >> repudiation. Also, looking for other governments as allies -- even to the >> point of withdrawing from the IMF and World Bank. >> ? ?Any suggestions on how to link up with Argentina's experience in this >> area? >> Michael Hudson >> >> >> On 3/5/09 4:43 PM, "N?stor Gorojovsky" wrote: >> >>> The Mauricio Macri regime in Buenos Aires City is launching an ethnic >>> and social cleansing campaign by means of illegal gangs of thugs, >>> hooligans on pay by the local government, ?who "clean away" settlers >>> in non-owned nor rented buildings. >>> >>> Drug dealing is one of the pretexts used. >>> >>> Comrades of Patria y Pueblo and the Aukache Social Organization are >>> confronting this extreme right wing Ayn Randian despot. Every support >>> will be welcome. Some of our comrades, and other comrades, have been >>> accused of dealing in drugs while they defended 130 families from >>> these illegal evictions. Once in the Police Station, they were >>> released immediately but the Macri Chief of Cabinet has been claiming >>> on TV that they were sellers of ?"paco", a most mortal and cheap form >>> of cocaine designed for children... >>> >>> Films and photographs are available upon request at AgrupAukache at gmail.com >>> >>> Those who can help, please send your signature to the following >>> statement of solidarity to lorenaaukache at yahoo.com.ar >>> >>> **************************** >>> >>> La VERDAD sobre el DESALOJO de SAN TELMO (Av. Paseo Colon) >>> >>> >>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> Los abajo firmantes nos solidarizamos con la Agrupaci?n Aukache, >>> patoteada por los grupos de tareas de Macri/Michetti ?y calumniada por >>> el Jefe de Gabinete de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodr?guez >>> Larreta. M?s de diez a?os de trayectoria y lucha por los desamparados >>> del barrio de La Boca constituyen un historial de dignidad que >>> dif?cilmente pueda esgrimir uno solo de los ministros del actual >>> gobierno de la Ciudad. >>> >>> VIOLENTO DESALOJO DE M?S 100 FAMILIAS EN PASEO COLON 1588 >>> >>> QUE NADIE SE EQUIVOQUE: LOS BARRABRAVAS DE MACRI Y MICHETTI >>> SE PREPARAN PARA ARREMETER CONTRA LA POBLACION DE LA CIUDAD >>> >>> El macrismo mostr? sus intenciones el viernes 27 de febrero en la >>> violenta y arbitraria expulsi?n de los residentes de Paseo Colon 1588. >>> Los barrabravas de la UCEP, ?fuerza de choque anticirujas? como la >>> defini? ?Perfil?, irrumpieron a las 5 de la ma?ana aduciendo una orden >>> administrativa de su jefe, el Ministro de Espacio P?blico Juan Pablo >>> Piccardo, y del Ministerio de Justicia y Seguridad. La instrucci?n no >>> los habilitaba para matonear ni expulsar a nadie, pero cumplieron a >>> las trompadas el designio del ni?o bien de Barrio Parque y su ladero >>> Horacio Rodr?guez Larreta: ?limpiar? de pobres una vivienda ocupada, >>> sin ofrecer alternativa habitacional ni, mucho menos, un plan oficial >>> de promoci?n del empleo productivo para terminar con la indigencia. >>> >>> Esta brutal violencia se inicia con una campa?a de amedrentamiento y >>> extorsi?n, acompa?ada de amenazas de muerte telef?nicas. Ya el >>> mi?rcoles, personal del Ministerio de Desarrollo Social empez? a >>> difundir entre las familias la falsa noticia de que exist?a una orden >>> judicial de desalojo, que se har?a efectiva el viernes. Los gestores >>> del macrismo ofrec?an una rid?cula e insuficiente suma a condici?n de >>> retirarse del lugar donde estaban viviendo. >>> >>> El apriete se fue endureciendo con el paso de las horas, pero enfrent? >>> resistencia masiva. Solo cedieron a la extorsi?n menos de 20 familias. >>> El resto exigi? la orden judicial para permitir el ingreso del >>> funcionariado municipal. Por medio de una cadena medi?tica >>> sugerentemente uniforme, el gobierno municipal, a trav?s de ?Despacito >>> y en Silencio? Horacio Rodr?guez Larreta intent? difamar a sus >>> victimas y a los apresados, acus?ndolos de vender drogas. >>> >>> Si el objetivo era terminar con el tr?fico, que las familias >>> denunciaban como v?ctimas que eran, ?por qu? no termin? el operativo >>> el mi?rcoles, cuando se meti? presos a los pocos malvivientes que todo >>> el mundo identificaba salvo, notablemente, las autoridades municipales >>> y del orden? Porqu? Rodr?guez Larreta acusa de traficantes a >>> integrantes de Aukache y a vecinos del lugar? Porqu? finge ignorar que >>> en realidad Aukache, como tantas organizaciones sociales del barrio, >>> se opone rotundamente al tr?fico de drogas? Porqu? omite decir que los >>> apresados salieron en libertad en menos de seis horas, con el solo >>> cargo -falso por lo dem?s- de ?atentado y resistencia a la autoridad?? >>> >>> Rodr?guez Larreta miente e injuria por televisi?n para justificar lo >>> injustificable. Miente tambi?n, y a sabiendas, el Subsecretario de >>> Desarrollo Social, Acevedo, cuando afirma que los compa?eros de >>> Aukache y los integrantes de la Asamblea de San Telmo manten?an como >>> rehenes a las familias. Quienes toman rehenes son los funcionarios de >>> un gobierno que coloca a los humildes entre el fuego que calcina >>> criaturas en Su?rez y Brown, y las patotas que los agreden en las >>> calles. >>> >>> Miente la Ministra de Desarrollo Social Mar?a Eugenia Vidal cuando >>> felicita a sus funcionarios por el ?ejemplar operativo?. Mienten ante >>> todo Mauricio Macri y Gabriela Michetti. A la infamia suman la >>> hipocres?a. Incre?blemente, la infanter?a de la Polic?a Federal en >>> determinado momento reparti? golpes sin interesarse por los gritos de >>> ni?os, beb?s y reci?n nacidos. Para colmo, meti? presos a ocho >>> compa?eros. >>> >>> Ante la resistencia popular frente a sus pol?ticas procesistas, el >>> macrismo recurre al chantaje, la injuria, la mentira y, si el caso lo >>> hace necesario, a sus barrabravas, n?cleo futuro de la polic?a que >>> desea dirigir. Esta banda ven?a entren?ndose ya con pateaduras y >>> violencias diarias contra los sin techo que viv?an en las plazas >>> p?blicas, y llegaron a la cumbre del hero?smo apu?eteando a los >>> docentes en las movilizaciones del a?o pasado. Esta vez volvieron a >>> demostrar su ?eficacia? como patota oficial de los privilegiados. >>> >>> El resultado final, hasta este momento, es sencillo: m?s de 300 >>> habitantes de la ciudad de Buenos Aires ya no tienen hogar; pibes y >>> pibas no saben si podr?n seguir acerc?ndose a los clubes donde, desde >>> hace a?os, ven?an integr?ndose a la sociedad; a dos d?as del inicio de >>> las clases; no saben a qu? escuela asistir?n. Macri y sus acompa?antes >>> sonr?en satisfechos. >>> >>> Ahora, m?s all? de las acciones judiciales que corresponda, pondremos >>> en juego todos los recursos legales y recurriremos a la movilizaci?n >>> de los ciudadanos contra un gobierno decidido a tratarlos como >>> animales. Se adjuntan im?genes identificatorias, y otro material est? >>> disponible a pedido, y ser? presentado ante las autoridades y >>> magistrados pertinentes. >>> >>> Si se permite que el macrismo siga desplegando sus alas, pronto la >>> Ciudad de Buenos Aires ser? un infierno matoneril. Hoy solo lastiman. >>> Ma?ana podr?n matar. Si alguien piensa que las bandas se detendr?n en >>> los m?s pobres, es mejor que se desenga?e. El macrismo es el Proceso >>> con careta humana. >>> >>> Adhesiones: >>> Multisectorial de La Boca - Asoc. Artistas Pl?sticos de Caminito - PC. >>> Congreso Extraordinario - PC la Boca - AG. Vecinos de La Boca - UB >>> Orgullosamente Peronista - Asoc. Gente del Sur - Movimiento Libres del >>> Sur - Movimiento Barrios de Pie - Frente Transversal - Partido de la >>> Victoria - Movimiento Unidad Popular / MUP - Centro de Actividades >>> Sociales / CAS - Asoc. Manos Solidarias - Vecinos autoconvocados del >>> barrio - Cte. Pol?tica 17 de Agosto - Coop. Grafica Patricios - >>> Partido Patria y Pueblo - M.T.L. La Boca - Peronismo 26 de Julio Cap. >>> Fed. - P. Sol - Comedor Los Pibes - Comedor Copitos - Peronismo >>> Militante - UTE - Daniel Portas - Luis D'Elia / FTV - Horacio Gonz?lez >>> - Norberto Galasso - Diputado Nacional Jorge Coscia - Diputado >>> Nacional Hector Recalde - Edgardo Mu?oz / Srio. de Org. del Sind. >>> Dragado y Balizamiento CGT - Luis Farinello - Juventud de UTE - >>> Juventud de la CTA Nacional - Frente Barrial 19 de Diciembre - >>> Agrupaci?n Nacional >>> ?Mart?n Fierro - CTERA Capital - Movimiento Evita Capital - Ana Agulla >>> - JP Evita Capital - C?tedra Nacional de Econom?a Arturo Jauretche - >>> Espacio Social y Comunal COMUNArte - Centro Social y Cultural Rodolfo >>> Puiggros - Agrupaci?n Universitaria La Vertiente - Teatro Catalinas >>> Sur - Centro de Estudios Nacionales Arturo Jauretche - Carolina >>> Listeri / ?FTV Cap. Fed. - Lista de Discusi?n Reconquista Popular - La >>> Vallese / Consejo Directivo de la Fac. de Cs. Sociales - Asociaci?n >>> Juntas y Juntos Somos Mas - Cooperativa El Sol - Cooperativa CAS Ldta. >>> - Cooperativa Manzanas de las Luces - Sec. de Rel. Obrero estudiantil >>> de la FUA - Secretar?a de Extensi?n del CeCSO / UBA - Agrupaci?n >>> Universitaria DEMOS - Agrup. Univ. La Scalabrini ?Fac. de Filosof?a y >>> Letras - Organizaci?n Popular Los Fogoneros - Radio Gr?fica - Marcelo >>> Saravia / Uruguay - Gabriel Fern?ndez / Dir. Se?al Medios y Question >>> Latinoam?rica - Mart?n Garc?a - Eduardo Dimas Berrozpe >>> ?/ Srio. Nac. de Prensa: Asoc. Bancaria (S.E.B.) - Militancia >>> Comunista - Alejandro Fagiani / Srio. de Cultura de la seccional Bs. >>> As. S.E.B. - Radio Ahijuna 94.7 / Quilmes - Alberto Ferraresi - Srio. >>> Gral. de la Asoc. ?Arg. de Farmacia CGT - Mat?as Rodeiro / Docente UBA >>> - Causa Popular / Cordoba - Nora Palancio Zapiola / Periodista - >>> Biblioteca Popular de Barracas - Daniel Sandoval / Pte.: Circulo >>> Bolivariano Jaime Nevares (Neuqu?n) - Agrup. Territorial German Abdala >>> CTA - Foro Permanente por el Derecho a una Vivienda Digna - Centro >>> Comunitario Madre Esperanza - Peronismo Independiente - FAETS (Fed. >>> Arg. Estudiantes de Trabajo Social) - Movimiento Universitario Evita - >>> UES - Enrique Arrosagaray - Dir. Gral. de DDHH- Municipalidad de >>> Avellaneda - Ricardo Forster - Soberan?a y Liberaci?n / Alberto >>> Lapolla, Marcelo Arbit, Jorge Rachid, Ana Lorenzo - Agrupaci?n Causa >>> Nacional - Gabriel H. Rubinstein - Hugo Carpenzano / C?rdoba - Mario >>> Alberto Gurioli >>> ?/ C?rdoba - Soledad Signetto / Rosario - Cecilia Litichever - >>> Jaquelina Anapo - Jos? Mar?a Cavalleri / Salta - Ra?l Isman / Docente >>> - Julieta Guerberof - Juan Francisco Natalizio - Maximiliano Gustavo >>> Vieites - Dora de la Vega / C?rdoba - Creactivar Redes Comunitarias - >>> Diego Oliveira, Fabi?n Cabanellas / Agrupaci?n Juan Jos? Valle >>> (Ensenada) - Sergio Andr?s Traversi / Sindicato Empleados de Comercio >>> - Fernando Adri?n Cosentino / Movimiento Peronista de Base (Alte >>> Brown) >>> >>> Contin?an las firmas? >>> >>> Si Ud. desea expresar su solidaridad env?enos: >>> Nombre completo institucional o nombre y apellido. >>> >>> Contactos: >>> Agrupaci?n Aukache: 4307-1010 >>> Rub?n Rosmarino: 15-6-247-2071 >>> Lorena Vazquez: 15-6-247-5077 >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> ? ? ?Yahoo! Cocina >>> Recetas pr?cticas y comida saludable >>> http://ar.mujer.yahoo.com/cocina/ >>> >>> ________________________________________ >>> >>> SI RECONQUISTA-POPULAR LE RESULTA ?TIL, CONSIDERE LA POSIBILIDAD DE >>> BRINDARLE APOYO FINANCIERO. HAGA UN DEP?SITO EN LA CUENTA 3-72081/5 >>> DEL BANCO FRANC?S, O CONT?CTESE CON recpopad at gmail.com >>> >>> ________________________________________ >>> INFORMACI?N SOBRE LA LISTA Y SUSCRIPCIONES POR V?A INTERNET: >>> ?http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/reconquista-popular. >>> >>> SUSCRIPCI?N POR CORREO ELECTR?NICO: >>> env?e un mensaje escribiendo 'help' >>> en el asunto (no escriba nada en el cuerpo del mensaje) >>> a reconquista-popular-request at lists.econ.utah.edu >>> >>> EL CORREO ELECTR?NICO DE LA PERSONA QUE ADMINISTRA LA LISTA ES: >>> >>> reconquista-popular-admin at lists.econ.utah.edu >>> >>> TODOS LOS MENSAJES DE ESTA LISTA QUEDAN ARCHIVADOS Y PUEDEN CONSULTARSE EN: >>> >>> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/reconquista-popular/ >>> ________________________________________ >>> >>> Lista de correo electr?nico Reconquista-Popular >>> Reconquista-Popular at lists.econ.utah.edu >>> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/reconquista-popular >>> >>> >> >> >> >> > > From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Fri Mar 6 02:33:25 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:33:25 +1100 Subject: [A-List] Pamphlet: Comrades in arms: Women in the Russian Revolution | Links Message-ID: <49B0EDE5.6020503@greenleft.org.au> To mark International Women's Day, /Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ is publishing an excerpt from Resistance Books' /Comrades in arms: Women in the Russian Revolution/, by Kathy Fairfax, and making available the entire pamphlet to download in PDF format. By *Kathy Fairfax* The popular image of the Russian Revolution is of a revolution made by men. Ask the person in the street to name a figure from the Russian Revolution and most could come up with Lenin, Stalin, maybe Trotsky. A few might have heard of Zinoviev, Kamenev or Bukharin. But how many would name Kollontai, Armand or Krupskaya? How many know of the women who helped make revolution in Russia? How many know about the thousands of female Bolsheviks who marched through the streets of Petrograd in 1917 or shouted revolutionary speeches to cheering crowds or wrote and distributed pamphlets calling for revolution? In fact, women revolutionaries inspired the working class the world over and inaugurated a new era in world history. Excerpt and download at http://links.org.au/node/934 Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 From noreply at coha.org Thu Mar 5 09:29:46 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 11:29:46 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Mexican Migration: the Impact of Recession Message-ID: <20090305162921.B000F3E4D34@mx-out.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 5202 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090305/7ad69de7/attachment.txt From suzannedk at gmail.com Fri Mar 6 07:53:13 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 15:53:13 +0100 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: The Last Picture Show In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Suzanne de Kuyper Date: Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 2:32 PM Subject: The Last Picture Show To: crgeditor at yahoo.com Mr. Cook: Along with fine analyses such as yours, seldom are the monetary facts of incresasing United States military spending juxtaposed to the the 'pure' though perhaps incorrect, U.S. fiscal numbers. You do represent those numbers by the differing states of the economy. The time when U.S. steel left and bankruted Pennsylvania, was a time of another movie of what happened to the people . The globalization still pushed by western global leaders, Gordon Brown yesterday I believe, in Congress, began slowly bankrupting Detroit and now all of Michigan just about a few years after Bethlehem steel shut down, thirty years ago. maybe more. GM and the Big Three knew this would happen and prepared for it by increasing their global reach while they made cars that were industrial policy neither ecologically sound nor affordable as the US and the world populations rushed toward the end of cheap oil. As the US lost or spent it's once rich infrastructure of oil, leather, gold, steel, wood, hard core manufacturing, those massive companies also turned to globalization. The U S became, with much fanfare, a Service economy. The entitlement program finances to provide a safety net to millions not available at the time of the Great Depression, came under stress, the seeming solution being to put the control of those massive outlays to U.S. insurance companies and later the Wall Sreet derivatives markets, as regulations were sytematicly shredded. An illuminating study might be to get the real military/industrial complex fiscal numbers from the time of even, perhaps Eisenhower, to now, today, might show a correlation missed by most, the angst level going so high. Lined up in graph form side by side would give priceless information I think. In the 1980's I know the numbers I recommend to be tabulated were being compiled with great difficulty. They showed a shadow government even then of such proportions as to eclipse the regular government to which taxes are paid. The 2001 secrecy acts, the war powers acts are methods by which to manipulate both foeign and domestic markets, foreign and domestic banking, as well as the actual monetary values of the vast derivitive makets, without whose numbers the world wide losses will be impossible to asceratain. A beginning might be to publish as much of the US military budget nembers as is possible in order to study the actual direction of the U S economy as well as it's real direction , perhaps a direction that is only sustainable by world wide military synergies? Us against them? Has that equation any fiscal probity or value? Suzanne Amsterdam -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 3228 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090306/50857170/attachment.txt From nmgoro at gmail.com Fri Mar 6 08:45:47 2009 From: nmgoro at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?N=C3=A9stor_Gorojovsky?=) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 16:45:47 +0100 Subject: [A-List] Solidarity requested (in Spanish, short intro in English) In-Reply-To: References: <2fa158550903051851p68c9d291gc7da4b39a7f41586@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2fa158550903060745g2226cebdv9146016bc335b2ee@mail.gmail.com> The signature of sympathy of Kucinich (clarifying who he is) will cost him NOTHING inside the US, but will be MOST POWERFUL here. We are a bunch of hard headed madmen who are waging a tremendous struggle against the beachhead of the '90s here. These people always are stoned when they see a foreign signature. What would not happen if an US Congressman sent his solidarity to us! What really matters to us is that the signature will be MONSTRUOSLY VISIBLE HERE. Kucinich can be of the greatest help, Michael. BTW: so would you, of course. But -an US Congressman! This would send our enemies to the ropes around the ring! El d?a 6 de marzo de 2009 16:06, Michael Hudson escribi?: > I'm sure he's sympathetic, but what can a U.S. Congressman do? Foreign > countries are almost invisible to the media here. > Michael > > > On 3/5/09 9:51 PM, "N?stor Gorojovsky" wrote: > >> Dear Michael, will return on this issue next week. >> >> >> What I sorely need now is solidarity in our struggle with this Macri guy. >> >> Do you think Kucinich would endorse our petition? >> >> As you may guess, it would be a hell of a support if we could put an >> US Congressman against a local pro-US Quisling. >> >> Best. >> >> El d?a 5 de marzo de 2009 19:23, Michael Hudson >> escribi?: >>> Nestor, Iceland is near to repudiating its debt, after England used >>> anti-terrorist laws to seize its assets in Britain. >>> I'm in charge of drafting the international-law grounds for debt >>> repudiation. Also, looking for other governments as allies -- even to the >>> point of withdrawing from the IMF and World Bank. >>> Any suggestions on how to link up with Argentina's experience in this >>> area? >>> Michael Hudson >>> >>> >>> On 3/5/09 4:43 PM, "N?stor Gorojovsky" wrote: >>> >>>> The Mauricio Macri regime in Buenos Aires City is launching an ethnic >>>> and social cleansing campaign by means of illegal gangs of thugs, >>>> hooligans on pay by the local government, who "clean away" settlers >>>> in non-owned nor rented buildings. >>>> >>>> Drug dealing is one of the pretexts used. >>>> >>>> Comrades of Patria y Pueblo and the Aukache Social Organization are >>>> confronting this extreme right wing Ayn Randian despot. Every support >>>> will be welcome. Some of our comrades, and other comrades, have been >>>> accused of dealing in drugs while they defended 130 families from >>>> these illegal evictions. Once in the Police Station, they were >>>> released immediately but the Macri Chief of Cabinet has been claiming >>>> on TV that they were sellers of "paco", a most mortal and cheap form >>>> of cocaine designed for children... >>>> >>>> Films and photographs are available upon request at AgrupAukache at gmail.com >>>> >>>> Those who can help, please send your signature to the following >>>> statement of solidarity to lorenaaukache at yahoo.com.ar >>>> >>>> **************************** >>>> >>>> La VERDAD sobre el DESALOJO de SAN TELMO (Av. Paseo Colon) >>>> >>>> >>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>> Los abajo firmantes nos solidarizamos con la Agrupaci?n Aukache, >>>> patoteada por los grupos de tareas de Macri/Michetti y calumniada por >>>> el Jefe de Gabinete de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodr?guez >>>> Larreta. M?s de diez a?os de trayectoria y lucha por los desamparados >>>> del barrio de La Boca constituyen un historial de dignidad que >>>> dif?cilmente pueda esgrimir uno solo de los ministros del actual >>>> gobierno de la Ciudad. >>>> >>>> VIOLENTO DESALOJO DE M?S 100 FAMILIAS EN PASEO COLON 1588 >>>> >>>> QUE NADIE SE EQUIVOQUE: LOS BARRABRAVAS DE MACRI Y MICHETTI >>>> SE PREPARAN PARA ARREMETER CONTRA LA POBLACION DE LA CIUDAD >>>> >>>> El macrismo mostr? sus intenciones el viernes 27 de febrero en la >>>> violenta y arbitraria expulsi?n de los residentes de Paseo Colon 1588. >>>> Los barrabravas de la UCEP, ?fuerza de choque anticirujas? como la >>>> defini? ?Perfil?, irrumpieron a las 5 de la ma?ana aduciendo una orden >>>> administrativa de su jefe, el Ministro de Espacio P?blico Juan Pablo >>>> Piccardo, y del Ministerio de Justicia y Seguridad. La instrucci?n no >>>> los habilitaba para matonear ni expulsar a nadie, pero cumplieron a >>>> las trompadas el designio del ni?o bien de Barrio Parque y su ladero >>>> Horacio Rodr?guez Larreta: ?limpiar? de pobres una vivienda ocupada, >>>> sin ofrecer alternativa habitacional ni, mucho menos, un plan oficial >>>> de promoci?n del empleo productivo para terminar con la indigencia. >>>> >>>> Esta brutal violencia se inicia con una campa?a de amedrentamiento y >>>> extorsi?n, acompa?ada de amenazas de muerte telef?nicas. Ya el >>>> mi?rcoles, personal del Ministerio de Desarrollo Social empez? a >>>> difundir entre las familias la falsa noticia de que exist?a una orden >>>> judicial de desalojo, que se har?a efectiva el viernes. Los gestores >>>> del macrismo ofrec?an una rid?cula e insuficiente suma a condici?n de >>>> retirarse del lugar donde estaban viviendo. >>>> >>>> El apriete se fue endureciendo con el paso de las horas, pero enfrent? >>>> resistencia masiva. Solo cedieron a la extorsi?n menos de 20 familias. >>>> El resto exigi? la orden judicial para permitir el ingreso del >>>> funcionariado municipal. Por medio de una cadena medi?tica >>>> sugerentemente uniforme, el gobierno municipal, a trav?s de ?Despacito >>>> y en Silencio? Horacio Rodr?guez Larreta intent? difamar a sus >>>> victimas y a los apresados, acus?ndolos de vender drogas. >>>> >>>> Si el objetivo era terminar con el tr?fico, que las familias >>>> denunciaban como v?ctimas que eran, ?por qu? no termin? el operativo >>>> el mi?rcoles, cuando se meti? presos a los pocos malvivientes que todo >>>> el mundo identificaba salvo, notablemente, las autoridades municipales >>>> y del orden? Porqu? Rodr?guez Larreta acusa de traficantes a >>>> integrantes de Aukache y a vecinos del lugar? Porqu? finge ignorar que >>>> en realidad Aukache, como tantas organizaciones sociales del barrio, >>>> se opone rotundamente al tr?fico de drogas? Porqu? omite decir que los >>>> apresados salieron en libertad en menos de seis horas, con el solo >>>> cargo -falso por lo dem?s- de ?atentado y resistencia a la autoridad?? >>>> >>>> Rodr?guez Larreta miente e injuria por televisi?n para justificar lo >>>> injustificable. Miente tambi?n, y a sabiendas, el Subsecretario de >>>> Desarrollo Social, Acevedo, cuando afirma que los compa?eros de >>>> Aukache y los integrantes de la Asamblea de San Telmo manten?an como >>>> rehenes a las familias. Quienes toman rehenes son los funcionarios de >>>> un gobierno que coloca a los humildes entre el fuego que calcina >>>> criaturas en Su?rez y Brown, y las patotas que los agreden en las >>>> calles. >>>> >>>> Miente la Ministra de Desarrollo Social Mar?a Eugenia Vidal cuando >>>> felicita a sus funcionarios por el ?ejemplar operativo?. Mienten ante >>>> todo Mauricio Macri y Gabriela Michetti. A la infamia suman la >>>> hipocres?a. Incre?blemente, la infanter?a de la Polic?a Federal en >>>> determinado momento reparti? golpes sin interesarse por los gritos de >>>> ni?os, beb?s y reci?n nacidos. Para colmo, meti? presos a ocho >>>> compa?eros. >>>> >>>> Ante la resistencia popular frente a sus pol?ticas procesistas, el >>>> macrismo recurre al chantaje, la injuria, la mentira y, si el caso lo >>>> hace necesario, a sus barrabravas, n?cleo futuro de la polic?a que >>>> desea dirigir. Esta banda ven?a entren?ndose ya con pateaduras y >>>> violencias diarias contra los sin techo que viv?an en las plazas >>>> p?blicas, y llegaron a la cumbre del hero?smo apu?eteando a los >>>> docentes en las movilizaciones del a?o pasado. Esta vez volvieron a >>>> demostrar su ?eficacia? como patota oficial de los privilegiados. >>>> >>>> El resultado final, hasta este momento, es sencillo: m?s de 300 >>>> habitantes de la ciudad de Buenos Aires ya no tienen hogar; pibes y >>>> pibas no saben si podr?n seguir acerc?ndose a los clubes donde, desde >>>> hace a?os, ven?an integr?ndose a la sociedad; a dos d?as del inicio de >>>> las clases; no saben a qu? escuela asistir?n. Macri y sus acompa?antes >>>> sonr?en satisfechos. >>>> >>>> Ahora, m?s all? de las acciones judiciales que corresponda, pondremos >>>> en juego todos los recursos legales y recurriremos a la movilizaci?n >>>> de los ciudadanos contra un gobierno decidido a tratarlos como >>>> animales. Se adjuntan im?genes identificatorias, y otro material est? >>>> disponible a pedido, y ser? presentado ante las autoridades y >>>> magistrados pertinentes. >>>> >>>> Si se permite que el macrismo siga desplegando sus alas, pronto la >>>> Ciudad de Buenos Aires ser? un infierno matoneril. Hoy solo lastiman. >>>> Ma?ana podr?n matar. Si alguien piensa que las bandas se detendr?n en >>>> los m?s pobres, es mejor que se desenga?e. El macrismo es el Proceso >>>> con careta humana. >>>> >>>> Adhesiones: >>>> Multisectorial de La Boca - Asoc. Artistas Pl?sticos de Caminito - PC. >>>> Congreso Extraordinario - PC la Boca - AG. Vecinos de La Boca - UB >>>> Orgullosamente Peronista - Asoc. Gente del Sur - Movimiento Libres del >>>> Sur - Movimiento Barrios de Pie - Frente Transversal - Partido de la >>>> Victoria - Movimiento Unidad Popular / MUP - Centro de Actividades >>>> Sociales / CAS - Asoc. Manos Solidarias - Vecinos autoconvocados del >>>> barrio - Cte. Pol?tica 17 de Agosto - Coop. Grafica Patricios - >>>> Partido Patria y Pueblo - M.T.L. La Boca - Peronismo 26 de Julio Cap. >>>> Fed. - P. Sol - Comedor Los Pibes - Comedor Copitos - Peronismo >>>> Militante - UTE - Daniel Portas - Luis D'Elia / FTV - Horacio Gonz?lez >>>> - Norberto Galasso - Diputado Nacional Jorge Coscia - Diputado >>>> Nacional Hector Recalde - Edgardo Mu?oz / Srio. de Org. del Sind. >>>> Dragado y Balizamiento CGT - Luis Farinello - Juventud de UTE - >>>> Juventud de la CTA Nacional - Frente Barrial 19 de Diciembre - >>>> Agrupaci?n Nacional >>>> Mart?n Fierro - CTERA Capital - Movimiento Evita Capital - Ana Agulla >>>> - JP Evita Capital - C?tedra Nacional de Econom?a Arturo Jauretche - >>>> Espacio Social y Comunal COMUNArte - Centro Social y Cultural Rodolfo >>>> Puiggros - Agrupaci?n Universitaria La Vertiente - Teatro Catalinas >>>> Sur - Centro de Estudios Nacionales Arturo Jauretche - Carolina >>>> Listeri / FTV Cap. Fed. - Lista de Discusi?n Reconquista Popular - La >>>> Vallese / Consejo Directivo de la Fac. de Cs. Sociales - Asociaci?n >>>> Juntas y Juntos Somos Mas - Cooperativa El Sol - Cooperativa CAS Ldta. >>>> - Cooperativa Manzanas de las Luces - Sec. de Rel. Obrero estudiantil >>>> de la FUA - Secretar?a de Extensi?n del CeCSO / UBA - Agrupaci?n >>>> Universitaria DEMOS - Agrup. Univ. La Scalabrini Fac. de Filosof?a y >>>> Letras - Organizaci?n Popular Los Fogoneros - Radio Gr?fica - Marcelo >>>> Saravia / Uruguay - Gabriel Fern?ndez / Dir. Se?al Medios y Question >>>> Latinoam?rica - Mart?n Garc?a - Eduardo Dimas Berrozpe >>>> / Srio. Nac. de Prensa: Asoc. Bancaria (S.E.B.) - Militancia >>>> Comunista - Alejandro Fagiani / Srio. de Cultura de la seccional Bs. >>>> As. S.E.B. - Radio Ahijuna 94.7 / Quilmes - Alberto Ferraresi - Srio. >>>> Gral. de la Asoc. Arg. de Farmacia CGT - Mat?as Rodeiro / Docente UBA >>>> - Causa Popular / Cordoba - Nora Palancio Zapiola / Periodista - >>>> Biblioteca Popular de Barracas - Daniel Sandoval / Pte.: Circulo >>>> Bolivariano Jaime Nevares (Neuqu?n) - Agrup. Territorial German Abdala >>>> CTA - Foro Permanente por el Derecho a una Vivienda Digna - Centro >>>> Comunitario Madre Esperanza - Peronismo Independiente - FAETS (Fed. >>>> Arg. Estudiantes de Trabajo Social) - Movimiento Universitario Evita - >>>> UES - Enrique Arrosagaray - Dir. Gral. de DDHH- Municipalidad de >>>> Avellaneda - Ricardo Forster - Soberan?a y Liberaci?n / Alberto >>>> Lapolla, Marcelo Arbit, Jorge Rachid, Ana Lorenzo - Agrupaci?n Causa >>>> Nacional - Gabriel H. Rubinstein - Hugo Carpenzano / C?rdoba - Mario >>>> Alberto Gurioli >>>> / C?rdoba - Soledad Signetto / Rosario - Cecilia Litichever - >>>> Jaquelina Anapo - Jos? Mar?a Cavalleri / Salta - Ra?l Isman / Docente >>>> - Julieta Guerberof - Juan Francisco Natalizio - Maximiliano Gustavo >>>> Vieites - Dora de la Vega / C?rdoba - Creactivar Redes Comunitarias - >>>> Diego Oliveira, Fabi?n Cabanellas / Agrupaci?n Juan Jos? Valle >>>> (Ensenada) - Sergio Andr?s Traversi / Sindicato Empleados de Comercio >>>> - Fernando Adri?n Cosentino / Movimiento Peronista de Base (Alte >>>> Brown) >>>> >>>> Contin?an las firmas? >>>> >>>> Si Ud. desea expresar su solidaridad env?enos: >>>> Nombre completo institucional o nombre y apellido. >>>> >>>> Contactos: >>>> Agrupaci?n Aukache: 4307-1010 >>>> Rub?n Rosmarino: 15-6-247-2071 >>>> Lorena Vazquez: 15-6-247-5077 >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Yahoo! Cocina >>>> Recetas pr?cticas y comida saludable >>>> http://ar.mujer.yahoo.com/cocina/ >>>> >>>> ________________________________________ >>>> >>>> SI RECONQUISTA-POPULAR LE RESULTA ?TIL, CONSIDERE LA POSIBILIDAD DE >>>> BRINDARLE APOYO FINANCIERO. HAGA UN DEP?SITO EN LA CUENTA 3-72081/5 >>>> DEL BANCO FRANC?S, O CONT?CTESE CON recpopad at gmail.com >>>> >>>> ________________________________________ >>>> INFORMACI?N SOBRE LA LISTA Y SUSCRIPCIONES POR V?A INTERNET: >>>> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/reconquista-popular. >>>> >>>> SUSCRIPCI?N POR CORREO ELECTR?NICO: >>>> env?e un mensaje escribiendo 'help' >>>> en el asunto (no escriba nada en el cuerpo del mensaje) >>>> a reconquista-popular-request at lists.econ.utah.edu >>>> >>>> EL CORREO ELECTR?NICO DE LA PERSONA QUE ADMINISTRA LA LISTA ES: >>>> >>>> reconquista-popular-admin at lists.econ.utah.edu >>>> >>>> TODOS LOS MENSAJES DE ESTA LISTA QUEDAN ARCHIVADOS Y PUEDEN CONSULTARSE EN: >>>> >>>> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/reconquista-popular/ >>>> ________________________________________ >>>> >>>> Lista de correo electr?nico Reconquista-Popular >>>> Reconquista-Popular at lists.econ.utah.edu >>>> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/reconquista-popular >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >> >> > > > > -- N?stor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autor?a From michael.hudson at earthlink.net Fri Mar 6 11:53:23 2009 From: michael.hudson at earthlink.net (Michael Hudson) Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:53:23 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Solidarity requested (in Spanish, short intro in English) In-Reply-To: <2fa158550903060745g2226cebdv9146016bc335b2ee@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: OK, Send me what you want me to forward to him, and I'll do it. Note: I'm in New York and he's in Cleveland and Washington. All I can do is e-mail him -- and talk by phone to his team. Michael On 3/6/09 10:45 AM, "N?stor Gorojovsky" wrote: > The signature of sympathy of Kucinich (clarifying who he is) will cost > him NOTHING inside the US, but will be MOST POWERFUL here. We are a > bunch of hard headed madmen who are waging a tremendous struggle > against the beachhead of the '90s here. These people always are stoned > when they see a foreign signature. What would not happen if an US > Congressman sent his solidarity to us! What really matters to us is > that the signature will be MONSTRUOSLY VISIBLE HERE. Kucinich can be > of the greatest help, Michael. > > BTW: so would you, of course. > > But -an US Congressman! > > This would send our enemies to the ropes around the ring! > > El d?a 6 de marzo de 2009 16:06, Michael Hudson > escribi?: >> I'm sure he's sympathetic, but what can a U.S. Congressman do? Foreign >> countries are almost invisible to the media here. >> Michael >> >> >> On 3/5/09 9:51 PM, "N?stor Gorojovsky" wrote: >> >>> Dear Michael, will return on this issue next week. >>> >>> >>> What I sorely need now is solidarity in our struggle with this Macri guy. >>> >>> Do you think Kucinich would endorse our petition? >>> >>> As you may guess, it would be a hell of a support if we could put an >>> US Congressman against a local pro-US Quisling. >>> >>> Best. >>> >>> El d?a 5 de marzo de 2009 19:23, Michael Hudson >>> escribi?: >>>> Nestor, Iceland is near to repudiating its debt, after England used >>>> anti-terrorist laws to seize its assets in Britain. >>>> I'm in charge of drafting the international-law grounds for debt >>>> repudiation. Also, looking for other governments as allies -- even to the >>>> point of withdrawing from the IMF and World Bank. >>>> Any suggestions on how to link up with Argentina's experience in this >>>> area? >>>> Michael Hudson >>>> >>>> >>>> On 3/5/09 4:43 PM, "N?stor Gorojovsky" wrote: >>>> >>>>> The Mauricio Macri regime in Buenos Aires City is launching an ethnic >>>>> and social cleansing campaign by means of illegal gangs of thugs, >>>>> hooligans on pay by the local government, who "clean away" settlers >>>>> in non-owned nor rented buildings. >>>>> >>>>> Drug dealing is one of the pretexts used. >>>>> >>>>> Comrades of Patria y Pueblo and the Aukache Social Organization are >>>>> confronting this extreme right wing Ayn Randian despot. Every support >>>>> will be welcome. Some of our comrades, and other comrades, have been >>>>> accused of dealing in drugs while they defended 130 families from >>>>> these illegal evictions. Once in the Police Station, they were >>>>> released immediately but the Macri Chief of Cabinet has been claiming >>>>> on TV that they were sellers of "paco", a most mortal and cheap form >>>>> of cocaine designed for children... >>>>> >>>>> Films and photographs are available upon request at AgrupAukache at gmail.com >>>>> >>>>> Those who can help, please send your signature to the following >>>>> statement of solidarity to lorenaaukache at yahoo.com.ar >>>>> >>>>> **************************** >>>>> >>>>> La VERDAD sobre el DESALOJO de SAN TELMO (Av. Paseo Colon) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >>>>> Los abajo firmantes nos solidarizamos con la Agrupaci?n Aukache, >>>>> patoteada por los grupos de tareas de Macri/Michetti y calumniada por >>>>> el Jefe de Gabinete de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodr?guez >>>>> Larreta. M?s de diez a?os de trayectoria y lucha por los desamparados >>>>> del barrio de La Boca constituyen un historial de dignidad que >>>>> dif?cilmente pueda esgrimir uno solo de los ministros del actual >>>>> gobierno de la Ciudad. >>>>> >>>>> VIOLENTO DESALOJO DE M?S 100 FAMILIAS EN PASEO COLON 1588 >>>>> >>>>> QUE NADIE SE EQUIVOQUE: LOS BARRABRAVAS DE MACRI Y MICHETTI >>>>> SE PREPARAN PARA ARREMETER CONTRA LA POBLACION DE LA CIUDAD >>>>> >>>>> El macrismo mostr? sus intenciones el viernes 27 de febrero en la >>>>> violenta y arbitraria expulsi?n de los residentes de Paseo Colon 1588. >>>>> Los barrabravas de la UCEP, ?fuerza de choque anticirujas? como la >>>>> defini? ?Perfil?, irrumpieron a las 5 de la ma?ana aduciendo una orden >>>>> administrativa de su jefe, el Ministro de Espacio P?blico Juan Pablo >>>>> Piccardo, y del Ministerio de Justicia y Seguridad. La instrucci?n no >>>>> los habilitaba para matonear ni expulsar a nadie, pero cumplieron a >>>>> las trompadas el designio del ni?o bien de Barrio Parque y su ladero >>>>> Horacio Rodr?guez Larreta: ?limpiar? de pobres una vivienda ocupada, >>>>> sin ofrecer alternativa habitacional ni, mucho menos, un plan oficial >>>>> de promoci?n del empleo productivo para terminar con la indigencia. >>>>> >>>>> Esta brutal violencia se inicia con una campa?a de amedrentamiento y >>>>> extorsi?n, acompa?ada de amenazas de muerte telef?nicas. Ya el >>>>> mi?rcoles, personal del Ministerio de Desarrollo Social empez? a >>>>> difundir entre las familias la falsa noticia de que exist?a una orden >>>>> judicial de desalojo, que se har?a efectiva el viernes. Los gestores >>>>> del macrismo ofrec?an una rid?cula e insuficiente suma a condici?n de >>>>> retirarse del lugar donde estaban viviendo. >>>>> >>>>> El apriete se fue endureciendo con el paso de las horas, pero enfrent? >>>>> resistencia masiva. Solo cedieron a la extorsi?n menos de 20 familias. >>>>> El resto exigi? la orden judicial para permitir el ingreso del >>>>> funcionariado municipal. Por medio de una cadena medi?tica >>>>> sugerentemente uniforme, el gobierno municipal, a trav?s de ?Despacito >>>>> y en Silencio? Horacio Rodr?guez Larreta intent? difamar a sus >>>>> victimas y a los apresados, acus?ndolos de vender drogas. >>>>> >>>>> Si el objetivo era terminar con el tr?fico, que las familias >>>>> denunciaban como v?ctimas que eran, ?por qu? no termin? el operativo >>>>> el mi?rcoles, cuando se meti? presos a los pocos malvivientes que todo >>>>> el mundo identificaba salvo, notablemente, las autoridades municipales >>>>> y del orden? Porqu? Rodr?guez Larreta acusa de traficantes a >>>>> integrantes de Aukache y a vecinos del lugar? Porqu? finge ignorar que >>>>> en realidad Aukache, como tantas organizaciones sociales del barrio, >>>>> se opone rotundamente al tr?fico de drogas? Porqu? omite decir que los >>>>> apresados salieron en libertad en menos de seis horas, con el solo >>>>> cargo -falso por lo dem?s- de ?atentado y resistencia a la autoridad?? >>>>> >>>>> Rodr?guez Larreta miente e injuria por televisi?n para justificar lo >>>>> injustificable. Miente tambi?n, y a sabiendas, el Subsecretario de >>>>> Desarrollo Social, Acevedo, cuando afirma que los compa?eros de >>>>> Aukache y los integrantes de la Asamblea de San Telmo manten?an como >>>>> rehenes a las familias. Quienes toman rehenes son los funcionarios de >>>>> un gobierno que coloca a los humildes entre el fuego que calcina >>>>> criaturas en Su?rez y Brown, y las patotas que los agreden en las >>>>> calles. >>>>> >>>>> Miente la Ministra de Desarrollo Social Mar?a Eugenia Vidal cuando >>>>> felicita a sus funcionarios por el ?ejemplar operativo?. Mienten ante >>>>> todo Mauricio Macri y Gabriela Michetti. A la infamia suman la >>>>> hipocres?a. Incre?blemente, la infanter?a de la Polic?a Federal en >>>>> determinado momento reparti? golpes sin interesarse por los gritos de >>>>> ni?os, beb?s y reci?n nacidos. Para colmo, meti? presos a ocho >>>>> compa?eros. >>>>> >>>>> Ante la resistencia popular frente a sus pol?ticas procesistas, el >>>>> macrismo recurre al chantaje, la injuria, la mentira y, si el caso lo >>>>> hace necesario, a sus barrabravas, n?cleo futuro de la polic?a que >>>>> desea dirigir. Esta banda ven?a entren?ndose ya con pateaduras y >>>>> violencias diarias contra los sin techo que viv?an en las plazas >>>>> p?blicas, y llegaron a la cumbre del hero?smo apu?eteando a los >>>>> docentes en las movilizaciones del a?o pasado. Esta vez volvieron a >>>>> demostrar su ?eficacia? como patota oficial de los privilegiados. >>>>> >>>>> El resultado final, hasta este momento, es sencillo: m?s de 300 >>>>> habitantes de la ciudad de Buenos Aires ya no tienen hogar; pibes y >>>>> pibas no saben si podr?n seguir acerc?ndose a los clubes donde, desde >>>>> hace a?os, ven?an integr?ndose a la sociedad; a dos d?as del inicio de >>>>> las clases; no saben a qu? escuela asistir?n. Macri y sus acompa?antes >>>>> sonr?en satisfechos. >>>>> >>>>> Ahora, m?s all? de las acciones judiciales que corresponda, pondremos >>>>> en juego todos los recursos legales y recurriremos a la movilizaci?n >>>>> de los ciudadanos contra un gobierno decidido a tratarlos como >>>>> animales. Se adjuntan im?genes identificatorias, y otro material est? >>>>> disponible a pedido, y ser? presentado ante las autoridades y >>>>> magistrados pertinentes. >>>>> >>>>> Si se permite que el macrismo siga desplegando sus alas, pronto la >>>>> Ciudad de Buenos Aires ser? un infierno matoneril. Hoy solo lastiman. >>>>> Ma?ana podr?n matar. Si alguien piensa que las bandas se detendr?n en >>>>> los m?s pobres, es mejor que se desenga?e. El macrismo es el Proceso >>>>> con careta humana. >>>>> >>>>> Adhesiones: >>>>> Multisectorial de La Boca - Asoc. Artistas Pl?sticos de Caminito - PC. >>>>> Congreso Extraordinario - PC la Boca - AG. Vecinos de La Boca - UB >>>>> Orgullosamente Peronista - Asoc. Gente del Sur - Movimiento Libres del >>>>> Sur - Movimiento Barrios de Pie - Frente Transversal - Partido de la >>>>> Victoria - Movimiento Unidad Popular / MUP - Centro de Actividades >>>>> Sociales / CAS - Asoc. Manos Solidarias - Vecinos autoconvocados del >>>>> barrio - Cte. Pol?tica 17 de Agosto - Coop. Grafica Patricios - >>>>> Partido Patria y Pueblo - M.T.L. La Boca - Peronismo 26 de Julio Cap. >>>>> Fed. - P. Sol - Comedor Los Pibes - Comedor Copitos - Peronismo >>>>> Militante - UTE - Daniel Portas - Luis D'Elia / FTV - Horacio Gonz?lez >>>>> - Norberto Galasso - Diputado Nacional Jorge Coscia - Diputado >>>>> Nacional Hector Recalde - Edgardo Mu?oz / Srio. de Org. del Sind. >>>>> Dragado y Balizamiento CGT - Luis Farinello - Juventud de UTE - >>>>> Juventud de la CTA Nacional - Frente Barrial 19 de Diciembre - >>>>> Agrupaci?n Nacional >>>>> Mart?n Fierro - CTERA Capital - Movimiento Evita Capital - Ana Agulla >>>>> - JP Evita Capital - C?tedra Nacional de Econom?a Arturo Jauretche - >>>>> Espacio Social y Comunal COMUNArte - Centro Social y Cultural Rodolfo >>>>> Puiggros - Agrupaci?n Universitaria La Vertiente - Teatro Catalinas >>>>> Sur - Centro de Estudios Nacionales Arturo Jauretche - Carolina >>>>> Listeri / FTV Cap. Fed. - Lista de Discusi?n Reconquista Popular - La >>>>> Vallese / Consejo Directivo de la Fac. de Cs. Sociales - Asociaci?n >>>>> Juntas y Juntos Somos Mas - Cooperativa El Sol - Cooperativa CAS Ldta. >>>>> - Cooperativa Manzanas de las Luces - Sec. de Rel. Obrero estudiantil >>>>> de la FUA - Secretar?a de Extensi?n del CeCSO / UBA - Agrupaci?n >>>>> Universitaria DEMOS - Agrup. Univ. La Scalabrini Fac. de Filosof?a y >>>>> Letras - Organizaci?n Popular Los Fogoneros - Radio Gr?fica - Marcelo >>>>> Saravia / Uruguay - Gabriel Fern?ndez / Dir. Se?al Medios y Question >>>>> Latinoam?rica - Mart?n Garc?a - Eduardo Dimas Berrozpe >>>>> / Srio. Nac. de Prensa: Asoc. Bancaria (S.E.B.) - Militancia >>>>> Comunista - Alejandro Fagiani / Srio. de Cultura de la seccional Bs. >>>>> As. S.E.B. - Radio Ahijuna 94.7 / Quilmes - Alberto Ferraresi - Srio. >>>>> Gral. de la Asoc. Arg. de Farmacia CGT - Mat?as Rodeiro / Docente UBA >>>>> - Causa Popular / Cordoba - Nora Palancio Zapiola / Periodista - >>>>> Biblioteca Popular de Barracas - Daniel Sandoval / Pte.: Circulo >>>>> Bolivariano Jaime Nevares (Neuqu?n) - Agrup. Territorial German Abdala >>>>> CTA - Foro Permanente por el Derecho a una Vivienda Digna - Centro >>>>> Comunitario Madre Esperanza - Peronismo Independiente - FAETS (Fed. >>>>> Arg. Estudiantes de Trabajo Social) - Movimiento Universitario Evita - >>>>> UES - Enrique Arrosagaray - Dir. Gral. de DDHH- Municipalidad de >>>>> Avellaneda - Ricardo Forster - Soberan?a y Liberaci?n / Alberto >>>>> Lapolla, Marcelo Arbit, Jorge Rachid, Ana Lorenzo - Agrupaci?n Causa >>>>> Nacional - Gabriel H. Rubinstein - Hugo Carpenzano / C?rdoba - Mario >>>>> Alberto Gurioli >>>>> / C?rdoba - Soledad Signetto / Rosario - Cecilia Litichever - >>>>> Jaquelina Anapo - Jos? Mar?a Cavalleri / Salta - Ra?l Isman / Docente >>>>> - Julieta Guerberof - Juan Francisco Natalizio - Maximiliano Gustavo >>>>> Vieites - Dora de la Vega / C?rdoba - Creactivar Redes Comunitarias - >>>>> Diego Oliveira, Fabi?n Cabanellas / Agrupaci?n Juan Jos? Valle >>>>> (Ensenada) - Sergio Andr?s Traversi / Sindicato Empleados de Comercio >>>>> - Fernando Adri?n Cosentino / Movimiento Peronista de Base (Alte >>>>> Brown) >>>>> >>>>> Contin?an las firmas? >>>>> >>>>> Si Ud. desea expresar su solidaridad env?enos: >>>>> Nombre completo institucional o nombre y apellido. >>>>> >>>>> Contactos: >>>>> Agrupaci?n Aukache: 4307-1010 >>>>> Rub?n Rosmarino: 15-6-247-2071 >>>>> Lorena Vazquez: 15-6-247-5077 >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Yahoo! Cocina >>>>> Recetas pr?cticas y comida saludable >>>>> http://ar.mujer.yahoo.com/cocina/ >>>>> >>>>> ________________________________________ >>>>> >>>>> SI RECONQUISTA-POPULAR LE RESULTA ?TIL, CONSIDERE LA POSIBILIDAD DE >>>>> BRINDARLE APOYO FINANCIERO. HAGA UN DEP?SITO EN LA CUENTA 3-72081/5 >>>>> DEL BANCO FRANC?S, O CONT?CTESE CON recpopad at gmail.com >>>>> >>>>> ________________________________________ >>>>> INFORMACI?N SOBRE LA LISTA Y SUSCRIPCIONES POR V?A INTERNET: >>>>> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/reconquista-popular. >>>>> >>>>> SUSCRIPCI?N POR CORREO ELECTR?NICO: >>>>> env?e un mensaje escribiendo 'help' >>>>> en el asunto (no escriba nada en el cuerpo del mensaje) >>>>> a reconquista-popular-request at lists.econ.utah.edu >>>>> >>>>> EL CORREO ELECTR?NICO DE LA PERSONA QUE ADMINISTRA LA LISTA ES: >>>>> >>>>> reconquista-popular-admin at lists.econ.utah.edu >>>>> >>>>> TODOS LOS MENSAJES DE ESTA LISTA QUEDAN ARCHIVADOS Y PUEDEN CONSULTARSE >>>>> EN: >>>>> >>>>> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/reconquista-popular/ >>>>> ________________________________________ >>>>> >>>>> Lista de correo electr?nico Reconquista-Popular >>>>> Reconquista-Popular at lists.econ.utah.edu >>>>> http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/reconquista-popular >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >> >> >> >> > > From rasherrs at eircom.net Fri Mar 6 14:36:05 2009 From: rasherrs at eircom.net (Paddy Hackett) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 21:36:05 -0000 Subject: [A-List] BATU MEMBERS OCCUPY UNION HEAD QUARTERS Message-ID: <001601c99ea3$8f092990$ad1b7cb0$@net> BATU MEMBERS OCCUPY UNION HEAD QUARTERS At 7pm this evening twenty members of the Building and Allied Trades' Union (BATU) occupied the union's head office at 13 Blessington Street, Dublin 7. The members, bricklayers and carpenters, said they are taking their building back as they have no confidence in the present leadership. They are joined outside the outside by many other members who are ensuring they have both support and provisions. Over the past number of months members have been disgusted at the actions of the union's General Secretary Paddy O'Shaughnessy who along with three others has passed the picket line of striking union staff daily. The strike which has gone on now for four and a half months has brought into sharp focus how out of touch the leadership are. Members are also very angry that the General Secretary has refused to co-operate with the call by union trustees for a full audit of the unions finances following concerns of financial irregularity. Dan O'Connell, a Chairman of the union's Carpentry Branch and one of those engaged in the occupation said tonight "we are taking back our building as a first step to putting the union back in the hands of members. We represent a majority of rank and file BATU members who are sickened by the actions of the General Secretary and others and by their failure to build the union at a time when construction workers are under ferocious attack. We call on members to turn up at the head office tomorrow to support the occupation and our campaign to reclaim our union." Those occupying the building have said they will not leave until the General Secretary Paddy O'Shaughnessy resigns as a first step to rebuilding BATU as the fighting democratic union it once was. For more information contact: Dan O'Connell 0877709068 or BATU Head Office at 01 8301911 From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Mar 6 16:35:02 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 07 Mar 2009 08:35:02 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Playing the Banking Game Message-ID: <49B1B326.8020102@ashisuto.co.jp> How Cash Starved States Can Create their Own Credit by Ellen Brown Global Research (March 03 2009) "He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator". --- Francis Bacon On February 19 2009, California narrowly escaped bankruptcy, when Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger put on his Terminator hat and held the state senate in lockdown mode until they signed a very controversial budget {1}. If the vote had failed, the state was going to be reduced to paying its employees in IOUs. California avoided bankruptcy for the time being, but 46 of fifty states are insolvent and could be filing Chapter Nine bankruptcy proceedings in the next two years {2}. One of the four states that is not insolvent is an unlikely candidate for the distinction - North Dakota. As Michigan management consultant Charles Fleetham observed last month in an article distributed to his local media: "North Dakota is a sparsely populated state of less than 700,000, known for cold weather, isolated farmers and a hit movie - Fargo. Yet, for some reason it defies the real estate cliche of location, location, location. Since 2000, the state's GNP has grown 56%, personal income has grown 43%, and wages have grown 34%. This year the state has a budget surplus of $1.2 billion!" What does the State of North Dakota have that other states don't? The answer seems to be: its own bank. In fact, North Dakota has the only state-owned bank in the nation. The state legislature established the Bank of North Dakota in 1919. Fleetham writes that the bank was set up to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men. By law, the state must deposit all its funds in the bank, and the state guarantees its deposits. Three elected officials oversee the bank: the governor, the attorney general, and the commissioner of agriculture. The bank's stated mission is to deliver sound financial services that promote agriculture, commerce and industry in North Dakota. The bank operates as a bankers' bank, partnering with private banks to loan money to farmers, real estate developers, schools and small businesses. It loans money to students (over 184,000 outstanding loans), and it purchases municipal bonds from public institutions. Still, you may ask, how does that solve the solvency problem? Isn't the state still limited to spending only the money it has? The answer is no. Certified, card-carrying bankers are allowed to do something nobody else can do: they can create "credit" with accounting entries on their books. A License to Create Money Under the "fractional reserve" lending system, banks are allowed to extend credit (create money as loans) in a sum equal to many times their deposit base. Congressman Jerry Voorhis, writing in 1973, explained it like this: "[F]or every $1 or $1.50 which people - or the government - deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits. It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1 or a little more in reserve to back it up". {3} That banks actually create money with accounting entries was confirmed in a revealing booklet published by the Chicago Federal Reserve titled Modern Money Mechanics {2}. The booklet was periodically revised until 1992, when it had reached fifty pages long. On page 49 of the 1992 edition, it states: "With a uniform ten percent reserve requirement, a $1 increase in reserves would support $10 of additional transaction accounts [loans created as deposits in borrowers' accounts]" {4}. The ten percent reserve requirement is now largely obsolete, in part because banks have figured out how to get around it with such devices as "overnight sweeps". What chiefly limits bank lending today is the eight percent capital requirement imposed by the Bank for International Settlements, the head of the private global central banking system in Basel, Switzerland. With an eight percent capital requirement, a state with its own bank could fan its revenues into 12.5 times their face value in loans (100 ? 8 = 12.5). And since the state would actually own the bank, it would not have to worry about shareholders or profits. It could lend to creditworthy borrowers at very low interest, perhaps limited only to a service charge covering its costs; and it could lend to itself or to its municipal governments at as low as zero percent interest. If these loans were rolled over indefinitely, the effect would be the same as creating new, debt-free money. Dangerously inflationary? Not if the money were used to create new goods and services. Price inflation results only when "demand" (money) exceeds "supply" (goods and services). When they increase together, prices remain stable. Today we are in a dangerous deflationary spiral, as lending has dried up and asset values have plummeted. The monopoly on the creation of money and credit by a private banking fraternity has resulted in a malfunctioning credit system and monetary collapse. Credit markets have been frozen by the wildly speculative derivatives gambles of a few big Wall Street banks, bets that not only destroyed those banks' balance sheets but are infecting the whole private banking system with toxic debris. To get out of this deflationary debt trap requires an injection of new, debt-free money into the economy, something that can best be done through a system of public banks dedicated to serving the public interest, administering credit as a public utility. Some experts insist that we must tighten our belts and start saving again, in order to rebuild the "capital" necessary for functioning markets; but our markets actually functioned quite well so long as the credit system was working. We have the same real assets (raw materials, oil, technical knowledge, productive capacity, labor force, et cetera) that we had before the crisis began. Our workers and factories are sitting idle because the private credit system has failed. A system of public credit could put them back to work again. The notion that "money" is something that has to be "saved" before it can be "borrowed" misconstrues the nature of money and credit. Credit is merely a legal agreement, a "monetization" of future proceeds, a promise to pay later from the fruits of the advance. Banks have created credit on their books for hundreds of years, and this system would have worked quite well had it not been for the enormous tribute siphoned off to private coffers in the form of interest. A public banking system could overcome that problem by returning the interest to the public purse. This is the sort of banking system that was pioneered in the colony of Pennsylvania, where it worked brilliantly well. Restoring Michigan to Solvency Among other advantages to a state of owning its own bank are the substantial sums it could save in interest. As Fleetham notes of his own ailing state of Michigan: "According to recent financial reports (available online), the State of Michigan, the City of Detroit, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, the Wayne County Airport, the Detroit Public Schools, the University of Michigan, and Michigan State University pay over $800 million a year in interest on long term debt. If you add interest paid by Michigan cities, school districts, and public utilities, the cost to our taxpayers easily tops a billion [dollars] a year. What does Wall Street do with our billion plus dollars? They decorate their offices like kings." Interestingly, the projected state budget deficit for 2009 is also $1 billion. If Michigan did not have to pay over a billion dollars in interest to Wall Street, the budget could be balanced and the state could be restored to solvency. A state-owned bank could not only provide interest-free credit for the state but could actually generate revenues for it. Fleetham notes that in 2007, the Bank of North Dakota earned a net profit of $51 million on a loan volume of $2 billion. He comments: "Last year, Michigan citizens paid over $5 billion dollars in personal income tax. With a state bank like North Dakota's we could reduce this burden, fund new businesses, and restore our crumbling water and sewer systems. And we don't have to feel sorry about Wall Street losing our business. They didn't 'earn' the money they lent us. They created it in computers and charged us interest to boot. Let's follow North Dakota's lead and get free from Wall Street's web." Taking the Initiative in California California could do this as well. Robert Ellis is a Tucson talk show host who once worked on Wall Street and has been involved in setting up several banks and financial institutions. In January of this year, he proposed in a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger that California could resolve its financial woes by setting up a bank on the model of the Bank of North Dakota. Ellis wrote to the governor: "I admire your tenacity in dealing with California's financial problems. Your idea of using IOUs was ingenious but there is a better way. The State of California can charter its own bank and issue its own checks to all state employees ... It can also pay all its vendors, contracts and contractors through the bank ... Additionally, once the bank is operational, you can fund your own state projects and you determine the interest rate paid as opposed to being at the mercy of the banks you currently deal with or the interest rates the investment bankers make you pay to issue bonds. By doing this, you will put the state in control of its own destiny and make it the benefactor of its own money. "... What I am proposing is not new. It has been done by one other state in the nation [North Dakota]. Why should you continue to pay the banks for services and interest on loans when you can receive that interest for the benefit of the state of California? Wouldn't it be better if you could fund your own infrastructure projects without having to get the approval of independent banks or investment bankers? Additionally, you set the interest rate on your own projects. You can even set it at zero if you deem the project worthy enough." Ellis offered his services in setting up the bank, which he thought could be chartered in a few short months. The Governor has not replied, but some pressure from constituents might encourage a response. Failing that, there is the initiative and referendum process pioneered in California. It allows state laws to be proposed directly by the public, and the state's Constitution to be amended either by public petition (the "initiative") or by the legislature submitting a proposed constitutional amendment to the electorate (the "referendum"). The initiative is done by writing a proposed constitutional amendment or statute as a petition, which is submitted to the California Attorney General along with a submission fee, which was a modest $200 in 2004. The petition must be signed by registered voters amounting to eight percent (for a constitutional amendment) or five percent (for a statute) of the number of people who voted in the most recent election for governor. {5} As Gandhi said, "When the people lead, the leaders will follow". We the people can beat the Wall Street bankers at their own game, by moving our legislators to set up publicly-owned banks that create credit using the same banking principles that are accepted as standard and usual in the trade by bankers themselves. _____ Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt (2007), her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust". She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from "the money trust". Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine (2008), Nature's Pharmacy (1998), co-authored with Dr Lynne Walker, and The Key to Ultimate Health (2000), co-authored with Dr Richard Hansen. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com. Notes: {1} Anne Davies, "Lockdown Vote Saves California from Bankruptcy", theage.com.au (February 21 2009). http://www.theage.com.au/world/lockdown-vote-saves-california-from-bankruptcy-20090220-8do1.html?page=2 {2} John Mitchell, "46 of 50 States Could File Bankruptcy in 2009-2010", Freedom Arizona (January 30 2009). {3} Jerry Voorhis, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon (1973), excerpted at http://www.sonic.net/~doretk/ArchiveARCHIVE/ECONOMICSPOLITICS/FEDERAL%20RESERVE/Jerry%20VoorhisFedReserve.html. {4} Modern Money Mechanics: A Workbook on Bank Reserves and Deposit Expansion (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Public Information Service, 1992, available at http://www.rayservers.com/images/ModernMoneyMechanics.pdf ). {5} "California Ballot Proposition", Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_ballot_proposition _____ Ellen Brown is a frequent contributor to Global Research. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BRO20090303&articleId=12522 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Mar 6 17:26:53 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 19:26:53 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Worse than the Great Depression Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Tony B. Sent: Friday, March 06, 2009 7:26 PM Subject: Worse than the Great Depression Worse than the Great Depression. by Dr. Krassimir Petrov The mainstream media and Wall Street have reached the consensus that the current credit crisis is the worst since the post-war period. George Soros' statement that "the world faces the worst finance crisis since WWII" epitomizes the collective wisdom. The crisis is currently the ultimate scapegoat for all the economic evils that currently plague the global financial system and the global economy - from collapsing stock markets of the world to food shortages in third world counties. We are repeatedly assured that the ultimate fault lies with the Credit Crisis itself; if there were no Credit Crisis, all of these terrible things would never have happened in the economy and the financial markets. The most extraordinary thing is that the mainstream media has never attempted to compare the current economic environment to the one preceding the Great Depression. In essence, it is assumed outright that the Great Depression can never possibly happen again, ever, thus obviating the need for such a comparison. I actually believe that the macroeconomic fundamentals today are much worse, so that we are in for a protracted period of economic depression - a depression much worse than the Great Depression, a depression that would likely be remembered in history as "The Second Great Depression" or The Greater Depression, as Doug Casey has called it so aptly. Here is why I believe that this is the case. Duplicating Mistakes from the Great Depression At its core, the environment of the 1990s, and the response of the Fed to the tech-telecom bust has created an economic environment that has encouraged the repetition of the very same mistakes that led to the Great Depression. Here is a concise summary of widely recognized mistakes of the 1920s, without going into the details, with obvious parallels in the current environment: Asset Bubbles - first in the stock market during the 1990s, then in real estate during the 2000s, pretty much mirroring the stock and real estate market bubbles of the 1920s. Securitization - although not in the very "ultra-modernistic" form and shape of the 2000s, with slicing and dicing of pools and tranches of seniority, it was widely recognized in the 1930s that securitization during the 20s drove the domino effect in the U.S. financial system during the Great Depression. Excessive Leverage - just like in 2008 the topic du jour is "deleveraging", so the unwinding of leverage during the 1930s was the driver of forced liquidations and financial pain. Of course, it was very clear back then that the root of the problem was not deleveraging per se, but the excessive leverage that took place prior to the deleveraging process. "Investment Pools" were then instrumental in both the securitization and excessive leverage, just like the Hedge Funds of today. Corrupt Gatekeepers - we know well that the Enrons and Worldcoms were aided and abetted by the accounting firms - those same firms that were supposedly the Gatekeepers of the financial community, yet handsomely profited from the boom while neglecting their watchdog functions. In the current financial crisis, we also know that the rating agencies were also making hay during the boom. Very similar were the issues during the 1920s that led to the establishment of the SEC and other regulatory bodies to replace the malfunctioning "gatekeepers" at the time. Financial Engineering - we are led to believe that financial engineering is a rather recent phenomenon that flourished during the New Age Finance Era of the last 15 years, yet financial engineering was prevalent in the 1920s with very clear goals: (1) to evade restrictive regulations, (2) to increase leverage, and (3) to remove liabilities from the books, all too familiar to all of us today. Lagging Regulations - just like the regulatory environment lagged the events of the 1920s and regulations were introduced only after the Great Depression had obliterated the U.S. financial system, so we are yet to see new regulations addressing the causes of the current crisis. Understandably, regulations should have foreseen today's financial problems and should have been introduced before the crisis. Market Ideology - back in the 1920s, just like in the last two decades, the market ideology of "laissez faire", which Soros quite appropriately described as "Market Fundamentalism", has swept the financial markets. Of course, the free market knows the best, but the reality is that the money market is not really free - when the Fed determines the cost of money (interest rates), and can fix this cost for as long as it wants, then all sorts of financial imbalances can be sustained without the discipline imposed by the market. This can lead to all sorts of problems that we actually have to face today. Non-Transparency - back in the 1930s, it was widely recognized that businesses and especially financial institutions lacked transparency, which allowed for the accumulation of significant imbalances and abuses. Today, financial markets and institutions have intentionally compromised transparency in a number of ingenious, or better disingenuous, accounting trickeries and financial gimmicks, like off-balance-sheet entities (SIVs), hard-to-understand derivatives, and opaque instruments with mind-boggling complexity. Today CEOs and Chief Risk Officers of major financial institutions cannot figure out their own risk exposures. Originally, lack of transparency was designed to fool the markets; ironically, modern-day financial executives have gotten to the point of fooling themselves. Worse than the Great Depression So, why Worse Than The Great Depression? What makes me believe that the current depression will be worse than the Great Depression? I present six of the most important fundamentals that are "baked in the cake" and that suggest of a Greater Depression. Overvalued Real Estate. The real estate market has been driven by a number of innovations in real estate finance. Overvaluation in real estate implies overvaluation in real estate financial instruments; an implosion of real estate prices implies an implosion in those instruments. It is widely recognized by economists that the Case-Shiller Index is a good proxy for the prices of real estate. A widely-recognized chart from 1890 to 2007 tells the story. The chart makes it crystal clear that the current overvaluation of real estate in real terms grossly exceeds the one during the 1920s. The coming correction in real estate will be protracted and gut-wrenching, with an expected cumulative effect that is much worse than the Great Depression. . Total U.S. Credit. Credit makes leverage: the more credit in the financial system, the more leveraged it is. Today's total U.S. credit relative to GDP has surpassed significantly the levels preceding the Great Depression. Back then, the total amount of credit in the financial system almost reached an astonishing 250% of GDP. Using the same metric today, the debt level in the U.S. financial system surpassed 350% in 2008, while the level in 1982 was "only" 130%. As Charles Dumas from Lombard Street Research put it quite aptly, "we've had a 30-year leveraging up of America, ending in an unchecked orgy." The chart below shows a dramatic buildup of debt (leverage) in the 1920s and a deleveraging from 1930 to 1945 (or 1952). Then it shows a consistent buildup of debt afterwards, with a dramatic rise since the 1990s, and surpassing in 2000 the previous peak in 1929. The chart shows the level of 299% at the end of 2005, but the level has already reached 350% by 2008. Of course, leveraging, as already indicated above, must necessarily be followed by deleveraging. The best way to think about leverage is to compare it with using drugs, while deleveraging is like detox. The problem is not that the detox is killing the patient who has abused drugs for years; what is really killing the patient is the drug abuse itself. However, one thing is clear - the patient must either go through a painful detox or die; the same applies for the financial system - it must either deleverage or implode. Explosion of Derivatives. Derivatives have been likened by Warren Buffet to "financial weapons of mass destruction". The notional amount of total derivatives, as well as "Value at Risk" (VaR), has skyrocketed in recent years with the potential to destabilize the financial system for decades. To put it more allegorically, derivatives hang like a sword of Damocles over the financial system. A comparison with the 1920s is difficult to make. mostly Derivatives back then were extensively used, although not widely understood. Given that I am not aware of any statistics of derivatives for the period of the 1920s, a meaningful comparison based on hard data is admittedly impossible. Nevertheless, I would venture to make an intelligent guess that the size of modern-day derivatives is hundreds or even thousands of times larger relative to the size of the economy in comparison to the 1920s. Some of the latest reports indicate that the total notional value of derivatives outstanding surpasses one quadrillion dollars. To put this into perspective, this amounts to almost 100 times the GDP of the U.S. economy. The chart below shows the explosion of derivatives in the U.S. banking system. You can see that in 1991 the notional value of the derivatives was about the size of the U.S. GDP. By 2006 the size has grown to about 10 times the GDP, vastly outgrowing the real economy. The chart below shows an even more telling picture. It shows world GDP and world's notional value of derivatives. Again, while there is no direct comparison with the 1920s, it is clear that the overall level of derivatives has skyrocketed during the last two decades and presents risks that were simply not present at the onset of the Great Depression. The unwinding of these derivatives could only be compared with a nuclear explosion in the financial system. Dow-Gold Ratio. The Dow-Gold ratio represents the most important ratio between the relative prices of financial assets and real assets. The Dow component represents the valuation of financial assets; the gold component - of real assets. When leverage in the financial system increases significantly, so does this ratio. A very high ratio is interpreted as an imbalance between financial and real assets - financial assets are grossly overvalued, while real assets are grossly undervalued. It also implies that a correction eventually will be necessary - either through deflation, which implies deleveraging and a collapsing stock market, or through inflation, which implies stagnant stock market for many years and steadily rising prices of real assets, commodities, and gold, usually associated with stagnant economy and typically resulting in stagflation. The first case-deflation-occurred during the 1930s, while the second case-stagflation-occurred during the 1970s. The graph below illustrates the above concepts. The very high Dow-Gold Ratio in 1929 was followed by the Great Depression, while the higher level in 1966 was followed by the stagflationary 70s. It is evident from the chart the peak in 2000 surpassed the previous two peaks in 1929 and 1966, so this provides a reasonable expectation that the forthcoming return to "normalcy" will be more painful than the Great Depression, at least in terms of cumulative pain over the next 10-15 years. Global Bubbles. It is impossible to make direct comparison with the 1920s, but today the global economy is rife with bubbles. Back then in the 1920s, the U.S. had its stock and real estate bubbles, while the European economies were struggling to rebuild from the devastations of WW1 that ended in 1919. I am personally not aware of any other bubbles during this period, although I welcome reader feedback on this topic. Today the picture is very different. The U.S. economy had a stock market and real estate bubble that has surpassed its own during the 1920s. Colossal US current account deficits have fuelled extraordinary growth in global monetary reserves. As a result, Europe has real estate bubbles across the board, from the U.K. and Ireland, throughout the Mediterranean (Spain, France, Italy and Greece), to the entire Baltic region (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) and the Balkans (Romaina and Bulgaria). Even worse, many Asian countries (China, Korea, etc.) also have their own stock and property bubbles, only with the exception of Japan, which is still in the process of recovering from its own during the 1980s. Thus, during the 1920s only the U.S. suffered from gross financial imbalances, while today the imbalances have engulfed the whole world - both developed and developing. It stands to reason that the unwinding of those global imbalances is likely to be more painful today than it was during the Great Depression due to both size and scope. Collapsing Bretton Woods II. The global monetary system was on a quasi-gold standard during the 1920s. Back then dollars and pounds were convertible to gold, while all other currencies were convertible to dollars and pounds. An appropriate way to think about it is that of a precursor to the Bretton Woods from 1945-1971. What is important to understand is that while the system was fiat in nature, gold imposed significant limitations to credit expansion and leveraging. Somewhat similar was the role of Bretton Woods that lasted from 1945 to 1971. The dollar was tied to gold, while all other fiat currencies were tied to the dollar. Just like the interwar period, gold imposed some limitations on credit and financial imbalances. We now live in what has been termed Bretton Woods II. Essentially, this is a pure fiat dollar standard, where all currencies are convertible to dollars, either at fixed or floating exchange rates, while the dollar itself is convertible to "nothing". Thus, the dollar has no limitations imposed to it by gold, so without the discipline of gold, the current global monetary system has accumulated significantly more imbalances than ever before in modern capitalism. These imbalances show up in the international monetary system as unsustainable trade deficits (and surpluses), skyrocketing official dollar reserves in some European and many Asian central banks, and the proliferation of Sovereign Wealth Funds; more generally, these imbalances result in a myriad of bubbles, overleveraging, and other maladjustments already discussed above. Today Bretton Woods II is in the process of disintegration. The world is slowly but steadily losing its confidence in the dollar as the world reserve currency. A flight from the dollar is in progress and the collapse of the global monetary system is imminent. As Bretton Woods II disintegrates and a new system replaces it, the process of readjustment will be necessarily more painful than the respective process during the Great Depression. A caution on terminology is necessary here. While the literature over the last 10-20 years has widely recognized the term "Bretton Woods II", in September-October of 2008 the term was widely used by the media to describe a proposed international summit with the goal of reconstructing a new international monetary system designed from scratch, just like "Bretton Woods". Instantly dubbed by the media "Bretton Woods II", this term could be potentially very confusing as it could mean very different things to different people. The interested reader should consult Wikipedia's Bretton Woods II where both meanings are explained in detail. Conclusion Since August of 2007 we have witnessed the relentless escalation of the credit crisis: a steady constriction of credit markets, starting with subprime mortgage-backed securities, spreading to commercial paper, then to interbank credit, and then to CDOs, CLOs, jumbo mortgages, home equity lines of credit, LBOs and private equity markets, and then generally to the bond and securities markets. While the media describes the problem as one of illiquidity and confidence, a more serious analysis indicates that boom-time credit has been employed unproductively and so losses must be incurred. In other words, scarce capital has been misallocated, poorly invested, and effectively wasted. No amount of monetary or fiscal policy can fix the errors of the past, just like no modern treatment can quickly restore to health a drug addict debilitated from a decade-long drug abuse. Based on indicators like (1) global real estate overvaluation, (2) indebtedness, (3) leverage, (4) outstanding derivatives, (5) global bubbles, and (6) the precariousness of the global monetary system, I would argue that the accumulated imbalances in the current period surpass significantly those preceding the Great Depression. I therefore conclude that the coming U.S. (and possibly) global depression will be of greater magnitude than the Great Depression of the 1930s. It likely suggests that we are entering a historic period that will likely be known as The Greater Depression. Investor beware! Only gold can protect you from the ravages of another Depression! From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Mar 6 17:50:35 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 19:50:35 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Pentagon Eyes Plan Colombia Model For Afghanistan, Pakistan Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, March 06, 2009 1:29 AM Subject: [stopnato] Pentagon Eyes Plan Colombia Model For Afghanistan, Pakistan http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSN05343730 Reuters March 5, 2009 US sees lessons for Afghan war in Colombia By Patrick Markey U.S. officials have said the Plan Colombia aid package could be an "overarching" model for Pakistan and Afghanistan.... Afghan police have already trained with their Colombian counterparts and Bogota is studying sending troops to Afghanistan to help out in eradication and de-mining. BOGOTA - Lessons from Colombia's U.S.-backed war against insurgents and drug traffickers could be applied to Washington's expanding military campaign in Afghanistan, the top U.S. military officer said on Thursday. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Bogota the Andean country's ideas on counterinsurgency, building governance in areas once abandoned by the state and economic development were fundamental. "There are parts of it that would be very applicable to other parts of the world, especially Afghanistan," he said. President Barack Obama's administration is currently reviewing U.S. policy for Afghanistan as Washington prepares to send in a further 17,000 troops to try to turn around an increasingly violent conflict. Once a powerful rebel force of 17,000 fighters that controlled large areas, Colombia's FARC insurgency movement has been driven back into the jungles and mountains.... Better troop training, more mobility with helicopters and improved intelligence have helped the army cut off rebel communications and supplies and isolated units from leadership. Washington has supplied more than $5 billion to Colombia to help combat guerrillas and the cocaine trade fueling the conflict but critics question the success of the anti-narcotics program. The U.N. estimates 27 percent more land was used for coca production at the end of 2007 than a year before. U.S. officials have said the Plan Colombia aid package could be an "overarching" model for Pakistan and Afghanistan.... Afghan police have already trained with their Colombian counterparts and Bogota is studying sending troops to Afghanistan to help out in eradication and de-mining. Colombia, which supplies about 600 tonnes of cocaine a year, once relied almost entirely on fumigation to destroy coca, but has stepped up manual eradication which is considered to have a more lasting impact. .... Despite a drop in production last year, Afghanistan still supplies more than 90 percent of the world's opium, a raw ingredient of heroin. The drug trade injects $3 billion a year in the Afghan economy and helps fund the Taliban. (Editing by David Storey) __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 3New Members Visit Your Group Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Mar 6 18:01:19 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 20:01:19 -0500 Subject: [A-List] US Missile Shield-Iran Ploy Masks Real World Threat Message-ID: <3D866469FB7243FAB92488263109140F@TonyPC> http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20090305/120440000.html Russian Information Agency Novosti March 5, 2009 Iran cannot be swapped for missile defense Ilya Kramnik MOSCOW - The Obama administration made no attempt to offer Russia a deal: to make concessions over the deployment of a missile defense system in Europe in exchange for Russia's cooperation on the "Iran issue." President Obama himself drew a line under the issue at a press conference held on Wednesday following his meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. What could this deal, or "tradeoff," have looked like? The media supposed that the United States would "forget" about deploying interceptor missiles in Eastern Europe on condition that Russia "formed a common front with the U.S." in the negotiations on the Iranian nuclear and missile problem. The proposal looked meaningless and crudely simplistic from the very start. Russia's security interests call for a comprehensive discussion of a vast region comprising Iran, the Caspian, Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iraq. In all these situations, many of which affect Moscow's interests, Iran plays the key role. For the U.S., Russian support on the Iran issue is very important, because as it loses leverage over the situation America needs the support of a country that commands authority in the Middle East to preserve its levers of influence. At the same time it hardly makes sense for Russia to give up its authority: by directly supporting the U.S., Russia risks to lose much of its political clout built up in recent years in the relations with the Middle East and Central Asian countries. Granted, these issues can and must be discussed, but not in terms of "supporting" the U.S., but in terms of a new American policy in the region. The missile defense problem has nothing to do with Iran, but it cannot be separated from Russia's relations with NATO countries. It is impossible to pluck the issue of missile defense out of the whole range of security issues in Europe. The U.S. promise not to deploy a missile defense system in Eastern Europe is not an adequate replacement of talks on the security system in Europe. At the end of the day the possible deployment of American bases with strike weapons in the new NATO member countries is no less of a threat than the deployment of a missile defense system or the possible accession of Georgia and Ukraine to NATO. Finally, the problem of missile defense is closely linked with the issue of preserving the nuclear and missile parity between the two countries, which has been the subject of a lively discussion in connection with reports about the U.S. initiative on drastic cuts of nuclear arsenals. The agreement between Russia and the U.S. on further nuclear arms cuts must include limitations on the development of missile defense systems, and not only in Eastern Europe but throughout the world. Ideally it should impose a total ban on the development of strategic missile defense systems and allow only the creation of theatre missile defense. One should also bear in mind that in the current situation the "price" of the missile defense system as a bargaining chip has diminished significantly. In the pre-crisis times such expenditure for the U.S., though significant, was not unmanageable, and the prospects of creating a massive missile defense deployed in key points in the world looked quite realistic. But tomorrow it may very well happen that the U.S. will have to scrap its plans of a missile defense system without any negotiations disguising the fact with fine words about "additional tests" and "development of a more sophisticated system." The real reason would be simply that there will be no wherewithal to pay for such a huge project. That is a circumstance to be borne in mind too. On balance, an Iran-missile defense deal plucks both problems out of the political and economic context without solving either. To repeat, the two issues can and must be discussed between Russia and the U.S., but each in the framework of its range of problems. Iran, as part of the overall range of issues in the Middle East and Central Asia, and missile defense as part of the issues of European and world security. The current situation objectively favors an agreement between the two countries as both the Russian and American administrations have shown a readiness to negotiate, including on key issues. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls MARKETPLACE From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Mar 6 18:18:06 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 20:18:06 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Afghanistan: The Myth of the Good War Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Tony B. Sent: Friday, March 06, 2009 12:11 AM Subject: Afghanistan: The Myth of the Good War ..this for the March issue of 'Mayday'.. Afghanistan: The Myth of the Good War Now in its eighth year, the US and NATO occupation of Afghanistan continues to grind on, its original - if entirely spurious - raison d'etre long since lost in the fog of war. Having thus ostensibly started out as a campaign to root out the personification of evil incarnate, i.e. Osama bin Laden, the 'mission' then quickly transmogrified into 'regime change' and thence into the typical imperial project of 'bringing peace and democracy to the heathens'. The latter, it need hardly be said, has been practiced many times before. In Indo-China during the Vietnam War, for instance, some 4 million or so were killed to save them from themselves. Many hundreds of thousands more were subsequently killed in Latin America to save them from themselves. And, of course, more recently in Iraq, over a million have now been killed since 2003 (adding to a previous million or two) to save them from themselves. If anything should be clear to homo-imperialis it is that our magnanimity and our sacrifice know no bounds; exceeded, perhaps, only by the ingratitude of those we seek to help. But then, someone has to care. And, oh, how we care. Loving Them to Death Of all the paper-thin rationales, then, for the continuing occupation of Afghanistan, the notion that 'we' are somehow deeply concerned for the welfare of the Afghani people is the most stubbornly, the most patently delusional. This is not to say that the average Canadian may not harbour some vague feelings in this regard. Indeed, such sentiments - heavily infected by a barely submerged imperial hubris though they invariably are - are precisely the target of state propaganda. The question then is not whether the 'man in the street' evinces such feelings, but, first, whether they are supported by the actual facts on the ground and, second, whether these have any relation whatsoever to the actual *function* of the occupation within the state's economic, political and geo-strategic calculus. Let us take a brief look at both of these. As I remarked in an earlier essay (May, 2007) the response, of Western reporters and TV news personnel to the initial invasion of Afghanistan resembled nothing so much as that, 'of morally deficient children lauding the annihilation of insects'. Thus, an unmistakable hint of 'glee' attended the ensuing military carnage as possibly tens of thousands of Afghans (not yet 'insurgents') were killed outright. Follow-up massacres by US and allied forces of thousands of Taliban forces at Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif were quickly swept under the carpet as all eyes avidly focused on the unfolding of the great moral play. In the aftermath of the initial 'pacification' of the country the usual colonial machinations were deployed. By late 2002, the Trans-Afghan Pipeline deal had been signed. All that was necessary now was to stabilize the country. Hamid Karzai, an ex-California oil executive was installed, via rigged elections, as puppet ruler. He was assisted by a gaggle of MPs composed of drug bosses and feudal lords most of whom were granted political immunity from all manner of former war crimes. Ministry positions were awarded as spoils of war to the various Tajek, Uzbek and Hazari generals who had weighed in against the clergy and the Taliban (comprised mainly of Pashtuns). Essentially, a group of authoritarian, theocratic warlords (the Taliban) not favourably disposed to playing ball with the new colonial master, got replaced by a another group of authoritarian, theocratic warlords (the Northern Alliance) who were. Not surprisingly, given the motives involved, the whole governmental edifice was permeated from the beginning - and as it is to this day - with extortion, graft, patronage and violence. What little foreign aid, for instance, leaks out of the circular loop from Western government coffers to Western corporate vaults and into Afghanistan proper (approximately 86 cents of every US 'aid' dollar is 'phantom', and never shows up in the recipient country) is then sopped up by the extensive corruption. Almost none of it reaches the Afghan people most in need. And, of course, if the country now reeks with the odour of a giant mafia enterprise, this is not some peculiar aberration, but the inevitable and predicable outcome of its role as a client state functioning within an imperial framework. Women's rights have expanded, but only theoretically. In practice they are as bad as they ever were under the Taliban except that the former more or less guaranteed a minimum security for women. Instead, rape is now endemic and hundreds of young women and girls have immolated themselves rather than face the forced marriages for money that have become part and parcel of the general culture of corruption and violence. Still, likely the most irritating bur under the saddle of the average Afghani is the large number of civilian casualties that result from the US air campaign. For while it is true that many Afghan civilians (approximately half) are killed either directly by Taliban suicide attacks against Western targets or as a result of Taliban forces taking cover amidst the civilian population, the other half are killed by US air strikes whose clear strategic calculus is the security of American troops at the expense of Afghan civilians. Ever since Vietnam, American politicians have understood that too many troops killed in actual battle is a public relations nightmare. The Pentagon's strategy has therefore consisted, both in Iraq and in Afghanistan, of deploying ground troops only as means of drawing out enemy forces which can then be conveniently pulverized from the air. It is in respect of this strategy, by the way, that one often hears in the Western media the moronic argument to the effect that the Taliban are 'cowards' hiding behind civilian 'shields'; as if congregating in an open field armed only with their rifles, and engaging our brave lads sheathed in their body armour, their tanks, and swooping down in their invulnerable F-18s would represent some sort of fair fight. The Afghani people, however, seem a tad more savvy than the average Western journalist and have, instead, taken to perceiving the civilian casualties caused by the NATO forces as morally worse than those caused by the Taliban. This because they judge NATO tactics as both cowardly and as a transparent indication that the West values the lives of its soldiers far more highly than it does the lives of Afghan civilians. And, truth to tell, we do. Anyone who thinks differently need only reflect upon the media coverage given to the 100+ Canadian troops killed in Afghanistan over the past seven years, with the coverage given, say, to the 95 civilians (including 50 children and 19 women) who were killed in the province of Herat last Aug. 22 in just one single NATO air strike. Still, I reckon one has to break a few eggs to save people from themselves. We break a couple of thousand a year. Not counting, naturally, enemy casualties, who register on no tally sheet whatsoever. A Rare Bird? That any of the foregoing can be thought of as some sort of aberration from intended policy, or some tragic if necessary by-product of a noble enterprise is to have missed the entire thrust of imperial history over the last several thousand years. More to the point, it is to have missed the fact the whole point of the 'mission' in Afghanistan is simply the occupation itself. As such, Afghanistan is a vital piece of real estate. How vital? First, Afghanistan represents a crucial conduit for the future transport of Caspian Sea oil and gas through to the Arabian Sea. This oil and gas is seen as enormously important in an age of general fossil fuel decline (peak oil) particularly in view of the fact that Caspian deposits are relatively untapped and thus represent a vast potential for a rapid expansion of output. Pipelines have already been built heading east from the Caspian through the Caucasus and Turkey, but the need for a supply route through to the markets in India and Asia has long been considered paramount. Second, Russia and China are America's chief military and political rivals, though inter-imperialist economic rivalry places Europe in the 'enemy' column as well. Controlling the world's Mid-East and Central Asian oil supplies is, then, central to the American imperium in a era when US economic power is clearly on the wane. The American ruling class are only too aware of the latter fact and consequently have sought to do what virtually every empire before them has done in similar situations, i.e. embark on a project of military expansionism in the desperate attempt to offset economic decline. After all, Washington may be losing its economic clout, but it retains a military machine the likes of which the world has never before witnessed. The danger, bye-the-bye, that this wounded-bear phenomenon represents to the entire globe cannot be overstated. Third, the projection of power into Central Asia is not just about oil, but about strategic military positioning itself. The US already occupies Iraq and Afghanistan, is allied with Pakistan (tenuous though this is at the moment), India, and Indonesia. In addition, it would like to take Iran back into the fold, and the fact that Iraq and Afghanistan flank it on both sides is no accident. Most of the former Warsaw Pact countries are now either in NATO or are awaiting membership. Many of the rest of the former Soviet / Islamic states that lie just above Afghanistan are presently subject to a tense turf war between Russia and the US. Russia, in other words is surrounded, as is China (by Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines etc, all US client states). Fourth, Afghanistan itself is a mineral treasure trove hosting as it does vast deposits of gold, uranium, copper, coal - even oil and gas. It also is one of the few places on earth with significant deposits of tantalum, a rare element essential in the manufacture of cell phones and computers. [Indeed, the Western scramble for tantalum (amongst other minerals) has been a prime driver of the recent killing fields in the Congo.] Canadian mining companies along with American, British, Russian and Chinese are thus set to make, to coin an apt phrase, a killing in Afghanistan. The notion, then, - widely espoused even amongst 'progressive' thinkers - that somehow the 'mission' can, nonetheless, perhaps be redirected towards humanitarian ends flies directly in the face of the granite fact of the mission's fundamental and true aim, i.e. unending colonial occupation and exploitation. [To this purpose, Washington forced Karzai, in 2005, to sign a 'declaration of strategic partnership' which gave the US the right to a *permanent* military presence in the country.] Finally, and all Obama-mania aside, the new US Administration is not only sending in 17,000 more troops to 'pacify' the country, but has just issued a new court ruling making 'enemy combatant' status (i.e. no legal rights at all) the name of the game for all captured forces in Afghanistan. For the 600 prisoners now incarcerated in Khandahar there is no recourse to any system of .well, no recourse at all, ever. A 'good war' is likely an oxymoron, but if there ever was such a rare bird, this certainly ain't one of 'em. Antony Black tal1 at cogeco.ca From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Mar 6 18:21:53 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 20:21:53 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Soros As Mirror Of US Politics In Post-Soviet Space Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, March 06, 2009 10:39 AM Subject: [stopnato] Soros As Mirror Of US Politics In Post-Soviet Space http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=1936 Strategic Culture Foundation February 27, 2009 Soros as the Mirror of the US Politics in the Post-Soviet Space Viktor Pirozhenko (Ukraine) US Vice President Joe Biden's speech at the Munich Security Conference and a number of less notable statements made by US officials revived the discussions of the US strategy in the post-Soviet space. Recently the notorious financial megaspeculator George Soros contributed to the discourse with his articles in the Russian Vedomosti (the Russian partner of The Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal) entitled ?Global Anticrisis Policy: Create New Money" (February 10), ?An Alternative to Geopolitics: the Russian Problem? (February 12), and ?A Crisis Landscape: the Geopolitics of Cheap Oil? (February 16). Soros has always been a supporter of the US Democratic Party and a critic of George Bush's politics. His ideas may be regarded as an expression of the foreign politics objectives of Barack Obama's administration and the methods it is going to employ to pursue them. Soros suggests to Europe a dual strategy ? a defense against the newly assertive and aggressive Russia and the encouragement of the strivings for democracy, an open society, and international cooperation to prevail over geopolitics. Soros writes: ?A key policy for neutralizing Russia?s geopolitical advantage will be for Europe to agree on a united energy policy, including the creation of an EU energy regulator with powers above those of national regulators and to establish a pan-European distribution grid. That will take away Russia?s ability to play off countries against one another?. Soros believes that the rule of law and the principles of the open society (Soros claims to have authored the latter term) should be promoted indirectly with the help of a reform of the international financial system with special attention to the countries neighboring Russia. He says ?assistance should be rendered to Georgia to help it recover from the effects of the Russian invasion?, but the proportions of the aid should be made contingent on Saakashvili's readiness to observe the above principles of the open society (in other words, to act as the conductor of the US politics)." In Soros's opinion, likewise direct assistance to Russia is impossible, but he projects that seeing progress in international cooperation, especially with China, Russia will hardly opt to stay outside the process. ?The strengthening and the support of the post-Soviet Republics will serve both aspects of the EU dual strategy with respect to Russia?, says Soros. Soros's ideas reflect the thinking traditional for the US Democratic Party. For it, implanting globally US values presented as universal is an end in itself. As we know from the past, the US missionary endeavors of the kind can pose a greater peril to the CIS countries and the world than George Bush's blunt unilateralism. It was Democratic US President Bill Clinton who unleashed the barbarian aggression against Yugoslavia under the US missionary banner. US analysts coined the term ?new unilateralism? to describe the foreign-politics stance of the Republican neocons. In essence it denotes the pursuit by the US of exclusively its own imperialist objectives. This is the explanation of the former US Administration's tendency to ignore permanent alliances and to replace them with coalitions of the willing, which was heavily criticized by the Democrats and Soros in particular. The approach of ranging countries not on the basis of their adherence to Euro-Atlantic values but on that of their readiness to act as US allies in the war against terror (or, potentially, against some other phantom) is regarded by Democrats as not being ideologically charged to a sufficient extent. Under a Democratic administration the US is likely to revert to reliance on NATO in collective security affairs and to start restoring the influence of its NATO partners and the alliance as a whole. New NATO members will probably be given secondary roles in the implementation of Washington's foreign politics. The post-Soviet Republics have already felt the escalation of the ?soft? pressure of the US aimed at getting them involved in the isolation of Russia, initially on the ideological level and in the future in politics and the economy. Washington's methods include manipulating public opinion and buying the loyalty of the Republics' ruling classes. The analysis of the views held by Soros and Obama's consultants like Zbigniew Brzezinski reveals the details of the US strategy in the post-Soviet space and in relations with Russia in particular. Essentially it amounts to avoiding direct pressure but isolating Russia and pushing it out of all significant projects in the spheres of energy and the economy in general as well as culture, security, etc. The collective efforts of the Euro-Atlantic community to be reinstated under US patronage rather than the individual efforts made by the US in concert with loose coalitions of the willing - as under former US President G. Bush - should lead to the materialization of the plan. Obama's administration plans to act in two directions in Eurasia. One is to draw the CIS countries into the orbit of anti-Russian politics. The other is to promote a consensus between the old and new Europe with the purpose of formulating a common European energy politics. The financial support to the CIS countries around Russia will be offered under the banner of promoting the principles of the open society. Translated from Soros's newspeak this means supporting those who regard themselves as allies of the US in the struggle against Russia. The US will focus on advancing its interests in Georgia and Ukraine by spreading the US value system among the populations of the countries and exerting disguised pressure on them (mainly by buying the local political classes). For Soros and Brzezinski it is logical that the interests of the US are best secured in the countries where the local elites if not the entire populations have converted to the value system implanted by the US and serve it sincerely ? or because they are paid to do so. The reliance of the new US administration on collective Euro-Atlantic activity manifests itself in Soros's recommendations concerning energy strategy. The establishment of a regulator with powers above those of national ones has long been a dream of some pygmy anti-Russian regimes in East Europe. The arrangement would allow them to block the pragmatic politics of the old Europe seeking to cooperate with Russia on energy issues. The key circumstance is that the priorities of the pygmy regimes ? in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and, since 2005, Ukraine - are not economic but geopolitical. It was their geopolitically important location between Russia and the old Europe that they have been selling quite successfully to Washington. In contrast, the old Europe's strategy is guided by economic considerations and a position in foreign politics which is relatively autonomous from the US. Soros prefers to ignore the fact that Berlin, Paris, and Rome may be unwilling to submit their rights to chart their energy policies to a supranational ? and likely US-installed ? regulator. The absence of a pan-European energy policy is explained not by Moscow's games with European countries outside the EU context but by the fundamental divergences between the old and the new Europe in the relations with Russia which as of today make a common EU strategy impossible. Ukraine is given a nearly central role in the plans of Obama's administration to isolate Russia. Probably, the US will push for Ukraine's informal and unannounced NATO membership and will interact with Kyiv as a de facto NATO member. Special attention will be paid to building US ideological influence in Ukraine. The US will, in particular, boost the support of various NGOs in the country. Not being a NATO country, Ukraine under President Yushchenko nevertheless assumes obligations normal for members of the bloc. The relocation of some of Ukraine's armed forces to the Russian border mentioned in December, 2008 by Ukraine's Chief of Staff S. Kirichenko means in fact the participation of the country in the strengthening of the NATO perimeter. The Ukraine-NATO agreement on military transit across Ukraine which President Yushchenko authorized Defense Minister Yekhanurov to sign is nothing but a step towards full NATO membership. A recent example is the February 18 ratification by the Ukrainian parliament of additional protocols to the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Ukrainian government and NATO. The Memorandum says a NATO Information and Documentation Center will be established in Ukraine and NATO liaison officers will be dispatched to the country. Additional protocols grant diplomatic privileges to the officers of the center and their family members. If Ukraine continues to fulfill strictly the obligations normally imposed on NATO countries while staying outside the alliance the European partners of the US may become convinced that Ukraine should be admitted without the normally required procedures simply to legitimize the existing situation. Therefore we should expect the US to grow increasingly active in the role of arbiter in disputes between the old and the new Europe and the European NATO countries - to get increasingly involved in drawing Ukraine into the alliance. Under these circumstances it is extremely important for the people of Ukraine to oust from power the politicians who have turned the country into an instrument of advancing US interests in Eurasia at the cost of a confrontation with Russia, which is Ukraine's main and most natural ally. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 3New Members Visit Your Group Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Mar 6 18:33:20 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 20:33:20 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Kyrgyzstan Moves To Oust NATO Forces Message-ID: <145AF95C115148C2A4AB57CB6EB228D4@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, March 06, 2009 10:26 AM Subject: [stopnato] Kyrgyzstan Moves To Oust NATO Forces http://en.rian.ru/world/20090306/120455979.html Russian Information Agency Novosti March 6, 2009 Kyrgyz parliament approves foreign troop pullout from Manas BISHKEK - Kyrgyzstan's parliament has approved the termination of agreements with 11 countries on the deployment of their military contingents at the Manas airbase in the north of the country. The bill, which terminates agreements with Australia, Denmark, Italy, Spain, South Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Poland, Turkey and France, was supported by an overwhelming majority of MPs. Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev signed on February 20 a decree to close the Manas airbase, located close to the former Soviet republic's capital of Bishkek. The base, staffed mainly by U.S. Air Force personnel, had been used since 2001 to support NATO operations in nearby Afghanistan. Bakiyev linked the decision to Washington's refusal to pay more for the base and to the conduct of U.S. military personnel, including the killing of a Kyrgyz national by a U.S. soldier in December 2006. Kyrgyz officials have rejected any connection between the decision and a recent Russian financial aid package under which Russia will write off Kyrgyzstan's $180 million debt and grant the country a $2 billion soft loan and $150 million in financial assistance. Moscow has likewise denied any link. Kyrgyzstan has formally informed Washington of the termination of the agreement on a U.S. military presence at the Manas airbase and has given it 180 days to withdraw some 1,200 personnel, aircraft and other equipment. The Kyrgyz parliament said the termination of the founding agreement with the U.S. made agreements with other countries 'senseless." ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=13653122&PageNum=0 Itar-Tass March 6, 2009 Kyrgyz lawmakers vote to scrap Manas agreement with 11 countries BISHKEK - Kyrgyz lawmakers on Friday overwhelmingly supported the bills denouncing the agreements on the Manas air base with 11 member-states of the international antiterrorist coalition - Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Poland, Turkey, Norway, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, France and South Korea. The lawmakers' decision will become effective after the document has been signed by President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. The parliamentarians voted separately for each country, although earlier, they did not rule out package voting. In the middle of February, the Cabinet submitted to the parliament the bills to denounce the treaties on the Manas air base with the governments of these countries. On Thursday, the bills were approved by three parliamentary committees, and the faction of the leading party Ak-Zhol (Bright Way) which has 71 of the 90 seats in parliament. It was Ak-Zhol that recommended the parliament to put this item on the Friday agenda. The Manas base that is operating with the UN mandate is meant for the support of the antiterrorist Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. It was opened in December 2001. The core of the group is currently formed of about 1,000 US Air Force military that have several military-transport aircraft and tanker aircraft. A considerable portion of non-military cargo, and soldiers and troops of the coalition are moved to Afghan airports through Kyrgyzstan. On February 19, Kyrgyz lawmakers practically unanimously voted for withdrawal of the U.S. servicemen who have to leave the Manas base by August 20. According to Kyrgyz leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the local authorities were expecting the anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan to last a year or two, not its dragging out for eight years. The head of the Kyrgyz state said he had no doubts that the last American soldier would leave the base this August. Explaining the reasons behind the decision to close the base, Bakiyev named the low level of compensation by the USA for the use of the facility and its infrastructure, and the negative reaction in the Kyrgyz society to the presence of U.S. troops in the country. According to Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Kadyrbek Sarbayev, the USA had already notified Bishkek about the readiness to hold talks over the beginning of the procedure to withdraw troops from Manas. President of Kyrgyzstan Kurmanbek Bakiyev first stated the intention to close the Manas base when he was on a visit to Moscow on February 3. According to official sources, the USA paid 38 million dollars to Kyrgyzstan for the lease of the airbase and use of the Bishkek airport infrastructure last year. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls MARKETPLACE From pwright at prisonlegalnews.org Fri Mar 6 19:37:42 2009 From: pwright at prisonlegalnews.org (Paul Wright) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 21:37:42 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Playing the Banking Game In-Reply-To: <49B1B326.8020102@ashisuto.co.jp> References: <49B1B326.8020102@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: <058101c99ecd$b0f6ac10$0900a8c0@PRISONLEGALNEWS.local> Is this related to the fact that until the Depression US banks could and did issue their own currency? Paul Wright, Editor Prison Legal News P.O. Box 2420 West Brattleboro, VT 05303 802 257-1342 pwright at prisonlegalnews.org www.prisonlegalnews.org Seattle Office 2400 NW 80th St. Suite 148 Seattle, WA 98117 206-246-1022 -----Original Message----- From: a-list-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu [mailto:a-list-bounces at lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Bill Totten Sent: Friday, March 06, 2009 6:35 PM To: a-list Subject: [A-List] Playing the Banking Game How Cash Starved States Can Create their Own Credit by Ellen Brown Global Research (March 03 2009) "He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator". --- Francis Bacon On February 19 2009, California narrowly escaped bankruptcy, when Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger put on his Terminator hat and held the state senate in lockdown mode until they signed a very controversial budget {1}. If the vote had failed, the state was going to be reduced to paying its employees in IOUs. California avoided bankruptcy for the time being, but 46 of fifty states are insolvent and could be filing Chapter Nine bankruptcy proceedings in the next two years {2}. One of the four states that is not insolvent is an unlikely candidate for the distinction - North Dakota. As Michigan management consultant Charles Fleetham observed last month in an article distributed to his local media: "North Dakota is a sparsely populated state of less than 700,000, known for cold weather, isolated farmers and a hit movie - Fargo. Yet, for some reason it defies the real estate cliche of location, location, location. Since 2000, the state's GNP has grown 56%, personal income has grown 43%, and wages have grown 34%. This year the state has a budget surplus of $1.2 billion!" What does the State of North Dakota have that other states don't? The answer seems to be: its own bank. In fact, North Dakota has the only state-owned bank in the nation. The state legislature established the Bank of North Dakota in 1919. Fleetham writes that the bank was set up to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men. By law, the state must deposit all its funds in the bank, and the state guarantees its deposits. Three elected officials oversee the bank: the governor, the attorney general, and the commissioner of agriculture. The bank's stated mission is to deliver sound financial services that promote agriculture, commerce and industry in North Dakota. The bank operates as a bankers' bank, partnering with private banks to loan money to farmers, real estate developers, schools and small businesses. It loans money to students (over 184,000 outstanding loans), and it purchases municipal bonds from public institutions. Still, you may ask, how does that solve the solvency problem? Isn't the state still limited to spending only the money it has? The answer is no. Certified, card-carrying bankers are allowed to do something nobody else can do: they can create "credit" with accounting entries on their books. A License to Create Money Under the "fractional reserve" lending system, banks are allowed to extend credit (create money as loans) in a sum equal to many times their deposit base. Congressman Jerry Voorhis, writing in 1973, explained it like this: "[F]or every $1 or $1.50 which people - or the government - deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits. It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1 or a little more in reserve to back it up". {3} That banks actually create money with accounting entries was confirmed in a revealing booklet published by the Chicago Federal Reserve titled Modern Money Mechanics {2}. The booklet was periodically revised until 1992, when it had reached fifty pages long. On page 49 of the 1992 edition, it states: "With a uniform ten percent reserve requirement, a $1 increase in reserves would support $10 of additional transaction accounts [loans created as deposits in borrowers' accounts]" {4}. The ten percent reserve requirement is now largely obsolete, in part because banks have figured out how to get around it with such devices as "overnight sweeps". What chiefly limits bank lending today is the eight percent capital requirement imposed by the Bank for International Settlements, the head of the private global central banking system in Basel, Switzerland. With an eight percent capital requirement, a state with its own bank could fan its revenues into 12.5 times their face value in loans (100 ? 8 = 12.5). And since the state would actually own the bank, it would not have to worry about shareholders or profits. It could lend to creditworthy borrowers at very low interest, perhaps limited only to a service charge covering its costs; and it could lend to itself or to its municipal governments at as low as zero percent interest. If these loans were rolled over indefinitely, the effect would be the same as creating new, debt-free money. Dangerously inflationary? Not if the money were used to create new goods and services. Price inflation results only when "demand" (money) exceeds "supply" (goods and services). When they increase together, prices remain stable. Today we are in a dangerous deflationary spiral, as lending has dried up and asset values have plummeted. The monopoly on the creation of money and credit by a private banking fraternity has resulted in a malfunctioning credit system and monetary collapse. Credit markets have been frozen by the wildly speculative derivatives gambles of a few big Wall Street banks, bets that not only destroyed those banks' balance sheets but are infecting the whole private banking system with toxic debris. To get out of this deflationary debt trap requires an injection of new, debt-free money into the economy, something that can best be done through a system of public banks dedicated to serving the public interest, administering credit as a public utility. Some experts insist that we must tighten our belts and start saving again, in order to rebuild the "capital" necessary for functioning markets; but our markets actually functioned quite well so long as the credit system was working. We have the same real assets (raw materials, oil, technical knowledge, productive capacity, labor force, et cetera) that we had before the crisis began. Our workers and factories are sitting idle because the private credit system has failed. A system of public credit could put them back to work again. The notion that "money" is something that has to be "saved" before it can be "borrowed" misconstrues the nature of money and credit. Credit is merely a legal agreement, a "monetization" of future proceeds, a promise to pay later from the fruits of the advance. Banks have created credit on their books for hundreds of years, and this system would have worked quite well had it not been for the enormous tribute siphoned off to private coffers in the form of interest. A public banking system could overcome that problem by returning the interest to the public purse. This is the sort of banking system that was pioneered in the colony of Pennsylvania, where it worked brilliantly well. Restoring Michigan to Solvency Among other advantages to a state of owning its own bank are the substantial sums it could save in interest. As Fleetham notes of his own ailing state of Michigan: "According to recent financial reports (available online), the State of Michigan, the City of Detroit, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, the Wayne County Airport, the Detroit Public Schools, the University of Michigan, and Michigan State University pay over $800 million a year in interest on long term debt. If you add interest paid by Michigan cities, school districts, and public utilities, the cost to our taxpayers easily tops a billion [dollars] a year. What does Wall Street do with our billion plus dollars? They decorate their offices like kings." Interestingly, the projected state budget deficit for 2009 is also $1 billion. If Michigan did not have to pay over a billion dollars in interest to Wall Street, the budget could be balanced and the state could be restored to solvency. A state-owned bank could not only provide interest-free credit for the state but could actually generate revenues for it. Fleetham notes that in 2007, the Bank of North Dakota earned a net profit of $51 million on a loan volume of $2 billion. He comments: "Last year, Michigan citizens paid over $5 billion dollars in personal income tax. With a state bank like North Dakota's we could reduce this burden, fund new businesses, and restore our crumbling water and sewer systems. And we don't have to feel sorry about Wall Street losing our business. They didn't 'earn' the money they lent us. They created it in computers and charged us interest to boot. Let's follow North Dakota's lead and get free from Wall Street's web." Taking the Initiative in California California could do this as well. Robert Ellis is a Tucson talk show host who once worked on Wall Street and has been involved in setting up several banks and financial institutions. In January of this year, he proposed in a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger that California could resolve its financial woes by setting up a bank on the model of the Bank of North Dakota. Ellis wrote to the governor: "I admire your tenacity in dealing with California's financial problems. Your idea of using IOUs was ingenious but there is a better way. The State of California can charter its own bank and issue its own checks to all state employees ... It can also pay all its vendors, contracts and contractors through the bank ... Additionally, once the bank is operational, you can fund your own state projects and you determine the interest rate paid as opposed to being at the mercy of the banks you currently deal with or the interest rates the investment bankers make you pay to issue bonds. By doing this, you will put the state in control of its own destiny and make it the benefactor of its own money. "... What I am proposing is not new. It has been done by one other state in the nation [North Dakota]. Why should you continue to pay the banks for services and interest on loans when you can receive that interest for the benefit of the state of California? Wouldn't it be better if you could fund your own infrastructure projects without having to get the approval of independent banks or investment bankers? Additionally, you set the interest rate on your own projects. You can even set it at zero if you deem the project worthy enough." Ellis offered his services in setting up the bank, which he thought could be chartered in a few short months. The Governor has not replied, but some pressure from constituents might encourage a response. Failing that, there is the initiative and referendum process pioneered in California. It allows state laws to be proposed directly by the public, and the state's Constitution to be amended either by public petition (the "initiative") or by the legislature submitting a proposed constitutional amendment to the electorate (the "referendum"). The initiative is done by writing a proposed constitutional amendment or statute as a petition, which is submitted to the California Attorney General along with a submission fee, which was a modest $200 in 2004. The petition must be signed by registered voters amounting to eight percent (for a constitutional amendment) or five percent (for a statute) of the number of people who voted in the most recent election for governor. {5} As Gandhi said, "When the people lead, the leaders will follow". We the people can beat the Wall Street bankers at their own game, by moving our legislators to set up publicly-owned banks that create credit using the same banking principles that are accepted as standard and usual in the trade by bankers themselves. _____ Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt (2007), her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust". She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from "the money trust". Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine (2008), Nature's Pharmacy (1998), co-authored with Dr Lynne Walker, and The Key to Ultimate Health (2000), co-authored with Dr Richard Hansen. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com. Notes: {1} Anne Davies, "Lockdown Vote Saves California from Bankruptcy", theage.com.au (February 21 2009). http://www.theage.com.au/world/lockdown-vote-saves-california-from-bankruptc y-20090220-8do1.html?page=2 {2} John Mitchell, "46 of 50 States Could File Bankruptcy in 2009-2010", Freedom Arizona (January 30 2009). {3} Jerry Voorhis, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon (1973), excerpted at http://www.sonic.net/~doretk/ArchiveARCHIVE/ECONOMICSPOLITICS/FEDERAL%20RESE RVE/Jerry%20VoorhisFedReserve.html. {4} Modern Money Mechanics: A Workbook on Bank Reserves and Deposit Expansion (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Public Information Service, 1992, available at http://www.rayservers.com/images/ModernMoneyMechanics.pdf ). {5} "California Ballot Proposition", Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_ballot_proposition _____ Ellen Brown is a frequent contributor to Global Research. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BRO20090303& articleId=12522 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From sabri_oncu at yahoo.com Fri Mar 6 22:51:06 2009 From: sabri_oncu at yahoo.com (Sabri Oncu) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 21:51:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [A-List] Worse than the Great Depression Message-ID: <786247.5367.qm@web111503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> The author of the forwarded article: > Securitization - although not in the very "ultra-modernistic" > form and shape of the 2000s, with slicing and dicing of pools > and tranches of seniority, it was widely recognized in the 1930s > that securitization during the 20s drove the domino effect in the > U.S. financial system during the Great Depression. I agree with the author of the article that this depression most likely will be called the Greater Depression. It appears that it is going to be much worse than the past few I know about some. However, I have a question about what is below: > it was widely recognized in the 1930s that securitization during > the 20s drove the domino effect in the U.S. financial system during > the Great Depression. How can I learn more about this? In other words, is the above statement true? Best, Sabri From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Mar 7 02:36:29 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 07 Mar 2009 18:36:29 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Federal Reserve Message-ID: <49B2401D.7080907@ashisuto.co.jp> by Jerry Voorhis {1} from his Beyond Victory (1944) {2} The Constitution of the United States says: "Congress shall have power to coin money and regulate the value thereof". Congress does no such thing, which is the heart of our trouble. Private banks coin our money and regulate its value. In doing so they take from the government and people of the United States a large chunk of their sovereignty, a large chunk of the taxing power, and the key to a prosperous economy without inflation. For example, in testimony before the Banking and Currency Committee of the House of Representatives in 1935, Marriner Eccles, then Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board itself, said: "In purchasing offerings of Government bonds, the banking system as a whole creates new money, or bank deposits. When the banks buy a billion dollars of Government bonds as they are offered - and you have to consider the banking system as a whole as a unit - the banks credit the deposit account of the Treasury with a billion dollars. They debit their Government bond account a billion dollars; or they actually create, by a bookkeeping entry, a billion dollars." Mr Eccles' statement is exactly as true today as when he made it. Here is how it works: The private banking system of our country creates our money in the form of demand deposits on the banks' books. The reason it is able to do this is because no bank is required to have in its vault anything like the amount of money which its depositors think they have in the banks. Banks are only required by the Federal Reserve System, which the banks are sure they own, to have in their vaults anywhere from $1 to $1.50 for every $10 of demand deposits on their books. Thus for every $1 or $1.50 which people - or the government - deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits. It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1 or a little more in reserve to back it up. This is, of course, the "fractional reserve system" of banking. It is more or less controlled by the Federal Reserve System, whose only stock is held by the private banks of the Federal Reserve System. Not a single share of such stock is held by the government or people of the United States, although if "national sovereignty" means anything at all, these banks of issue should be the property of the nation. But what actually happens when our government engages in deficit financing? The obvious way the government can get more buying power into the people's hands is by itself putting more money into the stream of commerce than it takes out in taxes. The tragedy of the situation is that, up to date, the only way our government has enabled itself to spend more money than it takes in has been by forcing this sovereign nation to borrow its own credit from private sources. This has been true, despite the fact that if deficit financing accomplishes its purpose at all it will increase production and trade, enhance tax revenues, and broaden the base of government credit. To the extent that government bonds are sold for cash to individuals or to institutional purchasers other than banks the government is taking out of circulation approximately as many dollars as it will put back in when it spends the money. To accomplish its purpose, deficit financing must result in the creation of new money, and the use of it to increase mass buying power. Only if this happens will there be any stimulation of idle plants to go back into production, or more employment. Under these circumstances what ought to happen is that the credit of this great nation should be drawn upon directly by the government - not that it should go more deeply into debt. For the credit of this or any nation is squarely based upon and derived from the production of wealth by the nation plus the power of the government to tax. A nation like the United States thus possesses an almost unlimited amount of credit. Otherwise it could not possibly have persuaded investors to buy $480 billion of government securities. By whatever percentage it can be anticipated that production and hence potential tax revenues will increase as a result of deficit spending, by that same amount the credit of the nation and its government will be increased. This same percentage of the volume of money previously in circulation should appear on the books of the Treasury as a credit entry to be drawn upon just like tax revenues. To do that would be nothing more than rational and proper bookkeeping. It would also be morally right bookkeeping. And it would make some sense of Mr Nixon's "full employment budget" idea. But this is not what happens at all. Instead the sovereign government of the United States goes hat in hand to the private banking system and asks it to create the new money that the economy needs. The government gives - the word is used advisedly - it gives to the banking system, including the Federal Reserve banks, government bonds, the debt of all the people. Interest-bearing bonds, that is, bonds bearing as high an interest rate under today's regime as the banks decide to demand. Else they won't buy the bonds. The banks "buy" the bonds with newly created demand deposit entries on their books -nothing more. It is fountain-pen money and considerably more inflationary than would be the same amount of dollar bills created by the government. The deposits the banks create with which to own the people's debt are backed by nothing except the bonds themselves! In other words, they are backed by the credit of the American people. What the government has "borrowed" from the banks, what the people must for years pay interest on, is nothing more nor less than the credit of the nation, which obviously the nation possessed in the first place or the bonds themselves would be no good! At long last, a few years ago the Federal Reserve made tacit acknowledgment of these facts. As a direct result of logical and relentless agitation by members of Congress, led by Congressman Wright Patman as well as by other competent monetary experts, the Federal Reserve began to pay to the US Treasury a considerable part of its earnings from interest on government securities. This was done without public notice and few people, even today, know that is being done. It was done, quite obviously, as acknowledgment that the Federal Reserve Banks were acting on the one hand as a national bank of issue, creating the nation's money, but on the other hand charging the nation interest on its own credit - which no true national bank of issue could conceivably, or with any show of justice, dare to do. But this is only part of the story. And the less discouraging part, at that. For where the commercial banks are concerned, there is no such repayment of the people's money. When the commercial banks create money, as they do when they acquire government bonds, they levy a tax on every person in the United States. This is so because every new dollar that is created makes every dollar previously in existence worth somewhat less than it was worth before. This is the very heart of inflation. It is also taxation without representation with a vengeance. Until this system is changed, our debt will continue to skyrocket without limit and the fixing of debt limits by the Congress will continue to be an exercise in utter futility. What ought to be done? Banks should lend existing money. But, as the Constitution clearly requires, the money (or credit) of the nation should never be created by any private agency, but by an agency of the nation itself. It is the duty of Congress to provide for this by a carefully drawn statute. The stock in Federal Reserve Banks should be purchased by the government from their present private bank owners. The Federal Reserve should then become our national bank of issue. It should create reserve Bank Credit as it does now. But that credit should be credited to the United States Treasury, not charged against it and the people as debt. As much such new credit should be created each year as is needed to keep our economy running at or near capacity - and no more than that. A stable price level could result. Then and only then can we expect to overcome recessions, to put our people to work, and do this without the danger of inflation and the ever-increasing debt which are inescapable under the present monetary system. --- Jerry Voorhis, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon (1973) HOW TO NATIONALIZE CREDIT Congress [could] provide for governmental purchase of the capital stock of the twelve central Federal Reserve Banks from the member banks which now own it. This would cost $144,000,000 in round figures, and would correct the present anomalous situation of a privately owned bank of issue. The Federal Reserve Banks could then create money in the form of "Federal Reserve Bank credit" entries on their books just as they do now. A "National Credit Account" (in contrast to present national debt) could be established on the central banks' books in favor of the United States Treasury. To such an account would be credited each year such amounts of newly created "Reserve Bank credit" as would provide the increased purchasing power needed to maintain economic balance and a stable price level. The Treasury would draw checks against their account and pay them out to those to whom the government owed money, thus getting it into the purchasing power stream. In this way the whole nation would derive the benefit from the creation of the additional supply of money which its own growth had made necessary. No interest bearing debt would be incurred, but only a bookkeeping transaction between two public agencies. Should inflation threaten so that it was desirable to reduce the volume of money in circulation, the process could be reversed and the Treasury could transfer a portion of its tax revenues to the central banks for cancellation and retirement of the requisite amount of money to restore stability. Links: {1} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Voorhis {2} http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Victory-Jerry-Voorhis/dp/B001JKN3KE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236334566&sr=1-3 http://www.sonic.net/~doretk/ArchiveARCHIVE/ECONOMICSPOLITICS/FEDERAL%20RESERVE/Jerry%20VoorhisFedReserve.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From critical.montages at gmail.com Sat Mar 7 06:58:55 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 08:58:55 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Obama, Your Package Is Too Small Message-ID: Yoshie From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sat Mar 7 11:57:39 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 13:57:39 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Keating kills Timothy Geithners' performance in the Asian crisis Message-ID: <708EA5E1A20745159B5F3225E5EFD663@TonyPC> ..another slant on the 'economic crisis' animal? ...Comments anyone? T. > Paul Keating, former Austrailian Prime Minister, gave an assessment of > Timothy Geithners' performance in the Asian crisis that is sharply at odds > with US reports. According to Keating, Geither completely misread the > nature > of the crisis, that it was the result of hot money flight, but reverted to > the standard IMF "country facing currency crisis" playbook, and made a bad > situation worse. > > And to compound matters, the mismanagement of the Asian crisis led China > to > decide to build up FX reserves so it would never have to go hat in hand to > the IMF. In other words, the "savings glut" that Bernanke and other > economists like to portray as a cause, if not the cause, of our current > financial crisis, was in response to the misguided Asian crisis program. > >>From the Sydney > ts-rip-20090306-8rk7.html?page=-1> Morning Herald (hat tip reader Sean): > > When Barack Obama announced his champion to rescue the world from economic > ruin, it was the first time most Americans had ever heard the name Tim > Geithner. > > The initial impression was good....."Exactly a decade ago, he was Uncle > Sam's golden-boy emissary sent into the stormy centre of what was then the > world's worst financial crisis [the Asian crisis]," reported The New York > Post. > > The paper gushed: "Just 36 at the time, he'd been raised in Asia and knew > the culture so intimately he scored successes and won confidences that > other > diplomats couldn't match. Geithner earned widespread plaudits for pulling > together quarrelling Asian finance ministers into a $US200 billion rescue > of > their economies." > > "A fantastic choice," said a Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi analyst, Chris > Rupkey, > as the Dow rose by nearly 6 per cent. Even one of Obama's political > rivals, > the hard-bitten Republican senator Richard Shelby, agreed Geithner was "up > to the challenge". > > If anyone in the US media had thought to ask a former Australian prime > minister for his assessment, they would have heard a different view. And > they would not have been so surprised at Geithner's performance since. > > In a speech to a closed gathering at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on > Thursday, Paul Keating gave a starkly different account of Geithner's > record > in handling the Asian crisis: "Tim Geithner was the Treasury line officer > who wrote the IMF [International Monetary Fund] program for Indonesia in > 1997-98, which was to apply current account solutions to a capital account > crisis." > > In other words, Geithner fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem. And his > misdiagnosis led to a dreadfully wrong prescription. > > Geithner thought Asia's problem was the same as the ones that had > shattered > Latin America in the 1980s and Mexico in 1994, a classic current account > crisis. In this kind of crisis, the central cause is that the government > has > run impossibly big debts. > > The solution? The IMF, the Washington-based emergency lender of last > resort, > will make loans to keep the country solvent, but on condition the > government > hacks back its spending. The cure addresses the ailment. > > But the Asian crisis was completely different. The Asian governments that > went to the IMF for emergency loans - Thailand, South Korea and > Indonesia - > all had sound public finances. > > The problem was not government debt. It was great tsunamis of hot money in > the private capital markets. When the wave rushed out, it left a credit > drought behind. > > But Geithner, through his influence on the IMF, imposed the same cure the > IMF had imposed on Latin America and Mexico. It was the wrong cure. > Indeed, > it only aggravated the problem. > > Keating continued: "Soeharto's government delivered 21 years of 7 per cent > compound growth. It takes a gigantic fool to mess that up. But the IMF > messed it up. The end result was the biggest fall in GDP in the 20th > century. That dubious distinction went to Indonesia. And, of course, > Soeharto lost power." > > Exactly who was the "gigantic fool"? It was, obviously, the man who wrote > the program, Geithner, although Keating is prepared to put the then > managing > director of the IMF, the Frenchman Michel Camdessus, in the same category. > > Worse, Keating argued, Geithner's misjudgment had done terminal damage to > the credibility of the IMF, with seismic geoeconomic consequences: "The > IMF > is the gun that can't shoot straight. They've been making a mess of things > for the last 20-odd years, and the greatest mess they made was in east > Asia > in 1997-98, so much so that no east Asian state will put its head in the > IMF > noose." > > China, in particular, drew hard conclusions from the IMF's mishandling of > the Asian crisis. It decided that it would never allow itself to be > dependent on the IMF, or the US, or the West generally, for its > international solvency. Instead, it would build the biggest war chest the > world had ever seen. > > Keating continued: "This has all been noted inside the State Council of > China and by the Politburo. And it's one of the reasons, perhaps the > principal reason, why convertibility of the renminbi remains off the > agenda > for China, and it's why through a series of exchange-rate interventions > each > day that they've built these massive reserves.... > > Is this some flight of Keatingesque fancy? The former deputy governor of > the > Reserve Bank of Australia, Stephen Grenville, doesn't think so: "After the > Asian crisis, the countries of east Asia decided that they would never go > to > the IMF again. The IMF is taboo in east Asia. Look at the evidence. The > revealed preference of the region is that no one has gone to the IMF > since, > even when they needed the money." > > And Asian capitals know that they have no real influence over the IMF - > while European governments enjoy 40 per cent of the voting power on the > IMF, > Japan, China and the rest of east Asia put together have only about 16 per > cent.... > > Keating urges that the fund should be decapitated, with control passing to > the governments of the Group of 20 countries whose leaders are to meet in > London on April 2. The summit, which is to include China, India and > Indonesia as well as Australia, is meeting to consider solutions to the > global crisis. > > As for The New York Post's claim that Geithner was the hero who cajoled > those quarrelsome Asians into agreeing to a $US200 billion rescue, the key > fact burned into the minds of Asian elites is that the US was deaf to > requests for funds. Washington did not contribute a cent of its own money > to > any of the emergency packages. Japan and Australia were the only nations > that made loans to all three of the stricken Asian countries. > > Keating went on to argue that, by frightening the Chinese into building > their vast $US2 trillion foreign reserves, Geithner was responsible for > the > build-up of tremendous imbalance in the world financial system. This > imbalance, in turn, according to Keating, contributed to the global > financial crisis which has since devastated the world economy.... > > "That is the fundamental cause of the problem - the imbalance is the > fundamental cause." > > > > > > > > > > Russell Huntley > > Managing Director > > Matrixx Management > > Tel: (201) 824-0117 > > rgnh at optonline.net > > > > cid:image001.gif at 01C7819D.A742CD10 > > __________________________________ > > This message is intended only for the addressee. Please notify sender by > e-mail if you are not the intended recipient. If you are not the intended > recipient, you may not copy, disclose, or distribute this message or its > contents to any other person and any such actions may be unlawful. > > > > Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre > minds...Albert Einstein > > > > > > From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Mar 7 14:15:55 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 13:15:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [A-List] How Credit Unions Survived The Crash Message-ID: <635049.67473.qm@web180107.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> ?Anne Williamson < Well, all financial institutions borrow short and lend long to my knowledge.? The point is credit unions can not pyramid money, therefore they are lending their private depositors' savings, real capital, not extending and creating credit based on govt-provided paper money (which is all digital these days, of course.)? A really good book on just how poisonous the system is and which discusses the details of the operation is Rothbard's "The Case Against the Fed."? Follow that one up with "Banks, the Federal Reserve and American Foreign Policy," two truly life-changing books, each of which can be read and absorbed in the course of a casual weekend's reading.? You, Sabri, are a sophisticated reader of things financial, but Rothbard wrote these books for the layman so they are excellent for list members who have interests and expertise outside of finance.? Alternatively, mises.org has Murray's "What Has Government Done to Our Money?" online, no charge - another brief and excellent primer for the general reader. -A. ^^^^^^^ CB: Are you saying that this pyramiding caused the current insolvency of the big Wall Street banks, S&L crisis, LTCM hedge fund crash ? 1929 stock market crash ? From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Mar 7 19:48:34 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 08 Mar 2009 11:48:34 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Monetize This! Message-ID: <49B33202.5050904@ashisuto.co.jp> A Better Way to Fund the Stimulus Package by Ellen Brown webofdebt.com (February 22 2009) "Diseases desperate grown are by desperate appliances relieved, or not at all". --- Shakespeare, "Hamlet" Moody's credit rating agency is warning that the US government's AAA credit rating is at risk, because it has taken on so much debt that there are few creditors left to underwrite it. Foreigners have bought as much as two-thirds of US debt in recent years, but they could be doing much less purchasing of US Treasury securities in the future, not so much out of a desire to chastise America as simply because they won't have the funds to do it. Oil prices have fallen off a cliff and the US purchase of foreign exports has dried up, slashing the surpluses that those countries previously recycled back into US Treasuries. And domestic buyers of securities, to the extent that they can be found, will no doubt demand substantially higher returns than the rock-bottom interest rates at which Treasuries are available now. {1} Who, then, is left to buy the government's debt and fund President Obama's $900 billion stimulus package? The taxpayers are obviously tapped out, so the money will have to be borrowed; but borrowed from whom? The pool of available lenders is shrinking fast. Morever, servicing the federal debt through private lenders imposes a crippling interest burden on the US Treasury. The interest tab was $412 billion in fiscal year 2008, or about one-third of the federal government's total income from personal income taxes ($1,220 billion in 2008). The taxpayers not only cannot afford the $900 billion; they cannot afford to increase their interest payments. But what is the alternative? How about turning to the lender of last resort, the Federal Reserve itself? The advantage for the government of borrowing from its own central bank is that this money is virtually free. This is because the Federal Reserve rebates any interest it receives to the Treasury after deducting its costs, and the federal debt is never actually paid off but is just rolled over from year to year. Interest-free loans that are never paid off are basically free money. In 2008, 85% of the interest collected by the Federal Reserve (or "Fed") was returned to the Treasury. The average interest rate on Treasury securities today is only about three percent; fifteen percent of three percent is less than a half percent - such a negligible interest as to make the money nearly free. The Fed does not have to worry about interest, because it does not actually have to acquire the money before lending it, and it knows the government will not default. The Fed originates the money it lends, either on a printing press or with accounting entries. It can purchase Treasury debt simply by writing credits into the "reserve account" of the seller's bank, which then credits the seller's account. The Fed's ability to write numbers into an account is obviously unlimited; but it has normally restricted its purchase of government securities to only so much as is necessary to provide the liquidity needed for banks to cash and clear checks. Funding the government's budget shortfall has usually been left to private lenders; but those loans are drying up, and servicing them is proving expensive. Both this interest burden and the need to continually attract new lenders could be avoided by tapping into the government's credit line at its own central bank. But wouldn't that be dangerously inflationary? Not in today's economic climate, as will be shown. And if the notion of funding the government through its own central bank seems too radical and unprecedented to be entertained, consider the radical moves the Fed has already been taking in the last year. Without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress, the Fed just "monetized" $1.2 trillion in private debt, turning commercial loans into money. If private banks and private corporations now have multi-billion dollar credit lines with the Federal Reserve, then Congress should have one too. In fact Congress, which gave the Fed its charter to create the national money supply, should have been the first in line. If the Fed Can "Monetize" Private Debt, It Can Monetize Public Debt. The Fed has been a hotbed of radical, experimental activity in the past year. Ben Gisin is a former banker who has long been tracking the Fed's statistical releases. He says he has never seen anything like it. Assets have been magically appearing on the Fed's balance sheet, and they are not coming from any traditional source. {2} In May 2007, the Fed reported assets of about $850 billion, and 92% of them were the usual federal securities (government IOUs). A year later, the Fed's stash of federal securities had dropped to $500 billion, but its total assets remained substantially unchanged. The federal securities had just been swapped for other forms of debt. In January of 2009, however, the Fed reported assets of $2.1 trillion, an increase of $1.2 trillion from a year earlier. {3} Where did this new money come from? The Fed's liabilities also went up by $1.2 trillion, indicating that it was creating "credit" simply by double-entry bookkeeping. Loans were being created by entering them as assets on one side of the Fed's books and as corresponding liabilities on the other. Creating money by double-entry bookkeeping is not actually unique to the central bank. It is how all commercial banks come up with the money they lend, as many authorities have attested. In a revealing booklet called Modern Money Mechanics, the Chicago Federal Reserve explained how banks expand the money supply (or create money) using double-entry bookkeeping. The booklet stated: "Of course, [banks] do not really pay out loans from the money they receive as deposits. If they did this, no additional money would be created. What they do when they make loans is to accept promissory notes in exchange for credits to the borrowers' transaction accounts. Loans (assets) and deposits (liabilities) both rise [by the same amount]." {4} Congressman Jerry Voorhis, writing in 1973, explained how monetary expansion is built on the ten percent reserve requirement imposed by the Fed: "[F]or every $1 or $1.50 which people - or the government - deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits. It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1 or a little more in reserve to back it up." {5} That means that if the Federal Reserve were operating like a commercial bank, it could take its $500 billion in US securities and fan them into $5 trillion in loans; and that appears to be exactly what it has been doing. What is extraordinary is that the money is being used to make commercial loans. If the Fed can come up with $1.2 trillion to "monetize" private promissory notes, argues Ben Gisin, there is no reason it could not come up with $900 billion to monetize Obama's stimulus package. In fact, Congress could mandate its captive central bank to buy the bonds needed to fund the stimulus package. The Advantage of Borrowing from the Federal Reserve For the government, the difference between borrowing credit created with accounting entries from a private bank and borrowing the same sort of credit from the Federal Reserve is that borrowing from the Fed is nearly interest-free. That is true today, but it has not always been true. Congressman Wright Patman, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, wrote in a 1964 treatise called A Primer on Money: "The Federal Reserve Banks create money out of thin air to buy Government Bonds from the US Treasury ... [creating] out of nothing a ... debt which the American people are obliged to pay with interest". Patman was outraged at the inequity of this practice and boldly agitated for Congress to nationalize the privately-owned Federal Reserve, a move that would have allowed the government to issue the national money supply directly. Needless to say, however, this proposal met with strong opposition. Nationalization did not happen, but the Fed did have to compromise. According to Jerry Voorhis: "As a direct result of logical and relentless agitation by members of Congress, led by Congressman Wright Patman as well as by other competent monetary experts, the Federal Reserve began to pay to the US Treasury a considerable part of its earnings from interest on government securities. This was done without public notice and few people, even today, know that it is being done. It was done, quite obviously, as acknowledgment that the Federal Reserve Banks were acting on the one hand as a national bank of issue, creating the nation's money, but on the other hand charging the nation interest on its own credit - which no true national bank of issue could conceivably, or with any show of justice, dare to do." Voorhis went on, "But this is only part of the story. And the less discouraging part, at that. For where the commercial banks are concerned, there is no such repayment of the people's money." Commercial banks, he explained, do not rebate the interest, although they also "'buy' the bonds with newly created demand deposit entries on their books - nothing more" {6}. Voorhis noted that the Constitution provides, "Congress shall have the power to coin money [and] regulate the value thereof". Whether "to coin money" means "to issue money" has been debated; but as President Andrew Jackson observed, if anyone was given the power to issue money, it was Congress, not a private banking elite. For a full century before the American Revolution, the colonists funded a period of unprecedented prosperity and productive enterprise with paper money issued directly by their own local governments or government-owned banks. According to Benjamin Franklin, it was chiefly to get that power back after King George halted the practice that the colonists fought the Revolution {7}. They won the war but lost the money-creating power to a private banking cartel. We the people now have an opportunity to get that innovative funding system back, and we can do it without having to convince a faction-ridden Congress that they need to do anything so controversial as nationalizing the Federal Reserve or even passing new legislation. All that is required is a shift in emphasis, a shift the Federal Reserve has been making lately itself. The Fed routinely turns government bonds into dollars in order to expand the amount of currency in circulation; it has now begun doing that with corporate debt; and Fed officials are talking about doing it with long-term federal securities. According to a January 28 2009 Associated Press report: "With its key lending rate to banks already near zero, the Fed pledged anew to use 'all available tools' to revive the economy. Specifically, the Fed said it is 'prepared' to buy longer-term Treasury securities if the circumstances warrant such action." {8} Traditionally, government debt has been "monetized" by the Fed only to provide the bank reserves necessary to cover check cashing and clearing. This tool is now being recommended "to revive the economy". Obama's stimulus package is also intended to revive the economy. Combine the two and you have a package that stimulates the economy without adding to the impossible burden of an exponentially-increasing debt. But Wouldn't That Be Inflationary? The usual objection to funding the government with credits drawn on its own central bank is that the result would be inflationary. However, the scenario most feared today is actually deflation - a lack of available dollars to fuel the economy. Asset values have collapsed, and savings have collapsed along with them. People with only half as much money in their brokerage accounts have less to spend; people whose houses have plummeted in value cannot take out consumer loans against equity as was done in the boom years. Funding a "stimulus" package with existing money that is merely recycled through the banking system as loans will not stimulate the economy but will only add to the problem, by adding to the collective burden to service debt. Money that should have gone into more productive endeavors will wind up going into interest payments. To bolster demand and stimulate production, recovery requires an infusion of new dollars - dollars that can be used to pay wages and salaries, which can then be used to buy goods and services. In any case, adding new money to the money supply will not inflate prices if the money is used in the production of new goods and services. Price inflation results only when "demand" (dollars) exceeds "supply" (goods and services). If the new dollars are used to create new goods and services, demand and supply will rise together and prices will remain stable. If the goods being produced are income-generating assets - railroads, bridges, alternative energy sources, low-cost housing, medical services - so much the better. The projects can be "monetized" in the same way that banks monetize mortgages - by entering them as assets on one side of their books and as liabilities on the other. The funds received from the central bank can then be repaid to the central bank from the income the assets produce, extinguishing the debt and avoiding inflation. Ideally, the projects would actually turn a profit, generating income for the government and reducing the tax burden on the public. The bottom line is that we cannot borrow our way out of debt. Only new money will stimulate a debt-ridden economy - money that is interest-free and does not have to be paid back. The direct road to that result would have been to nationalize the Federal Reserve and return the power to create money to Congress; but as Wright Patman found, that solution is controversial and could be a difficult piece of legislation to get passed. In the meantime, the same result can be achieved by tapping into the government's nearly-interest-free credit line at the Federal Reserve. Nearly-interest-free loans of accounting-entry money that never has to be paid back are a source of debt-free liquidity that can be used to fund projects that put people back to work, without increasing the interest burden on the government or the tax burden on the public. _____ Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt (2007), her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust". She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from "the money trust". Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine (2008), Nature's Pharmacy (1998), co-authored with Dr Lynne Walker, and The Key to Ultimate Health (2000), co-authored with Dr Richard Hansen) Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com. Notes: 1. Aaron Task, "Another $3T of US Debt: Don't Count on Foreigners to Pay for Our Bailouts" (citing John Ryding, chief economist of RDQ Economics), Finance.Yahoo.com (February 13 2009). 2. Benjamin Gisin, Michael Krajovic, "Rescuing the Physical Economy", Conscious Economics (January 2009). 3. Federal Reserve Board, "Annual Report 2007", "Statistical Tables, "No 9: Statement of Condition of Federal Reserve Banks", & "No 10: Income and Expenses of the Federal Reserve Banks", www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/rptcongress/default.htm; "Current Release", www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41. 4. Modern Money Mechanics: A Workbook on Bank Reserves and Deposit Expansion (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Public Information Service, 1992, available at http://www.rayservers.com/images/ModernMoneyMechanics.pdf), page 6. 5. J Voorhis, The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon (1973), excerpted at http://www.sonic.net/~doretk/ArchiveARCHIVE/ECONOMICSPOLITICS/FEDERAL%20RESERVE/Jerry%20VoorhisFedReserve.html. 6. Jerry Voorhis, op. cit. 7. Quoted by Congressman Charles Binderup in a 1941 speech, "How America Created Its Own Money in 1750: How Benjamin Franklin Made New England Prosperous", reprinted in Unrobing the Ghosts of Wall Street, http://reactor-core.org/america-created-money.html. 8. Jeannine Aversa, "Fed Ready to Provide Fresh Aid to Revive Economy", Associated Press (January 28 2009). www.webofdebt.com/articles/monetizethis.php http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Mar 7 22:25:48 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 21:25:48 -0800 (PST) Subject: [A-List] Obama Says US May Reach Out to Taliban Message-ID: <717808.86311.qm@web180102.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Obama Says US May Reach Out to Taliban http://news.aol.com/article/obama-afghanistan-taliban/373693 CB:If I was Obama , I'd say to the Taliban "look bros, obviously, you are some bad motherfuckers? because even Alexander couldn't conquer y'all, or was it that Alexander was the only one who conquered y'all. Whatever. But look , don't you realize that chimpanzees have more sense than you do in that they know that you can't disrespect ?females like you are. You dig ? You are dumber than apes when it come to the girls. So why not drop the extraordinary anti-women total bullshit and peace out ?" From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sat Mar 7 22:31:45 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 21:31:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [A-List] Palestinian PM resigns, paves way for unity talks Message-ID: <374178.60653.qm@web180109.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Palestinian PM resigns, paves way for unity talks ????*RAMALLAH, West Bank ? The Western-backed Palestinian prime minister submitted his resignation Saturday, improving the odds of a possible unity government of Fatah moderates and Hamas militants, followed by new Palestinian elections. Salam Fayyad announced that he will step down once a ?new government is formed, but no later than the end of March. Unity talks between the Islamic militant Hamas and the Fatah movement of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are to resume this week in Cairo. Abbas aides noted that if the negotiations fail, Abbas might reappoint Fayyad. Fayyad, a respected economist, was appointed prime minister by Abbas in June 2007, following Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza. The takeover led to a deep split between Fayyad's internationally backed ?administration in the West Bank and the widely shunned Hamas government in Gaza whose borders were sealed by Israel and Egypt. Still, both sides appeared optimistic Saturday ?about a power-sharing deal. "Everyone needs a lifeline," Ahmed Yousef, a Hamas official, said of the rivals. Previous unity accords collapsed in acrimony, but both sides seem to have stronger reasons now to compromise. After Israel's recent military offensive in Gaza, Hamas ?needs Fatah's international respectability to help end the crippling border blockade and obtain foreign funding to rebuild Gaza. Last week, dozens of donor countries promised $5.2 billion for Gaza reconstruction ?and the Fayyad government at a pledging conference in Egypt. Abbas, meanwhile, needs to find a way to blunt political challenges by Hamas, which maintains his four-year term expired in January. Abbas' support at home has eroded steadily, both because ?of his perceived lack of decisiveness during the Gaza war and because his yearlong peace talks with Israel ?produced no results. Abbas is the leading Palestinian proponent of a peace deal with Israel, but with a right-wing government poised to take power in Israel, chances for new talks are slim. Fayyad said Saturday he was resigning to "support the efforts being exerted to form a national consensus government that would reunite the homeland." Hamas has repeatedly demanded that Fayyad step down ?and officials of the militant Islamic group reacted dismissively. "This government did not work for the sake of the Palestinians, it worked for its own agenda. This end was expected for a government that was illegal and unconstitutional," said ?Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza. Despite the sour note, preparations for Egyptian-brokered ?unity talks were moving forward. Starting Tuesday, leading Hamas and Fatah officials will meet at an office of the Egyptian intelligence service in Cairo, ?said Nabil Shaath, a senior Fatah negotiator. The officials will work in five committees to talk about forming a unity government, holding new elections, reforming the security services, carrying out confidence-building measures and finding a role for Hamas in the Palestine Liberation Organization. Any agreement on forming a new government must be comprehensive, ?Shaath said. The talks are to go on for 10 days, but the two sides would keep going after that if there is no agreement, he added. "We want the dialogue to succeed because we have no alternative," he said. A unity government could consist of Hamas and Fatah politicians or of independents nominated by the two movements. It would be asked to ?prepare for presidential and legislative elections in the West Bank and Gaza. The next legislative elections are due in January 2010, but Hamas officials confirmed privately that they've raised the possibility of postponing the vote for several more months, arguing that both sides need time to improve their standing with the voters. It was not clear how the international community would respond to a unity government and whether it would keep sending the ?foreign aid promised to Fayyad. In the past, the U.S. and most European countries rejected any governing role for Hamas. However, positions appear to have softened among some European nations, particulary after Israel's Gaza offensive which ended with a temporary cease-fire Jan. 18. Hamas remains in control of Gaza, despite the Israeli military onslaught ?and the border blockade, underscoring the need for the international community to find a way to deal with the militants. Also, the war deepened the humanitarian crisis, with some 15,000 homes destroyed or damaged, and more than 900,000 of Gaza's 1.4 million people receiving food aid. In other developments, an internal report by European Union diplomats ?said Israel is undermining prospects for establishing a Palestinian ?capital in east Jerusalem because Israel keeps building homes for Jews there and demolishes Palestinian-owned homes. "Long-standing Israeli plans for Jerusalem, now being implemented at an accelerated rate, are undermining prospects for a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem and a sustainable two- state solution," said the 20-page report, made available to journalists by the Israel ?Committee Against House Demolitions. An EU diplomat verified its authenticity. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev would not comment on the report, saying he had not seen it. However, he said Israel offered Palestinians in Jerusalem citizenship after capturing the sector in the 1967 Mideast war, ?and that Arab and Jewish residents of the city are treated the same. Palestinians complain of systematic discrimination by municipal authorities. ___ Associated Press writers Mohammed Daraghmeh and Diaa Hadid ?contributed to this report From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Mar 8 07:05:20 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:05:20 +0900 Subject: [A-List] How Benjamin Franklin Made New England Prosperous Message-ID: <49B3C290.1020109@ashisuto.co.jp> America Created Its Own Money in 1750 by Congressman Charles G Binderup The following historical story is taken from a radio address given by Congressman Charles G Binderup of Nebraska, some fifty years ago and was reprinted in Unrobing the Ghosts of Wall Street {1}. Colonies More Prosperous Than The Home Country Before the American War for Independence in 1776, the colonized part of what is today the United States of America was a possession of England. It was called New England, and was made up of thirteen colonies, which became the first thirteen states of the great Republic. Around 1750, this New England was very prosperous. Benjamin Franklin was able to write: "There was abundance in the Colonies, and peace was reigning on every border. It was difficult, and even impossible, to find a happier and more prosperous nation on all the surface of the globe. Comfort was prevailing in every home. The people, in general, kept the highest moral standards, and education was widely spread." When Benjamin Franklin went over to England to represent the interests of the Colonies, he saw a completely different situation: the working population of this country was gnawed by hunger and poverty. "The streets are covered with beggars and tramps", he wrote. He asked his English friends how England, with all its wealth, could have so much poverty among its working classes. His friends replied that England was a prey to a terrible condition: it had too many workers! The rich said they were already overburdened with taxes, and could not pay more to relieve the needs and poverty of this mass of workers. Several rich Englishmen of that time actually believed, along with Malthus, that wars and plague were necessary to rid the country from man-power surpluses. Franklin's friends then asked him how the American Colonies managed to collect enough money to support their poor houses, and how they could overcome this plague of pauperism. Franklin replied: "We have no poor houses in the Colonies; and if we had some, there would be nobody to put in them, since there is, in the Colonies, not a single unemployed person, neither beggars nor tramps". Thanks To Free Money Issued By The Nation His friends could not believe their ears, and even less understand this fact, since when the English poor houses and jails became too cluttered, England shipped these poor wretches and down-and-outs, like cattle, and discharged, on the quays of the Colonies, those who had survived the poverty, dirtiness and privations of the journey. At that time, England was throwing into jail those who could not pay their debts. They therefore asked Franklin how he could explain the remarkable prosperity of the New England Colonies. Franklin replied: "That is simple. In the Colonies, we issue our own paper money. It is called 'Colonial Scrip'. We issue it in proper proportion to make the goods and pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power and we have no interest to pay to no one." The Bankers Impose Poverty The information came to the knowledge of the English Bankers, and held their attention. They immediately took the necessary steps to have the British Parliament to pass a law that prohibited the Colonies from using their scrip money, and then ordered them to use only the gold and silver money that was provided in sufficient quantity by the English bankers. Then began in America the plague of debt-money, which has never since brought so many curses to the American people. The first law was passed in 1751, and then completed by a more restrictive law in 1763. Franklin reported that one year after the implementation of this prohibition on Colonial money, the streets of the Colonies were filled with unemployment and beggars, just like in England, because there was not enough money to pay for the goods and work. The circulating medium of exchange had been reduced by half. Franklin added that this was the original cause of the American Revolution - and not the tax on tea nor the Stamp Act, as it has been taught again and again in history books. The financiers always manage to have removed from school books all that can throw light on their own schemes, and damage the glow that protects their power. Franklin, who was one of the chief architects of the American independence, wrote it clearly: "The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament, which has caused in the Colonies hatred of England and the Revolutionary War." This point of view of Franklin was confirmed by great statesmen of his era: John Adams, Jefferson, and several others. A remarkable English historian, John Twells, wrote, speaking of the money of the Colonies, the Colonial Scrip: "It was the monetary system under which America's Colonies flourished to such an extent that Edmund Burke was able to write about them: 'Nothing in the history of the world resembles their progress. It was a sound and beneficial system, and its effects led to the happiness of the people.'" John Twells adds: "In a bad hour, the British Parliament took away from America its representative money, forbade any further issue of bills of credit, these bills ceasing to be legal tender, and ordered that all taxes should be paid in coins. Consider now the consequences: this restriction of the medium of exchange paralyzed all the industrial energies of the people. Ruin took place in these once flourishing Colonies; most rigorous distress visited every family and every business, discontent became desperation, and reached a point, to use the words of Dr Johnson, when human nature rises up and asserts its rights." Another writer, Peter Cooper, expresses himself along the same lines. After having said how Franklin had explained to the London Parliament the cause of the prosperity of the Colonies, he wrote: "After Franklin gave explanations on the true cause of the prosperity of the Colonies, the Parliament exacted laws forbidding the use of this money in the payment of taxes. This decision brought so many drawbacks and so much poverty to the people that it was the main cause of the Revolution. The suppression of the Colonial money was a much more important reason for the general uprising than the Tea and Stamp Act." Today, in America as well as in Europe, we are under the regime of the Scrip of the Bankers instead of the scrip of the nation. Hence the public debts, everlasting interest charges, taxes that plunder purchasing power, with the only result being a consolidation of the financial dictatorship. There is only one cure for America's ultimate financial collapse and that is for Congress to exercise Clause Thirty of the "Federal" Reserve Act, buy the outstanding shares of stock, shut down this unconstitutional system and sell off their assets to reimburse the people of this nation for this unspeakable theft of their wealth. This is the first installment of postings on this issue, new ones will be put up as soon as manpower allows. Additional reading: http://www.members.shaw.ca/theultimatescam/index.htm Link {1}: http://openlibrary.org/b/OL6452000M http://www.planetization.org/prosperity.htm http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Sun Mar 8 10:05:56 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 09:05:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [A-List] Worse than the Great Depression Message-ID: <400253.57501.qm@web180102.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> > it was widely recognized in the 1930s that securitization during > the 20s drove the domino effect in the U.S. financial system during > the Great Depression. How can I learn more about this? In other words, is the above statement true? Best, Sabri ^^^^^^^ CB: Jim Devine on Pen-l is a Great D specialist. From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sun Mar 8 16:06:35 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2009 18:06:35 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Obama Says US May Reach Out to Taliban In-Reply-To: <717808.86311.qm@web180102.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <717808.86311.qm@web180102.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: ...and the Taliban should reply: "Yo, listen bro, we may consider that if you and yours kick back on the total bullshit imperialism / world hegemony / mass murder / global impoverishment and nuclear armageddon shtick...oh, and pay the Third World reparations to the tune of a few trillion of your soon to be worthless dollars to boot (so make that Euros)...Yo, watcha say?" ----- Original Message ----- From: "Charles Brown" To: ; Sent: Sunday, March 08, 2009 1:25 AM Subject: [A-List] Obama Says US May Reach Out to Taliban Obama Says US May Reach Out to Taliban http://news.aol.com/article/obama-afghanistan-taliban/373693 CB:If I was Obama , I'd say to the Taliban "look bros, obviously, you are some bad motherfuckers because even Alexander couldn't conquer y'all, or was it that Alexander was the only one who conquered y'all. Whatever. But look , don't you realize that chimpanzees have more sense than you do in that they know that you can't disrespect females like you are. You dig ? You are dumber than apes when it come to the girls. So why not drop the extraordinary anti-women total bullshit and peace out ?" From pwright at prisonlegalnews.org Fri Mar 6 08:13:23 2009 From: pwright at prisonlegalnews.org (Paul Wright) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 10:13:23 -0500 Subject: [A-List] News article about PLN public records suit against CCA Message-ID: <031501c99e6e$d528ecb0$0900a8c0@PRISONLEGALNEWS.local> Last July PLN won a landmark ruling against Corrections Corporation of America holding that the company was subject to that state's public records law because it performs a government function, i.e., runs prisons. CCA has appealed. As the Tennessean article below notes, a number of national media organizations joined the TN ACLU in an amicus brief supporting our position. The fundamental premise here is the government cannot contract away its open records obligations. PLN is represented by Andy Clarke in the case. We now await the appeals court ruling. CCA has not provided any records to date. Paul Wright, Editor Prison Legal News P.O. Box 2420 West Brattleboro, VT 05303 802 257-1342 pwright at prisonlegalnews.org www.prisonlegalnews.org Seattle Office 2400 NW 80th St. Suite 148 Seattle, WA 98117 206-246-1022 http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090306/NEWS03/903060350/1017/NEWS01 March 6, 2009 Journalist groups join push for CCA to open records By Chris Echegaray THE TENNESSEAN Five national journalist groups and the Tennessee chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union have joined forces supporting a prison reform advocate who is seeking public records from Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America. A friend of the court brief filed in state appeals court Tuesday asks the court to uphold a July ruling by a Nashville chancellor saying that CCA must follow public records law and open its files for viewing. Alex Friedmann, a former inmate who is now an advocate and associate editor for Prison Legal News, has taken the nation's largest for-profit prison operator to court, seeking access to public records under the Tennessee Public Records Act. He has campaigned for records that deal with the deaths and questionable treatment of inmates. Friedmann, the journalism associations and the ACLU contend CCA is performing a governmental function, operating prisons, detention centers and jails with public funding, and, therefore, the public has a right to access documents. "Our state government cannot contract away its accountability to the public by hiring private, for-profit companies like CCA to perform core governmental functions, such as operating prisons," Friedmann said. "Taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent." The journalism groups are: Society of Professional Journalists, American Society of Newspaper Editors, Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Associated Press. Nashville Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman had ruled that CCA, by running jails and prisons, which are essential governmental roles, was a "functional equivalent" to a governmental entity. Since most of its revenues are taxpayer-funded, she ordered the company to make all of its records available, except those sealed by a court order. CCA fights ruling CCA, which operates the Metro Detention Facility and six other detention facilities across Tennessee, has maintained the company does not have to comply with public records requests because it is private. CCA had its own ally file on its behalf. The Tennessee Secondary Schools Athletic Association claims in its brief that the chancery court's ruling would affect other government contractors. Louise Grant, CCA's spokeswoman, declined to comment, referring to their appellate brief. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 11717 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090306/c3bd0556/attachment.txt From tboyle at rosehill.net Fri Mar 6 11:11:43 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:11:43 -0800 Subject: [A-List] Solidarity requested (in Spanish, short intro in English) In-Reply-To: References: <2fa158550903051851p68c9d291gc7da4b39a7f41586@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Had to laugh out loud. Too true. At 07:06 AM 3/6/2009, Michael Hudson wrote: >Foreign countries are almost invisible to the media here. Actually there are two exceptions-- The countries scheduled for upcoming wars in the near term are depicted as raving lunatics, dangerous military threats and the like. The rest of the countries are reported in one-dimensional travel documentaries that focus on the physical buildings and the terrain. With narrative that will make future wars easier. It seems all part of the same design, to me. The pigs took over the media apparatus in the McCarthy era and never looked back. Todd -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 790 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090306/7185bf3c/attachment.txt From nscchicago at igc.org Fri Mar 6 11:55:37 2009 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 12:55:37 -0600 Subject: [A-List] [chi-labor-against-the-war] Venezuela nationalizes tree farm for eco reasons LIBERATE THE EUCALYPTUS! References: <589255.45359.qm@web110701.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <8A12E64AC76547498DC7FB6D442E7410@NSCCHICAGO> Tom Baker here and important. Venezuelan people, thru Hugo, SHUT DOWN EUCALYPTUS How could such a beautiful tree be turned against herself. The People of Venezuela Liberate the Eucalyptus, always wanting to be free Not no somebody's farm. ----- Original Message ----- From: Cort Greene Subject: [chi-labor-against-the-war] Venezuela nationalizes tree farm for eco reasons Venezuela takes over tree farm of Irish company Fri Mar 6, 2009 11:03am EST By Frank Jack Daniel CARACAS, March 6 (Reuters) - Venezuela President Hugo Chavez has taken over a 500,000-euro eucalyptus farm owned by Ireland's Smurfit Kappa, his latest move on foreign companies as he tightens his grip on the farm and food sectors. Since winning a referendum vote three weeks ago that allows him to run again for re-election in 2012, Chavez has made agriculture and food his priority and appears to be renewing a drive to boost agricultural production via land reform. Earlier this week Chavez nationalized a rice mill owned by giant U.S. food company Cargill Inc and has sent troops to other rice mills in a drive to control supplies of the grain. Smurfit Kappa Group Plc (SKG.I)(SKG.L) said on Friday that it was in talks with Venezuela after authorities took over about 3,700 acres (1,500 hectares) of forestry land with a value of about 500,000 euros. Smurfit Kappa is a major cardboard packaging company. Its London-listed stock was down 5.8 percent on Friday. Chavez said late on Thursday that the government had intervened in the El Pinal eucalyptus plantation because the water-hungry trees were drying out local rivers. He said the government would replant the farm. "We are going to use this wood in a rational manner and then we will change the vocation of the land; we are going to plant other things that are not eucalyptus," Chavez said during a televised address. Analyst Robert Eason of Goodbody Stockbrokers in Dublin said in a research note that Smurfit Kappa owned 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) in Venezuela, representing 35 percent of the group's Latin American landholdings. "This represents a very small seizure," Eason wrote, adding that Latin America represents 15 percent of Smurfit Kappa's revenues. Venezuela is South America's largest oil exporter, and its fertile plains and hills were abandoned when the booming oil industry crowded out coffee and cocoa farms in the 1920s. Chavez, who grew up in the countryside, has long-term plans to double the amount of land under cultivation in the vast South American country. In the past Chavez has taken over big farms deemed idle and given them to small farmers. The land reform sparked violence, with dozens of peasant farmers murdered in the last few years. (Additional reporting by Fabian Cambero; Jonathan Saul in Dublin; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn) Smurfit Kappa confirms Venezuelan seizure Friday, 6 March 2009 16:16 The government of Venezuela has taken over 1,500 hectares of land owned by Smurfit Kappa in the country. The company this afternoon confirmed that the area worth ?500,000 has been seized. In a statement, the firm said that its management in the South American country are in discussions with local authorities about the development. Earlier, a spokesman for the company was unable to say if the land had been seized as part of a renewed nationalisation drive of foreign-owned assets in the country. Local media said the area seized was planted with eucalyptus which a government minister said benefited only Smurfit Kappa. Smurfit is one of the world's biggest paper and packaging producers and has around 30,000 hectares in Venezuela. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez won a referendum three weeks ago changing the law to allow him to stand for office again. Last night the Government seized a rice plant used by the US food giant Cargill. The Government has also warned land owners they risk having their property seized if they reduce crop production. __._,_.___ Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe __,_._,___ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 10993 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090306/e315bce8/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 4008 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090306/e315bce8/attachment-0001.jpeg From tboyle at rosehill.net Fri Mar 6 14:02:06 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:02:06 -0800 Subject: [A-List] The root causes within a political economy Message-ID: Here is an essay I ran across, awhile back... http://librivox.org/unto-this-last-four-essays-on-the-first-principles-of-political-economy-by-john-ruskin/ Ruskin's thesis is that the structures of political economy are doomed to fail since the more powerful motivations for production and cooperation lie in natural affections, rather than the force of money power. My own 2 cents are that markets alone, would be a horribly unjust and inefficient system, because prices only reflect the consideration exchanged among the principal parties-- they omit externalities costs (and even fail sometimes to capture money for externalities benefits.) So, one remedy for the harmful externalities of markets is to quantify those things and add them to the prices people pay, and then in utopian fashion, faithfully giving the money back to the people affected, or using it to fix the things that were screwed up by the producers or "principal parties". That's what Al Gore (and my Rep. Jay Inslee) are proposing in "Cap and Trade" which I oppose. Marjorie Kelly also opposed quantifying externalities, in her talk in Seattle a couple years ago, so does John Ikerd and many others, regarding it as selling a license to the rich to harm the commons. Others propose that harmful activities are most effectively disincented by progressively steep income taxes, presuming the money can be reliably applied back to the public commons or to the public, perhaps reducing other costs or providing education, healthcare, etc. I favor progressive income taxes as crucial to taking the fun and profit out of antisocial behaviors by the greedy. Such as war. No wealthy oligarchs, no war. Simple. You might think the concentration of wealth can be reversed by other means, but I reject that theory. Never happens. You need intangibles taxes like in Florida, and devastatingly high estate taxes, and progressive income taxes on the extreme incomes. I also favor progressivity in excise taxes on all hydrocarbon production. Finally, some things just have to be banned. (Coal fired power plants, nuclear reactors, production of most toxic compounds) Todd -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 2492 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090306/da4fe644/attachment.txt From tboyle at rosehill.net Fri Mar 6 16:59:02 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:59:02 -0800 Subject: [A-List] Playing the Banking Game In-Reply-To: <49B1B326.8020102@ashisuto.co.jp> References: <49B1B326.8020102@ashisuto.co.jp> Message-ID: >How Cash Starved States Can Create their Own Credit >by Ellen Brown >Global Research (March 03 2009) > >..... Since 2000, the state's GNP has grown 56%, personal income has >grown 43%, and wages have grown 34%. This year the state has a budget >surplus of $1.2 billion!" > >What does the State of North Dakota have that other states don't? The >answer seems to be: its own bank. In fact, North Dakota has the only >state-owned bank in the nation.......... This absolutely wouldn't accomplish anything other than perhaps, that the bank wouldn't be looted and collapse like the big money-center banks. Is that all Ms. Brown is trying to accomplish? If you want to stir things up a bit, any State could unleash business from the need to use money at all, by operating a public transaction repository on the Internet. They already maintain at least two large-scale transaction repositories - the title system to real estate parcels, and the title system for automobiles. IN the latter case, in most states the ownership may be passed from owner to owner by electronic entries. Why not modernize and generalize this system so that individuals and companies, once having established login accounts on the server, could upload ANY transaction having consideration? At that point, very substantial barter, including multiparty barter, could become 1000 times more efficient. Furthermore, the likelihood of fraud becomes much smaller because, picture the situation of a fraudster appearing to take possession of your physical asset, or force performance of some service. You would just tell the fraudster to get lost. This system is intrinsically not vulnerable to fraud. Now here is what I would do, if I were the State legislature: Require that every transaction in the state exceeding $100 must be registered on the public transaction repository, together with the digital signatures of both parties OTHERWISE BE UNENFORCEABLE IN THIS STATE, and furthermore-- the public transaction repository be publicly readable. A great flapping of wings as the entire criminal class and plutocracy departs the state. Todd -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 2458 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090306/edd46d84/attachment.txt From nscchicago at igc.org Sat Mar 7 10:19:48 2009 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 11:19:48 -0600 Subject: [A-List] VENEZUELA VERY COOL AND STRONG MINNESOTA FIGHT BACK Message-ID: Tom Baker here and if you click on the web pages you'll see reports on International Womens Day in Venezuela and about the taking over of Cargill Minnesota. Strong people's challenge to the State legislature. Bail out the Banks? BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE, bo -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 1079 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090307/01de47a5/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 4008 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090307/01de47a5/attachment-0001.jpeg -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Cort Greene Subject: [chi-labor-against-the-war] Venezuela: Food multinational Cargill nationalised Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 08:57:11 -0800 (PST) Size: 9242 Url: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090307/01de47a5/attachment-0003.eml From suzannedk at gmail.com Sat Mar 7 11:52:40 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 19:52:40 +0100 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: "The Last Picture Show": Obama's Fiscal Year 2010 Budget. CRG E-Newsletter In-Reply-To: <1102487129170.1101807978350.23602.3.34070018@scheduler> References: <1102487129170.1101807978350.23602.3.34070018@scheduler> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Globalresearch.ca Date: Mar 5, 2009 1:08 PM Subject: "The Last Picture Show": Obama's Fiscal Year 2010 Budget. CRG E-Newsletter To: suzannedk at gmail.com ?The Last Picture Show?: Obama's Fiscal Year 2010 Budget By Richard C. Cook URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12512 Global Research, March 2, 2009 [?The Last Picture Show? was a 1971 film depicting the decay of small town America . It took place in the fictitious town of Anarene , Texas .] We hear a distant tune reminiscent of America 's high and lonely places and the sound of a dry wind blowing. It's March 2010 in the tiny West Texas town of Anarene . Nothing much happens here any more. The last business shut down a couple of years ago. It was a cement plant that went broke after the housing bubble burst and the banks stopped lending. The kids out of high school drive their jalopies from one end of Main Street to the other past boarded-up storefronts. Some of the grown-ups carpool to low-wage jobs in a city 50 miles down the road. The elderly have had their Social Security eaten up by the high price of food but still get by on Spam and Kool-Aid. There used to be a movie theater, but it too closed a few months ago. Not a single person went to the ?Last Picture Show.? But there is change in the air! President Barack Obama, who was elected president a couple of years ago, is in the middle of his fiscal year 2010 budget. The 2009 budget had a deficit of $1.75 trillion, a number no fool could even have imagined before the crash of 2008. The projection for 2010 is $1.17 trillion, due to the government's hopes for an economic recovery. But the jury is out on whether a recovery will ever happen. Some say the banks are starting to lend again, though no one at the Anarene State Bank knows anything about it. Some say the city down the road is getting a plant to make blades for those new wind turbines. The Anarene high school got funding for an adult training course on writing resumes. The Nightly News says, ? America is coming back.? I wish! So what is really going on here? Well, President Obama's 2010 budget has attracted a lot of attention. $1.75 trillion? That's not federal spending. That's new federal debt! A good measure of fiscal policy is federal government tax revenues. Revenues for 2010 are projected at $2.19 trillion, off 13 percent from a year ago, due to the recession. With the huge bank bailouts and Obama's $787 billion economic recovery program, 2010 expenditures are estimated at $3.94 trillion, an increase of 33 percent over 2008. Then there's the interest taxpayers must pay on the national debt, which will likely reach $600 billion in 2010. Of course almost 100 percent of all new federal debt is financed by foreigners, mainly China . But don't worry, the recovery program will succeed, and the economy will start growing again. THE GOVERNMENT PROMISES! Obama's budget forecasts such a strong upsurge in economic activity by the end of 2009 that the net for the year will be GDP growth of 1 percent. (Yes, that's what it says.) Is it a contradiction that the government is conducting ?stress tests? on the nation's banks in which it is predicting that the recession will last at least until 2011 to see if those banks are strong enough to weather the storm? Yes, it is a contradiction. Even the Federal Reserve does not see recovery coming as quickly as Obama's budget. Neither do any economists. The budget is not an honest document. It gets worse. The budget says growth will then continue as far as the eye can see?the projections go out to 2019, when we'll have a GDP of $22.86 trillion, 61 percent higher than 2008. Happy days will be here again! So go back to sleep, America . It's official. The recession we are in right now will end soon and is the last one ever. This means that the financial industry will soon be fixed, plenty of good jobs will be available, climate change and drought will be overcome, the government budget will be right-sized, and America and the world will be content and at peace. All because of the decisions being made by the Obama administration and approved by Congress during these few critical weeks we're in the middle of right now. But there are a whole swarm of flies in the ointment. I'll mention just two. One is that according to University of Massachusetts economist Thomas Ferguson, who spoke at last weekend's Eastern Economic Conference national conference in New York , the Bush/Obama bank bailouts alone will cause a permanent addition of interest payments on the national debt of $100 billion a year forever. That means every American will pay, during the course of his or her lifetime, over $20,000 to rescue the banks from their bad loans. To put that number in perspective, it equates to 2-1/2 years of tuition at a state university that instead will be paid to the government of China or a similar foreign investor. Yes, America , that is what your elected government just decided you will do. Another is that the U.S. has had virtually no real economic growth since the early 1970s, because since then we've lived in a bubble economy. Look it up. Most of our industrial output has been flat or has declined. Whole industries, such as steel, are shadows of their former greatness. The automobile industry is on life support. We've imported huge amounts of foreign capital by selling them our real estate and businesses. As stated on the Economy in Crisis website: ?The United States now no longer controls many of its domestic industries. Over the last 10 years alone foreigners have spent $1.2 trillion to acquire more than 8,000 key US companies. Already as of 2002, foreigners owned fully 20 percent of American manufacturing. In many high-tech and defense-related industries, the proportion is far higher. Such US industries as mining, cement, publishing, engine and power transmission equipment, rubber and plastics, and sound recording and motion pictures are now largely foreign owned. Even in industries like pharmaceuticals, chemicals, industrial machinery, transportation equipment, electronics, metal industries, and coal and petroleum industries, foreign ownership has recently become very high.? Until the last year, the biggest growth industry within the U.S. had been the financial sector, producing profits of over $500 billion as late as 2006. In other words, the U.S. has replaced working for a living with the manipulation of money and the extraction of interest, either by lending it or by brokering the lending and investment by foreigners. In order to enrich themselves, the financiers, with a lot of help from the government, created the merger/buyout bubble of the 1980s, the dot.com bubble of the 1990s, and the housing/equity/hedge fund/derivative bubble of the 2000s. All this time, the federal, state, and local governments have tried to keep up by taxing every financial transaction they can get their hands on, including by raising property taxes on the inflated value of family homes. But now, with the last of the bubbles deflating, the tax base is vanishing. So governments, along with the private sector economy, which has been living on capital gains in the absence of job income for all but the very rich, have gone into the tank as well. President Barack Obama's economic recovery program, along with the budget just released, is an attempt to substitute a federal government bubble for the failed private sector ones. Like the private sector bubbles, this one is also based on debt. This is because debt is the only way anyone in the U.S. can any longer think of when it comes to creating a national money supply. It includes the president's proposed $5 billion federal infrastructure bank for lending to state and local governments. This bank will probably offer better interest rates than the bond markets, but it's still debt. There was a time in U.S. history when other ways were known to create money; for instance, during the Civil War, when Congress authorized the Lincoln administration to spend Greenbacks directly into existence. The banks hated the Greenbacks, of course, so they got Congress to pass the National Banking Acts of 1863-64, which were the prelude to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Today, Greenback-type funding for the federal government is one of the chief provisions of the American Monetary Act drafted by the American Monetary Institute (www.monetary.org). Another way to introduce debt-free money into the economy is through a dividend, such as the Alaska Permanent Fund, which in 2008 paid every resident $3,269 tax-free out of the state's resource revenues. There is no good reason why such a dividend could not be paid by every state or by the federal government. Greenbacks and programs like the Alaska Permanent Fund are part of what I call Dividend Economics. It's why I've proposed the ?Cook Plan,? which would be a system of vouchers for the necessities of life in the amount of $1,000 a month for any adult citizen who applied. A smaller amount would be provided as an allowance for children. The vouchers would be taxed like any other income and would supplement other entitlements such as unemployment compensation, Social Security, etc. But taxes would be low for those who would use the vouchers as a main source of income. Under the plan, the vouchers would then be accepted as deposits at a new network of community savings banks that would lend at one percent interest to consumers, students, small businesses, local manufacturing establishments, and family farms. This would introduce over $2.5 trillion of debt-free money into the economy over the next year, because under the ?Cook Plan,? the dividend would be paid directly by the U.S. Treasury without borrowing or taxation. It would not be inflationary, because it would replace money from public bank lending and would result in new goods and services being created within the U.S. producing economy. In fact, we would see a renaissance of local and regional economic activity that would eventually transform the national economy as well. You may ask, should we just be ?giving away money?? My answer is that if the banks can create trillions of dollars in credit out of thin air for lending, why can't the government create it for the people? The same goes with the trillions the government is borrowing to pay to the banks to reinflate the bubble economy. Give it to the people instead. Look at Obama's economic recovery program that equates to $225,000 for each new job it hopes to create and probably won't. Give that to the people too. Let them use the money as a dividend to live on during this emergency and create new jobs as well. Right now there is nothing further from the minds of President Obama and his advisers than such ideas. That's why his new bubble budget is America 's ?Last Picture Show.? Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst. His book on monetary reform, We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform, is now available at http://www.amazon.com. He is also the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider's Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age. He can be contacted through his website at http://www.richardccook.com. Please support Global Research Global Research relies on the financial support of its readers. Your endorsement is greatly appreciated Subscribe to the Global Research e-newsletter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article. 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For media inquiries: crgeditor at yahoo.com ? Copyright Richard C. Cook, Global Research, 2009 The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12512 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ? Copyright 2005-2007 GlobalResearch.ca Web site engine by Polygraphx Multimedia ? Copyright 2005-2007 Forward email http://ui.constantcontact.com/sa/fwtf.jsp?m=1101807978350&ea=suzannedk%40gmail.com&a=1102487129170 This email was sent to suzannedk at gmail.com by crgeditor at yahoo.com. Update Profile/Email Address http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?p=oo&v=001Y9XAqyV8VF0P5VFIo8dIEgRMYPodUcIXq88weJDgX1PAXMyYkUhDt_dMSiILS59nqmYxmgqCP_M%3D Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe(TM) http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?p=un&v=001Y9XAqyV8VF0P5VFIo8dIEgRMYPodUcIXq88weJDgX1PAXMyYkUhDt_dMSiILS59nqmYxmgqCP_M%3D Privacy Policy: http://ui.constantcontact.com/roving/CCPrivacyPolicy.jsp Email Marketing by Constant Contact(R) www.constantcontact.com GlobalResearch.ca | v | Montreal | Canada -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 16096 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090307/143d5358/attachment.txt From nscchicago at igc.org Sat Mar 7 22:21:57 2009 From: nscchicago at igc.org (NSC WORKERS COOP) Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2009 23:21:57 -0600 Subject: [A-List] [Cispes-Alert] One week until Presidential Elections in ElSalvador--we need your help! Message-ID: <0A834B4D926C4C8D85BA19C7A3DBB79B@NSCCHICAGO> From: CISPES National Office Subject: [Cispes-Alert] One week until Presidential Elections in ElSalvador--we need your help! go to our webpage www.cispes.org if you're having trouble reading this email www.cispes.org | 202 521-2510| subscribe| suscribir en espa?ol Dear Friends in Struggle, With only a week before the Presidential elections in El Salvador, CISPES is turning up the heat! After a flurry of lobbying and grassroots Congressional pressure by people like you, U.S. officials are speaking out in favor of U.S. neutrality in El Salvador's March 15 elections, exactly the kind of statements we need to prevent U.S. intervention in the days to come. We will be posting all the latest news to the 2009 Elections Blog-have you bookmarked it yet? On Thursday, March 5, Rep. Ra?l Grijalva (D-AZ) held a press conference on Capitol Hill to announce a Congressional letter to President Obama asking him to declare his respect for El Salvador's sovereign democratic process and assure the people of El Salvador that he will maintain a positive relationship with their government regardless of the outcome. Check out a video of Rep. Grijalva's statement calling for a new era in foreign policy towards Latin America and read the international media coverage. The 33 members of the House of Representatives and 1 Senator who signed the letter rejected past U.S. intervention and committed to "honoring and respecting the will of the Salvadoran people when they go to the polls on March 15." Read a complete version of the letter and find out if your Representative signed on! Nearly one hundred North American solidarity organizations, churches, and unions also made the call to President Obama in an Open Letter published in the Salvadoran newspapers, stating their commitment to organize against any form of U.S. intervention. A group of 70 delegates from across the U.S. is headed to El Salvador right now to observe the elections on March 15, to report on the results independently, and to stand with the Salvadoran people during this historic possibility for change. Those of us here in the U.S. have a very important role to play. It costs about $8,000 for CISPES to coordinate a delegation this size. Will you give $100 today to make it happen? These public statements of U.S. neutrality, the commitment of thousands to take action to defend Salvadoran sovereignty, and the presence of vigilant international observers will serve as a powerful "vaccine" against last-ditch attempts by the right-wing to thwart the will of the Salvadoran people to elect a new government. But a vaccine is a preventative measure. We also need to be ready to respond. The right-wing is desperate, dangerous and it is hard to imagine them respecting the will of the Salvadoran people now after trampling it for nearly 20 years. Are you ready to take action? We need you to stay vigilant, to check the website, to check your email and when called upon, to take action. If you aren't part of our Emergency Response Network, please sign up today! (Enter your email address under Join Today!) We hope the 2009 Elections blog will be a valuable resource for journalists and solidarity activists and we will be updating it as often as possible, in both Spanish and English. Artist and long-time ally of the Salvadoran people, Adam Kufeld, has a new on-line photo project to document the campaigns! We also need your financial support to keep this work going, now and for the challenges and victories to come. Please give as generously as you can so that we can seize this historic moment, which Blandino Nerio, FMLN mayor of Mejicanos described as the "realization of the democratic revolution in El Salvador." Si se puede! En solidaridad, Alexis Stoumbelis CISPES National Office P.S. We got so many signers on the Congressional letter because hundreds of individuals like you made a phone call. Imagine what we could do if all of those individuals sent in a contribution of $100 today? If you no longer wish to receive our emails, you may unsubscibe here ? 2008 CISPES - The Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador CISPES National Office | ph. 202-521-2510 | 1525 Newton St. NW, Wash. DC 20010| cispes at cispes.org -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 28058 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090307/d0ea0283/attachment.txt -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 21685 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090307/d0ea0283/attachment-0002.jpeg -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: image007.gif Type: image/gif Size: 5493 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090307/d0ea0283/attachment-0007.gif -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image003.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 66003 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090307/d0ea0283/attachment-0005.jpg From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sun Mar 8 18:29:02 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2009 09:29:02 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The End of Retirement Message-ID: <49B462CE.50803@ashisuto.co.jp> by John Michael Greer The Archdruid Report (March 04 2009) Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by the flurry of responses to last week's Archdruid Report post on the twilight of investment. "Men will forgive the murder of their fathers sooner than the loss of their patrimony", Machiavelli wrote a long time ago, and the principle can be applied more generally: if you really want to rile people, threaten the money and property they think is securely theirs. Unfortunately the word "security" can be applied to any financial asset in today's economy only in the most ironic of senses. The entire system of economic value that underlies the possibility of investment broke down completely in the speculative excesses of the last thirty years, drowned in a flood of unpayable debts - public, corporate, and private - that were mistakenly classified and then sold as financial assets. The face value of these paper debts vastly exceeds the value of all human economic activities on Earth; the huge majority of them can thus never be paid off, and so they are effectively worthless. That awkward fact, if honestly faced, would likely bring the world's economies to a shuddering halt. Thus we can be confident that it will not be honestly faced. Instead, governments around the world are playing a high-stakes game of make-believe, pretending that the global economy is not bankrupt in the hope that the losses can be spread out over years rather than hitting all at once. For all I know, they may succeed - but even so, the downside will not be pretty. One aspect of that downside was on many of my readers' minds last week, to judge by the comments and emails I fielded. People nowadays invest for many reasons, but one of the most common is retirement. Ever since the American pension system and its government equivalent, Social Security, began to shed their reputation for stability and adequate funding, a growing number of Americans - pushed that way by large and lavishly funded ad campaigns - have placed their hopes for a comfortable old age on investments. The result is a huge fraction of Americans who are emotionally as well as financially invested in the hope that a big payoff from their assets will enable them to have the retirement of their dreams. If you are among the people who cling to that belief, I'm sorry to say I have bad news. Over the next decade or so, the huge overhang of paper wealth that now floods the world economy is going to lose nearly all its value. As it goes, it will take your retirement funds with it. It's anyone's guess exactly how the process will play out. One possibility is a long deflationary spiral in which markets slump, bankruptcies soar, and the legacy of bad debt suffers the death of a thousand cuts. Another is hyperinflation, in which the dollar value of the bad debt still holds good but a cheeseburger costs US$150,000 and workmen take their salaries home in wheelbarrows. Another is a credit crisis in which efforts by governments to fund deficits via borrowing exhaust the world's dwindling pool of credit, and nations are forced into default. Still another is a political decision on the part of a major debtor nation to default on its foreign debt, leading to panic selling of offshore assets and the collapse of international trade and investment. What makes this devastating for those who hope to retire on their current investments is that most current asset classes are part of that overhang of unpayable debt, and the rest are priced at levels that assume that much of the unpayable debt is still boosting the global economy's net worth. One way or another, those assets will sooner or later move toward their real value, which in the case of most financial assets is nothing, and in the case of most nonfinancial assets is a lot less than they're worth on paper right now. This means that no matter where you put your investments, you're likely to lose most of your money. Interestingly, this is likely to be true even of commodities such as crude oil which are subject to declining production curves for hard geological reasons. Last year's price spikes in oil and other energy resources were only partly a product of geological limits on production. The soaring demand growth of an overheating economy, and speculative money flooding into any asset that was gaining in price, both played major parts. Prices collapsed when the speculative money flowed back out, and slumping demand has helped keep prices low since then. As the economy unravels further, the chance of further downside action can't be dismissed. It has, I think, too rarely been noticed in peak oil circles that there are at least two ways to price oil out of the market; the first is for the price per barrel to soar out of reach, the second is for the economy to contract so sharply that even a modest price per barrel is more than most people can pay. For the next decade or so, then, there's unlikely to be any asset class that will give prospective retirees the income they've come to expect. Nor will private pensions, most of which are dependent on investments and vulnerable to corporate bankruptcies, fare much better during that time. Nor are government pensions immune; most governments are hemmorrhaging red ink right now, adding to unsupportable debt loads, and the pool of credit available for government borrowing is far from limitless. What about after that, when the overhang of debt has been cleared one way or another and this crisis, like all economic crises, finally comes to an end? Well, once again, I have bad news. Retirement as a social habit was entirely a product of the zenith of the age of abundance now sliding backwards in our collective rear view mirror. For a brief window of time - rather less than a century - it made financial and political sense for nations in the developed world to pay their elderly citizens to stay out of the work force, in order to keep unemployment down to politically bearable levels. All this unfolded, in turn, from an industrial economy so lavishly supplied with cheap energy that human labor was worth replacing with machines wherever the state of technology permitted, and so greedy for new markets that every part of human life was made subject to market forces. Before that period began, something less than half of all economic activity even in the industrial world had anything to do with the market at all. Most women, and many men outside the age of regular employment, worked in a household economy governed by custom and intrafamily exchange rather than market forces. This included essentially everyone who would be eligible for retirement by the standards of the age that has just ended. Outside the market but not outside the demand for skilled human labor, elderly people typically provided household goods and services to a household somewhere in their extended family. That was their full-time job; by contributing the value of their labor and skills, they earned their keep. The end of the age of cheap energy means that such household economies will once again be viable. It also means that they will once again be necessary. When the limited energy and resources of a contracting, deindustrial society have to be prioritized for urgent needs, takeout meals and convenience foods will sooner or later draw the short straw; in their absence, most food will once again be made at home from raw materials. When the energy cost of the global network of sweatshops that keeps Americans clothed can no longer be met, a great deal of clothing will once again be made at home from raw fiber, as it was not so long ago, and so on. All this requires human labor. Thus a society no longer supplied with nearly unlimited amounts of cheap abundant energy will have every incentive to keep elderly people in the household labor force, and neither the incentive nor the resources to keep them in comfortable idleness. Now of course it's true that we will not be landing in such a society overnight. It's also true that the clout of the retiree lobby in most industrial nations is such that public and private pensions will be gutted only when every other option has been exhausted - though in the United States, at least, the vast tide of red ink currently flooding out of Washington DC is likely to bring about this eventuality sooner rather than later. Still, it's quite possible that at least some of today's retirees and soon-to-be-retirees will manage to cling to that status, at least for a while. If I were asked for advice about retirement, then, it would probably go something like this. If you're already retired, or within a few years of retirement, it's probably worth your while to try to get any investment money you have left into a stable investment, if you can find one. Still, it's probably unwise to assume that your investments will be worth anything in the long terms, and having a Plan B in place would be a very good idea. If you're more than a decade or so out from retirement, having a Plan B in place is essential. If you're thirty years out or more out, as I am, forget about Plan A for now; you can look into the options for investment later, once the wreckage of the last few decades has been hauled away and a new economic order has begun to take shape, but you probably will never retire. What sort of Plan B might work best for you depends on so many local and personal variables that specifics would almost certainly be misleading. If you've got a large family with whom you're on good terms, bone up on your home ec skills; ten years from now, when four of your grandkids, their spouses, and their children all live in one rundown McMansion, having Grandma and Grandpa there to cook the meals, tend the children, and keep the garden going will likely be worth much more than your keep. If you don't have a family or can't stand them, cultivate relationships with younger friends, or get ready to take up a second career that you can continue into advanced old age. No matter what you choose, it's not going to be as fun as sitting on a lawn chair in a Sun Belt trailer park. Still, history is under no obligation to give the options we'd prefer, and a great many pleasant options are going away for a time, or forever, as the industrial age draws to a close. _____ ?John Michael Greer has been active in the alternative spirituality movement for more than 25 years, and is the author of a dozen books, including The Druidry Handbook (2006) and The Long Descent (2008). He lives in Ashland, Oregon. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/03/end-of-retirement.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Mar 9 07:14:46 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:14:46 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The Anti-Empire Report Message-ID: <49B51646.3040404@ashisuto.co.jp> by William Blum www.killinghope.org (March 04 2009) Being serious about torture. Or not. In Cambodia they're once again endeavoring to hold trials to bring some former senior Khmer Rouge officials to justice for their 1975-79 war crimes and crimes against humanity. The current defendant in a United Nations-organized trial, Kaing Guek Eav, who was the head of a Khmer Rouge torture center, has confessed to atrocities, but insists he was acting under orders {1}. As we all know, this is the defense that the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected for the Nazi defendants. Everyone knows that, right? No one places any weight on such a defense any longer, right? We make jokes about Nazis declaring: "I was only following orders!" ("Ich habe nur den Befehlen gehorcht!") Except that both the Bush and Obama administrations have spoken in favor of it. Here's the new head of the CIA, Leon Panetta: "What I have expressed as a concern, as has the president, is that those who operated under the rules that were provided by the Attorney General in the interpretation of the law [concerning torture] and followed those rules ought not to be penalized. And ... I would not support, obviously, an investigation or a prosecution of those individuals. I think they did their job." {2} Operating under the rules ... doing their job ... are of course the same as following orders. The UN Convention Against Torture (first adopted in 1984), which has been ratified by the United States, says quite clearly, "An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture". The Torture Convention enacts a prohibition against torture that is a cornerstone of international law and a principle on a par with the prohibition against slavery and genocide. Of course, those giving the orders are no less guilty. On the very day of Obama's inauguration, the United Nation's special torture rapporteur invoked the Convention in calling on the United States to pursue former president George W Bush and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo prisoners {3}. On several occasions, President Obama has indicated his reluctance to pursue war crimes charges against Bush officials, by expressing a view such as: "I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards." This is the same excuse Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has given for not punishing Khmer Rouge leaders. In December 1998 he asserted: "We should dig a hole and bury the past and look ahead to the 21st century with a clean slate" {4}. Hun Sen has been in power all the years since then, and no Khmer Rouge leader has been convicted for their role in the historic mass murder. And by not investigating Bush officials, Obama is indeed saying that they're above the law. Like the Khmer Rouge officials have been. Michael Ratner, a professor at Columbia Law School and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set future anti-torture policy. "The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it. I don't see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable." {5} One reason for the non-prosecution may be that serious trials of the many Bush officials who contributed to the torture policies might reveal the various forms of Democratic Party non-opposition and collaboration. It should also be noted that the United States supported Pol Pot (who died in April 1998) and the Khmer Rouge for several years after they were ousted from power by the Vietnamese in 1979. This support began under Jimmy Carter and his National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and continued under Ronald Reagan. {6} A lingering bitterness by American cold warriors toward Vietnam, the small nation which monumental US power had not been able to defeat, and its perceived closeness to the Soviet Union, appears to be the only explanation for this policy. Humiliation runs deep when you're a superpower. Neither should it be forgotten in this complex cautionary tale that the Khmer Rouge in all likelihood would never have come to power, nor even made a serious attempt to do so, if not for the massive American "carpet bombing" of Cambodia in 1969-70 and the US-supported overthrow of Prince Sihanouk in 1970 and his replacement by a man closely tied to the United States {7}. Thank you Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Well done, lads. By the way, if you're not already turned off by many of Obama's appointments, listen to how James Jones opened his talk at the Munich Conference on Security Policy on February 8: "Thank you for that wonderful tribute to Henry Kissinger yesterday. Congratulations. As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr Kissinger." {8} Lastly, Spain's High Court recently announced it would launch a war crimes investigation into an Israeli ex-defense minister and six other top security officials for their role in a 2002 attack that killed a Hamas commander and fourteen civilians in Gaza {9}. Spain has for some time been the world's leading practitioner of "universal jurisdiction" for human-rights violations, such as their indictment of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet a decade ago. The Israeli case involved the dropping of a bomb on the home of the Hamas leader; most of those killed were children. The United States does this very same thing every other day in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Given the refusal of American presidents to invoke even their "national jurisdiction" over American officials-cum-war criminals, we can only hope that someone reminds the Spanish authorities of a few names, names like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Feith, Perle, Yoo, and a few others with a piece missing, a piece that's shaped like a conscience. There isn't even a need to rely on international law alone, for there's an American law against war crimes, passed by a Republican-dominated Congress in 1996 {10}. The noted Israeli columnist, Uri Avnery, writing about the Israeli case, tried to capture the spirit of Israeli society that produces such war criminals and war crimes. He observed: "This system indoctrinates its pupils with a violent tribal cult, totally ethnocentric, which sees in the whole of world history nothing but an endless story of Jewish victimhood. This is a religion of a Chosen People, indifferent to others, a religion without compassion for anyone who is not Jewish, which glorifies the God-decreed genocide described in the Biblical book of Joshua." {11} It would take very little substitution to apply this statement to the United States - like "American" for "Jewish" and "American exceptionalism" for "a Chosen People". Hell hath no fury like an imperialist scorned Hugo Chavez's greatest sin is that he has shown disrespect for the American Empire. Or as they would say in America's inner cities - He's dissed the Man. Such behavior of course cannot go unpunished lest it give other national leaders the wrong idea. Over the years, the United States has gotten along just fine with brutal dictators, mass murderers, torturers, and leaders who did nothing to relieve the poverty of their population - Augusto Pinochet, Pol Pot, the Greek Junta, Ferdinand Marcos, Suharto, Duvalier, Mobutu, the Brazil Junta, Somoza, Saddam Hussein, South African apartheid leaders, Portuguese fascists, et cetera, et etera, terrible guys all, all seriously supported by Washington at one time or another; for none made it a regular habit, if ever, to diss the Man. The latest evidence, we are told, that Hugo Chavez is a dictator and a threat to life as we know it is that he pushed for and got a constitutional amendment to remove term limits from the presidency. The American media and the opposition in Venezuela often make it sound as if Chavez is going to be guaranteed office for life, whereas he of course will have to be elected each time. Neither are we reminded that it's not unusual for a nation to not have a term limit for its highest office. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, if not all of Europe and much of the rest of the world, do not have such a limit. The United States did not have a term limit on the office of the president during the nation's first 162 years, until the ratification of the 22nd Amendment in 1951. Were all American presidents prior to that time dictators? In 2005, when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe succeeded in getting term limits lifted, the US mainstream media took scant notice. President Bush subsequently honored Uribe with the American Presidential Medal of Freedom. But in the period leading up to the February 15 referendum in Venezuela, the American media were competing with each other over who could paint Chavez and the Venezuelan constitutional process in the most critical and ominous terms. Typical was an op-ed in the Washington Post the day before the vote, which was headlined: "Closing in on Hugo Chavez". Its opening sentence read: "The beginning of the end is setting in for Hugo Chavez" {12}. For several years now, the campaign to malign Chavez has at times included issues of Israel and anti-Semitism. An isolated vandalism of a Caracas synagogue on January 30th of this year fed into this campaign. Synagogues are of course vandalized occasionally in the United States and many European countries, but no one ascribes this to a government policy driven by anti-semitism. With Chavez they do. In the American media, the lead up to the Venezuelan vote was never far removed from the alleged "Jewish" issue. "Despite the government?s efforts to put the [synagogue] controversy to rest", the New York Times wrote a few days before the referendum vote, "a sense of dread still lingers among Venezuela?s 12,000 to 14,000 Jews" {13}. A day earlier, a Washington Post editorial was entitled: "Mr Chavez vs the Jews - With George W Bush gone, Venezuela's strongman has found new enemies" {14}. Shortly before, a Post headline had informed us: "Jews in South America Increasingly Uneasy - Government and Media Seen Fostering Anti-Semitism in Venezuela, Elsewhere" {15}. So commonplace has the Chavez-Jewish association become that a leading US progressive organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) in Washington, DC, recently distributed an article that reads more like the handiwork of a conservative group than a progressive one. I was prompted to write to them as follows: Dear People, I'm very sorry to say that I found your Venezuelan commentary by Larry Birns and David Rosenblum Felson to be remarkably lacking. The authors seem unable, or unwilling, to distinguish between being against Israeli policies from anti-semitism. It's kind of late in the day for them to not have comprehended the difference. They are forced to fall back on a State Department statement to make their case. Is that not enough said? They condemn Chavez likening Israel?s occupation of Gaza to the Holocaust. But what if it's an apt comparison? They don't delve into this question at all. They also condemn the use of the word "Zionism", saying that "in nine times out of ten involving the use of this word in fact smacks of anti-Semitism". Really? Can they give a precise explanation of how one distinguishes between an anti-Semitic use of the word and a non-anti-semitic use of it? That would be interesting. The authors write that Venezuela's "anti-Israeli initiative ... revealingly transcends the intensity of almost every Arabic nation or normal adversary of Israel". Really. Since when are the totally gutless, dictator Arab nations the standard bearer for progressives? The ideal we should emulate. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are almost never seriously and harshly critical of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Therefore, Venezuela shouldn't be? The authors state: "In a Christmas Eve address to the nation, Chavez charged that, 'Some minorities, descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ ... took all the world?s wealth for themselves'. Here, Chavez was not talking so much about Robin Hood, but rather unquestionably dipping into the lore of anti-Semitism." Well, here's the full quote: "The world has enough for all, but it turns out that some minorities, descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ, descendants of the same ones who threw Bolivar out of here and also crucified him in their own way at Santa Marta there in Colombia ..." Hmm, were the Jews so active in South America? The ellipsis after the word "Christ" indicates that the authors consciously and purposely omitted the words that would have given the lie to their premise. Truly astonishing. After Chavez won the term-limits referendum with about 55% of the vote, a State Department spokesperson stated: "For the most part this was a process that was fully consistent with democratic process". Various individuals and websites on the left have responded to this as an encouraging sign that the Obama administration is embarking on a new Venezuelan policy. At the risk of sounding like a knee-reflex cynic, I think this attitude is at best premature, at worst rather naive. It's easy for a State Department a level-or-so above the Bushies, that is, semi-civilized, to make such a statement. A little more difficult would be accepting as normal and unthreatening Venezuela having good relations with countries like Cuba, Iran and Russia and not blocking Venezuela from the UN Security Council. Even more significant would be the United States ending its funding of groups in Venezuela determined to subvert and/or overthrow Chavez. You've got to be carefully taught I've been playing around with a new book for awhile. I don't know if I'll find the time to actually complete it, but if I do it'll be called something like "Myths of US foreign policy: How Americans keep getting fooled into support". The leading myth of all, the one which entraps more Americans than any other, is the belief that the United States, in its foreign policy, means well. American leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may lie, they may even on the odd occasion cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions are honorable, if not divinely inspired. Of that most Americans are certain. And as long as a person clings to that belief, it's rather unlikely that s/he will become seriously doubtful and critical of the official stories. It takes a lot of repetition while an American is growing up to inculcate this message into their young consciousness, and lots more repetition later on. Think of some of the lines from the song about racism from the Broadway classic show, "South Pacific" - "You've got to be taught" ... You've got to be taught from year to year. It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear. You've got to be taught before it's too late. Before you are six or seven or eight. To hate all the people your relatives hate. You've got to be carefully taught. The education of an American true-believer is ongoing, continuous. All forms of media, all the time. Here is Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military officer in the United States, writing in the Washington Post recently: "We in the US military are likewise held to a high standard. Like the early Romans, we are expected to do the right thing, and when we don't, to make it right again. We have learned, after seven years of war, that trust is the coin of the realm - that building it takes time, losing it takes mere seconds, and maintaining it may be our most important and most difficult objective. That's why images of prisoner maltreatment at Abu Ghraib still serve as recruiting tools for al-Qaeda. And it's why each civilian casualty for which we are even remotely responsible sets back our efforts to gain the confidence of the Afghan people months, if not years. It doesn't matter how hard we try to avoid hurting the innocent, and we do try very hard. It doesn't matter how proportional the force we deploy, how precisely we strike. It doesn't even matter if the enemy hides behind civilians. What matters are the death and destruction that result and the expectation that we could have avoided it. In the end, all that matters is that, despite our best efforts, sometimes we take the very lives we are trying to protect ... Lose the people's trust, and we lose the war ... I see this sort of trust being fostered by our troops all over the world. They are building schools, roads, wells, hospitals and power stations. They work every day to build the sort of infrastructure that enables local governments to stand on their own. But mostly, even when they are going after the enemy, they are building friendships. They are building trust. And they are doing it in superb fashion." {16} How many young servicemembers have heard such a talk from Mullen or other officers? How many of them have not been impressed, even choked up? How many Americans reading or hearing such stirring words have not had a lifetime of reinforcement reinforced once again? How many could even imagine that Admiral Mullen is spouting a bunch of crap? The great majority of Americans will swallow it. When Mullen declares: "What matters are the death and destruction that result and the expectation that we could have avoided it", he's implying that there was no way to avoid it. But of course it could have been easily avoided by not dropping bombs on the Afghan people. You tell the true-believers that the truth is virtually the exact opposite of what Mullen has said and they look at you like you just got off the Number 36 bus from Mars. Bill Clinton bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights in a row. His military and political policies destroyed one of the most progressive countries in Europe. And he called it "humanitarian intervention". It's still regarded by almost all Americans, including many, if not most, "progressives", as just that. Now why is that? Are all these people just ignorant? I think a better answer is that they have certain preconceptions; consciously or unconsciously, they have certain basic beliefs about the United States and its foreign policy, most prominent amongst which is the belief that the US means well. And if you don't deal with this basic belief you'll be talking to a stone wall. Notes 1. Associated Press (August 01 2007) 2. Press conference (February 25 2009), transcript by Federal News Service 3. Agence France Presse (AFP) (January 20 2009) 4. New York Times (December 29 1998) 5. Associated Press (November 17 2008) 6. See William Blum, "Rogue State", chapter 10 ("Supporting Pol Pot") 7. See William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 20 ("Cambodia, 1955-1973") 8. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/jones_munich_conference.html ? 9. Reuters news agency (January 30 2009) 10. The War Crimes Act (18 USC 2441) 11. Haaretz, leading Israeli newspaper (January 30 2009) 12. Washington Post (February 14 2009), column by Edward Schumacher-Matos 13. New York Times (February 13 2009) 14. Washington Post (February 12 2009) 15. Washington Post (February 08 2009) 16. Washington Post (February 15 2009) page B7 William Blum is the author of:- Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War Two (Common Courage Press, 1995) Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower (Zed Books, 2002) West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir (Soft Skull Press, 2002) Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (Common Courage Press, 2004) Portions of the books can be read, and copies purchased, at http://www.killinghope.org and previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website. To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 at aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area. Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite. Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned. http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer67.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Mon Mar 9 13:07:16 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:07:16 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Ward Churchill First Amendment Trial Begins Message-ID: <49B568E4.204@gmail.com> Also see: Russell Means being interview by a Peruvian Journalist, Juan Tincopa about the origins of the Lakotah People and the formation of the Republic of Lakotah http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fb1_1233635476 It's also interesting to note, in the cultural 'hook up' department, that David Lane, the lawyer handling Churchill's case, is also involved in the defense of the "Rainbow Family of the Living Light' (AKA 'The Rainbow Family), who have been organizing a yearly 4th of July gathering in national forests around the US since the early 1970s. The US Forest Service has created a "Rainbow Squad" tasked with harassing the visitors and disrupting the gatherings, held on BLM land and in US national forests, and as of a year or so ago, Barry 'Twanger', one of the founders, said that since the US has gone as far as creating a special ops group to with the sole purpose of harassing their non-leader-ed organization, the Rainbow Family IS going to formally create a non-profit organization specifically for the purpose of filing a class action suit against the US Forest Service and all culpable parties. From their site: "It is longstanding Rainbow Family consensus that nobody has ever, or ever will represent the Rainbow Family. This is an unofficial collection of information on the Rainbow Family and the Rainbow Gatherings, and in no way should anyone who works on this web site be considered to be representing the Rainbow Family. For the rest of the disclaimer, Go to the Bottom. Since various Law Enforcement agencies and the Forest Service can't seem to understand the preceeding paragraph, go to this link for a more verbose and simplified version especially for you. http://www.welcomehome.org/rainbow/index.html Right Wing Attempting to Bankrupt Ward Churchill Russell Means Professor Churchill was fired after a 30 month long ?investigation? by the University of Colorado where they dug into all 4,000 pages of his published works and combed through his over 12,000 footnotes! In the end, the investigation finds 7 alleged errors and/or plagiarism. Since his firing, Ward has mounted a full-scale lawsuit against the Board of Regents of the University of Colorado.. Detailed Chronology of Events: Sept. 12, 2001 Prof. Churchill writes an op-ed piece published online by Dark Night Field Notes, giving a ?gut reaction? to possible causes of the Sept. 11 attacks. This is later expanded and published as On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality (AK Press, 2003). Neither receives much public attention. January 26, 2005 A Syracuse, NY newspaper discusses Prof. Churchill?s scheduled lecture at Hamilton College sponsored by the Kirkland Project for the Study of Gender, Society and Culture. The Kirkland Project had already been targeted by various rightwing organizations, including Lynne Cheney?s American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) and David Horowitz? Center for the Study of Popular Culture and its spin-off, Students for Academic Freedom. A well-coordinated campaign at Hamilton had recently succeeded in forcing cancellation of a class which was to have been taught by former political prisoner Susan Rosenberg (who was to speak on a panel with Prof. Churchill). Within a few days the story, which focused on two words (?little Eichmanns?) taken out of context from the 2001 op-ed piece, had been picked up by AP, newspapers around the country, and highlighted by Fox News? Bill O?Reilly, who urged viewers to contact Hamilton College. Both Ward Churchill and Hamilton College soon received thousands of calls, letters and e-mails, including threats of violence and death. Despite initial vows to protect freedom of speech, Hamilton College President Joan Hinde Stewart cancels the program on January 31. She attributes it to security concerns, but it later becomes clear that threats from alumni to withdraw financial support play a major role in the decision. The director of the Kirkland Project is soon removed and the Project threatened with de-funding. January 27, 2005 With total disregard for the CU?s written policies on academic freedom, Interim Chancellor Philip DiStefano immediately denounces Prof. Churchill?s statements as ?abhorrent? and ?repugnant.? Two days later Colorado Congressman Bob Beauprez demands Prof. Churchill?s resignation. Beauprez later boasts on the radio that he has discussed the Churchill case with President Bush on Air Force One. Within the week Gov. Bill Owens demands that Prof. Churchill be fired, and both chambers of the Colorado legislature pass resolutions condemning Prof. Churchill and threatening to withhold funds from CU. February 3, 2005 The CU Board of Regents convenes an emergency meeting. Although billed as a ?public meeting,? an undergraduate is immediately arrested for attempting to read a brief statement on behalf of the students. His charges were eventually dropped, but community activist Shareef Aleem faces a sixteen-year prison term for allegedly assaulting officers who attempted to forcibly eject him when he asked why the students were not being allowed to speak. The Regents issue a blanket ?apology? to the entire country for Prof. Churchill?s statements, and accept Chancellor DiStefano?s proposal that he, CU Law dean David Getches, and Arts & Sciences dean Todd Gleeson convene an ?ad hoc? committee to determine within 30 days whether any of Prof. Churchill?s public writing or speeches ?crossed? some undefined boundary of protected speech. The Regents? own rules on academic freedom and CU?s internal faculty procedures ? to say nothing of the First Amendment ? are completely disregarded. CU posts DiStefano?s statements prominently on its website. February 8, 2005 CU-Boulder students sponsor a speech by Ward Churchill on campus. Interim Chancellor DiStefano attempts to cancel it at the last minute, citing ?security? concerns, but the possibility of a federal court injunction persuades him otherwise. More than 1500 people attend; they are orderly and extremely supportive of Prof. Churchill. Despite on-going efforts by Bill O?Reilly, David Horowitz and his ?Students for Academic Freedom,? and even personal communiqu?s from Governor Bill Owens to College Republican around the country to have his speeches cancelled, during the spring Ward Churchill speaks to large and overwhelmingly supportive audiences at the University of Hawai?i, the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, the University of California-Berkeley, Reed College, Pitzer College, the University of California-Monterey Bay, and at numerous public events in Denver and the San Francisco Bay area. President Jordan of Eastern Washington University, then vying for a job in Denver, cancels a talk; he is unanimously rebuked by his faculty and his students bring Ward Churchill to speak anyway. Ironically, only the very ?liberal? Antioch College and Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics at the University of Oregon actually cancel scheduled appearances. February 25, 2005 Nearly 200 tenured faculty members at UC-Boulder take out an ad ?demanding that school officials halt their investigation of Ward Churchill?s work. On March 22 this is followed by a full-page open letter endorsed by hundreds of scholars across the country, demanding that the Regents? and administration?s ?utterly gratuitous and inappropriate action[s]? be reversed. During this period thousands of individuals sign petitions supporting Prof. Churchill and hundreds write letters of protest to CU officials. March 3, 2005 CU President Elizabeth Hoffman warns an emergency session of the Boulder Faculty Assembly of a ?new McCarthyism,? pointing out that there is ?no question that there?s a real danger that the group of people [who] went after Churchill now feel empowered.? Within 5 days she announces her resignation. Mid-March 2005 Having bought time with its ?ad hoc? investigation of his every word, the University negotiates with Prof. Churchill. He is willing to take early retirement for nominal compensation, but only on the condition that the Regents formally and publicly affirm the University?s processes of academic review and their own rules on academic freedom. They refuse. March 24, 2005 Interim Chancellor DiStefano, who has never consulted Ward Churchill or even officially informed him of the investigation, publicly announces the findings of the ?ad hoc? committee. The Interim Chancellor has discovered, apparently to his surprise, that all of Prof. Churchill?s writings and speeches are protected by the First Amendment. But in the meantime, he states, other allegations have surfaced which require further investigation. Spring 2005 Beginning in late January the ?Churchill controversy? is highlighted by O?Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Joe Scarborough, and other neoconservative media personalities; a Denver Clear Channel radio station (closely aligned with Fox News) begins devoting 6-8 hours a day to disparaging Ward Churchill, and The O?Reilly Factor highlights Professor Churchill in over 40 segments. The two major Denver newspapers as well as the two Boulder dailies (three of the four now owned by Scripps-Howard) engage in uniformly negative coverage, running 400 stories in the next two months. This ?news? coverage rapidly turns into an all-out attempt at character assassination. The opinions of an ex-wife, former in-laws, and long-term political adversaries are highlighted. Ward Churchill?s driving record, credit history, employment and military record, high school football team, and even baby pictures are scrutinized. One week the theme is vague accounts of heretofore unreported ?intimidation? supposedly occurring a decade or two earlier; then supposed misrepresentations of his academic credentials; then claims that he attempted to incite violence. As each set of claims was proven false, reporters simply moved on to another. The Interim Chancellor now decides to invoke existing faculty procedures and refers numerous allegations culled from this media barrage to CU?s Standing Committee on Research Misconduct (SCRM). One set of allegations concerns Prof. Churchill?s interpretation of the U.S. Army?s participation in the spreading of smallpox to Indians and about the implementation of ?blood quantum? requirements pursuant to the 1887 General Allotment Act and the Indian Arts and Crafts Act. A second set is widely characterized as ?plagiarism,? although it is primarily devolves from a claim that Prof. Churchill wrote material published under someone else?s name. In addition, Chancellor DiStefano instructs SCRM to investigate Prof. Churchill?s American Indian identity. Disregarding the University?s own rules on confidentiality, the allegations are released to the press even before Prof. Churchill receives them. Prof. Churchill protests the investigation as pretextual punishment of protected speech and contests the convening of a racial purity board, but provides SCRM with evidence countering each allegation, including evidence that he meets three standard federal definitions of ?American Indian.? April 25, 2005 Predictably the media feeding frenzy (as well as organized rightwing writing campaigns) has resulted in a barrage of e-mails, telephone calls and letters to Prof. Churchill and the Department of Ethnic Studies. For several weeks the Department cannot otherwise function. While many express support, Prof. Churchill and the Department each receive several thousand hostile and usually virulently racist e-mails. Students of color on the Boulder campus experience a heightened level of racist hostility. Prof. Churchill receives a steady stream of death threats and his home is vandalized. The University ignores all of this; the racist attacks are not condemned and the Department receives no additional support or security. The Ethnic Studies faculty finally sends an Open Letter to the Regents and all of the relevant University administrators, requesting support and attaching excerpts of e-mails which are racist, homophobic and threaten violence. Interim Chancellor DiStefano apparently finds these neither ?abhorrent? nor ?repugnant.? The Department never receives acknowledgment of its Open Letter from any University official. May 17-19, 2005 The office of the Keetowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Tahlequah, Oklahoma is overwhelmed by media inquiries concerning Prof. Churchill?s status. On May 17 Prof. Churchill learns that, in the face of this pressure, the Band has issued a statement falsely asserting that he was never on the band rolls. Prof. Churchill issues a response documenting his May 1994 enrollment as an Associate Member; on May 19 the Band confirms this fact. Summer 2005 Having taught an overload during the spring semester, Prof. Churchill also teaches a Maymester course. He wins a 2005 teaching award, voted on by students, but its sponsor (the CU alumni association) withholds the award ?pending the outcome of the investigation,? despite the fact that the allegations have nothing to do with teaching. Early June 2005 The Rocky Mountain News, having put at least 5 reporters on ?special assignment? for several weeks, runs a 5-part, multi-page series with its conclusions on each allegation being investigated by the SCRM in its purportedly ?confidential? process. The University spokesperson says that only allegations from individual complainants, not news reports, can be investigated. Immediately thereafter, Interim Chancellor DiStefano, as complainant, sends 59 pages of stories downloaded off the Rocky Mountain News website to the SCRM, which forwards the entire package to Prof. Churchill with instructions to answer ?any new allegations.? Late June 2005 Prof. Churchill files a formal grievance with the faculty Privilege and Tenure (P&T) Committee concerning the pretextual nature of the investigations against him and the University?s violations of his academic freedom, First Amendment, and due process rights. He subsequently files additional grievances concerning the University?s persistent violations of confidentiality and its refusal to grant him a sabbatical. He is eventually informed that the P&T Committee will only consider the grievances about the investigative process after the process has been completed. August 19, 2005 The SCRM completes its ?inquiry? phase. It drops or disregards numerous allegations, including the charge of ?ethnic fraud,? but forwards seven allegations for ?investigation.? These involve matters of historical interpretation (Prof. Churchill?s attribution of intentionality with respect to two smallpox epidemics and his characterization of the blood quantum requirements of the 1887 General Allotment Act and the 1990 Indian Arts and Crafts Act) and questions of attribution of authorship regarding three articles (one he never claimed authorship of; another a pamphlet which a long-defunct political organization had asked him to use; the third a piece which he readily acknowledged to have ghostwritten). Late August, 2005 Denver newspapers report that Prof. Churchill is scheduled for a sabbatical in the spring semester of 2006. Interim Provost Susan Avery immediately announces that although Prof. Churchill?s sabbatical had been approved by Dean Todd Gleeson almost a year earlier, she had never forwarded it to the Regents for approval. Prof. Churchill files a grievance and, pending its outcome, announces his intent to ?un-bank? two of the six overload courses which he had already taught and for which he was owed the equivalent of ?comp time.? In October Dean Gleeson refuses to allow Prof. Churchill to un-bank more than one course in the spring. He states that this is because Prof. Churchill needs to be present on campus, but then contradicts himself by suggesting that Prof. Churchill take an unpaid leave. After Prof. Churchill notifies University officials that he will file suit, they concede that he can un-bank courses in the spring and fall of 2006. Fall-Winter 2005 The SCRM appoints the investigative committee. Because of the poisoned atmosphere within the University, Prof. Churchill requests an entirely external committee including experts in his field of American Indian Studies. Given the prior actions of law dean David Getches, Prof. Churchill specifically objects to the inclusion of CU law faculty. SCRM chair Joseph Rosse appoints a committee dominated by 3 CU insiders and chaired by a CU law professor. The two outside members include an American Indian Studies expert and a native professor of federal Indian law. Local media pundits immediately begin bashing the two outsiders for having previously made general statements acknowledging the importance of Prof. Churchill?s work. Within 48 hours the two outside members resign, leaving the committee without an expert in the field and without any persons of color. Two additional members are eventually appointed, a white federal Indian law scholar and a Chicano anthropologist. The committee proceeds without any American Indian scholars or experts in American Indian studies. Winter-Spring 2006 Prof. Churchill submits voluminous responses to and meets with the investigative committee. Because of the committee?s lack of knowledge of the field, much of his time is devoted to basic questions of history and methodology. Four American Indian scholars appear as witnesses to confirm his interpretation of historical matters, as well as the methodology and standards employed in American Indian Studies and in native oral traditions. The committee refuses Prof. Churchill?s repeated requests for extensions of time to submit responses, and only allows him to question witnesses ? even his own ? by typing questions and e-mailing them. May 16, 2006 The investigative committee issues an obtuse 124-page report which, despite its many concessions to the flaws in the process, concludes that Prof. Churchill did engage in research misconduct on the seven allegations. Contradicting the evidence presented by all of the American Indian witnesses, the entirely non-Indian committee accuses Prof. Churchill of ?disrespecting? American Indian oral traditions. The committee concludes that these are offenses for which a tenured faculty member can be fired, and the members recommend that Prof. Churchill be terminated or suspended for several years. The severity of recommended sanctions appears to be a result of what the report describes as Prof. Churchill?s ?bad attitude.? The report was immediately criticized on many grounds, substantive and procedural. (Click here for problems with the report.) June 16, 2006 Interim Chancellor DiStefano, who has thus far publicly condemned Prof. Churchill, convened an inquiry into ?every word? he has published or publicly uttered, solicited allegations and then forwarded them to the SCRM as ?complainant,? now serves as sentencing judge, sanctioning the investigative committee?s report and recommending that Prof. Churchill be fired. DiStefano, too, cites Prof. Churchill?s ?attitude.? Prof. Churchill files an internal appeal with the Privilege & Tenure Committee. April 11, 2007 A review panel convened by CU?s Privilege & Tenure (P&T) Committee concludes that but for the ?controversy? over Ward Churchill?s statements regarding 9/11 the investigation would not have occurred. It also finds that the SCRM Investigative Committee ?exceeded its charge? in a number of cases, and that the University failed to meet its burden of proof on others, including the claims about misrepresenting the blood quantum requirements of the General Allotment Act of 1887 and the 1990 Indian Arts and Craft Act. Nonetheless, the P&T Panel concludes that Prof. Churchill engaged in research misconduct on some specifics concerning the 1837 smallpox epidemic, and failed to comply with (unspecified) standards concerning author attribution. The majority of the Panel recommends a 1-year suspension. May 10, 2007 Research misconduct complaint against the SCRM Investigative Committee filed by 11 professors, including 2 experts in American Indian Studies alleging deliberate falsification and fabrication in their Report. (Never investigated by CU.) May 28, 2007 Another set of research misconduct allegations filed against the SCRM Committee by 5 professors and 2 attorneys. (Never investigated by CU.) June 7, 2007 CU President Hank Brown refuses to recuse himself from Ward Churchill case despite his longstanding ties to ACTA. He then overrides the P&T Panel to recommend to the Regents that they fire Ward Churchill. July 10, 2007 A P&T review panel belatedly addresses a grievance filed by Ward Churchill in September 2005 regarding the University?s violations of its own rules on confidentiality. The panel concludes that ?the actions by the University regarding the SCRM process and press releases/conferences violated Churchill?s confidentiality. In addition, the panel finds that further harm to Churchill?s reputation was done by the delay in hearing his grievance by the Privilege and Tenure Committee.? July 10, 2007 Churchill fired by Board of Regents This finding, of course, comes too late to redress any of the harm caused by these breaches of University rules. July 12, 18, and 19, 2007 Still more research misconduct complaints are filed against the SCRM Investigative Committee. (Never investigated.) July 24, 2007 The Regents of the University of Colorado vote 8-1 to fire Ward Churchill. Only Regent Cindy Carlisle votes to accept the P&T Panel?s findings. July 25, 2007 David Lane immediately files suit to vindicate Ward Churchill?s rights under the First Amendment. March 9-27, 2009: Churchill v. University of Colorado scheduled for trial in Denver State Court. http://www.russellmeansfreedom.com/?p=1109 From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Mar 9 18:04:41 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 17:04:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [A-List] Seeds of its own destruction Message-ID: <492036.19825.qm@web180113.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Financial Times - March 8, 2009 Seeds of its own destruction By Martin Wolf From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Mon Mar 9 18:21:30 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:21:30 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Forget About "Recovery" Message-ID: <49B5B28A.4030307@ashisuto.co.jp> Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler Comment on current events by the author of The Long Emergency (2005) www.kunstler.com (March 09 2009) At the risk of confirming my critics' dumbest charge - that I am a "doomer" - the mandate of clarity requires me to ask: to what state of affairs do we expect to recover? If the answer is a return to an economy based on building ever more suburban sprawl, on credit card over-spending, on routine securitized debt shenanigans in banking, and on consistently lying to ourselves about what reality demands of us, then we are a mortally deluded nation. We're done with that, we're beyond that now, we've crossed the frontier and left that all behind, and we'd better get our heads straight about it. I maintain that there are countless constructive tasks waiting to occupy us on a long national "to do" list for rebuilding a national economy, but they are way different than the ones currently preoccupying government and the mainstream media. The Obama White House, Congress, and The New York Times are hung up on exercises in futility - "rescuing" banks and insurance companies that cannot be rescued (because they are hopelessly trapped in "black hole" credit default swaps contracts), and re-starting a "consumer" binge that was completely crazy in the first place, based, as it was, on a something-for-nothing standard-of-living. Meanwhile, if the buzz on the blogosphere is a measure of anything - and I think it is - then a new consensus is forming out there about where to start doing things differently. Unfortunately after less than two months in office, President Obama finds himself awkwardly behind-the-curve on this. It begins with the understanding that a general bank rescue is hopeless and, going a step further, that the people who caused the train wreck of "innovative" securities have to be prosecuted. The public's collective voice on this is muted but growing. It has been muted by the general air of blackmail that the banks have used to enthrall policy and opinion - the "too big to fail" idea - in effect holding the nation's future for ransom. Last week, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo hauled Bank of America chief Ken Lewis into his office to explain who, exactly, received an aggregate several billion dollars in bonuses late in 2008 after the US Treasury forked over billions of dollars in TARP money to his bank. That was a good start. Mr Lewis, being lawyered-up to the max, had the temerity to reply that answering the question would compromise his ability to keep talented people in his employ. For that impertinence alone, Mr Lewis ought to be dragged over fifteen miles of broken chardonnay bottles behind a GMC Yukon - but that is not how we do things in American jurisprudence. To be more realistic, a simple indictment would be in order, and then Mr Lewis can answer this question, and a few others, in the comfort of an air-conditioned courtroom. Ultimately, that might lead to Mr Lewis becoming the wife of a bodybuilder in one of New York State's houses of correction - a just outcome that would go far in rejiggering the nation's expectations about how people in authority ought to behave. And such an outcome might lead to the conviction of many other brides-to-be from the Wall Street debutante pool. Now it has come to light, just last week in the wake of AIG's latest bail-out, that previous AIG bail-out money to the tune of $50 billion was distributed to a set of banks including Goldman Sachs (former employer of then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and then New York Federal Reserve Governor Tim Geithner), plus Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Mr Lewis's Bank of America, and a long list of European banks with operations in the USA. Since the transactions took place in New York State, the investigation of these irregularities alone could solve the unemployment problem here if NY Attorney General Cuomo were given a free hand in hiring staff to depose everyone involved - including the hiring of caterers to bring in coffee and meals for round-the-clock proceedings. All of this raises another awkward question: where is United States Attorney General Eric Holder in this situation? Surely the federal statutes offer some grounds for inquiring about the misuse of Treasury funds - and many other issues arising from Wall Street's stupendous orgy of misbehavior. What I'm hearing out in the blogosphere is a growing clamor to call people to account before we are really able to move on to the massive task-list that awaits us in rebuilding our economy. The bigger question for now is whether any of these authorities will act effectively before the public simply goes apeshit and starts burning down Greenwich, Connecticut. The dangerous shift in public mood is liable to occur with shocking swiftness, in the manner of "phase change," where one moment you see a bewildered bunch of flabby clown-citizens vacuously enraptured by "American Idol", and the next moment they are transformed into a vicious mob hoisting flaming brands to the window treatments of a hedge funder's McMansion. The moment of opportunity for avoiding that outcome is looking sickeningly slim right now. Another thing that President Obama can set into motion anytime - and pull himself back to the head of the curve of leadership - is to either by executive order or by proposal to congress, shut down the credit default swap system for a period of time while procedures are drawn up to place all these dubious contracts in a "clearing" market, where the holders of them will have to come clean about what they're sitting on. The lack of this procedure is allowing zombie banks to hold the United States hostage for never-ending bail-out ransoms. None of these banks are going to survive another six months anyway, so the basic blackmail motif that the whole money system will collapse if ransoms are not paid is a bluff that has to be called sooner or later in any case. So Mr Obama might as well get on with it. Once these two matters are dealt with - an earnest start-up of prosecutions and disabling the credit default swap blackmail racket - then perhaps a stressed-out and impoverished public might be induced to not go apeshit and instead get on with the mighty task of rebuilding our nation along lines that have a plausible future. _____ My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers. http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2009/03/forget-about-recovery.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From noreply at coha.org Mon Mar 9 12:05:45 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 14:05:45 -0400 Subject: [A-List] An Open Letter on El Salvador; China Courts Costa Rica Message-ID: <20090309180444.BD65E3E4317@mx-out2.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 5961 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090309/25f04c0c/attachment.txt From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Mar 9 22:29:22 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 21:29:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [A-List] A Backlash Against Obama's Budget ; which side are you on Message-ID: <758062.2194.qm@web180109.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> There's a big class battle brewing. Which side are you on ? http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_11/b4123016507664.htm BusinessWeek BusinessWeek Exchange Search all of BusinessWeek.com: NEWS MarBusinessWeek BusinessWeek Exchange Search all of BusinessWeek.com: NEWS March 5, 2009, 5:00PM EST A Backlash Against Obama's Budget Businesses from startups to global giants to drugmakers and farmers are gearing up to fight the President's spending plan with ad campaigns and public protests ch 5, 2009, 5:00PM EST A Backlash Against Obama's Budget Businesses from startups to global giants to drugmakers and farmers are gearing up to fight the President's spending plan with ad campaigns and public protests From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Mon Mar 9 23:14:54 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 22:14:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [A-List] Obama gets high marks in the latest NEWSWEEK poll, Message-ID: <468194.94620.qm@web180114.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> It's the People vs the Business class. Which side are you on ? CB ^^^^^^^ Newsweek Honeymoon In Hell Amid all the gloom, Obama gets high marks in the latest NEWSWEEK poll, with the GOP in the doghouse. Michael Hirsh Newsweek Web Exclusive Despite the tumbling economy, ?Barack Obama continues to enjoy a honeymoon with the American public in the face of the most trying crisis any newly inaugurated president ?has encountered since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The GOP, meanwhile, is viewed by a majority of Americans as the party of "no," without a plan of its own to fix the economy, and even rank-and-file ?Republicans are concerned about the party's direction, according to the ?first NEWSWEEK Poll taken since Obama assumed office. "People give Obama credit for reaching out to Republicans, but they don't see Republicans reciprocating," ?says pollster Larry Hugick, whose firm conducted the survey. "A surprising number said bipartisanship is more important ?than getting things done." Overall, 58 percent of Americans surveyed approve of the job Obama is doing, while 26 percent ?disapprove and one in six (16 percent) has no opinion. Although his approval ratings ?are down from levels seen a few weeks ago in other polls, 72 percent of Americans still say they have a favorable opinion of Obama? a higher rating than he received in NEWSWEEK Polls during the ?presidential campaign last year. The president's rating in this poll is consistent with estimates provided by other national media polls in the last week. On the most important issue of the day, the NEWSWEEK Poll shows that close to two thirds (65 percent) of the public say they are very or somewhat confident that Obama ?will be successful in turning the economy around. That's down just a little from the 71 percent who felt that way before he took office. ?Still, overall perceptions of the economy remain solidly negative, ?with 84 percent saying the national economy is in poor shape and just 3 percent viewing things positively. The public is also dubious about some of the president's programs. Majorities of Americans think too much has been spent so far to help rescue large banks in danger of ?failing and domestic auto companies facing bankruptcy. A somewhat surprising majority (56 percent) supports nationalizing large banks ?at risk of failing?a policy the Obama administration has shied ?away from. And fewer than half of those polled (49 percent) say they support Obama's proposal to allow the expiration of tax cuts for those with ?incomes above $250,000 at the end of next year. (Forty-two percent say they oppose ending these cuts.) Even so, faith in Obama personally ?has apparently carried over into optimism about the future. More than a third (37 percent) of the public expect economic conditions to improve in the next 12 months, compared with 29 percent who think things will be worse. Another big plus for the president's policies is that a huge majority of Americans (73 percent) favor his plan to remove ?most U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of next year. The biggest problem for the GOP, ?according to the poll, may be that 58 percent of Americans believe that Republicans ?who have opposed Obama's economic-rescue plans have no plan of their own for turning the economy around. With the Republicans ?having lost the White House and both houses of Congress, public ?identification with the party has dropped to a recent low point of 26 percent, after running at or near 30 percent for most of the last 15 years. ?That's the lowest level since the Watergate era and a ?striking loss of stature for the party, considering that self-described conservatives continue to outnumber liberals in the country by nearly two to one (39 percent vs. 20 percent). Many Republicans express concern ?about where their party is headed and whether GOP leaders in Congress are ?in touch with their constituents. Asked about the direction of their party, ?45 percent of rank-and-file Republicans say it is moving in the right direction, while more than a third (35 percent) think it is going in ?the wrong direction. This is in sharp contrast to what a NEWSWEEK ?Poll found in 1999 after the Clinton impeachment hearings. At that time, 65 percent of Republicans said their party was headed in the right direction. Some of these results spring from discontent over Republican leadership; other survey respondents ?indicate the party is ideologically lost. More than half of Republicans today (52 percent) say they don't think GOP congressional leaders are in touch with what the average Republican thinks. While four in 10 Republicans (39 percent) think the GOP is about right ?in terms of ideology, another 38 percent believe it is not conservative enough, and only 20 percent think it is too conservative. Apart from Obama himself, however, the Democratic Party can hardly crow about these results. The public's ?general disdain for Congress?including the Democratic leadership?hasn't changed much since the Democrats took over in 2006. More people have an unfavorable opinion of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ?than a favorable one (41 percent vs. 35 percent). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid fares little better, with 28 percent viewing him unfavorably and 23 percent with a favorable opinion. One reason for Pelosi's and Reid's low numbers is that by a large margin?51 percent to 40 percent? Americans say they value bipartisanship in Washington over getting things done quickly. And the public doesn't see Democratic congressional leaders acting in a bipartisan manner nearly as much as Obama, ?who is given credit for trying: 71 percent feel that the president has made a reasonable effort to work with and listen to Republicans on Capitol Hill. The results are based on telephone ?interviews conducted March 4-5 with a nationally representative sample of 1,203 adults, age 18 and over. The overall margin of sampling error is ?plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/188002 From ftkjepzdm at to78000.jss.cn Wed Mar 11 03:10:26 2009 From: ftkjepzdm at to78000.jss.cn (sjdmowwxx) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:10:26 +0800 Subject: [A-List] =?gb2312?b?vfEuyNUuyPwuysI=?= Message-ID: <20090311091027.C9F26664DB4@to78000.jss.cn> ????a-list?????? ?????????????????????? ??????????????.??1349713497????.????.????.?????????? ??.???????? ??.????????.??.??????????.??????.????????.????????.??????.????.?? ??.??????????.????.????.????.??????.??????????.??????????.????.???? ??.????.????.????.?? ????.????.????..????.???? ??.????.???? http://www.hongb88.com/welcome.aspx?vid=kgh5743574 ??.??????.????.?? ????..????.????.????????.?????? ??.????.?? http://www.hong248.com ??????.????????.???? ?? ??????.?? ?C 128??SSL??.????.?? ?? ??.?????? ?C ??.??195 ?? ??.????.?? ?C ??..??????..??????.??.??????..?? ?? ??????..?? ?C ??.??30??.??????.?? ?? ??.????.?? ?C ??.????.????????.????.?? ?? ??.????.?? ?C 24??.????.????.?? ?? ??.????.?? ?C ??.????.????.???????? ??.????????????.??,??.????.???? support at hbhelpdesk.com ??.????.???? ??.????.??,??.??.????.????????????"delete"??ken at hbhelpdesk.com,????! ????????,??.??.??.??! 2009-03-11 17:10:26 From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Mar 10 09:19:45 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:19:45 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Should creation of money stay in private hands? Message-ID: <49B68511.1090207@ashisuto.co.jp> by Richard A Werner The Daily Yomiuri (March 09 2009) Governments all over the world are engaged in frantic efforts to avoid another Great Depression. Late last year, $700 billion still seemed a large sum. But since then the US Congress has been asked to approve government expenditure now counted in the trillions of dollars. The main thrust of government policy worldwide has been to inject mind-boggling sums of public money into the banking system. Is this the most efficient, cost-effective and fair way of stabilizing economies and employment in this situation? Further, the banking and economic crises as we are witnessing today are nothing new. Their frequency had already increased to record numbers in the past thirty years before the start of the current crisis. Indeed, the world has seen an apparently endless string of recurring banking crises and connected economic cycles, with all their costs and distortions. Should we not first step back and consider what the true common causes are, so that any policy response can be properly designed and also we could be surer that banking crises such as these will in future be avoided? No such thing as a bank loan First, we need to understand what causes banking crises. The core of the problem is that 95 percent to 98 percent of the money supply is not created by central banks or governments, but by privately owned commercial banks. It is a little-known fact that there is no such thing as a "bank loan". Banks do not lend money. "Lending" refers to transferring control of the lent object to the borrower. If I lend you my car, I can't at the same time drive in it. That's not what banks do when they issue a "bank loan". Instead, they are allowed by the current regulatory framework to create new money out of nothing - which is called "credit creation". The collective decisions of commercial bank staff thus determine how much money is created, who gets the newly created money and for what purpose. Mainstream economics assumes that the best possible outcome will be achieved, if banks are left alone in making their decisions about how much money should be created and to whom it should be handed over for whatever use. But the current crisis has disproven this claim. It has demonstrated that we can't expect banks' credit decisions to be in any way beneficial for the overall economy, social welfare, or even the bankers' own good - as former US Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan admitted to Congress last October. The incentive structure at banks is such that they tend to create too much credit when not needed, and for unproductive use; and when this has gone sour, too little money, though it is then badly needed by productive firms. There are some simple rules for sound banking and sound economies that need to be followed: Whenever credit is created and used to increase the amount of goods and services provided, it will be noninflationary: more money comes about, but also more goods and services. This is boring banking, without excessive bankers' bonuses. But it is the kind of stable banking that created the postwar German and Japanese economic miracles, and also explains the rise of China and other East Asian so-called miracle economies. But whenever credit is created and used for unproductive purposes, inflation comes about: more money chases a limited amount of goods or assets. The unproductive credit creation can take two forms: When credit is extended for consumption, it will result in consumer price inflation. When credit is extended for non-gross domestic product transactions (which means mainly financial and real estate transactions), there will be asset inflation. Both cases are unsustainable and if sufficiently large, result in banking and economic crises. To prevent banking crises, it must be ensured that the bulk of credit creation is used for productive purposes. Specifically, the use of aggregate bank credit for transactions that are not part of GDP (something that can be easily verified by loan officers) needs to be monitored, and suppressed when it threatens to rise in excess of total bank credit growth. This simple measure would have prevented the credit bubbles in the United States, Britain, Ireland, Spain and many emerging markets, which have now burst and caused the current crisis. It would also have prevented the Japanese recession since 1990 or the US depression of the 1930s. Central banks used to monitor precisely this, but following the deregulation advice of mainstream economics, they chose to abolish their "credit guidance" policies and instead let rip the unproductive bank credit expansions of the past decades. Ironically, it is now that the US, British, French and German governments say they want to monitor the allocation of new bank lending (to ensure lending to small firms and mortgage borrowers). The horse has already bolted. Thus one also needs to ask why those institutions that could have prevented the bubbles have singularly failed to do so, although they had been given unusually strong powers with little accountability to democratic institutions: the central banks. Never have they been as independent and powerful as today. This suggests that the very independence and lack of accountability of central banks has been a factor in allowing the creation of credit bubbles and the propagation of the current crisis: the central banks' erroneous belief in the infallibility of free and unfettered markets remained unchecked. Thus from now on, central banks should be made to monitor credit flows and made more directly accountable to democratically elected assemblies for the results. How to fix the banking system What should be done to end the current crisis and avoid large-scale unemployment? Just like the Japanese government in the early 1990s, governments have responded by increasing fiscal expenditure, funded by borrowing, and central banks have responded by lowering interest rates. Neither will help: The privately owned creators of the bulk of the money supply are battening down the hatches; in their increased risk aversion, they will reduce credit creation. Just as their excessive credit creation affects us all, so does their reduction of credit: For economic growth, as traditionally measured, credit creation is necessary. This is why the current policies will not help. Fiscal policy on its own does not create credit. By borrowing more, national debt is increased, but the money for the fiscal stimulation is the same money that is removed from the economy through bond issuance. Thus fiscal policy, if not backed by credit creation, will crowd out private demand dollar by dollar. And lower interest rates will not help - even if they drop to zero - if the quantity of credit does not increase. This is why Japan will soon be in the 20th year of recession after its own credit bubble burst in 1990. The solution is simple: We have been hearing much of the need to help banks write off nonperforming loans, but those burdened most by this debt - the households saddled with uneconomical mortgages - are not given significant debt relief. Instead, many are being made homeless. Their debt slates should be wiped clean before government money is injected into the banking system. Further, fiscal stimulation, in the form of purchases of nonperforming assets from banks, and public purchases of bank equity, should be funded either by the issuance of government money (such as former US President John F Kennedy's "United States Notes" issued in 1963, or the government money put into circulation by the Japanese or US governments in the 19th century), or, failing that, undertaken directly by the central banks, for their own account. In both cases, national debt and interest liabilities will not increase, but credit creation will. Growth will not collapse. This also makes sense from a moral hazard perspective: It is not the taxpayer that is responsible for the current mess, but the central banks, so let them pay. Finally, another topic should be discussed, although the ruling elites seem to consider it taboo: Is it really right that the creation and allocation of money - a public good - remains in private hands? Surely that's the ultimate reason why nobody seems interested in learning the lessons from the past and why experts feign surprise each time another banking crisis erupts. Many are conflicted, as they have been beneficiaries from this highly lucrative private monopoly. _____ Werner is professor of international banking at the University of Southampton and author of the books Princes of the Yen (2003) and New Paradigm in Macroeconomics (2005). http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/columns/commentary/20090309dy02.htm http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Tue Mar 10 20:01:09 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:01:09 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Credit Where Credit Is Due Message-ID: <49B71B65.5000107@ashisuto.co.jp> The Direct Way to Fix the Credit Crisis by Ellen Brown www.webofdebt.com (January 11 2009) Letter to the bank - Dear Sirs, In light of recent developments, when you returned my check marked "insufficient funds", were you referring to my funds or yours? Economist John Kenneth Galbraith famously said, "The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled". If banks can create money, why are we suffering from a "credit crunch"? Why can't banks create all the money they can find borrowers for? Last fall, Congress committed an unprecedented $700 billion in taxpayer money to reversing the credit crisis, and the Federal Reserve has already fanned that into $8.5 trillion in loans and commitments. {1} But the bank bailout has proven to be no more than a boondoggle for a handful of lucky Wall Street banks, without getting credit flowing again. To understand the real cause of the credit crisis and how it can be reversed, we first need to understand credit itself - what it is, where it comes from, and what the real tourniquet is that has limited its flow. Banks actually create credit; and if private banks can do it, so could public banks or public treasuries. The crisis is not one of "liquidity" but of "solvency". It has been caused, not by the banks' inability to get credit (something they can create with accounting entries), but by their inability to meet the capital requirement imposed by the Bank for International Settlements, the private foreign head of the international banking system. That inability, in turn, has been caused by the derivatives virus; and only a few big banks are seriously infected with it. By bailing out these big banks, the government is actually spreading the virus by furnishing the funds for them to take over smaller regional banks. A more effective alternative than trying to patch up the hopelessly imperiled derivatives positions of these few Wall Street banks would be to simply create another credit system with a pristine set of books. We don't need to fix the Wall Street disease; we can bypass the whole problem and create a new, healthy, parallel system. A network of public banks (federal and state) could create "credit" just as private banks do now. This credit could be extended at low interest rates to consumers and at very low interest to local governments, drastically reducing the cost of public projects by reducing the cost of funding them. That is not a radical proposal. It is what private banks themselves do every day. But bankers will dispute it, and most people have trouble believing it. So to make a compelling case for this solution, the first thing that needs to be established is that ... Banks Create the Money They Lend Bankers will tell you that they do not create money. At a ten percent reserve requirement, they simply lend out ninety percent of their deposits. The catch is that their "deposits" include the money they have written into their customers' accounts as loans. That is how loans are made: numbers are simply written into the accounts of borrowers, as many reputable authorities have attested. Here are two of them, dating back to when officials were either more aware of what was going on or more open about it: "[W]hen a bank makes a loan, it simply adds to the borrower's deposit account in the bank by the amount of the loan. The money is not taken from anyone else's deposit; it was not previously paid in to the bank by anyone. It's new money, created by the bank for the use of the borrower." --- Robert B Anderson, Treasury Secretary under Eisenhower, in an interview reported in the August 31 1959 issue of US News and World Report "Do private banks issue money today? Yes. Although banks no longer have the right to issue bank notes, they can create money in the form of bank deposits when they lend money to businesses, or buy securities ... The important thing to remember is that when banks lend money they don't necessarily take it from anyone else to lend. Thus they 'create' it". --- Congressman Wright Patman, Money Facts (House Committee on Banking and Currency, 1964) The process by which banks create money was detailed in a revealing booklet put out by the Chicago Federal Reserve titled Modern Money Mechanics {2}. The booklet was periodically revised until 1992, when it had reached fifty pages long. It is written in somewhat difficult prose, but here are a few relevant passages: "The actual process of money creation takes place primarily in banks". [page 3] Translation: banks create money. "In the absence of legal reserve requirements, banks can build up deposits by increasing loans and investments so long as they keep enough currency on hand to redeem whatever amounts the holders of deposits want to convert into currency". [page 3] Translation: banks can create as much money as they want by writing loans into their borrowers' accounts, limited only by (a) legal reserve requirements (money that must be held in reserve - traditionally about ten percent of outstanding deposits and loans) or (b) the amount of money they will need to keep on hand to pay any depositors who might come for their money (also traditionally about ten percent). "Banks may increase the balances in their reserve accounts by depositing checks and proceeds from electronic funds transfers as well as currency". [page 4] Translation: the "reserves" that count toward the reserve requirement include currency, deposited checks, and electronic funds transfers. (Note that the "deposits" created as loans are excluded from this list of allowable reserves: the bank cannot just keep bootstrapping loans on top of loans but must have money from external sources backing up its liabilities equal to about ten percent of its loans and deposits.) "The money-creation process takes place principally through transaction accounts [accounts that can be drawn on without restriction]". [page 2] "With a uniform ten percent reserve requirement, a $1 increase in reserves would support $10 of additional transaction accounts". [page 49] Translation: $1 deposited by a customer can be fanned into $10 in loans. "In the real world, a bank's lending is not normally constrained by the amount of excess reserves it has at any given moment. Rather, loans are made, or not made, depending on the bank's credit policies and its expectations about its ability to obtain the funds necessary to pay its customers' checks and maintain required reserves in a timely fashion." Translation: In practice, banks issue loans without worrying too much about whether they have the reserves to cover them. If they come up short, they can just borrow them: "[Since] the individual bank does not know today precisely what its reserve position will be at the time the proceeds of today's loans are paid out ... many banks turn to the money market - borrowing funds to cover deficits or lending temporary surpluses". [page 50] "[A] bank may [also] borrow reserves temporarily from its Reserve Bank ... [However], banks are discouraged from borrowing [Reserve Bank] adjustment credit too frequently or for extended time periods". [page 29] Translation: If the bank finds at the end of the accounting period that its reserves do not come to the required ten percent of its outstanding loans and deposits, it can simply borrow the reserves it needs from the money market or its Federal Reserve Bank. A 2002 article posted on the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York noted that today, few banks are constrained by reserve requirements at all: "Since the beginning of the last decade, required reserve balances have fallen dramatically. The decline stems in part from regulatory action: the Federal Reserve eliminated reserve requirements on large time deposits in 1990 and lowered the requirements on transaction accounts in 1992. But a far more important source of the decline in required reserves has been the growth of sweep accounts. In the most common form of sweeping, funds in bank customers' retail checking accounts are shifted overnight into savings accounts exempt from reserve requirements and then returned to customers' checking accounts the next business day. Largely as a result of this practice, today only thirty percent of banks are bound by a reserve balance requirement." {3} Even without official reserve requirements, however, banks must keep enough money on hand to meet withdrawals or checks written against the accounts of their depositors; and that generally means about ten percent of outstanding deposits and loans, as moneylenders discovered centuries ago. But if the banks come up short, they can borrow this money from the money market or the Federal Reserve; and if the Fed comes up short, it can create new reserves {4}. So why the current credit crunch? What is limiting bank lending? One answer is that borrowers are simply "tapped out" and not in a position to take out as many loans as they used to. When housing and the stock market crashed, consumers no longer had home or stock equity to borrow against. {5} But to the extent that the blockage is with the banks themselves, it is not caused by the reserve requirement. Something else is putting the squeeze on credit ... The Real Tourniquet: Capital Adequacy and the Mark-to-Market Rule What actually constrains bank lending is the capital adequacy requirement, something that is imposed not by our own central bank but by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Called "the central bankers' central bank", the BIS pulls the strings of the private international banking system from Basel, Switzerland. How the capital requirement is determined is even more complicated than the reserve requirement, but it needs to be understood to understand why banks with the power to create money are going bankrupt. So here is a simplified version. A bank's "capital" consists of its assets minus its liabilities. Under the capital adequacy rule imposed by the Basel Accords, assets are "risk-weighted", with some being considered riskier than others. Ordinary loans have a "risk weighting" of One. The capital adequacy rule requires that the ratio of a bank's capital to its assets with a risk-weighting of One be at least eight percent. That means the bank must have $8 in capital for every $100 in ordinary loans. Federal bonds have a risk-weighting of zero: they are considered to be as safe as dollars and don't need any extra capital backing them. Mortgage loans (which are secured by real estate) have a risk weighting of 0.5. That means they need only $4 of capital per $100 of loans. Other bank exposures given risk weightings include such things as derivatives and foreign exchange contracts. {6} (Interestingly, the $700 billion committed by Congress to bailing out the financial system is approximately eight percent of the $8.5 trillion the Fed has now promised in loans and commitments. Even the Federal Reserve evidently feels constrained by the BIS capital requirement.) A very controversial accounting rule imposed on banks for their capital ratio calculations is the "mark to market" rule. This rule requires banks to revalue all of their assets each day as if the assets had to be sold that day. Capital calculations thus fluctuate with the market; and in today's volatile market, all asset classes have plunged at the same time. Since assets get marked to market but liabilities don't, a bank may suddenly find that its assets are insufficient to support its liabilities, rendering it insolvent and unable to make new loans. Banks have gotten around the capital adequacy requirement by reducing risk on their balance sheets with a form of private bet known as "derivatives". At least, they thought they had gotten around the rule. But this unregulated form of insurance proved to be based on faulty mathematical models. (See Ellen Brown, ""Credit Default Swaps: Derivative Disaster Du Jour", and "It's the Derivatives, Stupid!", www.webofdebt.com/articles.) "Credit default swaps" (CDS) are a form of derivative widely sold as insurance against default. When AIG, the world's largest insurance company, ventured into CDS in the late 1990s, the presumption was that "housing always goes up" and that the risk of default was so remote that selling "credit protection" was virtually "free money" {7}. But this free money turned into a serious liability to the protection sellers when the "remote" actually happened and a flood of defaults struck. The value of the derivatives protecting securitized mortgages became so questionable that they were unmarketable at any price. Banks counting them as assets on their books then had to "mark them to market" effectively at zero, reducing the banks' capital below the levels called for in the Basel Accords and rendering the banks officially insolvent. When AIG went broke in September 2008, banks heavily involved in derivatives faced double jeopardy: not only would they have to write down the derivative protection they had sold to others and counted as assets on their books, but they could no longer count on the derivative insurance they had bought to minimize the risk of default on their other assets. AIG got a massive bailout from the Fed in return for most of its equity, but even that bailout money is not expected to be enough to get it out of its derivative nightmare and keep it afloat. Derivatives have introduced a lack of transparency into bank portfolios, creating fear and uncertainty on the part of lenders, depositors and investors alike. This uncertainty has prevented banks from raising capital by selling stock, or meeting reserve requirements by getting interbank loans; and it has discouraged investors from investing in the money market. Banks don't know whether the money they lend to each other will be repaid, since they don't have a clear view of the value of the assets carried on bank balance sheets. The result is a crisis of confidence: the players are all eying each other suspiciously and holding their cards close to the chest. Going Local Fortunately, according to a recent study using the Treasury Department's own data, the banking crisis is not widespread but is limited to only "a few big, vocal banks" {8}. The real credit problem lies with the financial institutions with significant derivative exposure, and most of this liability is carried by only a handful of Wall Street giants. In early 2008, outstanding derivatives on the books of US banks exceeded $180 trillion. However, $90 trillion of this was carried on the books of JPMorgan Chase alone, while Citibank and Bank of America each had $38 trillion on their books. {9] Needless to say, these are also the banks that are first in line for the Treasury's bailout money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Rather than excising the relatively contained derivative tumor, the Treasury and the Fed are feeding it with trillions in taxpayer money; and this money is being used, not to unfreeze credit by making loans, but to buy up smaller banks. {10} That means the derivative cancer, rather than being excised, is liable to spread. We the people and our representatives in Congress have allowed Wall Street to call the shots because we think we are dependent on their credit system, but we aren't. There are other ways to get credit - ways that are fair, efficient, transparent, and don't encourage greed. Public credit could be generated by a system of public banks. Precedent for this solution is to be found in the state-owned Bank of North Dakota, which has been generating credit for North Dakota since 1919, keeping the state fiscally sound when other states are floundering. (See Ellen Brown, "Sustainable Government: Banking for a 'New' New Deal", webofdebt.com/articles, December 08 2008.) The credit crunch could be avoided by "going local" not just in the United States but around the world. Countries that have been seduced or coerced into funneling their productive assets into serving foreign markets and foreign investors could become self-sustaining, using their own credit and their own resources to feed and serve their own people. There is much more to be said on this subject, but it will be saved for future articles. Stay tuned. Notes: 1. Kathleen Pender, "Government Bailout Hits $8.5 Trillion", San Francisco Chronicle (November 26 2008). 2. Modern Money Mechanics: A Workbook on Bank Reserves and Deposit Expansion (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Public Information Service, 1992, available at http://www.rayservers.com/images/ModernMoneyMechanics.pdf. 3. Paul Bennett, Savros Peristiani, "Are Reserve Requirements Still Binding?", Economic Policy Review (May 2002). 4. Modern Money Mechanics, op cit. 5. Joshua Holland, "Was the 'Credit Crunch' a Myth Used to Sell a Trillion-Dollar Scam?", AlterNet (December 29 2008). 6. "Capital Requirement", Wikipedia. 7. Robert O'Harrow Jr, Brady Dennis, "Complex Deals Led to AIG's Undoing", Los Angeles Times (January 01 2009). 8. Joshua Holland, op cit. 9. Comptroller of the Currency, "OCC's Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities Third Quarter 2008", www.occ.treas.gov; "US Bank Derivative Exposure", FDIC/IRA Bank Monitor, chart reproduced on The Big Picture (blog), August 2008. 10. Joe Nocera, "So When Will Banks Give Loans?", New York Times (October 25 2008). _____ Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt (2007), her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust". She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from "the money trust". Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine (2008), Nature's Pharmacy (1998), co-authored with Dr Lynne Walker, and The Key to Ultimate Health (2000), co-authored with Dr Richard Hansen) Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com. Copyright (c) 2007 Ellen Brown. All Rights Reserved. http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/creditcrunch.php http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Mar 11 06:59:16 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:59:16 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Back to the Future Message-ID: <49B7B5A4.8070705@ashisuto.co.jp> The Edo Biosphere by Thomas Daniell www.archis.org (December 19 2008) 1. Postwar Japan Japan's phoenix-like emergence out of the urban firestorms triggered by incendiary bombing campaigns during the final months of the Second World War is a story that has been told often enough. The incredible collective willpower that rebuilt - or better, reconceived - the nation during the postwar period (albeit under the benevolent guidance of the American Occupation for the first seven years) enabled decades of unprecedented industrialization, urbanization, modernization, democratization and a welcome reentry into the global community of nations symbolized by the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the 1970 Osaka Expo. It was a long haul from the brutal, favela-like conditions of Japan's cities at the end of the war, confronted as they were with overwhelming homelessness, unemployment, inflation and material scarcities. The turning point was 1960, the year Hayato Ikeda (a career bureaucrat in the Finance Ministry) became Prime Minister and announced his 'income doubling plan' and 'politics of patience and reconciliation': slogans that equated to massive industrialization and a concomitant suppression of societal disagreement. Ikeda built on his own late-1950s policies of preferential financing for heavy industry, advocating huge government investment in transportation infrastructure and an uncompromising commitment to economic progress. The environmental and social consequences were immaterial. Ikeda's personal ruthlessness was no secret: he had been appointed head of MITI (the Ministry of International Trade and Industry) in 1952, but was forced to resign within a month as a result of his infamous statement that in the pursuit of national industrialization, 'it makes no difference to me if five or ten small businessmen are forced to commit suicide' {1}. Heartless as this may sound, Ikeda's crime was merely an overly blunt expression of a generally accepted Japanese principle: individual suffering is irrelevant in the pursuit of collective wellbeing. Boosted by US investment and the Korean War, the Japanese economy succeeded far beyond expectations. Within a few years, Japan had a Gross National Product second only to the US, an affluent citizenry with a remarkably flat distribution of wealth, a superb educational system, the highest literacy rates in the world and local industries producing an array of consumer goods that had turned the label 'Made in Japan' from a contemptuous warning into an assurance of quality. The 1960s also nurtured the Metabolists, a group of young visionaries who attempted to give architectural form to the utopian promises of technological progress, infinite growth and development without consequences {2}. The spirit of the times is encapsulated by Kenzo Tange's 1960 Tokyo Bay Plan, an enormous, potentially infinite, extension of the city out across the water, with housing and other facilities sprouting from a central infrastructural spine. The parallel story is one of appalling and tragic environmental damage that gave Japan the sadly deserved reputation of having the worst pollution problems of any developed country. Since the late nineteenth century, incipient industrialization had been causing serious damage to local ecosystems and their human inhabitants, but the problems exponentially increased after the Second World War. A series of notorious ecological disasters during the 1950s and 60s resulted in outbreaks of incurable illnesses, birth defects and deaths, as the natural environment became poisoned by industrial waste: arsenic (Morinaga Milk Powder poisoning), sulfur dioxide (Yokkaichi Asthma), mercury (Minamata Disease), cadmium (Itai-itai Disease) {3}. Such incidents were initially confined to rural areas, a result of provincial governments trying to stimulate their local economies by attracting industrial investment - mining, chemical production, wood pulp treatment - that directly and indirectly destroyed the health of their farming and fishing communities. Protests were initially suppressed or ignored, with the wider population all too content in their new prosperity. Media coverage of the problems and successful compensation claims eventually led to the enactment of strict new environmental legislation in 1970 and the establishment of the Environmental Agency in 1971. This was another turning point, coinciding with the World Expo in Osaka - a paean to progress and technology, dominated by the Metabolist architects. Again Kenzo Tange made the definitive contribution, a vast spaceframe roof covering the Expo grounds. For the general public the utopian idealism of it all was no longer inspiring, but rather a callous display of the gap between these fantastic visions and the degraded reality of their living environment. It fueled a burgeoning backlash to modern affluence and progress - the dawning feeling that something was deeply amiss, that a historical wrong turn had been taken. This was the genesis of the 'Edo Boom' (or more accurately, series of booms): a flourishing popular interest in the premodern Edo period (1603-1867). Once regarded as laughably backward, an embarrassing episode best forgotten in the forward thrust of Japan's manifest destiny, during the 1970s a stream of books, lectures, exhibitions and television shows began to valorize Edo as an innocent, Edenic period of social and ecological sustainability. This reached a crescendo during the second half of the 1980s, precisely coinciding with the most shamelessly unsustainable period of Japan's postwar economic growth, the so-called 'bubble'. Since the burst of the bubble at the beginning of the 1990s, the fascination with Edo culture has only deepened. An Edo-Tokyo Museum opened in 1993 and new publications on the subject continue to appear, ranging from serious, substantial historiography to the most superficial, self-congratulatory 'nipponology'. 2. Edo Japan The Edo Period began in the wake of a century of devastating civil wars, with a military regime (the Tokugawa Shogunate) taking control of the nation and imposing a somewhat Taliban-like peace, stability and unity. Japan was run for the following two-and-a-half centuries by a series of warlords - de facto rulers based in the de facto capital, Edo, while the nominal ruler, the Emperor, lived in secluded irrelevance in the official capital, Kyoto. The new rulers invented a strict social hierarchy (a five-tier caste system), regulated architectural form and aesthetics (preventing wealthier commoners from building houses that might compete with the aristocracy), banned and confiscated all firearms (ensuring the dominance of the samurai sword) and most importantly closed the country to the outside world. Foreign trade and communication were almost entirely prohibited. The Edo Period ended with the restoration of the Emperor to power in 1868, together with the official relocation of the nation's capital from Kyoto to Edo (the latter city was then renamed Tokyo). Japan was reopened to the world, and like a child starved of novelty began to enthusiastically and uncritically import Western ideas while dismissing the older ways as primitive and worthless. Yet during those centuries of self-imposed isolation, Japan was a closed system, a laboratory for an extended experiment in sustainability. Without significant fossil fuel reserves, unable to import energy or manufactured goods, Japan effectively became a solar-powered nation. Recycling was not a choice or an ideology, but a life-or-death necessity, so pervasive that the word itself did not exist. The exquisite minimalism of the arts and crafts was not a rejection of luxury and decoration, but the only available option. Edo society teemed with itinerant artisans specialized in repairing various materials: welding metal cooking pots, gluing broken ceramics, repapering lanterns and umbrellas, refurbishing footwear, replenishing ink pads. If an object was beyond repair, it was repurposed: kimonos became diapers became cleaning rags. Finally, the component materials were collected and reused: scrap metal was melted down, coagulated wax from old candles was made into new ones, used paper was pulped and turned into clean sheets. {4} A balanced integration with the wider ecosystem was crucial for long-term survival. Centuries of small-scale farming and forestry around Japanese villages resulted in a kind of hybrid natural-artificial landscape known as satoyama {5}. A word that today evokes an idyllic, rural lifestyle, satoyama are usually defined as coppice woodlands maintained in a sustainable equilibrium with adjacent paddy fields and human communities. Forests were regularly, judiciously thinned and the wood used for charcoal and construction. The inedible straw left over from the rice harvest was turned into coats, hats, footwear, bags, embedded into clay walls as reinforcement, woven into tatami mats for floors and used as fuel for fires. Ultimately, everything was returned to the earth, whether directly or as ash after being burned. The main source of fertilizer was 'night soil' (human excrement), often collected directly from residences by farmers who paid for it in cash or crops. It was valuable stuff: dealers set up warehouses, landlords argued with their tenants over ownership and farmers became connoisseurs - different neighborhoods commanded different prices and the best shit was used for cultivating the highest grades of green tea. One side effect was cities that were extraordinarily clean by medieval standards (no one would pour potential wealth out the window, European-style). Equally important was the daily reminder that humanity was intimately, necessarily connected with the cycles of nature. Unsurprisingly, a society of reuse and recycling is not good for business. Without constant disposal and demand for new products, the economy stagnates. Historical analyses show that the Japanese economy grew insignificantly during the Edo period, averaging 0.3% per year {6}. The picture painted by the Edo Boom is undoubtedly a simplistic idealization of what must have been a grueling existence for much of the population. Admittedly, not even the most extreme of the contemporary Edo-philes are proposing a return to that lifestyle. More than an unwillingness to abandon modern conveniences, this is the acknowledgment of an insurmountable problem: the sustainability of Edo Japan was predicated on a far lower population (throughout the Edo Period, the nation held a stable thirty million people) and a correspondingly higher proportion of arable land and natural forest. Interlude: Biosphere 2 Though national in scale and multigenerational in duration, the isolated ecology of Edo Japan might be seen as a precursor to Biosphere 2, the largest artificial closed ecological system ever constructed. Intended as a microcosm of the earth itself (that is, Biosphere 1), Biosphere 2 comprises an array of enormous greenhouses in the Arizona desert. From September 1991 to September 1993, eight humans were sealed inside together with 3800 other living species spread across seven biomes (rainforest, desert, ocean, savannah, marshland, agriculture and a 'cultural' habitat for humans). There was to be no material input, with the entire system powered primarily by sunlight, and rigorous crop rotation, animal farming and waste recycling providing all necessities for the duration. Given the complexity and originality of the experiment, calculation errors and unforeseeable events inevitably intervened. Insects destroyed much of the crops. Oxygen and food ran low. The team was forced to slaughter all the pigs and chickens, eliminating the absurd inefficiency of raising vegetables only to be used as animal feed - one outcome was evidence that a vegetarian diet and abnormally low body weight will significantly increase human health and longevity (as had already been proven with laboratory animals). Yet, inadvertently perhaps, Biosphere 2 was a social experiment as much as a scientific one. Destabilized by the shortage of food, the participants soon divided into two factions with a relationship that was, at best, icy {7}. Violence was only averted through a determined commitment to civility and the creation of ad hoc food-related festivals - not unlike some primitive agrarian society - intended to inspire a sense of community. The widespread media criticism of Biosphere 2 notwithstanding, it was a compelling confirmation of the experience of Edo Japan: the creation of a closed system exponentially increases the importance of efficient recycling, of maintaining a high ratio of cultivated land to human population, and of ensuring a strict social order. 3. Japan now With a population of close to 130 million overwhelmingly middle-class consumers, contemporary Japan simply cannot sustain itself without a constant influx of new resources. Indeed, the nation is now one of the world's main importers of raw materials and energy (oil, natural gas, uranium). Yet grassroots activism on issues of energy, recycling and pollution has spread into national awareness, exemplified by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the nature-themed Aichi Expo 2005 and the bid for a carbon-neutral Tokyo Olympics in 2016. Japan is now a world leader in solar power research and usage. Maverick architect Tadao Ando, after four decades of creating sublime yet uninsulated raw concrete dwellings, is focusing his energy and fame on planting trees. In a droll echo of Tange's 1960 proposal for extending human habitation out into Tokyo Bay, Ando has been promoting a 480,000-tree 'Sea Forest' on a garbage landfill island in the bay. As in many First World countries, Japan now has an increasingly popular back-to-the-land movement {8}. Following decades of rural depopulation due to youth invariably moving to the cities, idealistic new communities are resettling abandoned villages and publicly funded volunteer groups are rejuvenating the satoyama landscapes. Yet however admirable, without broader action these trends are deeply quixotic. Their success is predicated on a far smaller population willing (or forced) to make do with far less and an understanding of the human world as being integral to the natural world. Premodern Japan lacked a sharp distinction between nature and culture, conceiving each as inextricably embedded in the other. Time was seen as circular: any one life follows a linear trajectory from birth to death, but the collective rides cycles of eternal recurrence and renewal. Balance must be maintained and the individual must stay strictly subservient to the group. The mentality of modern Japan has arguably undergone a shift toward a Western, linear conception of time. At worst, this manifests in lunatic fantasies of infinite growth or even more insidiously the End of Days: if our present moment is located somewhere between a creation and an apocalypse, the 'moral' thing to do is use up our divinely bequeathed resources before time runs out. While Japan may have belatedly recognized the urgent need to shift course nationally, globally the situation is only being maintained through massive imbalances in regional wealth. The idealized self-sufficiency of Edo Japan is no longer tenable. For true sustainability, everything removed must be replenished. The flows of material into Japan and the rest of the First World are themselves unsustainable. As formerly Third World populations increase in affluence - cars for the Chinese, refrigerators for the Indians - there will not be enough to go around. Priority must go to tackling new frontiers in intensive agriculture and technologies for resource recycling and procurement (seaweed farms? alchemical transformation of plastic waste? towing mineral-rich asteroids into earth orbit?). Failing that, the problem becomes disturbingly simple: without realistic recourse to global vegetarianism or global war, the closed system of our planetary biosphere now holds more human beings than it can sustain. Notes: 1. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1982), page 202. 2. Their manifesto was presented at the World Design Conference held in Tokyo in 1960 as Metabolism 1960: The Proposals for New Urbanism (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1960). 3. Jun Ui (editor), Industrial Pollution in Japan (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 1991). 4. The information given here about recycling in the Edo Period is primarily drawn from Eisuke Ishikawa, Oo-edo Risaikuru Jijou [The Recycling Situation in the Edo Period] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1997) and Atsushi Tsuchida, Ekorojii Shinwa no Kouzai [The Value of Ecology Myths] (Tokyo: Hotaru Shuppan, 1998). 5. A comprehensive survey of historical and contemporary satoyama is contained in Kazuhiko Takeuchi, R D Brown, I Washitani, M Yokohari (editors), Satoyama: The Traditional Rural Landscape of Japan (Berlin: Springer, 2003). 6. Eisuke Ishikawa, Oo-edo Risaikuru Jijou [The Recycling Situation in the Edo Period] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1997). 7. The two sides of the story are recounted in Abigail Alling, Mark Nelson, and Sally Silverstone, Life under Glass: The Inside Story of Biosphere 2 (Tuscon: Biosphere Press, 1993) and Jane Poynter, The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes inside Biosphere 2 (New York: Basic Books, 2006). 8. See, for example, John Knight, 'The Soil as Teacher: Natural Farming in a Mountain Village', in Pamela J Asquith and Arne Kalland (editors), Japanese Images of Nature (Richmond: Curzon, 1997), pages 236-256. http://www.archis.org/volume/2008/12/19/volume-18/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Wed Mar 11 10:49:26 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:49:26 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [A-List] What is the Crisis About? Fictitious Capital or the Destruction of Wealth? Message-ID: <763798.76691.qm@web180116.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> What is the Crisis About? Fictitious Capital or the Destruction of Wealth? michael perelman ________________________________ This short essay briefly describes the financial side of my interpretation that the crash reflected a disconnect between the underlying investment in the economy and its financial representation -- what Marx called fictitious capital. The stock market people call this realignment, "destruction of wealth," even though what ?is destroyed is the illusion of wealth. The illusion may have been capable of purchasing valuable things so long as other people accept that illusion. Long ago people accepted the illusion as an illusion and went on with their business. Here is what a former ?governor of Illinois wrote: Ford, Thomas. 1854. History of Illinois (Chicago: S. C. Griggs and Co.). 227: "Our Whig friends contended that the continual and violent opposition of the democrats to the banks ?destroyed confidence; which, by-the-bye, could only exist when the bulk of the people were under a delusion. ?According to their views, if the banks owed five times ?as much as they were able to pay and yet if the whole ?people could be persuaded to believe this incredible falsehood that all were able to pay, this was 'confidence'." Ordinary people understood what was happening. Here ?is an incident from Chicago about the same time. More at: http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/2009/03/11/what-is-the-crisis-about-fictitious-capital-or-the-destruction-of-wealth/ From suzannedk at gmail.com Wed Mar 11 12:50:42 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:50:42 +0100 Subject: [A-List] A-List Digest, Vol 66, Issue 17 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Bill: How excellent this is. There is a set of twelve books detailing the living of the mountain poor in Apalaichia, written many years before a highway, any highway, bisected those mountains, the name escaping me and then "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" a study ordered by Roosevelt of the families living in the Appalachian Mountains at the time of the Great Depression, using one of our best authors and best photographers as young ambitious curious experts who lived with families, worked, slept and ate with them. The book is amazing. Phillip Agee wrote it from his notes. Has Japan made similar detailed studies of the building the growing, the curing (like of food, leather) the hand making of things that people lived with and by from those times? Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com On 3/11/09, a-list-request at lists.econ.utah.edu < a-list-request at lists.econ.utah.edu> wrote: > > Send A-List mailing list submissions to > a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/a-list > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > a-list-request at lists.econ.utah.edu > > You can reach the person managing the list at > a-list-owner at lists.econ.utah.edu > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of A-List digest..." > > > The A-List Digest > > Today's Topics: > > 1. An Open Letter on El Salvador; China Courts Costa Rica > (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) > 2. A Backlash Against Obama's Budget ; which side are you on > (Charles Brown) > 3. Obama gets high marks in the latest NEWSWEEK poll, (Charles Brown) > 4. ?.?.?.? (sjdmowwxx) > 5. Should creation of money stay in private hands? (Bill Totten) > 6. Credit Where Credit Is Due (Bill Totten) > 7. Back to the Future (Bill Totten) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 14:05:45 -0400 > From: Council on Hemispheric Affairs > Subject: [A-List] An Open Letter on El Salvador; China Courts Costa > Rica > To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu > Message-ID: <20090309180444.BD65E3E4317 at mx-out2.daemonmail.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > A non-text attachment was scrubbed... > Name: not available > Type: text/html > Size: 5962 bytes > Desc: not available > Url : > http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090309/25f04c0c/attachment.txt > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 21:29:22 -0700 (PDT) > From: Charles Brown > Subject: [A-List] A Backlash Against Obama's Budget ; which side are > you on > To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu, marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu > Message-ID: <758062.2194.qm at web180109.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > > There's a big class battle brewing. > Which side are you on ? > > > http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_11/b4123016507664.htm > > > > BusinessWeek > BusinessWeek Exchange > Search all of BusinessWeek.com: > > NEWS MarBusinessWeek > BusinessWeek Exchange > Search all of BusinessWeek.com: > > NEWS March 5, 2009, 5:00PM EST > A Backlash Against Obama's Budget > Businesses from startups to global giants to drugmakers and farmers > are gearing up to fight the President's spending plan with ad > campaigns and public protests > ch 5, 2009, 5:00PM EST > A Backlash Against Obama's Budget > Businesses from startups to global giants to drugmakers and farmers > are gearing up to fight the President's spending plan with ad > campaigns and public protests > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 22:14:54 -0700 (PDT) > From: Charles Brown > Subject: [A-List] Obama gets high marks in the latest NEWSWEEK poll, > To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu, marxism-thaxis at lists.econ.utah.edu > Message-ID: <468194.94620.qm at web180114.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > > > It's the People vs the Business class. > Which side are you on ? > > CB > > ^^^^^^^ > > Newsweek > Honeymoon In Hell > Amid all the gloom, Obama gets high marks in the latest NEWSWEEK poll, > with the GOP in the doghouse. > > Michael Hirsh > Newsweek Web Exclusive > > Despite the tumbling economy, > ?Barack Obama continues to enjoy a > honeymoon with the American public > in the face of the most trying > crisis any newly inaugurated president > ?has encountered since Franklin > Delano Roosevelt. The GOP, > meanwhile, is viewed by a majority of > Americans as the party of "no," > without a plan of its own to fix the > economy, and even rank-and-file > ?Republicans are concerned about the > party's direction, according to the > ?first NEWSWEEK Poll taken since > Obama assumed office. > > "People give Obama credit for > reaching out to Republicans, but they > don't see Republicans reciprocating," > ?says pollster Larry Hugick, > whose firm conducted the survey. > "A surprising number said > bipartisanship is more important > ?than getting things done." > > Overall, 58 percent > of Americans > surveyed approve of the job Obama is > doing, while 26 percent > ?disapprove > and one in six (16 percent) has no > opinion. Although his approval ratings > ?are down from levels seen a few > weeks ago in other polls, 72 percent > of Americans still say they have > a favorable opinion of Obama? > a higher rating than he received in > NEWSWEEK Polls during the > ?presidential campaign last year. The > president's rating in this poll is > consistent with estimates provided > by other national media polls in the last week. > > On the most important issue > of the day, the NEWSWEEK Poll shows that > close to two thirds (65 percent) > of the public say they are very or > somewhat confident that Obama > ?will be successful in turning the > economy around. That's down > just a little from the 71 percent who felt > that way before he took office. > ?Still, overall perceptions of the > economy remain solidly negative, > ?with 84 percent saying the national > economy is in poor shape and > just 3 percent viewing things positively. > > The public is also dubious about > some of the president's programs. > Majorities of Americans think too > much has been spent so far to help > rescue large banks in danger of > ?failing and domestic auto companies > facing bankruptcy. A somewhat > surprising majority (56 percent) > supports nationalizing large banks > ?at risk of failing?a policy the > Obama administration has shied > ?away from. And fewer than half of those > polled (49 percent) say they support > Obama's proposal to allow the > expiration of tax cuts for those with > ?incomes above $250,000 at the > end of next year. (Forty-two percent > say they oppose ending these > cuts.) > > Even so, faith in Obama personally > ?has apparently carried over into > optimism about the future. More > than a third (37 percent) of the > public expect economic conditions > to improve in the next 12 months, > compared with 29 percent who > think things will be worse. Another big > plus for the president's policies > is that a huge majority of Americans > (73 percent) favor his plan to remove > ?most U.S. troops from Iraq by > the end of next year. > > The biggest problem for the GOP, > ?according to the poll, may be that 58 > percent of Americans believe that Republicans > ?who have opposed Obama's > economic-rescue plans have no plan of their > own for turning the > economy around. With the Republicans > ?having lost the White House and > both houses of Congress, public > ?identification with the party has > dropped to a recent low point of 26 > percent, after running at or near > 30 percent for most of the last 15 years. > ?That's the lowest level > since the Watergate era and a > ?striking loss of stature for the party, > considering that self-described > conservatives continue to outnumber > liberals in the country by nearly two to > one (39 percent vs. 20 > percent). > > Many Republicans express concern > ?about where their party is headed and > whether GOP leaders in Congress are > ?in touch with their constituents. > Asked about the direction of their party, > ?45 percent of rank-and-file > Republicans say it is moving in the > right direction, while more than a > third (35 percent) think it is going in > ?the wrong direction. This is > in sharp contrast to what a NEWSWEEK > ?Poll found in 1999 after the > Clinton impeachment hearings. > At that time, 65 percent of Republicans > said their party was headed in the right direction. > > Some of these results spring from > discontent over Republican > leadership; other survey respondents > ?indicate the party is > ideologically lost. More than half > of Republicans today (52 percent) > say they don't think GOP congressional > leaders are in touch with what > the average Republican thinks. While four > in 10 Republicans (39 > percent) think the GOP is about right > ?in terms of ideology, another 38 > percent believe it is not conservative > enough, and only 20 percent > think it is too conservative. > > Apart from Obama himself, however, > the Democratic Party can hardly > crow about these results. The public's > ?general disdain for > Congress?including the Democratic leadership?hasn't changed much since > the Democrats took over in 2006. More people have an unfavorable > opinion of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi > ?than a favorable one (41 percent > vs. 35 percent). Senate Majority Leader > Harry Reid fares little > better, with 28 percent viewing him > unfavorably and 23 percent with a > favorable opinion. One reason for Pelosi's > and Reid's low numbers is > that by a large margin?51 percent to 40 percent? > Americans say they > value bipartisanship in Washington over > getting things done quickly. > And the public doesn't see Democratic congressional leaders acting in > a bipartisan manner nearly as much as Obama, > ?who is given credit for > trying: 71 percent feel that the president > has made a reasonable > effort to work with and listen to Republicans on Capitol Hill. > > The results are based on telephone > ?interviews conducted March 4-5 with > a nationally representative sample of > 1,203 adults, age 18 and over. > The overall margin of sampling error is > ?plus or minus 3.5 percentage > points. > > URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/188002 > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:10:26 +0800 > From: "sjdmowwxx" > Subject: [A-List] ?.?.?.? > To: "a-list" > Message-ID: <20090311091027.C9F26664DB4 at to78000.jss.cn> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="GB2312" > > ??a-list??? > > ??????????? > ???????.?1349713497??.??.??.????? > > ?.???? > > ?.????.?.?????.???.????.????.???.??.? > ?.?????.??.??.??.???.?????.?????.??.?? > > ?.??.??.??.? ??.??.??..??.?? > > ?.??.?? http://www.hongb88.com/welcome.aspx?vid=kgh5743574 > > ?.???.??.? ??..??.??.????.??? > > ?.??.? http://www.hong248.com > > ???.????.?? > > ? ???.? ? 128?SSL?.??.? > ? ?.??? ? ?.?195 > ? ?.??.? ? ?..???..???.?.???..? > ? ???..? ? ?.?30?.???.? > ? ?.??.? ? ?.??.????.??.? > ? ?.??.? ? 24?.??.??.? > ? ?.??.? ? ?.??.??.???? > > ?.??????.?,?.??.?? support at hbhelpdesk.com ?.??.?? > ?.??.?,?.?.??.??????"delete"?ken at hbhelpdesk.com,??! > > ????,?.?.?.?! > > 2009-03-11 17:10:26 > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 5 > Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:19:45 +0900 > From: Bill Totten > Subject: [A-List] Should creation of money stay in private hands? > To: a-list > Message-ID: <49B68511.1090207 at ashisuto.co.jp> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-2022-JP > > > by Richard A Werner > > The Daily Yomiuri (March 09 2009) > > > Governments all over the world are engaged in frantic efforts to avoid > another Great Depression. Late last year, $700 billion still seemed a > large sum. But since then the US Congress has been asked to approve > government expenditure now counted in the trillions of dollars. > > The main thrust of government policy worldwide has been to inject > mind-boggling sums of public money into the banking system. Is this the > most efficient, cost-effective and fair way of stabilizing economies and > employment in this situation? > > Further, the banking and economic crises as we are witnessing today are > nothing new. Their frequency had already increased to record numbers in > the past thirty years before the start of the current crisis. Indeed, > the world has seen an apparently endless string of recurring banking > crises and connected economic cycles, with all their costs and > distortions. Should we not first step back and consider what the true > common causes are, so that any policy response can be properly designed > and also we could be surer that banking crises such as these will in > future be avoided? > > No such thing as a bank loan > > First, we need to understand what causes banking crises. The core of the > problem is that 95 percent to 98 percent of the money supply is not > created by central banks or governments, but by privately owned > commercial banks. It is a little-known fact that there is no such thing > as a "bank loan". > > Banks do not lend money. "Lending" refers to transferring control of the > lent object to the borrower. If I lend you my car, I can't at the same > time drive in it. That's not what banks do when they issue a "bank > loan". Instead, they are allowed by the current regulatory framework to > create new money out of nothing - which is called "credit creation". The > collective decisions of commercial bank staff thus determine how much > money is created, who gets the newly created money and for what purpose. > > Mainstream economics assumes that the best possible outcome will be > achieved, if banks are left alone in making their decisions about how > much money should be created and to whom it should be handed over for > whatever use. But the current crisis has disproven this claim. It has > demonstrated that we can't expect banks' credit decisions to be in any > way beneficial for the overall economy, social welfare, or even the > bankers' own good - as former US Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan > Greenspan admitted to Congress last October. The incentive structure at > banks is such that they tend to create too much credit when not needed, > and for unproductive use; and when this has gone sour, too little money, > though it is then badly needed by productive firms. > > There are some simple rules for sound banking and sound economies that > need to be followed: Whenever credit is created and used to increase the > amount of goods and services provided, it will be noninflationary: more > money comes about, but also more goods and services. This is boring > banking, without excessive bankers' bonuses. But it is the kind of > stable banking that created the postwar German and Japanese economic > miracles, and also explains the rise of China and other East Asian > so-called miracle economies. > > But whenever credit is created and used for unproductive purposes, > inflation comes about: more money chases a limited amount of goods or > assets. The unproductive credit creation can take two forms: When credit > is extended for consumption, it will result in consumer price inflation. > When credit is extended for non-gross domestic product transactions > (which means mainly financial and real estate transactions), there will > be asset inflation. Both cases are unsustainable and if sufficiently > large, result in banking and economic crises. > > To prevent banking crises, it must be ensured that the bulk of credit > creation is used for productive purposes. Specifically, the use of > aggregate bank credit for transactions that are not part of GDP > (something that can be easily verified by loan officers) needs to be > monitored, and suppressed when it threatens to rise in excess of total > bank credit growth. > > This simple measure would have prevented the credit bubbles in the > United States, Britain, Ireland, Spain and many emerging markets, which > have now burst and caused the current crisis. It would also have > prevented the Japanese recession since 1990 or the US depression of the > 1930s. Central banks used to monitor precisely this, but following the > deregulation advice of mainstream economics, they chose to abolish their > "credit guidance" policies and instead let rip the unproductive bank > credit expansions of the past decades. Ironically, it is now that the > US, British, French and German governments say they want to monitor the > allocation of new bank lending (to ensure lending to small firms and > mortgage borrowers). The horse has already bolted. > > Thus one also needs to ask why those institutions that could have > prevented the bubbles have singularly failed to do so, although they had > been given unusually strong powers with little accountability to > democratic institutions: the central banks. Never have they been as > independent and powerful as today. > > This suggests that the very independence and lack of accountability of > central banks has been a factor in allowing the creation of credit > bubbles and the propagation of the current crisis: the central banks' > erroneous belief in the infallibility of free and unfettered markets > remained unchecked. Thus from now on, central banks should be made to > monitor credit flows and made more directly accountable to > democratically elected assemblies for the results. > > How to fix the banking system > > What should be done to end the current crisis and avoid large-scale > unemployment? Just like the Japanese government in the early 1990s, > governments have responded by increasing fiscal expenditure, funded by > borrowing, and central banks have responded by lowering interest rates. > Neither will help: The privately owned creators of the bulk of the money > supply are battening down the hatches; in their increased risk aversion, > they will reduce credit creation. Just as their excessive credit > creation affects us all, so does their reduction of credit: For economic > growth, as traditionally measured, credit creation is necessary. > > This is why the current policies will not help. Fiscal policy on its own > does not create credit. By borrowing more, national debt is increased, > but the money for the fiscal stimulation is the same money that is > removed from the economy through bond issuance. Thus fiscal policy, if > not backed by credit creation, will crowd out private demand dollar by > dollar. And lower interest rates will not help - even if they drop to > zero - if the quantity of credit does not increase. This is why Japan > will soon be in the 20th year of recession after its own credit bubble > burst in 1990. > > The solution is simple: We have been hearing much of the need to help > banks write off nonperforming loans, but those burdened most by this > debt - the households saddled with uneconomical mortgages - are not > given significant debt relief. Instead, many are being made homeless. > Their debt slates should be wiped clean before government money is > injected into the banking system. Further, fiscal stimulation, in the > form of purchases of nonperforming assets from banks, and public > purchases of bank equity, should be funded either by the issuance of > government money (such as former US President John F Kennedy's "United > States Notes" issued in 1963, or the government money put into > circulation by the Japanese or US governments in the 19th century), or, > failing that, undertaken directly by the central banks, for their own > account. > > In both cases, national debt and interest liabilities will not increase, > but credit creation will. Growth will not collapse. This also makes > sense from a moral hazard perspective: It is not the taxpayer that is > responsible for the current mess, but the central banks, so let them pay. > > Finally, another topic should be discussed, although the ruling elites > seem to consider it taboo: Is it really right that the creation and > allocation of money - a public good - remains in private hands? Surely > that's the ultimate reason why nobody seems interested in learning the > lessons from the past and why experts feign surprise each time another > banking crisis erupts. Many are conflicted, as they have been > beneficiaries from this highly lucrative private monopoly. > > _____ > > Werner is professor of international banking at the University of > Southampton and author of the books Princes of the Yen (2003) and New > Paradigm in Macroeconomics (2005). > > http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/columns/commentary/20090309dy02.htm > > > http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com > http://www.ashisuto.co.jp > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 6 > Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:01:09 +0900 > From: Bill Totten > Subject: [A-List] Credit Where Credit Is Due > To: a-list > Message-ID: <49B71B65.5000107 at ashisuto.co.jp> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-2022-JP > > > The Direct Way to Fix the Credit Crisis > > by Ellen Brown > > www.webofdebt.com (January 11 2009) > > > Letter to the bank - > > Dear Sirs, In light of recent developments, when you returned my check > marked "insufficient funds", were you referring to my funds or yours? > > Economist John Kenneth Galbraith famously said, "The process by which > banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled". If banks > can create money, why are we suffering from a "credit crunch"? Why can't > banks create all the money they can find borrowers for? Last fall, > Congress committed an unprecedented $700 billion in taxpayer money to > reversing the credit crisis, and the Federal Reserve has already fanned > that into $8.5 trillion in loans and commitments. {1} But the bank > bailout has proven to be no more than a boondoggle for a handful of > lucky Wall Street banks, without getting credit flowing again. > > To understand the real cause of the credit crisis and how it can be > reversed, we first need to understand credit itself - what it is, where > it comes from, and what the real tourniquet is that has limited its > flow. Banks actually create credit; and if private banks can do it, so > could public banks or public treasuries. The crisis is not one of > "liquidity" but of "solvency". It has been caused, not by the banks' > inability to get credit (something they can create with accounting > entries), but by their inability to meet the capital requirement imposed > by the Bank for International Settlements, the private foreign head of > the international banking system. That inability, in turn, has been > caused by the derivatives virus; and only a few big banks are seriously > infected with it. By bailing out these big banks, the government is > actually spreading the virus by furnishing the funds for them to take > over smaller regional banks. > > A more effective alternative than trying to patch up the hopelessly > imperiled derivatives positions of these few Wall Street banks would be > to simply create another credit system with a pristine set of books. We > don't need to fix the Wall Street disease; we can bypass the whole > problem and create a new, healthy, parallel system. A network of public > banks (federal and state) could create "credit" just as private banks do > now. This credit could be extended at low interest rates to consumers > and at very low interest to local governments, drastically reducing the > cost of public projects by reducing the cost of funding them. > > That is not a radical proposal. It is what private banks themselves do > every day. But bankers will dispute it, and most people have trouble > believing it. So to make a compelling case for this solution, the first > thing that needs to be established is that ... > > Banks Create the Money They Lend > > Bankers will tell you that they do not create money. At a ten percent > reserve requirement, they simply lend out ninety percent of their > deposits. The catch is that their "deposits" include the money they have > written into their customers' accounts as loans. That is how loans are > made: numbers are simply written into the accounts of borrowers, as many > reputable authorities have attested. Here are two of them, dating back > to when officials were either more aware of what was going on or more > open about it: > > "[W]hen a bank makes a loan, it simply adds to the borrower's deposit > account in the bank by the amount of the loan. The money is not taken > from anyone else's deposit; it was not previously paid in to the bank by > anyone. It's new money, created by the bank for the use of the borrower." > --- Robert B Anderson, Treasury Secretary under Eisenhower, in an > interview reported in the August 31 1959 issue of US News and World Report > > "Do private banks issue money today? Yes. Although banks no longer have > the right to issue bank notes, they can create money in the form of bank > deposits when they lend money to businesses, or buy securities ... The > important thing to remember is that when banks lend money they don't > necessarily take it from anyone else to lend. Thus they 'create' it". > > --- Congressman Wright Patman, Money Facts (House Committee on Banking > and Currency, 1964) > > > The process by which banks create money was detailed in a revealing > booklet put out by the Chicago Federal Reserve titled Modern Money > Mechanics {2}. The booklet was periodically revised until 1992, when it > had reached fifty pages long. It is written in somewhat difficult prose, > but here are a few relevant passages: > > "The actual process of money creation takes place primarily in banks". > [page 3] > > Translation: banks create money. > > "In the absence of legal reserve requirements, banks can build up > deposits by increasing loans and investments so long as they keep enough > currency on hand to redeem whatever amounts the holders of deposits want > to convert into currency". [page 3] > > Translation: banks can create as much money as they want by writing > loans into their borrowers' accounts, limited only by (a) legal reserve > requirements (money that must be held in reserve - traditionally about > ten percent of outstanding deposits and loans) or (b) the amount of > money they will need to keep on hand to pay any depositors who might > come for their money (also traditionally about ten percent). > > "Banks may increase the balances in their reserve accounts by depositing > checks and proceeds from electronic funds transfers as well as > currency". [page 4] > > Translation: the "reserves" that count toward the reserve requirement > include currency, deposited checks, and electronic funds transfers. > (Note that the "deposits" created as loans are excluded from this list > of allowable reserves: the bank cannot just keep bootstrapping loans on > top of loans but must have money from external sources backing up its > liabilities equal to about ten percent of its loans and deposits.) > > "The money-creation process takes place principally through transaction > accounts [accounts that can be drawn on without restriction]". [page 2] > > "With a uniform ten percent reserve requirement, a $1 increase in > reserves would support $10 of additional transaction accounts". [page 49] > > Translation: $1 deposited by a customer can be fanned into $10 in loans. > > "In the real world, a bank's lending is not normally constrained by the > amount of excess reserves it has at any given moment. Rather, loans are > made, or not made, depending on the bank's credit policies and its > expectations about its ability to obtain the funds necessary to pay its > customers' checks and maintain required reserves in a timely fashion." > > Translation: In practice, banks issue loans without worrying too much > about whether they have the reserves to cover them. If they come up > short, they can just borrow them: > > "[Since] the individual bank does not know today precisely what its > reserve position will be at the time the proceeds of today's loans are > paid out ... many banks turn to the money market - borrowing funds to > cover deficits or lending temporary surpluses". [page 50] > > "[A] bank may [also] borrow reserves temporarily from its Reserve Bank ... > > [However], banks are discouraged from borrowing [Reserve Bank] > adjustment credit too frequently or for extended time periods". [page 29] > > Translation: If the bank finds at the end of the accounting period that > its reserves do not come to the required ten percent of its outstanding > loans and deposits, it can simply borrow the reserves it needs from the > money market or its Federal Reserve Bank. > > A 2002 article posted on the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New > York noted that today, few banks are constrained by reserve requirements > at all: > > "Since the beginning of the last decade, required reserve balances have > fallen dramatically. The decline stems in part from regulatory action: > the Federal Reserve eliminated reserve requirements on large time > deposits in 1990 and lowered the requirements on transaction accounts in > 1992. But a far more important source of the decline in required > reserves has been the growth of sweep accounts. In the most common form > of sweeping, funds in bank customers' retail checking accounts are > shifted overnight into savings accounts exempt from reserve requirements > and then returned to customers' checking accounts the next business day. > Largely as a result of this practice, today only thirty percent of banks > are bound by a reserve balance requirement." {3} > > Even without official reserve requirements, however, banks must keep > enough money on hand to meet withdrawals or checks written against the > accounts of their depositors; and that generally means about ten percent > of outstanding deposits and loans, as moneylenders discovered centuries > ago. But if the banks come up short, they can borrow this money from the > money market or the Federal Reserve; and if the Fed comes up short, it > can create new reserves {4}. So why the current credit crunch? What is > limiting bank lending? > > One answer is that borrowers are simply "tapped out" and not in a > position to take out as many loans as they used to. When housing and the > stock market crashed, consumers no longer had home or stock equity to > borrow against. {5} But to the extent that the blockage is with the > banks themselves, it is not caused by the reserve requirement. Something > else is putting the squeeze on credit ... > > > The Real Tourniquet: > Capital Adequacy and the Mark-to-Market Rule > > What actually constrains bank lending is the capital adequacy > requirement, something that is imposed not by our own central bank but > by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Called "the central > bankers' central bank", the BIS pulls the strings of the private > international banking system from Basel, Switzerland. > > How the capital requirement is determined is even more complicated than > the reserve requirement, but it needs to be understood to understand why > banks with the power to create money are going bankrupt. So here is a > simplified version. A bank's "capital" consists of its assets minus its > liabilities. Under the capital adequacy rule imposed by the Basel > Accords, assets are "risk-weighted", with some being considered riskier > than others. Ordinary loans have a "risk weighting" of One. The capital > adequacy rule requires that the ratio of a bank's capital to its assets > with a risk-weighting of One be at least eight percent. That means the > bank must have $8 in capital for every $100 in ordinary loans. Federal > bonds have a risk-weighting of zero: they are considered to be as safe > as dollars and don't need any extra capital backing them. Mortgage loans > (which are secured by real estate) have a risk weighting of 0.5. That > means they need only $4 of capital per $100 of loans. Other bank > exposures given risk weightings include such things as derivatives and > foreign exchange contracts. {6} (Interestingly, the $700 billion > committed by Congress to bailing out the financial system is > approximately eight percent of the $8.5 trillion the Fed has now > promised in loans and commitments. Even the Federal Reserve evidently > feels constrained by the BIS capital requirement.) > > A very controversial accounting rule imposed on banks for their capital > ratio calculations is the "mark to market" rule. This rule requires > banks to revalue all of their assets each day as if the assets had to be > sold that day. Capital calculations thus fluctuate with the market; and > in today's volatile market, all asset classes have plunged at the same > time. Since assets get marked to market but liabilities don't, a bank > may suddenly find that its assets are insufficient to support its > liabilities, rendering it insolvent and unable to make new loans. Banks > have gotten around the capital adequacy requirement by reducing risk on > their balance sheets with a form of private bet known as "derivatives". > At least, they thought they had gotten around the rule. But this > unregulated form of insurance proved to be based on faulty mathematical > models. (See Ellen Brown, ""Credit Default Swaps: Derivative Disaster Du > Jour", and "It's the Derivatives, Stupid!", www.webofdebt.com/articles.) > > "Credit default swaps" (CDS) are a form of derivative widely sold as > insurance against default. When AIG, the world's largest insurance > company, ventured into CDS in the late 1990s, the presumption was that > "housing always goes up" and that the risk of default was so remote that > selling "credit protection" was virtually "free money" {7}. But this > free money turned into a serious liability to the protection sellers > when the "remote" actually happened and a flood of defaults struck. The > value of the derivatives protecting securitized mortgages became so > questionable that they were unmarketable at any price. Banks counting > them as assets on their books then had to "mark them to market" > effectively at zero, reducing the banks' capital below the levels called > for in the Basel Accords and rendering the banks officially insolvent. > > When AIG went broke in September 2008, banks heavily involved in > derivatives faced double jeopardy: not only would they have to write > down the derivative protection they had sold to others and counted as > assets on their books, but they could no longer count on the derivative > insurance they had bought to minimize the risk of default on their other > assets. AIG got a massive bailout from the Fed in return for most of its > equity, but even that bailout money is not expected to be enough to get > it out of its derivative nightmare and keep it afloat. > > Derivatives have introduced a lack of transparency into bank portfolios, > creating fear and uncertainty on the part of lenders, depositors and > investors alike. This uncertainty has prevented banks from raising > capital by selling stock, or meeting reserve requirements by getting > interbank loans; and it has discouraged investors from investing in the > money market. Banks don't know whether the money they lend to each other > will be repaid, since they don't have a clear view of the value of the > assets carried on bank balance sheets. The result is a crisis of > confidence: the players are all eying each other suspiciously and > holding their cards close to the chest. > > > Going Local > > Fortunately, according to a recent study using the Treasury Department's > own data, the banking crisis is not widespread but is limited to only "a > few big, vocal banks" {8}. The real credit problem lies with the > financial institutions with significant derivative exposure, and most of > this liability is carried by only a handful of Wall Street giants. In > early 2008, outstanding derivatives on the books of US banks exceeded > $180 trillion. However, $90 trillion of this was carried on the books of > JPMorgan Chase alone, while Citibank and Bank of America each had $38 > trillion on their books. {9] Needless to say, these are also the banks > that are first in line for the Treasury's bailout money under the > Troubled Asset Relief Program. Rather than excising the relatively > contained derivative tumor, the Treasury and the Fed are feeding it with > trillions in taxpayer money; and this money is being used, not to > unfreeze credit by making loans, but to buy up smaller banks. {10} That > means the derivative cancer, rather than being excised, is liable to > spread. > > We the people and our representatives in Congress have allowed Wall > Street to call the shots because we think we are dependent on their > credit system, but we aren't. There are other ways to get credit - ways > that are fair, efficient, transparent, and don't encourage greed. Public > credit could be generated by a system of public banks. Precedent for > this solution is to be found in the state-owned Bank of North Dakota, > which has been generating credit for North Dakota since 1919, keeping > the state fiscally sound when other states are floundering. (See Ellen > Brown, "Sustainable Government: Banking for a 'New' New Deal", > webofdebt.com/articles, December 08 2008.) > > The credit crunch could be avoided by "going local" not just in the > United States but around the world. Countries that have been seduced or > coerced into funneling their productive assets into serving foreign > markets and foreign investors could become self-sustaining, using their > own credit and their own resources to feed and serve their own people. > There is much more to be said on this subject, but it will be saved for > future articles. Stay tuned. > > Notes: > > 1. Kathleen Pender, "Government Bailout Hits $8.5 Trillion", San > Francisco Chronicle (November 26 2008). > > 2. Modern Money Mechanics: A Workbook on Bank Reserves and Deposit > Expansion (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Public Information Service, > 1992, available at > http://www.rayservers.com/images/ModernMoneyMechanics.pdf. > > 3. Paul Bennett, Savros Peristiani, "Are Reserve Requirements Still > Binding?", Economic Policy Review (May 2002). > > 4. Modern Money Mechanics, op cit. > > 5. Joshua Holland, "Was the 'Credit Crunch' a Myth Used to Sell a > Trillion-Dollar Scam?", AlterNet (December 29 2008). > > 6. "Capital Requirement", Wikipedia. > > 7. Robert O'Harrow Jr, Brady Dennis, "Complex Deals Led to AIG's > Undoing", Los Angeles Times (January 01 2009). > > 8. Joshua Holland, op cit. > > 9. Comptroller of the Currency, "OCC's Quarterly Report on Bank Trading > and Derivatives Activities Third Quarter 2008", www.occ.treas.gov; "US > Bank Derivative Exposure", FDIC/IRA Bank Monitor, chart reproduced on > The Big Picture (blog), August 2008. > > 10. Joe Nocera, "So When Will Banks Give Loans?", New York Times > (October 25 2008). > > _____ > > Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing > civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt (2007), her latest book, > she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the > money trust". She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to > create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get > it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that > gets its power from "the money trust". Her eleven books include > Forbidden Medicine (2008), Nature's Pharmacy (1998), co-authored with Dr > Lynne Walker, and The Key to Ultimate Health (2000), co-authored with Dr > Richard Hansen) Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com. > > Copyright (c) 2007 Ellen Brown. All Rights Reserved. > > http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/creditcrunch.php > > > http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com > http://www.ashisuto.co.jp > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 7 > Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:59:16 +0900 > From: Bill Totten > Subject: [A-List] Back to the Future > To: a-list > Message-ID: <49B7B5A4.8070705 at ashisuto.co.jp> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-2022-JP > > > The Edo Biosphere > > by Thomas Daniell > > www.archis.org (December 19 2008) > > > 1. Postwar Japan > > Japan's phoenix-like emergence out of the urban firestorms triggered by > incendiary bombing campaigns during the final months of the Second World > War is a story that has been told often enough. The incredible > collective willpower that rebuilt - or better, reconceived - the nation > during the postwar period (albeit under the benevolent guidance of the > American Occupation for the first seven years) enabled decades of > unprecedented industrialization, urbanization, modernization, > democratization and a welcome reentry into the global community of > nations symbolized by the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the 1970 Osaka Expo. > > It was a long haul from the brutal, favela-like conditions of Japan's > cities at the end of the war, confronted as they were with overwhelming > homelessness, unemployment, inflation and material scarcities. The > turning point was 1960, the year Hayato Ikeda (a career bureaucrat in > the Finance Ministry) became Prime Minister and announced his 'income > doubling plan' and 'politics of patience and reconciliation': slogans > that equated to massive industrialization and a concomitant suppression > of societal disagreement. Ikeda built on his own late-1950s policies of > preferential financing for heavy industry, advocating huge government > investment in transportation infrastructure and an uncompromising > commitment to economic progress. The environmental and social > consequences were immaterial. Ikeda's personal ruthlessness was no > secret: he had been appointed head of MITI (the Ministry of > International Trade and Industry) in 1952, but was forced to resign > within a month as a result of his infamous statement that in the pursuit > of national industrialization, 'it makes no difference to me if five or > ten small businessmen are forced to commit suicide' {1}. Heartless as > this may sound, Ikeda's crime was merely an overly blunt expression of a > generally accepted Japanese principle: individual suffering is > irrelevant in the pursuit of collective wellbeing. > > Boosted by US investment and the Korean War, the Japanese economy > succeeded far beyond expectations. Within a few years, Japan had a Gross > National Product second only to the US, an affluent citizenry with a > remarkably flat distribution of wealth, a superb educational system, the > highest literacy rates in the world and local industries producing an > array of consumer goods that had turned the label 'Made in Japan' from a > contemptuous warning into an assurance of quality. The 1960s also > nurtured the Metabolists, a group of young visionaries who attempted to > give architectural form to the utopian promises of technological > progress, infinite growth and development without consequences {2}. The > spirit of the times is encapsulated by Kenzo Tange's 1960 Tokyo Bay > Plan, an enormous, potentially infinite, extension of the city out > across the water, with housing and other facilities sprouting from a > central infrastructural spine. > > The parallel story is one of appalling and tragic environmental damage > that gave Japan the sadly deserved reputation of having the worst > pollution problems of any developed country. Since the late nineteenth > century, incipient industrialization had been causing serious damage to > local ecosystems and their human inhabitants, but the problems > exponentially increased after the Second World War. A series of > notorious ecological disasters during the 1950s and 60s resulted in > outbreaks of incurable illnesses, birth defects and deaths, as the > natural environment became poisoned by industrial waste: arsenic > (Morinaga Milk Powder poisoning), sulfur dioxide (Yokkaichi Asthma), > mercury (Minamata Disease), cadmium (Itai-itai Disease) {3}. Such > incidents were initially confined to rural areas, a result of provincial > governments trying to stimulate their local economies by attracting > industrial investment - mining, chemical production, wood pulp treatment > - that directly and indirectly destroyed the health of their farming and > fishing communities. Protests were initially suppressed or ignored, with > the wider population all too content in their new prosperity. Media > coverage of the problems and successful compensation claims eventually > led to the enactment of strict new environmental legislation in 1970 and > the establishment of the Environmental Agency in 1971. > > This was another turning point, coinciding with the World Expo in Osaka > - a paean to progress and technology, dominated by the Metabolist > architects. Again Kenzo Tange made the definitive contribution, a vast > spaceframe roof covering the Expo grounds. For the general public the > utopian idealism of it all was no longer inspiring, but rather a callous > display of the gap between these fantastic visions and the degraded > reality of their living environment. It fueled a burgeoning backlash to > modern affluence and progress - the dawning feeling that something was > deeply amiss, that a historical wrong turn had been taken. This was the > genesis of the 'Edo Boom' (or more accurately, series of booms): a > flourishing popular interest in the premodern Edo period (1603-1867). > Once regarded as laughably backward, an embarrassing episode best > forgotten in the forward thrust of Japan's manifest destiny, during the > 1970s a stream of books, lectures, exhibitions and television shows > began to valorize Edo as an innocent, Edenic period of social and > ecological sustainability. This reached a crescendo during the second > half of the 1980s, precisely coinciding with the most shamelessly > unsustainable period of Japan's postwar economic growth, the so-called > 'bubble'. Since the burst of the bubble at the beginning of the 1990s, > the fascination with Edo culture has only deepened. An Edo-Tokyo Museum > opened in 1993 and new publications on the subject continue to appear, > ranging from serious, substantial historiography to the most > superficial, self-congratulatory 'nipponology'. > > 2. Edo Japan > > The Edo Period began in the wake of a century of devastating civil wars, > with a military regime (the Tokugawa Shogunate) taking control of the > nation and imposing a somewhat Taliban-like peace, stability and unity. > Japan was run for the following two-and-a-half centuries by a series of > warlords - de facto rulers based in the de facto capital, Edo, while the > nominal ruler, the Emperor, lived in secluded irrelevance in the > official capital, Kyoto. The new rulers invented a strict social > hierarchy (a five-tier caste system), regulated architectural form and > aesthetics (preventing wealthier commoners from building houses that > might compete with the aristocracy), banned and confiscated all firearms > (ensuring the dominance of the samurai sword) and most importantly > closed the country to the outside world. Foreign trade and communication > were almost entirely prohibited. The Edo Period ended with the > restoration of the Emperor to power in 1868, together with the official > relocation of the nation's capital from Kyoto to Edo (the latter city > was then renamed Tokyo). Japan was reopened to the world, and like a > child starved of novelty began to enthusiastically and uncritically > import Western ideas while dismissing the older ways as primitive and > worthless. > > Yet during those centuries of self-imposed isolation, Japan was a closed > system, a laboratory for an extended experiment in sustainability. > Without significant fossil fuel reserves, unable to import energy or > manufactured goods, Japan effectively became a solar-powered nation. > Recycling was not a choice or an ideology, but a life-or-death > necessity, so pervasive that the word itself did not exist. The > exquisite minimalism of the arts and crafts was not a rejection of > luxury and decoration, but the only available option. Edo society teemed > with itinerant artisans specialized in repairing various materials: > welding metal cooking pots, gluing broken ceramics, repapering lanterns > and umbrellas, refurbishing footwear, replenishing ink pads. If an > object was beyond repair, it was repurposed: kimonos became diapers > became cleaning rags. Finally, the component materials were collected > and reused: scrap metal was melted down, coagulated wax from old candles > was made into new ones, used paper was pulped and turned into clean > sheets. {4} > > A balanced integration with the wider ecosystem was crucial for > long-term survival. Centuries of small-scale farming and forestry around > Japanese villages resulted in a kind of hybrid natural-artificial > landscape known as satoyama {5}. A word that today evokes an idyllic, > rural lifestyle, satoyama are usually defined as coppice woodlands > maintained in a sustainable equilibrium with adjacent paddy fields and > human communities. Forests were regularly, judiciously thinned and the > wood used for charcoal and construction. The inedible straw left over > from the rice harvest was turned into coats, hats, footwear, bags, > embedded into clay walls as reinforcement, woven into tatami mats for > floors and used as fuel for fires. Ultimately, everything was returned > to the earth, whether directly or as ash after being burned. The main > source of fertilizer was 'night soil' (human excrement), often collected > directly from residences by farmers who paid for it in cash or crops. It > was valuable stuff: dealers set up warehouses, landlords argued with > their tenants over ownership and farmers became connoisseurs - different > neighborhoods commanded different prices and the best shit was used for > cultivating the highest grades of green tea. One side effect was cities > that were extraordinarily clean by medieval standards (no one would pour > potential wealth out the window, European-style). Equally important was > the daily reminder that humanity was intimately, necessarily connected > with the cycles of nature. > > Unsurprisingly, a society of reuse and recycling is not good for > business. Without constant disposal and demand for new products, the > economy stagnates. Historical analyses show that the Japanese economy > grew insignificantly during the Edo period, averaging 0.3% per year {6}. > The picture painted by the Edo Boom is undoubtedly a simplistic > idealization of what must have been a grueling existence for much of the > population. Admittedly, not even the most extreme of the contemporary > Edo-philes are proposing a return to that lifestyle. More than an > unwillingness to abandon modern conveniences, this is the acknowledgment > of an insurmountable problem: the sustainability of Edo Japan was > predicated on a far lower population (throughout the Edo Period, the > nation held a stable thirty million people) and a correspondingly higher > proportion of arable land and natural forest. > > Interlude: Biosphere 2 > > Though national in scale and multigenerational in duration, the isolated > ecology of Edo Japan might be seen as a precursor to Biosphere 2, the > largest artificial closed ecological system ever constructed. Intended > as a microcosm of the earth itself (that is, Biosphere 1), Biosphere 2 > comprises an array of enormous greenhouses in the Arizona desert. From > September 1991 to September 1993, eight humans were sealed inside > together with 3800 other living species spread across seven biomes > (rainforest, desert, ocean, savannah, marshland, agriculture and a > 'cultural' habitat for humans). There was to be no material input, with > the entire system powered primarily by sunlight, and rigorous crop > rotation, animal farming and waste recycling providing all necessities > for the duration. Given the complexity and originality of the > experiment, calculation errors and unforeseeable events inevitably > intervened. Insects destroyed much of the crops. Oxygen and food ran > low. The team was forced to slaughter all the pigs and chickens, > eliminating the absurd inefficiency of raising vegetables only to be > used as animal feed - one outcome was evidence that a vegetarian diet > and abnormally low body weight will significantly increase human health > and longevity (as had already been proven with laboratory animals). Yet, > inadvertently perhaps, Biosphere 2 was a social experiment as much as a > scientific one. Destabilized by the shortage of food, the participants > soon divided into two factions with a relationship that was, at best, > icy {7}. Violence was only averted through a determined commitment to > civility and the creation of ad hoc food-related festivals - not unlike > some primitive agrarian society - intended to inspire a sense of > community. The widespread media criticism of Biosphere 2 > notwithstanding, it was a compelling confirmation of the experience of > Edo Japan: the creation of a closed system exponentially increases the > importance of efficient recycling, of maintaining a high ratio of > cultivated land to human population, and of ensuring a strict social order. > > 3. Japan now > > With a population of close to 130 million overwhelmingly middle-class > consumers, contemporary Japan simply cannot sustain itself without a > constant influx of new resources. Indeed, the nation is now one of the > world's main importers of raw materials and energy (oil, natural gas, > uranium). Yet grassroots activism on issues of energy, recycling and > pollution has spread into national awareness, exemplified by the 1997 > Kyoto Protocol, the nature-themed Aichi Expo 2005 and the bid for a > carbon-neutral Tokyo Olympics in 2016. Japan is now a world leader in > solar power research and usage. Maverick architect Tadao Ando, after > four decades of creating sublime yet uninsulated raw concrete dwellings, > is focusing his energy and fame on planting trees. In a droll echo of > Tange's 1960 proposal for extending human habitation out into Tokyo Bay, > Ando has been promoting a 480,000-tree 'Sea Forest' on a garbage > landfill island in the bay. As in many First World countries, Japan now > has an increasingly popular back-to-the-land movement {8}. Following > decades of rural depopulation due to youth invariably moving to the > cities, idealistic new communities are resettling abandoned villages and > publicly funded volunteer groups are rejuvenating the satoyama landscapes. > > Yet however admirable, without broader action these trends are deeply > quixotic. Their success is predicated on a far smaller population > willing (or forced) to make do with far less and an understanding of the > human world as being integral to the natural world. Premodern Japan > lacked a sharp distinction between nature and culture, conceiving each > as inextricably embedded in the other. Time was seen as circular: any > one life follows a linear trajectory from birth to death, but the > collective rides cycles of eternal recurrence and renewal. Balance must > be maintained and the individual must stay strictly subservient to the > group. The mentality of modern Japan has arguably undergone a shift > toward a Western, linear conception of time. At worst, this manifests in > lunatic fantasies of infinite growth or even more insidiously the End of > Days: if our present moment is located somewhere between a creation and > an apocalypse, the 'moral' thing to do is use up our divinely bequeathed > resources before time runs out. > > While Japan may have belatedly recognized the urgent need to shift > course nationally, globally the situation is only being maintained > through massive imbalances in regional wealth. The idealized > self-sufficiency of Edo Japan is no longer tenable. For true > sustainability, everything removed must be replenished. The flows of > material into Japan and the rest of the First World are themselves > unsustainable. As formerly Third World populations increase in affluence > - cars for the Chinese, refrigerators for the Indians - there will not > be enough to go around. Priority must go to tackling new frontiers in > intensive agriculture and technologies for resource recycling and > procurement (seaweed farms? alchemical transformation of plastic waste? > towing mineral-rich asteroids into earth orbit?). Failing that, the > problem becomes disturbingly simple: without realistic recourse to > global vegetarianism or global war, the closed system of our planetary > biosphere now holds more human beings than it can sustain. > > Notes: > > 1. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of > Industrial Policy, 1925-1975 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, > 1982), page 202. > > 2. Their manifesto was presented at the World Design Conference held in > Tokyo in 1960 as Metabolism 1960: The Proposals for New Urbanism (Tokyo: > Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1960). > > 3. Jun Ui (editor), Industrial Pollution in Japan (Tokyo: United Nations > University Press, 1991). > > 4. The information given here about recycling in the Edo Period is > primarily drawn from Eisuke Ishikawa, Oo-edo Risaikuru Jijou [The > Recycling Situation in the Edo Period] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1997) and > Atsushi Tsuchida, Ekorojii Shinwa no Kouzai [The Value of Ecology Myths] > (Tokyo: Hotaru Shuppan, 1998). > > 5. A comprehensive survey of historical and contemporary satoyama is > contained in Kazuhiko Takeuchi, R D Brown, I Washitani, M Yokohari > (editors), Satoyama: The Traditional Rural Landscape of Japan (Berlin: > Springer, 2003). > > 6. Eisuke Ishikawa, Oo-edo Risaikuru Jijou [The Recycling Situation in > the Edo Period] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1997). > > 7. The two sides of the story are recounted in Abigail Alling, Mark > Nelson, and Sally Silverstone, Life under Glass: The Inside Story of > Biosphere 2 (Tuscon: Biosphere Press, 1993) and Jane Poynter, The Human > Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes inside Biosphere 2 (New York: > Basic Books, 2006). > > 8. See, for example, John Knight, 'The Soil as Teacher: Natural Farming > in a Mountain Village', in Pamela J Asquith and Arne Kalland (editors), > Japanese Images of Nature (Richmond: Curzon, 1997), pages 236-256. > > http://www.archis.org/volume/2008/12/19/volume-18/ > > > http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com > http://www.ashisuto.co.jp > > > > > > End of A-List Digest, Vol 66, Issue 17 > ************************************** > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 64933 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090311/54246cce/attachment.txt From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Mar 11 13:11:40 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leigh Meyers) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:11:40 -0700 Subject: [A-List] When Doctors Talk... Big Broth... Pharma Listens Message-ID: HEALTH When Doctors Talk Big Pharma listens. How social-networking sites created for physicians are becoming a boon for drug manufacturers and investors. By Ford Vox Newsweek Web Exclusive Mar 10, 2009 "What might you overhear if you got 100,000 doctors together in one virtual room? You could find out if you had access to the social network Sermo. It's just one of a growing cadre of sites designed for the nation's practicing physicians. Here, doctors from across the country can consult each other about the ordinary and the weird (or "zebras" in the lingo). There are queries about treatments for everything from plantar warts to photographs of mystifying rashes and even questions about an unfortunate fellow with postorgasmic nausea. It's not surprising that the chance to confer with other practitioners from around the country is increasingly popular among doctors. Today most of them work in small outpatient practices, missing out on the old-school social networking they used to find through weekly grand rounds, curbsides in hospital corridors and coffee refills in the physician's lounge. About 15 percent of practicing American doctors have signed on to Sermo since it launched in fall 2006. Its major competitor, Medscape Physician Connect, a part of WebMD , entered the ring a year ago. Both sites boast thousands of new registrations each month. These sites may be free for doctors, but they are not nonprofits. Sermo makes money by selling access to doctor talk, mostly to Big Pharma. Lately the data has become so rich that the financial industry has taken interest. Bloomberg inked a deal with Sermo this fall that allows Bloomberg subscribers to see comments by Sermo members related to particular companies and products. WebMD similarly gives its paying clients tools like a trend graph reminiscent of Google Trends, which tracks keywords hot on the lips of its physicians. With a few clicks, WebMD's clients can deconstruct the clinical chatter via detailed demographic profiles, zooming in on threads by practice years, specialty, geographic area and so on." In Full: http://www.newsweek.com/id/188604?from=rss ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Mar 11 13:41:30 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:41:30 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Of Police States & Israel Lobbies - U.S. cybersecurity chief and new chairman of the national intelligence council quit Message-ID: <49B813EA.70600@gmail.com> U.S. cybersecurity chief quits, says NSA control of computer security poses "threats to our democratic processes." Emerging Threats U.S. cybersecurity head quits, citing growing role of spy agencies By SHAUN WATERMAN, UPI Homeland and National Security Editor Published: March 11, 2009 WASHINGTON, March 10 (UPI) -- The official in charge of coordinating the U.S. government's cybersecurity operations has quit, saying the expanding control of the National Security Agency over the nation's computer security efforts poses "threats to our democratic processes." "Even from a security standpoint," Rod Beckstrom, the head of the Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Center, told United Press International, "it is unwise to hand over the security of all government networks to a single organization." "If our founding fathers were taking part in this debate (about the future organization of the government's cybersecurity activities) there is no doubt in my mind they would support a separation of security powers among different (government) organizations, in line with their commitment to checks and balances." In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano last week, Beckstrom said the NSA "dominates most national cyber efforts" and "effectively controls DHS cyber efforts through detailees, technology insertions and the proposed move" of the NCSC to an NSA facility at the agency's Fort Meade, Md., headquarters. "I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds," wrote Beckstrom in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by UPI. "The intelligence culture is very different than a network operations or security culture. In addition, threats to our democratic processes are significant if all top-level government network security and monitoring are handled by any one organization." Greg Garcia, who was the Bush administration's first presidentially appointed head of cybersecurity at DHS before leaving last December -- and who worked with Beckstrom for nine months -- told UPI that, while he does not share Beckstrom's anxiety, "I recognize the cautionary flag he is raising." Beckstrom's resignation -- after just less than a year in office -- comes as the new Obama administration moves to complete a 60-day review of the way cybersecurity efforts are organized in the U.S. government. Successive administrations have wrestled with the complex problem of how to delineate and define the roles of various intelligence, military and security agencies in assuring the integrity of the nation's computer networks -- the vast majority of which are owned and operated by the private sector and depend for their efficacy on their open and accessible, and therefore security-unfriendly, architecture. "There's been a lot of duplication and not enough coordination," Jessica Herrera-Flanigan, a former senior congressional staffer on the House Homeland Security Committee, told UPI. Garcia said there had been "a fairly collaborative partnership, not just between NSA and DHS, but ? with a whole lot of moving parts" and different agencies within the government. "Clearly, both operationally and technologically, the Intelligence Community is a key element," he said, using the insider's terms of art for the sprawling and sometimes fractious collection of spy agencies that serve the U.S. government. But he said DHS' role had to be primary "from a legal standpoint and from a trust and privacy standpoint." "Unlike the (Department of Defense) or the Intelligence Community, DHS has a statutory responsibility to work across all levels of federal, state and local government and the private sector," he said. DHS has come under fire for its cybersecurity work, with some criticizing an approach they saw characterized by turf squabbles and overlapping and contradictory lines of authority. Some, including most recently Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, have called for a greater role for U.S. intelligence agencies in cybersecurity as a result of the 60-day review, which is being led by an official in Blair's office. Garcia acknowledged what he called "growing pains" in DHS' cybersecurity efforts but maintained it would be a mistake to shift primary responsibility for the issue away from the department. "If there were a move," as a result of the 60-day review, "to centralize or focus cybersecurity strategy on the Intelligence Community, that would jeopardize the relationship we (at DHS) built up over several years with the private sector." Another Bush administration DHS official, former Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker, told UPI that although Beckstrom's criticism of the NSA's role was receiving more media attention, "I suspect his frustration was driven as much by the funding and organizational issues as by NSA." In his resignation letter, Beckstrom wrote that "the NCSC did not receive appropriate support inside DHS. ? During the past year, the NCSC received only five weeks of funding, due to various roadblocks engineered within the department and by the Office of Management and Budget." "Someone canceled all our contracts for office space, computers and furniture ? without telling us," he told UPI. "I never had a one-on-one meeting with the new secretary, although I reported directly to her ? and last year, there were only five weeks during which we had access to the money to make hires, rent office space and buy equipment we needed." "He came from a very different background" than most federal officials, said Herrera-Flanigan of Beckstrom, who was a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author before joining the department. "There was a big challenge" for him in negotiating "the dynamics between the different players" in the department, she said. "Unless he was given the authorities to coordinate across the department, it would have been a problem," she added. Beckstrom said the center he ran, set up to oversee and coordinate all federal government cybersecurity activity, "has a role which is much coveted by others in government, so there were natural tensions." "Rod is a friend and a remarkable talent," said Baker. "He understood Washington much better than most in Silicon Valley. His inability to move the bureaucracy shows how deep is the divide between government and the tech community." Department spokeswoman Amy Kudwa told UPI that DHS "has a strong relationship with the NSA ? and is fully engaged with the 60-day cybersecurity review. ? We look forward to our continued, positive working relationship with all our partners on outreach to the private sector as we strive to further secure our nation's cyber networks. "We thank Rod for his service, and regret his departure," she concluded. The NSA's public affairs office referred requests for comment to DHS. http://www.upi.com/Emerging_Threats/2009/03/11/US_cybersecurity_head_quits_citing_growing_role_of_spy_agencies/UPI-64411236692969/ Israel must be putting some serious pressure on: US diplomat resigns from intelligence post over Israel criticism Chas Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, withdrew from one of Barack Obama's top intelligence positions Oliver Burkeman in Washington guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 March 2009 A veteran American diplomat has resigned as one of Barack Obama's top intelligence officials over his strident criticisms of Israeli government policy. Chas Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, withdrew before starting work as chairman of the national intelligence council, accusing his critics of libel, character assassination and "utter disregard for the truth". The "Israel Lobby", he argued, was stifling any discussion of US policy options in the Middle East except those endorsed by "the ruling faction in Israeli politics" - a situation that could "ultimately threaten the existence of the state of Israel". Freeman's job would have involved producing National Intelligence Estimates, the authoritative documents intended to provide the president and senior policymakers with an overview of crucial security issues. But numerous members of Congress have questioned Freeman's ability to carry out the task objectively, citing his view that until "Israeli violence against Palestinians" is halted, "it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Palestinians will stand down from violent resistance". They also questioned his business links with Saudi Arabia and his views on China. "His statements against Israel were way over the top and severely out of step with the administration," said the New York Democratic senator, Chuck Schumer. "I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing." Unlike the string of prominent Obama nominees who have withdrawn in recent weeks, Freeman did not have to be approved by Congress. But his departure - coming hours after the national intelligence director, Dennis Blair, defended him before a Senate committee - will embarrass the White House, and signals how reluctant the president may be to depart from Washington's current policies towards Israel and the Palestinians. Freeman's critics noted that he was president of a Middle East thinktank part-funded by the Saudi regime, and serves as an adviser to an oil company owned by the Chinese government. In a posting to a foreign policy email list, attributed to Freeman, he appears to back Beijing's actions in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, arguing that force should have been used sooner. "I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be," the posting reads. But in a message on the website of the magazine Foreign Policy, Freeman claimed it was ironic to be accused of improper regard for foreign governments "by a group so clearly intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government". He had never sought money from or been paid by any overseas power, he said. "This is a country where you can say anything you want about the president, or any other policy, and it's really important for people to understand that this is the only issue you cannot discuss openly," said MJ Rosenberg, of the Israel Policy Forum. "I think if people perceive incorrectly that the Jewish community as a whole is behind these efforts to stifle dissent on this issue, that's dangerous." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/11/obama-administration-barack-obama From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Mar 11 14:16:14 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leigh Meyers) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:16:14 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Give 'em the money but don't tell them what to do with it - Bailout Chief Says Government Shouldnt Dictate Bank Lending Message-ID: CQ TODAY MIDDAY UPDATE March 11, 2009 1:26 p.m. Bailout Chief Says Government Shouldnt Dictate Bank Lending The Treasury Department official who directs the financial industry bailout said Wednesday that the government should not manage operations for banks that received government money. Neel Kashkari, the Treasury Departments interim assistant secretary for financial stabilization, was answering congressional critics who want to require them to loan out much of the money. Under the bailout law, the government has injected hundreds of billions of dollars into financial institutions, in the hopes of stabilizing the banks and spurring lending. But the law placed few restrictions on the money, and many lawmakers have been angered by reports that the banks have used the cash to shore up their balance sheets and have shrunk, not expanded, their loan portfolios. Kashkari said imposing lending requirements on recipient institutions would be a bad idea. [W]e must ensure that our investments are targeted at stabilizing the economy, but we must also take great care not to try to micromanage recipient institutions, he told the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. However well-intended, government officials are not positioned to make better commercial decisions than lenders in our communities, he added. Kashkari is a holdover from the previous administration, having been appointed by former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. He agreed to stay on for an unspecified period during the transition to the Obama administration. http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=cqmidday-000003072445 ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Mar 11 16:47:11 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leigh Meyers) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:47:11 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Hometown (almost) News: They've got yer Posse Comitatus hangin' - Monterey County Sheriffs To Take Anti-Terror Counter-Intell Training And Use Military School Facilities For War On Gangs Message-ID: ...about 40 miles, as the frisbee flies. Posse Comitatus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act [March 11 2009] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: But Is It A Solution? Salinas California Has A Gang Problem So The Sheriffs Are Going To Take Anti-Terrorist Counter-Intelligence Training And Use Federal Facilities In Their War On Gangs My site: http://leighm.net/wp/2009/03/11/tth_090311/ ArchiveDOTorg: http://www.archive.org/details/tth_090311 In... 'Other' News: Free elections, at least thats what the bosses call them: Card Check unions are becoming closer to reality as congress begins work on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). [After the commentary, a little Down Home Salinas, by Larry Hosford, Raised among em. Courtesy of the respective artists and KPIG radio Freedom California Earth] ___________________________________________________________ Sent by ePrompter, the premier email notification software. Free download at http://www.ePrompter.com. From noreply at coha.org Wed Mar 11 13:42:54 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:42:54 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Let Down on Cuba Message-ID: <20090311194236.42E733E49B0@mx-out.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 4038 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090311/391dc67e/attachment.txt From rfidler_8 at sympatico.ca Wed Mar 11 14:41:19 2009 From: rfidler_8 at sympatico.ca (Richard Fidler) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:41:19 -0400 Subject: [A-List] A-List Digest, Vol 66, Issue 17 References: Message-ID: That's James Agee, not Philp (the latter wrote the CIA expos?), Co-authored with Walker Evans (who provided the photos). ----- Original Message ----- From: Suzanne de Kuyper To: a-list at lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 2:50 PM Subject: Re: [A-List] A-List Digest, Vol 66, Issue 17 Bill: How excellent this is. There is a set of twelve books detailing the living of the mountain poor in Apalaichia, written many years before a highway, any highway, bisected those mountains, the name escaping me and then "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" a study ordered by Roosevelt of the families living in the Appalachian Mountains at the time of the Great Depression, using one of our best authors and best photographers as young ambitious curious experts who lived with families, worked, slept and ate with them. The book is amazing. Phillip Agee wrote it from his notes. Has Japan made similar detailed studies of the building the growing, the curing (like of food, leather) the hand making of things that people lived with and by from those times? Suzanne suzannedk at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 2217 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090311/af6c887a/attachment.txt From tboyle at rosehill.net Wed Mar 11 13:38:59 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:38:59 -0800 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: Re: Financial Cryptography Update: Identity & Privacy (conference) 14-15 May Message-ID: I asked my friend in the financial cryptography industry how to distinguish between real activists and government provocateurs. We have no way to prove our bonafides, nor to test others. Conclusions: a) throw out people who are doing counterproductive things, b) don't let anybody get control over strategy by out-performing everybody else, and c) you cannot defend your movement unless you understand your own grand strategy. Todd >Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 >From: Ian G >To: Todd Boyle >Subject: Re: Financial Cryptography Update: Identity & Privacy (conference) > 14-15 May > >On 11/3/09 03:11, Todd Boyle asked: >>Why don't I know a single person in London? other than perhaps Chris Cook. >>I've been in the antiwar movement 6 years yet we never have any >>interrelation with antiwar activists overseas--- in ANY country. >> >>Can you find me a list of 5 people in London area who are >>reliable certifiable antiwar activists? or even 3? > > >Hmmm tough. You know, most of the anti-war people are likely >outside London. A sort of inner secret is that London is a >financial industry, and the finance sector is now the biggest >industry in Britain. People who like finance tend to "like war", as >per the George Bernard Shaw play. Dunno, just an observation. > > >>Put me down as a reliable, absolutely certified antiwar activist, >>I guess you'll just have to take my word for it. What does it take >>to establish one's reputation as a real dissident from your >>county's policies? I have friends in the movement, even my >>closest friends who have workd alongside, for all these 6 years >>and to this very day I can't promise you they are not A) gathering >>information and sending reports to the government, or B) doing >>some sorts of agent provocateur actions. It cannot be disproven. > > >Hmmm, that is a seriously good question. > >You know, we have exactly this problem in the CA I work with >(CAcert.org), where we take volunteers to work on the systems. Now, >for the security systems, we find a steady series of volunteers who >have "interesting relationships" with "interesting agencies." It >turns out that there is correlation in their interests, and also >benefit. So we can't rule out that the bosses of these guys are >simply pushing them in there. > >The one way the CA has figured out how to deal with these people is >to expose them upfront: names and so forth, all checked out, become >public. So, if they ever do turn out to be a mole, then we have a >bit of history to expose, and this can be seriously damaging to >their future career. That is, an exposed mole can never be a mole again. > >Whether that works for your scenario or not, I don't know. The CA >isn't at war with the moles, whereas your org might be. > > >>So therefore the measure of these people is taken by their >>effectiveness in actually ending wars, opposing the war policies. >>To determine this measure, is much easier than to prove they are >>not paid by the government. > > >Right, so what is done is that they can contribute as long as they >are contributing. However, one has to be careful to not have them >gain control by contribution. > >Also, what we have done in the CA is to open it up >entirely. Everything is open, so secrecy is frowned >upon. Basically, if we need secrecy to do something, we find >another way. We find ways to make it work even if the enemy knows it all. > >Which is indeed perverse; those in the inner core of the CA have to >give up privacy and secrecy to preserve the privacy and secrecy of others. > > >>However it takes brains - you would >>have to understand the entire grand strategy of the military complex >>and governmnet, and the effective grand strategy of the antiwar >>movement. This is not inaccessible to anybody, but unfortunately >>it takes brains. In fact, it takes the most brains of any human >>occupation since the outcomes at stake are so valuable that they >>engage the brightest minds in the world, in a game of chess, > > >Right. Which is why we have to attract the brightest brains as well! > > > >iang -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 4828 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090311/6ff9f898/attachment.txt From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Wed Mar 11 18:32:14 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:32:14 -0700 Subject: [A-List] On the verge... a major collapse of evangelical Christianity - Christian Science Monitor Message-ID: <49B8580E.3010708@gmail.com> Complete Theo-analysis: The Christian Science Monitor The coming evangelical collapse An anti-Christian chapter in Western history is about to begin. But out of the ruins, a new vitality and integrity will rise. By Michael Spencer from the March 10, 2009 edition Oneida, Ky. - We are on the verge ? within 10 years ? of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century. This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good. Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close. Why is this going to happen? 1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society. The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap ofbelieving in a cause more than a faith. 2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures. 3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive. 4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself. 5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to "do good" is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive. 6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith. 7. The money will dry up. What will be left? ?Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success. Emphasis will shift from doctrine to relevance, motivation, and personal success ? resulting in churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on the faith. ?Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the "conversion" of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. ?A small band will work hard to rescue the movement from its demise through theological renewal. This is an attractive, innovative, and tireless community with outstanding media, publishing, and leadership development. Nonetheless, I believe the coming evangelical collapse will not result in a second reformation, though it may result in benefits for many churches and the beginnings of new churches. ?The emerging church will largely vanish from the evangelical landscape, becoming part of the small segment of progressive mainline Protestants that remain true to the liberal vision. ?Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear. ?Charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity will become the majority report in evangelicalism. Can this community withstand heresy, relativism, and confusion? To do so, it must make a priority of biblical authority, responsible leadership, and a reemergence of orthodoxy. ?Evangelicalism needs a "rescue mission" from the world Christian community. It is time for missionaries to come to America from Asia and Africa. Will they come? Will they be able to bring to our culture a more vital form of Christianity? ?Expect a fragmented response to the culture war. Some Evangelicals will work to create their own countercultures, rather than try to change the culture at large. Some will continue to see conservatism and Christianity through one lens and will engage the culture war much as before ? a status quo the media will be all too happy to perpetuate. A significant number, however, may give up political engagement for a discipleship of deeper impact. Is all of this a bad thing? Evangelicalism doesn't need a bailout. Much of it needs a funeral. But what about what remains? Is it a good thing that denominations are going to become largely irrelevant? Only if the networks that replace them are able to marshal resources, training, and vision to the mission field and into the planting and equipping of churches. Is it a good thing that many marginal believers will depart? Possibly, if churches begin and continue the work of renewing serious church membership. We must change the conversation from the maintenance of traditional churches to developing new and culturally appropriate ones. The ascendency of Charismatic-Pentecostal-influenced worship around the world can be a major positive for the evangelical movement if reformation can reach those churches and if it is joined with the calling, training, and mentoring of leaders. If American churches come under more of the influence of the movement of the Holy Spirit in Africa and Asia, this will be a good thing. Will the evangelicalizing of Catholic and Orthodox communions be a good development? One can hope for greater unity and appreciation, but the history of these developments seems to be much more about a renewed vigor to "evangelize" Protestantism in the name of unity. Will the coming collapse get Evangelicals past the pragmatism and shallowness that has brought about the loss of substance and power? Probably not. The purveyors of the evangelical circus will be in fine form, selling their wares as the promised solution to every church's problems. I expect the landscape of megachurch vacuity to be around for a very long time. Will it shake lose the prosperity Gospel from its parasitical place on the evangelical body of Christ? Evidence from similar periods is not encouraging. American Christians seldom seem to be able to separate their theology from an overall idea of personal affluence and success. The loss of their political clout may impel many Evangelicals to reconsider the wisdom of trying to create a "godly society." That doesn't mean they'll focus solely on saving souls, but the increasing concern will be how to keep secularism out of church, not stop it altogether. The integrity of the church as a countercultural movement with a message of "empire subversion" will increasingly replace a message of cultural and political entitlement. Despite all of these challenges, it is impossible not to be hopeful. As one commenter has already said, "Christianity loves a crumbling empire." We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century. We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture. I'm not a prophet. My view of evangelicalism is not authoritative or infallible. I am certainly wrong in some of these predictions. But is there anyone who is observing evangelicalism in these times who does not sense that the future of our movement holds many dangers and much potential? ? Michael Spencer is a writer and communicator living and working in a Christian community in Kentucky. He describes himself as "a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality." This essay is adapted from a series on his blog, InternetMonk.com. Find this article at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Wed Mar 11 19:04:57 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:04:57 +0900 Subject: [A-List] We Are Breeding Ourselves to Extinction Message-ID: <49B85FB9.2020605@ashisuto.co.jp> by Chris Hedges Truthdig (March 08 2009) All measures to thwart the degradation and destruction of our ecosystem will be useless if we do not cut population growth. By 2050, if we continue to reproduce at the current rate, the planet will have between eight billion and ten billion people, according to a recent UN forecast. This is a fifty percent increase. And yet government-commissioned reviews, such as the Stern report in Britain, do not mention the word population. Books and documentaries that deal with the climate crisis, including Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (2006), fail to discuss the danger of population growth. This omission is odd, given that a doubling in population, even if we cut back on the use of fossil fuels, shut down all our coal-burning power plants and build seas of wind turbines, will plunge us into an age of extinction and desolation unseen since the end of the Mesozoic era, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared. We are experiencing an accelerated obliteration of the planet's life-forms - an estimated 8,760 species die off per year - because, simply put, there are too many people. Most of these extinctions are the direct result of the expanding need for energy, housing, food and other resources. The Yangtze River dolphin, Atlantic gray whale, West African black rhino, Merriam's elk, California grizzly bear, silver trout, blue pike and dusky seaside sparrow are all victims of human overpopulation. Population growth, as E O Wilson says, is "the monster on the land". Species are vanishing at a rate of a hundred to a thousand times faster than they did before the arrival of humans. If the current rate of extinction continues, Homo sapiens will be one of the few life-forms left on the planet, its members scrambling violently among themselves for water, food, fossil fuels and perhaps air until they too disappear. Humanity, Wilson says, is leaving the Cenozoic, the age of mammals, and entering the Eremozoic - the era of solitude. As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland. The populations in industrialized nations maintain their lifestyles because they have the military and economic power to consume a disproportionate share of the world's resources. The United States alone gobbles up about 25 percent of the oil produced in the world each year. These nations view their stable or even zero growth birthrates as sufficient. It has been left to developing countries to cope with the emergent population crisis. India, Egypt, South Africa, Iran, Indonesia, Cuba and China, whose one-child policy has prevented the addition of 400 million people, have all tried to institute population control measures. But on most of the planet, population growth is exploding. The UN estimates that 200 million women worldwide do not have access to contraception. The population of the Persian Gulf states, along with the Israeli-occupied territories, will double in two decades, a rise that will ominously coincide with precipitous peak oil declines. The overpopulated regions of the globe will ravage their local environments, cutting down rainforests and the few remaining wilderness areas, in a desperate bid to grow food. And the depletion and destruction of resources will eventually create an overpopulation problem in industrialized nations as well. The resources that industrialized nations consider their birthright will become harder and more expensive to obtain. Rising water levels on coastlines, which may submerge coastal nations such as Bangladesh, will disrupt agriculture and displace millions, who will attempt to flee to areas on the planet where life is still possible. The rising temperatures and droughts have already begun to destroy crop lands in Africa, Australia, Texas and California. The effects of this devastation will first be felt in places like Bangladesh, but will soon spread within our borders. Footprint data suggests that, based on current lifestyles, the sustainable population of the United Kingdom - the number of people the country could feed, fuel and support from its own biological capacity - is about eighteen million. This means that in an age of extreme scarcity, some 43 million people in Great Britain would not be able to survive. Overpopulation will become a serious threat to the viability of many industrialized states the instant the cheap consumption of the world's resources can no longer be maintained. This moment may be closer than we think. A world where eight billion to ten billion people are competing for diminishing resources will not be peaceful. The industrialized nations will, as we have done in Iraq, turn to their militaries to ensure a steady supply of fossil fuels, minerals and other nonrenewable resources in the vain effort to sustain a lifestyle that will, in the end, be unsustainable. The collapse of industrial farming, which is made possible only with cheap oil, will lead to an increase in famine, disease and starvation. And the reaction of those on the bottom will be the low-tech tactic of terrorism and war. Perhaps the chaos and bloodshed will be so massive that overpopulation will be solved through violence, but this is hardly a comfort. James Lovelock, an independent British scientist who has spent most of his career locked out of the mainstream, warned several decades ago that disrupting the delicate balance of the Earth, which he refers to as a living body, would be a form of collective suicide. The atmosphere on Earth - 21 percent oxygen and 79 percent nitrogen - is not common among planets, he notes. These gases are generated, and maintained at an equable level for life's processes, by living organisms themselves. Oxygen and nitrogen would disappear if the biosphere was destroyed. The result would be a greenhouse atmosphere similar to that of Venus, a planet that is consequently hundreds of degrees hotter than Earth. Lovelock argues that the atmosphere, oceans, rocks and soil are living entities. They constitute, he says, a self-regulating system. Lovelock, in support of this thesis, looked at the cycle in which algae in the oceans produce volatile sulfur compounds. These compounds act as seeds to form oceanic clouds. Without these dimethyl sulfide "seeds" the cooling oceanic clouds would be lost. This self-regulating system is remarkable because it maintains favorable conditions for human life. Its destruction would not mean the death of the planet. It would not mean the death of life-forms. But it would mean the death of Homo sapiens. Lovelock advocates nuclear power and thermal solar power; the latter, he says, can be produced by huge mirrors mounted in deserts such as those in Arizona and the Sahara. He proposes reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide with large plastic cylinders thrust vertically into the ocean. These, he says, could bring nutrient-rich lower waters to the surface, producing an algal bloom that would increase the cloud cover. But he warns that these steps will be ineffective if we do not first control population growth. He believes the Earth is overpopulated by a factor of about seven. As the planet overheats - and he believes we can do nothing to halt this process - overpopulation will make all efforts to save the ecosystem futile. Lovelock, in The Revenge of Gaia (2006), said that if we do not radically and immediately cut greenhouse gas emissions, the human race might not die out but it would be reduced to "a few breeding pairs". The Vanishing Face of Gaia (2009), his latest book, which has for its subtitle "The Final Warning", paints an even grimmer picture. Lovelock says a continued population boom will make the reduction of fossil fuel use impossible. If we do not reduce our emissions by sixty percent, something that can be achieved only by walking away from fossil fuels, the human race is doomed, he argues. Time is running out. This reduction will never take place, he says, unless we can dramatically reduce our birthrate. All efforts to stanch the effects of climate change are not going to work if we do not practice vigorous population control. Overpopulation, in times of hardship, will create as much havoc in industrialized nations as in the impoverished slums around the globe where people struggle on less than two dollars a day. Population growth is often overlooked, or at best considered a secondary issue, by many environmentalists, but it is as fundamental to our survival as reducing the emissions that are melting the polar ice caps. _____ A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman. Copyright (c) 2009 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090309_we_are_breeding_ourselves_to_extinction/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From ioriwase at mail.mohawknationnews.com Wed Mar 11 14:23:26 2009 From: ioriwase at mail.mohawknationnews.com (Mohawk Nation News) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:23:26 -0400 Subject: [A-List] MNN Secret illegal US-Canada Border ID for Indigenous Message-ID: <01eabbc9$39883$0ce96829446875@xnote> CANADA-U.S. BORDER: CONFUSED HAUDENOSAUNEE TO ISSUE ILLEGAL ID CARDS!!! MNN. March 10, 2009. As usual the immigrants to Onowaregeh, Turtle Island, want to dictate to us. The Indigenous collaborators continue to get pocket change to sell us out to their ?swamis?. Who?s law does this colonial ID card come under to give us permission to pass over the ?imaginary line? known as the Canada-U.S. border? They want to take away our birth right and give us a privilege. We?ve been on Onowaregeh since time immemorial. We never gave these invading squatters any right to dictate how we shall relate to each other or traverse our territories. It violates the Kaianerehkowa, Great Law of Peace, our law, the Two Row Wampum, the U.S. Constitution and international law. Who?s going to enforce this illegal pass system? A combined force of Canadian, U.S. and Mexican ?death squads?!! The law of the gun does not make their schemes legitimate. The Two Row Wampum between us and the U.S. and Canada does not allow their selected flunkies to act on our behalf. Wampum #58 provides that those who knowingly violating the People and the Great Law may be charged with ?conspiracy? and ?espionage?. They are working with a foreign entity to dissolve and destroy the title and birthright of the Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy. These colonists of ?Indian? descent follow foreign laws, including the U.S. Federal Indian Law and Canada?s Indian Act. They cannot enter into any agreements or contracts for any of our rights with any private corporations or foreign entities of these transients who roved onto our land. These persons must leave the council, the nation and the league and forfeit their birthright. They are no longer in but out of the League. They are called ?they have alienated themselves? [Tehonnatonkoton]. On January 1, 2009 U.S. Customs and Border Protection CBP got new instructions on how to force their will on us. These newcomers made up this new ?informed compliance? policy all by themselves. They know they need a surrender of our sovereignty by our nations to impose it. They have to consult us, the owners of the land they are divvying up. Even our Red ID Card issued by our nations for decades is being hijacked. Without our permission the CBP decreed that our cards will be accepted until at least June 1, 2009. They have no right to dictate anything to us. If we have a problem, we?re supposed to call Cherri Morris of CBP in Washington DC at 202-344-3325. In late 2008 the CBP handed out templates of ?their? ID cards to the ?tribe? and ?Nation? councils of their ?Indians?. They have colonial incestuous ?government-to-government? relations with each other. This whole ?con? does not apply to the true Ongwehonwe. Our agreements with the U.S. and Canada are ?nation-to-nation?, a relationship of equals. We can only deal directly with the U.S. President and the Governor General of Canada as the colonial representatives of the two colonies. They have no authority over us or our land because we never surrendered anything to anybody. Their jurisdiction is limited to their subjects and their ?Indians? who are U.S. or Canadian citizens. The rest of us never gave up our sovereignty and remain free and independent. We and our children cannot carry these cards. The Onondaga Nation of New York State Inc. that Washington is dealing with is a federal and state incorporated entity headed by ?faithkeeper?, Oren Lyons. They had secret discussions on the draft template with their colonial big cheese, the CBP in Washington. These cards are going to be used by those tribal or band council marionettes who dance to the tune of their colonial maestros. They stuck a feather on the card and called it ?Indian?. Don?t be fooled. It?s still a fraud, deceptive and illegal. The U.S. needs a major commitment from each of our nations to go ahead. The illegal cards will be tested for 4 to 6 months to design a tactic to ram it down our throats. These Haudenosaunee colluders made a deal with the German company, Siemens, to produce the cards. A building with an application office and staff is being installed to herd us into the ?ovens? where they will tattoo or nuke us! There is fear mongering of our people to shove their wallpaper on us. The border goons are being trained to say our Red Card is obsolete and that we have to submit to them ?reeal sooon?. It ain?t gonna fly ?cause it ain?t legal! Ever wonder why these border flunkies have been intimidating, harassing, beating us up and trying to rape and kill us at the border, especially at the Cornwall-Massena checkpoint? A lot of laws are being broken. We can?t get any answers from anyone. No meetings or information are being given out. We and our supporters better start filing objections to the President of the U.S., the Governor General of Canada, the Queen who runs both corporations [U.S. and Canada], the CBP, and whoever else. Who?s making these illegal deals to sell out our sovereignty? What have they agreed to? No one shall separate us or weaken us. These quislings knowingly work against us and our future generations. Hey, colonial vagrants and your agents, no one has any authority to function on behalf of the Rotinno?shonni:onwe. We are going to resist this latest desperate genocidal corralment plan. MNN Staff Mohawk Nation News, www.mohawknationnews.com katenies20 at yahoo.com kahentinetha2 at yahoo.com Note: Your financial help is needed and appreciated. Please send your donations by check or money order to ?MNN Mohawk Nation News?, Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0. Nia:wen thank you very much. Go to MNN ?BORDER? category for more stories; New MNN Books Available now! Purchase t-shirts, mugs and more at our CafePressStore http://www.cafepress.com/mohawknews; Subscribe to MNN for breaking news updates http://.mohawknationnews.com/news/subscription.php; Sign Women Title Holders petition! http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Iroquois Contact the following contagions: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Buckingham Palace, London, SQ1A UK; President Barack Obama, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ Comments: 202-456-1111, Switchboard: 202-456-1414 FAX: 202-456-2461; The Governor General of Canada, M. Michaelle Jean, 1 Rideau Drive, Ottawa info at gg.ca; Alain Jolicoeur, President, CBSA, Ottawa, ON K1A 0L8, 613-952-3200, 613-957-0612; General inquiries CBSA-ASFC at canada.gc.ca; Lance Markell, District Director, Northern Office ? Customs, St. Laurent Blvd., Ottawa Ont. K1G 4K3, CBSA 613-930-3234, 613-991-1214, General inquiries CBSA-ASFC at canada.gc.ca; Secretary Janet Napolitano, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC 20528, Operator Number: 202-282-8000, Comment Line: 202-282-8495, Jayson P. Ahern, A/Commissioner, U.S. Customs, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20229 Chief Counsel (202) 344-2990; Marco A. Lopez, Jr., Chief of Staff, U.S. Customs, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20229; Prime Minister Stephen Harper; House of Commons, Ottawa, harper.s at parl.gc.ca; Hon. Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety, House of Commons, Ottawa; Hon. Robert Douglas Nicholson, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, 284 Wellington St., Ottawa, ON K1A 0H8; Attorney General of Ontario, 720 Bay St., 4th Floor, Toronto, ON M5G 2K1; Hon. Yvon Marcoux, Minister of Justice and A.G.O., Louis-Phillipe-Pigeon Bldg., 1200 Rue d l'Eglise, 9th Floor, St. Foy G1V 4M1; Hon. Chuck Strahl, Minister of Indian Affairs, 10 Wellington St., Hull, Que. K1A 0H4 Strahl.c at parl.gc.ca; Premier Dalton McGuinty, Province of Ontario, Queens Park, Toronto ON; Premier Charest, Province of Quebec, Legislature, Quebec City; British High Commission, 80 Elgin St., Ottawa, ON K1P 5K7; Canadian Human Rights Commission, 344 Slater St., 8th Floor Ottawa, ON K1A 1E1; United Nations, 405 E 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017; The Hague, Anna Paulownastraat, 103, 251 BBC, The Netherlands; Coalition for the International Criminal Court, c/o WFM, 708 3rd Ave., 24th Floor, New York, NY 10017 From tal1 at cogeco.ca Wed Mar 11 21:17:16 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:17:16 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Of Golden Calves, Sacred Cows, Sheeple and Tax cattle Message-ID: <98C6E058CCD04D5FA6E54BB7FF02646A@TonyPC> http://www.israelshamir.net/ The Pope Is Not Welcome in Jerusalem By Israel Shamir ?Pope Benedict is not welcome in the Holy Land in the present circumstances", - said Archbishop Theodosius of Sebaste, the highest ranking native Palestinian Christian clergyman in Jerusalem, after it was announced in Israel that the head of the Church of Rome will begin his May pilgrimage to the Holy City with obeisance to the Jewish Holocaust Memorial ?Yad Vashem?. - We are not against the Pope?s visit to Yad Vashem, but before expressing solidarity with the Jews, he should show solidarity with the Christians of Palestine. We have our own tragic memories; our Yad Vashem is in Gaza , said the Archbishop, and then added: ?let the Pope begin his visit with Gaza first?. Tall and fortyish, blue-eyed, of commanding presence, the Galilean-born Archbishop is a citizen of Israel , an outspoken critic of Jewish excesses and a most visible supporter of the One Democratic State idea calling for full equality for Jew, Christian and Muslim in the whole, undivided Holy Land . Archbishop Theodosius Atallah Hanna is a man of his own mind: he refused to meet with President Bush, befriended the Muslim Mufti of Jerusalem and defended Pope Benedict when he was attacked for what was considered anti-Muslim talk. Now he expresses the feelings of many Palestinian Christians, this oldest Christian community in the world. While the Church of Rome was established by Christ?s apostle St Peter, the Church of Jerusalem was established by Christ Himself. In many villages and towns of the Holy Land memories of the Saviour?s presence still linger. The majority of Jerusalem Christians belong to the Archbishop?s Orthodox church, while a minority are Catholic. Regarding the papal visit, the Catholics and the Orthodox are of one mind. Before the Gaza war, Father Manuel Musallam, head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Gaza , said that it is Gaza ?s right not to die, and if it dies it will be in the battlefield. The Catholic believers, priests and monks of the Holy Land forwarded the Pope a secret letter calling on him to postpone his visit to some future time. The Vatican read the letter but decided to disregard it. Now, when the blood shed by Jews in Gaza is still warm, Israel will certainly portray this visit as a sign of papal approval. ?If the Pope wants to come to the Holy Land, he should begin the visit by coming to the local Catholic church in Gaza ", said Archbishop Theodosius Atallah Hanna. "The church was denied visits by the priests and bishops, and Gazan Christians were unable to worship in Jerusalem and Bethlehem . At first, the Pope should meet with Palestinian Christians, who carry the light of Christ in the darkness of Israeli occupation. Otherwise, this is not a visit to us, but a visit to Israel , an item on the Pope?s agenda vis-?-vis the Jewish organizations. We ask the Pope to speak for the people of Palestine , for Palestinian Christians are part and parcel of Palestine . Palestinian Christians suffer together with their Muslim brothers. Let the Pope advocate our cause?, said he. Many Palestinian Christians feel that the Vatican has become a plaything of Jewish intrigues. Why does Vatican spend so much effort trying to woo and please the Jews? Is not the Church of Rome still an independent body? Why is the See of St Peter heeds to Jewish veto even regarding church affairs? The Pope?s visit to the Holocaust Memorial is troubling. The Museum adjacent to Memorial contains some rude defamation of the late Pope Pius; and the Jews have refused to remove it. Even worse, the Holocaust is used to justify mass murder in Gaza ; coming first to Yad vaShem sends a wrong symbol of accepting Jewish superiority over Christendom. Moreover, the Holocaust Memorial is a religious symbol, an idol of a new heathen, godless cult. Its boss Dr Judah Bauer has openly denied God and the Creation, while its previous boss is considered a war criminal and his extradition is being sought. Tom Segev, a prominent Israeli writer, correctly said that the Holocaust has become "an object of worship." Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League has declared: ?The Holocaust is a near successful attempt on the life of God's Chosen children and, thus, on God himself?. We know of a near-successful attempt on the life of God?s Son, and thus on God Himself, and it took place in Jerusalem , on Calvary . Yad va-Shem is a pretender, a place of idolatry. Abraham refused to pay obeisance to idols -- why can?t the Pope follow his lead? The forthcoming visit of the Pope was engendered by a ruse: traditionalist Bishop Msgr. Williamson was re-communicated with the Church, and at the same time his interview regarding the Jewish holocaust was aired. The scandal was enormous. If Williamson were to blaspheme Christ and the Church he would be applauded for his free mind; as things are, the Pope was forced to beg forgiveness of his "elder brothers the Jews," and even depart on this Canossa-like trip with its scheduled meetings with Israeli war criminals. In Palestine , the Pope and the Catholics may learn a thing or two from the Church of Jerusalem . Despite its minority position in the Jewish state, the Orthodox Church is still free and un-subverted. Its theology is shiningly, implacably triumphalist; we believe in Christ and in victory of Orthodoxy as we celebrated it last Sunday, the first Sunday of Lent. Our Church is universal and catholic, for we of Jerusalem and Moscow , Antioch and Constantinople are joined by one communion, though we do not have a single shepherd. We have no elder brothers; we have no Zionists in our midst. We have no special relations with Jews ? unless they want to join. We reject heresies, and we do not hesitate to anathematise heretics, including the popes of Rome who went too far in their desire to submit to worldly powers. Our Church does not seek better public relations, she does not change her rules in a vain attempt to attract more worshippers. She venerates icons, but does not bow down to idols. From tal1 at cogeco.ca Wed Mar 11 21:18:38 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:18:38 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Serbia: Tens Of Thousands Still Threatened By NATO Cluster Bombs Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 12:25 PM Subject: [stopnato] Serbia: Tens Of Thousands Still Threatened By NATO Cluster Bombs http://www.canada.com/news/NATO+cluster+bombs+still+threaten+thousands+Serbia+Report/1373535/story.html Agence France-Presse March 10, 2009 NATO cluster bombs still threaten thousands in Serbia: Report Unexploded shells remain a decade after alliance campaigned for Kosovo BELGRADE - Unexploded cluster bombs still threaten thousands of Serbian civilians almost 10 years after they were dropped during NATO's air war over Kosovo, an independent report said Tuesday. "During the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, U.S., British and Dutch forces dropped at least 37,000 sub-munitions on Serbian territory," the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) said in a statement. "According to the survey published by Norwegian People's Aid, a CMC member, a decade on unexploded cluster bomblets continue to pose a threat to tens of thousands of local inhabitants," it added. There were 2,547 unexploded bomblets located across Serbia, excluding its breakaway province of Kosovo, according to a report the CMC presented at a media conference in Belgrade. The warning came in a statement that called on the Serbian government to sign up to the cluster bomb ban convention already backed by 95 other countries. The convention bans the use and stockpiling of cluster bombs and contains provisions on clearing unexploded cluster bombs and aiding victims. .... NATO's 1999 bombing campaign was launched against Yugoslavia, then made up of Serbia and Montenegro.... Kosovo proclaimed unilateral independence from Serbia in February 2008. It is now recognized by 56 countries including the United States and 22 of the European Union's 27 member states. Serbia is backed by its old ally Russia in its opposition to the move. ---------------------------------------------------------- http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iBrCuuXf-41AtcNepmSmoGBWgHeAD96R88280 Associated Press March 10, 2009 Study: Serbs still in danger from cluster bombs BELGRADE, Serbia ? Thousands of civilians in Serbia remain in danger from unexploded cluster bombs left over from the 1999 NATO bombing of the country, according to a new report released Tuesday by a humanitarian aid group. The study by Norwegian People's Aid says cluster bombs are scattered unevenly in 15 municipalities throughout the Balkan country where 160,000 people live. Half of those people are in direct danger from the bombs, said Miroslav Pisarevic, who took part in the project funded by Norway's Foreign Ministry. Serbia needs about euro30 million ($37.7 million) for a clean up, the report said. NATO launched the air war to force Serbia to end a crackdown against separatists in Kosovo. It used cluster bombs on several occasions during the attacks. Fired by artillery or dropped by aircraft, cluster bombs are canisters that open in flight and eject dozens or hundreds of small bomblets. But some fail to explode immediately, lying dormant for years until they are disturbed. "Those cluster bombs are a permanent threat," said Pisarevic. He said that 27 people were killed by the cluster bombs during the NATO raids, while 152 were wounded. After the war, four more people died from unexploded cluster bombs, while eight more were wounded, Pisarevic said. .... =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 8New Members Visit Your Group Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Wed Mar 11 21:19:15 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:19:15 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Holbrooke Arranges For Japan To Pay Salaries For 80, 000 Afghan Police Message-ID: <90F818C785154F778CBD4E25286935E8@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: rwrozoff at yahoo.com To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 11:12 AM Subject: [stopnato] Holbrooke Arranges For Japan To Pay Salaries For 80,000 Afghan Police http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/03/09/america/NA-US-Japan-Afghanistan.php Associated Press March 10, 2009 Japan to pay Afghan police salaries WASHINGTON - Japan will pay six months' salary for Afghanistan's 80,000 police officers...two senior Japanese envoys said Monday. The $124 million for police salaries comes as Afghanistan prepares for crucial August elections. The money will be handed over by the end of this month for distribution by a United Nations Development Program fund, Japan's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Motohide Yoshikawa, and President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency Sadako Ogata told reporters after meeting with the U.S. representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke. .... The envoys' visit coincides with the Obama administration's review of U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The administration has been reaching out to allies for help on ways to combat growing violence that has spread throughout Afghanistan over the last three years. Last month, President Barack Obama ordered 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American military forces already there. The envoys' trip to Washington was the result of a meeting last month between Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso and Obama. Ogata said improved security is crucial for the work of the 50 to 70 Japanese officials and other foreigners trying to help Afghans. The Japanese envoys also said Holbrooke accepted an invitation to attend an international donors conference for Pakistan to be held in Tokyo in mid April. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 8New Members Visit Your Group Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Wed Mar 11 21:22:37 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:22:37 -0400 Subject: [A-List] China Lodges Protest Over US Spy Ship Message-ID: <5DFBFF3862F64FDD822C1C1240BFF8AF@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: rwrozoff at yahoo.com To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2009 8:39 AM Subject: [stopnato] China Lodges Protest Over US Spy Ship http://en.rian.ru/world/20090311/120509039.html Russian Information Agency Novosti March 11, 2009 China protests over U.S. Navy activities BEIJING - China has lodged an official protest against the U.S. Navy over unauthorized activities in China's exclusive maritime economic zone, the China Daily reported on Wednesday. The U.S. has also protested over the weekend incident in the South China Sea, saying Chinese ships engaged in dangerous maneuvers when shadowing a U.S. vessel. (VIDEO) Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters that U.S. vessels, including the USNS Impeccable, conducted illegal surveys on Sunday, 120 kilometers (74.5 miles) to the south of China's Hainan Island. "China has lodged a protest to the United States, as the USNS Impeccable conducted the activities ... without China's permission," Ma said. The U.S. Navy insists its actions were in line with international maritime law. Vice-Admiral Jin Mao, former vice-commander of the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) navy told the China Daily that the U.S. ship was "not a research vessel, but a spy ship." The Impeccable, which serves with the U.S. 7th Fleet, uses low-frequency sonar to search for undersea threats including submarines. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi is currently in Washington to discuss preparations for the London G20 summit set for April 1to address the financial crisis. Yang is working on plans for a meeting between President Hu Jintao and U.S. President Barack Obama during the summit. The naval incident may be discussed by Yang and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the Chinese diplomat's visit. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls MARKETPLACE From critical.montages at gmail.com Wed Mar 11 23:26:41 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:26:41 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Iran's Reformists Fail to Unite Message-ID: Four more years for Mr. Ahmadinejad? -- Yoshie Former PM Mousavi Announces Presidential Bid ? ?"Reformist Principalist" Enters Stage? - 2009.03.12 Nader Karami Following up on the efforts that he launched since the beginning of winter, Mir Hossein ?Mousavi officially announced his candidacy for the upcoming Islamic Republic ?presidential election in a statement released yesterday.? The Islamic Republic's last prime minister, who has not been publicly seen or active in ?political affairs for twenty-year, chose the tenth presidential election as the venue to ?return to the power structure in Iran. Mir Hossein Mousavi, who, with the death of his ?major supporter, Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 and the promotion of the-then president - ?Ayatollah Khamenei to be the next supreme leader, chose to exit the political stage in ?favor of his foe, has now announced his candidacy during the last days of the Iranian year ??1387.? Competition Begins Mir Hossein Mousavi followed a calculated plan to return to the country's political stage, ?first breaking his twenty-year silence by establishing several Internet websites. As his ?next step, he published an edited interview last month, which contained points in defense ?of his past performance, addressing many issues that experts believed could be used by ?his opponents against him. ? In the statement announcing his candidacy, which was published yesterday, while noting ?his disinterest in the past to enter the stage, Mousavi argues that peculiar sensitivities ?make it necessary for him to be present now: "This time is a different time and ?necessitates my presence."? While emphasizing his reformist posture, the last prime minister of the Islamic regime ?said, "It is upon us now to reexamine the value of liberty." He clarified his stance on ?foreign policy by noting, "The achievements of our young scientists in the field of ?nuclear energy are irreversible."? Mousavi also laid out his campaign strategy in his statement. A photogenic personality, ?Mousavi announced, "During my campaign, my campaign staff will not be allowed to ?photocopy or distribute my picture, and I request from supporters who may contribute to ?this cause of their own volition to take into account this request by their servant." ?Mousavi also touched on his artistic side, noting, "In my opinion, a simple note written ?by a citizen interested in the country's fate behind storefront windows is the most ?effective and desirable political statement." ? Reactions Although Mousavi's candidacy was officially announced yesterday, many observers and ?others had predicted that Mousavi would run for presidency, particularly after his speech ?at Tehran university and the issuance of a permit for his newspaper. Therefore, more ?than being interested in Mousavi's official announcement, political analysts sought to ?gather news about Seyed Mohammad Khatami's reaction to this decision. Two weeks ?prior to announcing his candidacy on February 9, Khatami had announced, "Between me ?and Mir Hossein only one will run for presidency, and my preference is Mr. Mousavi." ? Thus, on Monday nights senior officials in the Khatami campaign attended a meeting at ?his request, which lasted until two in the morning. As some news sources, including ?Mizan News confirmed, Khatami had announced his plan to step aside in Mousavi's ?favor, which his campaign officials strongly opposed. Meanwhile, young activists in the ?Khatami campaign announced through an immediate opinion poll that their passion "is ?not transferable to a different person."? It was the expectation of this exact reaction from Seyed Mohammad Khatami which ?caused the Yari News website to quote an informed source as having "fully" denied the ?rumor of Khatami's stepping aside. ? Meanwhile, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a close associate to Khatami, expressed his surprise ?regarding Mousavi's decision on his weblog and implicitly accused him of breaking his ?promise. In his weblog piece, Abtahi wrote, "Mr. Mousavi had indicated that he would ?not compete against Mr. Khatami, but I welcome his presence to this political stage."? Abtahi added, "Why Mr. Mousavi is running [for presidency] is an issue that he can ?explain and would clarify what new events have prompted him to run despite Mr. ?Khatami's candidacy." Abtahi connected the rumor of Khatami's stepping aside to ??"certain friends of Mr. Mousavi" and labeled this an "unethical event."? March 10, 2009 In Iran, Khatami Loses a Key Backer By NAZILA FATHI TEHRAN ? A former mayor of Tehran, a powerful politician who once backed Mohammad Khatami, the former president, has aligned himself with Mr. Khatami?s rival, in a move that could alter the political landscape ahead of June presidential elections. Gholamhossein Karbaschi, the mayor of Tehran from 1988 to 1998 who was instrumental in Mr. Khatami?s landslide victory in 1997, said last Tuesday that he was supporting Mehdi Karroubi, a former speaker of Parliament. The new alliance reveals the deep divisions between reformists who want more openness in Iranian politics and society ? and their disillusionment with Mr. Khatami. Other former supporters of Mr. Khatami, especially activists who were jailed during his presidency, said they would vote for Mr. Karroubi in the hope that he would be a more effective leader. They noted that during Mr. Khatami?s two terms in office, his agenda was blocked by the conservative establishment and hamstrung by his perceived weakness. ?I think Mr. Karroubi would be a better candidate and more suitable for the country,? Mr. Karbaschi said in a telephone interview on Sunday. ?We might have a better experience with him than with other ones we have already experienced, and the outcome was not so good,? he said, in an apparent reference to Mr. Khatami. The shift comes despite the widely held belief that the charismatic Mr. Khatami would be a more formidable challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The president has captured the support of the poor by redistributing aid, and is backed by conservative elements of society. Many of Mr. Khatami?s allies, including Mr. Karbaschi, were jailed during the eight years that he was in office. Former supporters say Mr. Khatami failed to help them, while Mr. Karroubi, who was then the speaker of Parliament, backed them more strongly. Emadedin Baghi, a human rights advocate and journalist who once supported Mr. Khatami, said he would vote for Mr. Karroubi this time. ?Mr. Karroubi is a man who has helped more than anyone else with human rights cases and helped save people who were on the death row,? he said. Mr. Karbaschi was tried in 1998 on corruption charges, sentenced to two years in prison and banned from holding public office for 10 years. The trial was largely considered the first major attack on Mr. Khatami?s government aimed at depriving him of one of his most capable allies. Many Iranians recall Mr. Karbaschi as the driving force behind modernizing efforts in Tehran during his 10 years as mayor. He built cultural centers, highways and bridges, and removed revolutionary graffiti from city walls. During his trial, which was broadcast on state-run television and attracted a record audience, he engaged in heated debate with the conservative judge. Mr. Karbaschi was also a supporter of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president who was viewed as a pragmatist. ?He is more than a political figure, and his alliance with a candidate matters,? Akbar Montajabi, a journalist and analyst, wrote in the daily newspaper Etemad-e-Melli on Saturday. ?It is important who he supports because people respect his political judgment.? All candidates must register to run in April and must be approved by the Guardian Council, a hard-line body of clerics close to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which has the power to approve or disqualify candidates. A former prime minister, Mir Hussein Moussavi, has also hinted that he might run. From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Thu Mar 12 03:33:19 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:33:19 +0900 Subject: [A-List] The US Financial System is Effectively Insolvent Message-ID: <49B8D6DF.6050109@ashisuto.co.jp> by Nouriel Roubini Forbes.com (March 05 2009) For those who argue that the rate of growth of economic activity is turning positive - that economies are contracting but at a slower rate than in the fourth quarter of 2008 - the latest data don't confirm this relative optimism. In 2008's fourth quarter, gross domestic product fell by about six percent in the US, six percent in the euro zone, eight percent in Germany, twelve percent in Japan, sixteen percent in Singapore and twenty percent in South Korea. So things are even more awful in Europe and Asia than in the US. There is, in fact, a rising risk of a global L-shaped depression that would be even worse than the current, painful U-shaped global recession. Here's why: First, note that most indicators suggest that the second derivative of economic activity is still sharply negative in Europe and Japan and close to negative in the US and China. Some signals that the second derivative was turning positive for the US and China turned out to be fake starts. For the US, the Empire State and Philly Fed indexes of manufacturing are still in free fall; initial claims for unemployment benefits are up to scary levels, suggesting accelerating job losses; and January's sales increase is a fluke - more of a rebound from a very depressed December, after aggressive post-holiday sales, than a sustainable recovery. For China, the growth of credit is only driven by firms borrowing cheap to invest in higher-returning deposits, not to invest, and steel prices in China have resumed their sharp fall. The more scary data are those for trade flows in Asia, with exports falling by about forty to fifty percent in Japan, Taiwan and Korea. Even correcting for the effect of the Chinese New Year, exports and imports are sharply down in China, with imports falling (minus forty percent) more than exports. This is a scary signal, as Chinese imports are mostly raw materials and intermediate inputs. So while Chinese exports have fallen so far less than in the rest of Asia, they may fall much more sharply in the months ahead, as signaled by the free fall in imports. With economic activity contracting in 2009's first quarter at the same rate as in 2008's fourth quarter, a nasty U-shaped recession could turn into a more severe L-shaped near-depression (or stag-deflation). The scale and speed of synchronized global economic contraction is really unprecedented (at least since the Great Depression), with a free fall of GDP, income, consumption, industrial production, employment, exports, imports, residential investment and, more ominously, capital expenditures around the world. And now many emerging-market economies are on the verge of a fully fledged financial crisis, starting with emerging Europe. Fiscal and monetary stimulus is becoming more aggressive in the US and China, and less so in the euro zone and Japan, where policymakers are frozen and behind the curve. But such stimulus is unlikely to lead to a sustained economic recovery. Monetary easing - even unorthodox - is like pushing on a string when (1) the problems of the economy are of insolvency/credit rather than just illiquidity; (2) there is a global glut of capacity (housing, autos and consumer durables and massive excess capacity, because of years of overinvestment by China, Asia and other emerging markets), while strapped firms and households don't react to lower interest rates, as it takes years to work out this glut; (3) deflation keeps real policy rates high and rising while nominal policy rates are close to zero; and (4) high yield spreads are still 2,000 basis points relative to safe Treasuries in spite of zero policy rates. Fiscal policy in the US and China also has its limits. Of the $800 billion of the US fiscal stimulus, only $200 billion will be spent in 2009, with most of it being backloaded to 2010 and later. And of this $200 billion, half is tax cuts that will be mostly saved rather than spent, as households are worried about jobs and paying their credit card and mortgage bills. (Of last year's $100 billion tax cut, only thirty percent was spent and the rest saved.) Thus, given the collapse of five out of six components of aggregate demand (consumption, residential investment, capital expenditure in the corporate sector, business inventories and exports), the stimulus from government spending will be puny this year. Chinese fiscal stimulus will also provide much less bang for the headline buck ($480 billion). For one thing, you have an economy radically dependent on trade: a trade surplus of twelve percent of GDP, exports above forty percent of GDP, and most investment (that is almost fifty percent of GDP) going to the production of more capacity/machinery to produce more exportable goods. The rest of investment is in residential construction (now falling sharply following the bursting of the Chinese housing bubble) and infrastructure investment (the only component of investment that is rising). With massive excess capacity in the industrial/manufacturing sector and thousands of firms shutting down, why would private and state-owned firms invest more, even if interest rates are lower and credit is cheaper? Forcing state-owned banks and firms to, respectively, lend and spend/invest more will only increase the size of nonperforming loans and the amount of excess capacity. And with most economic activity and fiscal stimulus being capital- rather than labor-intensive, the drag on job creation will continue. So without a recovery in the US and global economy, there cannot be a sustainable recovery of Chinese growth. And with the US recovery requiring lower consumption, higher private savings and lower trade deficits, a US recovery requires China's and other surplus countries' (Japan, Germany, et cetera) growth to depend more on domestic demand and less on net exports. But domestic-demand growth is anemic in surplus countries for cyclical and structural reasons. So a recovery of the global economy cannot occur without a rapid and orderly adjustment of global current account imbalances. Meanwhile, the adjustment of US consumption and savings is continuing. The January personal spending numbers were up for one month (a temporary fluke driven by transient factors), and personal savings were up to five percent. But that increase in savings is only illusory. There is a difference between the national income account (NIA) definition of household savings (disposable income minus consumption spending) and the economic definitions of savings as the change in wealth/net worth: savings as the change in wealth is equal to the NIA definition of savings plus capital gains/losses on the value of existing wealth (financial assets and real assets such as housing wealth). In the years when stock markets and home values were going up, the apologists for the sharp rise in consumption and measured fall in savings were arguing that the measured savings were distorted downward by failing to account for the change in net worth due to the rise in home prices and the stock markets. But now with stock prices down over fifty percent from peak and home prices down 25% from peak (and still to fall another twenty percent), the destruction of household net worth has become dramatic. Thus, correcting for the fall in net worth, personal savings is not five percent, as the official NIA definition suggests, but rather sharply negative. In other terms, given the massive destruction of household wealth/net worth since 2006-07, the NIA measure of savings will have to increase much more sharply than has currently occurred to restore households' severely damaged balance sheets. Thus, the contraction of real consumption will have to continue for years to come before the adjustment is completed. In the meanwhile the Dow Jones industrial average is down today below 7,000, and US equity indexes are twentyb percent down from the beginning of the year. I argued in early January that the 25% stock market rally from late November to the year's end was another bear market suckers' rally that would fizzle out completely once an onslaught of worse than expected macro and earnings news, and worse than expected financial shocks, occurs. And the same factors will put further downward pressures on US and global equities for the rest of the year, as the recession will continue into 2010, if not longer (a rising risk of an L-shaped near-depression). Of course, you cannot rule out another bear market suckers' rally in 2009, most likely in the second or third quarters. The drivers of this rally will be the improvement in second derivatives of economic growth and activity in the US and China that the policy stimulus will provide on a temporary basis. But after the effects of a tax cut fizzle out in late summer, and after the shovel-ready infrastructure projects are done, the policy stimulus will slacken by the fourth quarter, as most infrastructure projects take years to be started, let alone finished. Similarly in China, the fiscal stimulus will provide a fake boost to non-tradable productive activities while the traded sector and manufacturing continue to contract. But given the severity of macro, household, financial-firm and corporate imbalances in the US and around the world, this second- or third-quarter suckers' market rally will fizzle out later in the year, like the previous five ones in the last twelve months. In the meantime, the massacre in financial markets and among financial firms is continuing. The debate on "bank nationalization" is borderline surreal, with the US government having already committed - between guarantees, investment, recapitalization and liquidity provision - about $9 trillion of government financial resources to the financial system (and having already spent $2 trillion of this staggering $9 trillion figure). Thus, the US financial system is de facto nationalized, as the Federal Reserve has become the lender of first and only resort rather than the lender of last resort, and the US Treasury is the spender and guarantor of first and only resort. The only issue is whether banks and financial institutions should also be nationalized de jure. But even in this case, the distinction is only between partial nationalization and full nationalization: With 36% (and soon to be larger) ownership of Citi, the US government is already the largest shareholder there. So what is the non-sense about not nationalizing banks? Citi is already effectively partially nationalized; the only issue is whether it should be fully nationalized. Ditto for AIG, which lost $62 billion in the fourth quarter and $99 billion in all of 2008 and is already eighty percent government-owned. With such staggering losses, it should be formally 100% government-owned. And now the Fed and Treasury commitments of public resources to the bailout of the shareholders and creditors of AIG have gone from $80 billion to $162 billion. Given that common shareholders of AIG are already effectively wiped out (the stock has become a penny stock), the bailout of AIG is a bailout of the creditors of AIG that would now be insolvent without such a bailout. AIG sold over $500 billion of toxic credit default swap protection, and the counter-parties of this toxic insurance are major US broker-dealers and banks. News and banks analysts' reports suggested that Goldman Sachs got about $25 billion of the government bailout of AIG and that Merrill Lynch was the second largest benefactor of the government largesse. These are educated guesses, as the government is hiding the counter-party benefactors of the AIG bailout. (Maybe Bloomberg should sue the Fed and Treasury again to have them disclose this information.) But some things are known: Goldman's Lloyd Blankfein was the only CEO of a Wall Street firm who was present at the New York Fed meeting when the AIG bailout was discussed. So let us not kid each other: The $162 billion bailout of AIG is a nontransparent, opaque and shady bailout of the AIG counter-parties: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and other domestic and foreign financial institutions. So for the Treasury to hide behind the "systemic risk" excuse to fork out another $30 billion to AIG is a polite way to say that without such a bailout (and another half-dozen government bailout programs such as TAF, TSLF, PDCF, TARP, TALF and a program that allowed $170 billion of additional debt borrowing by banks and other broker-dealers, with a full government guarantee), Goldman Sachs and every other broker-dealer and major US bank would already be fully insolvent today. And even with the $2 trillion of government support, most of these financial institutions are insolvent, as delinquency and charge-off rates are now rising at a rate - given the macro outlook - that means expected credit losses for US financial firms will peak at $3.6 trillion. So, in simple words, the US financial system is effectively insolvent. _____ Nouriel Roubini, a professor at the Stern Business School at New York University and chairman of Roubini Global Economics, is a weekly columnist for Forbes.com. http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/04/global-recession-insolvent-opinions-columnists-roubini-economy.html http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From james.irldaly at ntlworld.com Thu Mar 12 07:03:25 2009 From: james.irldaly at ntlworld.com (james daly) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:03:25 -0000 Subject: [A-List] The Upcoming Political Crisis in Washington Message-ID: <802CA76EA4B34D259AA799FD2C838E26@home9sg93n9r5y> The Upcoming Political Crisis in Washington By David Gordian URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12627 Global Research, March 9, 2009 In recent days we have seen even mainstream Democratic figures as Joe Stiglitz and Paul Krugman sound the alarm on what seems to be uncertainty in the Obama administration. Stiglitz, Krugman et al. are following in their essential critique a path well worn over the past few weeks by a range of commentators to be found as much among the Austrians as those on the liberal-to-left part of the spectrum. The fundamental point is, of course, that it is now clear to all but the militantly unreflective that Obama can - perhaps - save the Real economy or - perhaps - save Finance (i.e. Bank bond- and shareholders), but certainly not both. The increasing, but still relatively gentle, criticism of Stiglitz, Krugman and their ilk is owing to the fact that it is becoming all too clear that Obama is still unwilling to engage Finance in what might turn out to be the greatest intramural fight capitalism has ever seen. As always with the all-things-to-all-people Obama, it is possible to sift through his recent speeches and find words of comfort (to those who opt for saving the economy rather than Finance) even as the Fed, FDIC and Treasury keep pouring out trillions to Finance. Further, in areas as critical as civil liberties and Empire, Obama has managed to speak out of both sides of the mouth in a manner seldom if ever seen in history and - so far - to avoid the messes that usually come with that. [Examples: the U.S. upping the ante with Africom's new adventures, with forces moving further afield into S. Lanka, B'Desh and yet simultaneously getting brownie points for half a dozen nice words about speaking to Syria; doing all that is needed - including an unsavory folding before Rove - to maintain all of Bush 43's assertions of unrestricted executive power, while heightening the rhetoric about a new dawn of American Values; opening to Iran, but appointing Dennis Ross as the new U.S. legate, etc.] That the vast majority of citizens of the U.S and of its principal tributary nations are generally unconcerned about the expansion of liberal militarism, unless it is unsuccessful or impacts their standard of living negatively, and have no problems with dictatorial presidential power, unless it hurts them directly, is evidenced by the fact these and related issues were non-starters in the last electoral round. The Battle of the Bailout is different for one brutally simple reason: there is simply too much at stake for the two rival formations of capitalist power to come up with the usual compromise solutions that have seen unity in the face of past challenges. The devil is in the details and while there is a surfeit of sets of details any one of which makes for fascinating reading, a look at the big picture as regards the politics of the Crisis is in order. If Finance is saved at the cost of further trillions of a publicly funded bailout, it will be in a position of almost unimaginable strength as far as the further consolidation of ownership of the US (and world) Real economy. Therefore, it is hard to see how non-Finance capital can possibly be enthusiastic about allowing these rentier interests to acquire at bargain-basement prices great swaths of their various industries. At the time of writing, market capitalization of several Fortune 500 firms is being pummeled by the very crisis that Finance - as proximate cause, pace Marxist friends - has triggered. On February 20, 2009, GM, admittedly on the verge of bankruptcy, had a market capitalization of less than $1 billion. It doesn't take much foresight to see what the vulture brigade of Finance would make of this unique conjuncture. Likewise, the sense of outrage that non-Finance capital feels at the prospect of the crisis being exploited so mercilessly by the very forces that caused it is an additional guarantor that acquiescence is just not in the cards. The Rubin Gang around Obama may intone as menacingly as it likes the promise that failure to bail out Finance will lead to the end of capitalism and the American Way of Life, but this time it's not going to fly. (Let it be noted in passing that such warnings delivered by one side of the mouth are and will continue to be accompanied by sad songs from the other about, e.g., the transfer of wealth from poor to rich that has occurred in the past few decades [engineered thanks largely to the Rubin Gang itself, of course.]) The contours of the upcoming political battle are not yet clear: each side will use its surrogate experts, agitators and useful idiots, but the very gentleness of the Stiglitz/Krugman warnings are an indication that such as they still hope that mortal combat may be avoided. This is, of course, pure fantasy. These two groupings, acting in concert, are the force that has given us a) the national security state, b) multiple armed interventions, covert and front-door, from Guatemala and Greece, to Iraq, Pakistan and fill in the blank, all the while building an executive power that Augustus would have envied, so neither of them are going to be put off by the prospect of political conflict. More important, they both know the real score: the bailout of Finance will debase the integrity of U.S. economic and political power, and by consequence, that of the entire capitalist world that has come to depend on the U.S. as the last line of defense against chaos. So in that sense the long-mooted euthanasia of the rentiers is the "right" prescription and will be seen as so by both the leaders of the "Real" economy and by the public at large, save those who remain unable to distinguish between Bailout and Stimulus. But the genesis of the crisis itself reveals the stark truth about the actual existing balance of power: the controlled bubble-bust economy of the past two decades is not simply the core engine of growth for world capitalism; far, far more importantly it is both the result of and the ongoing reinforcement of the political and intellectual hegemony that Finance has built up before and during that time. No hegemonic power has ever willingly given up its position of dominance and there is no reason to suppose that the forces that paid for and orchestrated the Washington Consensus through use of the U.S. state - i.e. the power that backed it up - will be the first, though Stiglitz and Krugman are to be commended for suggesting that they do just that. David Gordian is a feature film producer and student of international affairs, with a special interest in South Asia. He currently lives in Toronto From cbcox at ilstu.edu Thu Mar 12 07:21:15 2009 From: cbcox at ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:21:15 -0500 Subject: [A-List] Iran's Reformists Fail to Unite References: Message-ID: <49B90C4B.95F76D1D@ilstu.edu> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > > Four more years for Mr. Ahmadinejad? -- Yoshie Another account (I forget where I read it) says the opposite. These multiple candidates are agreed on as a tactic to test which one will be strongest. early in May all but one will withdraw. Carrol From glparramatta at greenleft.org.au Wed Mar 11 23:24:18 2009 From: glparramatta at greenleft.org.au (glparramatta) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:24:18 +1100 Subject: [A-List] What's new at Links: Lessons of Great Depression; Women in Russian Revolution; John Bellamy Foster; Water crisis; Michael Lebowitz; El Salvador Message-ID: <49B89C82.2010002@greenleft.org.au> What's new at Links: Lessons of Great Depression; Women in Russian Revolution; John Bellamy Foster; Water crisis; Michael Lebowitz; El Salvador * * * Subscribe free to Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal - at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 Visit and bookmark http://links.org.au and add it to your RSS feed (http://links.org.au/rss.xml). If you would like us to consider an article, please send it to links at dsp.org.au *Please pass on to anybody you think will be interested in /Links/. * * * Lessons from the past: The Great Depression and the Communist Party of Australia By Dave Holmes [This is an excerpt from the new pamphlet, Meltdown! A socialist view of the capitalist crisis, by Resistance Books. Meltdown! features essays by John Bellamy Foster, Phil Hearse, Adam Hanieh, Lee Sustar and others. Purchase a copy from Resistance Books .] The current economic crisis is a fundamental crisis of the world capitalist system. British socialist Phil Hearse calls it the "third slump" in the history of the capitalism (the other two being the Great Depression of the 1930s and the 1974-75 sharp downturn). And the levels of mass distress may yet come to rival the 1930s. * Read more Pamphlet: Comrades in arms: Women in the Russian Revolution To mark International Women's Day, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal is publishing an excerpt from Resistance Books' Comrades in arms: Women in the Russian Revolution, by Kathy Fairfax, and making available the entire pamphlet to download in PDF format. * Read more John Bellamy Foster: A failed system -- The world crisis of capitalist globalisation and its impact on China By John Bellamy Foster John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. He is coauthor, with Fred Magdoff, of The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (Monthly Review Press, January 2009) among numerous other works. This article was originally a presentation delivered to the International Conference on the Critique of Capital in the Era of Globalization, Suzhou University, Suzhou, China, January 11, 2009. It appeared in the March edition of Monthly Review and is posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with John Bellamy Foster's permission. * Read more Sydney, April 10-12 (Easter), 2009: World at a Crossroads - Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century World At a Crossroads: Fighting for Socialism in the 21st Century * Read more Animation: `Closed Zone', by Yoni Goldman, the animator of `Waltz with Bashir' Despite declarations that it has "disengaged" from the Gaza Strip, Israel maintains control of the Strip's overland border crossings, territorial waters and air space. This includes substantial, albeit indirect, control of the Rafah Crossing. During the past 18 months, Israel tightened its closure of Gaza, almost completely restricting the passage of goods and people both to and from the Strip. These policies punish innocent civilians with the goal of exerting pressure on the [elected] Hamas government, violating the rights of 1.5 million people who seek only to live ordinary lives -- to be reunited with family, to pursue higher education, to receive quality medical treatment and to earn a living. * Read more Market madness: `Oversupply' of water tanks during a record water crisis! By Dave Holmes Melbourne, February 26, 2009 -- Australian plastics manufacturer Nylex has been placed in the hands of receivers. Nylex is a well-known name -- the company produces the iconic Esky, water tanks, wheelie bins, hose and garden fittings and interior trimmings for car manufacturers. According to the February 13 Melbourne Age, "The drought and a government rebate stimulated demand for water tanks, but oversupply pushed down prices and demand collapsed after substantial rain in Queensland and NSW." * Read more Michael Lebowitz: The path to human development -- capitalism or socialism? The following is the preface to an important article in the March 2009 issue of Monthly Review by Michael Lebowitz, entitled "The path to human development: capitalism or socialism?". Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal encourages its readers to follow the link below to the full article. Michael Lebowitz will be a featured guest at the World at a Crossroads conference, to be held in Sydney, Australia, on April 10-12, 2009, organised by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, Resistance and Green Left Weekly. Visit http://www.worldATACrossroads.org for full agenda and to book your tickets. By Michael A. Lebowitz If we believe in people, if we believe that the goal of a human society must be that of "ensuring overall human development", our choice is clear: socialism or barbarism. * Read more El Salvador's left poised for election victory: FMLN promises a people-centred government By Erica Thompson February 26, 2009 -- Committee in Solidarity of the People of El Salvador (CISPES) -- Polls on the March 15 presidential vote show the election will likely open a new progressive chapter in El Salvador's long, violent history of war and dictatorships with a victory by the left-wing FMLN, which is promising to build a people-centred government. But the right is not taking its impending defeat lightly; it has been orchestrating a massive fear campaign and has worked feverishly to secure corporate-driven development contracts before its rule is set to expire. * Read more * * * Links seeks to promote the international exchange of information, experience of struggle, theoretical analysis and views of political strategy and tactics within the international left. It is a forum for open and constructive dialogue between active socialists coming from different political traditions. It seeks to bring together those in the international left who are opposed to neoliberal economic and social policies. It aims to promote the renewal of the socialist movement in the wake of the collapse of the bureaucratic model of "actually existing socialism" in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. ATTENTION: Sign up for regular ``what's new'' announcement emails at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373 _______________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 12132 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090312/0be04e7a/attachment.txt From critical.montages at gmail.com Thu Mar 12 10:01:07 2009 From: critical.montages at gmail.com (Yoshie Furuhashi) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:01:07 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Ahmadinejad 'Not a Principlist Candidate' Message-ID: Unlike in the United States, there are more than two schools of the power elite for the Iranians to choose from. -- Yoshie Ahmadinejad 'not a Principlist candidate' Wed, 11 Mar 2009 10:19:54 GMT An Iranian Principlist lawmaker dismisses speculations that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will seek reelection on the Principlist platform. "Ahmadinejad will be an independent candidate, just as he was in the previous elections. He ran as an independent and was not backed by the Principlist camp," Ali Motahari said, according to a Wednesday report published in Tabnak. "We will have three groups in the upcoming elections. One will be the independents which will back Ahmadinejad as their candidate. Another will be the Reformists and finally the Principlists," he added. Motahari also rejected claims that the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, favors Ahmadinejad. Ayatollah Khamenei reproached a certain individual who had said President Ahmadinejad is the Leader's preferred candidate for the June 12 elections, he said. His comments come as several Principlist lawmakers had recently implied that Ahmadinejad would be the camp's sole nominee. Iran has scheduled its 10th presidential elections for June 12, 2009. Former president Mohammad Khatami, former Majlis speaker Mehdi Karroubi and the country's last prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi have announced their bid for the presidential palace on the Reformist platform. No candidate has officially entered the race on the Principlist platform as of yet. From tboyle at rosehill.net Thu Mar 12 10:49:36 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:49:36 -0800 Subject: [A-List] Thomas Barnett resurfaces in 2009. Listen up. Message-ID: Great Powers:America and the World After Bush Thomas P.M. Barnett Watch online http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=10243&SectionName= Thomas P.M. Barnett talks about the challenges and opportunities facing the United States in the world today and describes what he thinks the world will look like in the future. Mr. Barnett spoke at Politics and Prose in Washington, DC. Includes Q&A. Barnett, columnist and contributing editor at Esquire magazine, regularly serves as an adviser to the Pentagon, the State Department, and members of the intelligence community. He is the author of "The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century." For more, visit: thomaspmbarnett.com. The Short Version of Barnett's "Pentagons New Map" 2005 - 23 minutes. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/thomas_barnett_draws_a_new_map_for_peace.html The real Thomas Barnett: 2.5 hours lecture at the war college, 2004 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4689061169761152025 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 5834 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090312/6088fe9c/attachment.txt From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Mar 13 08:09:57 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:09:57 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Downward Spiral's Silver Lining Message-ID: <49BA6935.80203@ashisuto.co.jp> End of Lonely Plastic Culture by Jan Lundberg Culture Change Letter #234 (February 06 2009) We all see and feel the intensifying depression of the consumer economy, with incalculable human costs such as hunger, loss of homes, sense of failure, and fear of the unknown. This column has long warned of collapse of the petroleum economy and of the ecosystem, and we don't feel good about being right about bad news. However, we have always maintained there is a better way to live life than to trash the planet as isolated consumers under the yoke of exploitation. We've even pointed the way with specifics. Even the worst of the upcoming "Nature's correction" to our overshoot of ecological carrying capacity (apart from a nuke scenario) will have to result in the survivors' automatic extrication from the destructive, heartless system dominating us today. Coming from a bad place People yearn for more feeling and closeness, as evidenced by interest in romance stories, fierce attachment to pets, and worshiping pretty celebrities. The mass mania for the Beatles was a wake up call to society that young people needed something their parents and institutions were incapable of offering. Our modern society's hold on the masses is such that they are divided down to the individual level - so much so that even within the individual the heart and mind are separated, causing torment, confusion, and damage to Mother Nature. In addition to being divided, we are extremely busy. Our time in the US is limited to working, sleeping, and eating - and not much else. On weekends or vacations we have to just recover. We forget our youthful dreams and don't keep up our creative interests or branch out into others such as a musical instrument. People don't have time for simple pleasures or leisure, or they grab it on the run. "Quality time" is a recent notion; all time should be quality time, and we should never be compromising over spending days and nights with loved ones. Above all, our children need us far more than they need a teacher employed by the state. No wonder the elders are put out to pasture in institutions to die alone. We seek love and excitement through machines for virtual companionship or sex. For those who scoff at this and pride themselves on having real human relationships, their marriages are often arrangements for convenient sex and cohabitation. Not to be cynical about love, which is always with us, we must realize we've been sold a bill of goods by the ruling class: compete, work hard, buy things, and maybe then you'll get approval and a lover or spouse. Property and money are held to be the supreme accomplishment, as confirmed by divorces occurring as a result of either financial stress or selfish urges. What's going down today isn't all bad With time on our hands from unemployment, good deeds can happen as a result of reaching out to members of the community. Sharing is an important human trait that has been suppressed by divide-and-conquer domination. The tendency neighbors have to be useful to one another in order to assure survival is second to none in our human impulses, for this is our evolution (until very recently). This can manifest itself by a care-giver providing needed help while the young or sick or infirm person's family may pursue other activities such as rigging up a bike cart or foraging for firewood. The closeness that will increase from such interactions will bind us together again as bands and then tribes. The nation state was an effort to smash tribes, in part due to megalomania of the empire builders or the self interest of the king makers. When the unfolding collapse of the US economy and corporate globalism is further along, there will be tax rebellions and a redefining of new societies' priorities. Economies will be local, with distant nations or tribes linked through sail power - as practiced for many centuries before the oil-powered cargo ships that destroy the air and water. One's personal living environment will be shed of plastic crapola (thank you James Howard Kunstler) that has crapped out and no longer can be powered. It is too late for our generation and our civilization to be known other than the Plastic Culture, based on the non-biodegradability of our petroleum products we "need". But if there are future generations to study our trash, as today's archeologists and anthropologists do, they may also note that we seemed to cease and walk away from our Plastic Culture and its associated ways - perhaps about 2009? Forgotten pleasures return Although gardening is hard work, it is also healthful and social. Since nature knows no waste, we will become very efficient and go with the flows to minimize work and disruption to the land and waters that must be restored to health. So when food forests start to bear fruit and nuts, as well as coppicing for firewood and basket materials, for example, we will work less and have time again for our songs, stories and dances that all our ancestors' cultures indulged in religiously. Let's not skip the part about coping with toxic soils, the task of depaving, and the need to gather and hunt. These activities are unavoidable and done under duress in our transition. But those participating will be shown appreciation by those occupied by cooking, sewing, child rearing, making musical instruments, or acting as counselors or teachers. But keep picturing more time for these real things, including loving and family cohesion, when we are no longer working for abstract capitalist entities and doing the debilitating commutes. Above all, a relationship with nature will keep us together to overcome adversity. The future culture of sustainability will be more sane and liberating than modern living - for those who survive the collapsing house of toxic cards. The sooner we get started in dismantling the present failed system, and be our own leaders, the more of us and our fellow species will survive to continue what might still be the endless dance of evolution. The answers are here today, but must be sought out. In time, however, they will become obvious and spread quickly as people try to adapt to the loss of Big Brother the Boss Man of The Machine. Good riddance, and hello tomorrow's new age. You may say I'm a dreamer, but as one of the former Beatles sang, I'm not the only one. Give peace a chance. It's getting better all the time. http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=314&Itemid=1 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Mar 13 08:51:58 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 07:51:58 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [A-List] Stewart hammers Cramer on `The Daily Show' Message-ID: <103167.78996.qm@web180112.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Stewart hammers Cramer on `The Daily Show' By JAKE COYLE AP Entertainment Writer AP Photo/Jason DeCrow???? ?Stewart hammers Cramer on `The Daily Show' NEW YORK (AP) -- Jon Stewart hammered Jim Cramer and ?his network, CNBC, in their anticipated face-off on "The Daily ?Show," repeatedly chastising the "Mad Money" host for putting entertainment above journalism. "I understand that you want to make finance entertaining, but it's not a ... game," Stewart told Cramer, adding in an expletive during the show's Thursday taping. The episode was scheduled to air at 11 p.m. EDT on Comedy Central. It was perhaps the hardest lashing Stewart has given to a TV commentator since 2004 when he called Tucker Carlson and his then co-host Paul Begala "partisan hacks" on CNN's "Crossfire," the since canceled political commentary program. The program opened in mock hype of the confrontation, ?which caught headlines through the week as each snipped at the other over the air. The show announced it as "the weeklong feud of the century." In his opening, Stewart announced that it was "go time." He played a video clip of Cramer's Thursday guest appearance ?on "The Martha Stewart Show" in which Cramer beat a mound ?of dough, pretending it was Stewart. Said Stewart: "Mr. Cramer, don't you destroy enough dough ?on your own show?" Once Cramer came out for the interview, Stewart wondered: ?"How the hell did we get here?" Cramer, his sleeves characteristically rolled up, said he was a "fan of the show." But the humorous tone - at least for Stewart - changed as the interview continued. Stewart repeatedly said Cramer wasn't his target, but ?aired clip after clip of the CNBC pundit. "Roll 210!" announced Stewart, like a prosecutor. "Roll 212!" Most were from a 2006 interview not meant for TV in which Cramer spoke openly about the duplicity of the market. "I can't reconcile the brilliance and knowledge that you have of the intricacies of the market with the crazy ... I see you do every night," said the comedian. Stewart said he and Cramer are both snake-oil salesman, only "The Daily Show" is labeled as such. He claimed CNBC shirked its journalistic duty by believing corporate lies, ?rather than being an investigative "powerful tool of illumination." And he alleged CNBC was ultimately in bed with the businesses ?it covered - that regular people's stocks and 401Ks were "capitalizing your adventure." For his part, Cramer disagreed with Stewart on a few points, but mostly acknowledged that he could have done a better job foreseeing the economic collapse: "We all should have seen it more." Cramer said CNBC was "fair game" to the criticism and acknowledged the network was perhaps overeager to believe ?the information it was fed from corporations. "I, too, like you, want to have a successful show," said Cramer, defending his methods on "Mad Money." He later added: "Should we have been constantly pointing out the mistakes that were made? Absolutely. I truly wish we had done more." Cramer insisted he was devoted to revealing corporate "shenanigans," to which Stewart retorted: "It's easy to get on this after the fact." At one point, Cramer sounded the reformed sinner, responding ?to Stewart's plea for more levelheaded, honest commentary: "How about I try that?" said Cramer. "I'll do that." By the end, the two-segment interview went far beyond its ?allotted time. Comedy Central said the on-air version would be cut by about eight minutes, though the entire interview would ?be available unedited on ComedyCentral.com on Friday. --- On the Net: http://www.thedailyshow.com/ http://www.cnbc.com/ ? 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy. From tboyle at rosehill.net Thu Mar 12 20:44:08 2009 From: tboyle at rosehill.net (Todd Boyle) Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:44:08 -0800 Subject: [A-List] Fw: We Still Have Two Wars to Stop! (Soapbox Actions!) Message-ID: Theme song for the banking collapse: Grateful Dead: "come round the bend, you know it's the end. " "the fireman screams and the engine just gleams" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0HM0RtRv-E Todd >From: "Tim Boyle" >To: "Todd Boyle" >Subject: Fw: We Still Have Two Wars to Stop! (Soapbox Actions!) >Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:51:08 -0600 > >Are you getting these Todd? I am sure you will appreciate >Cindy. Have to confress I haven't downloaded one of her shows yet, >but I aim to and I like these emails. >----- Original Message ----- >From: Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox >To: timcboyle at earthlink.net >Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2009 8:42 PM >Subject: We Still Have Two Wars to Stop! (Soapbox Actions!) > >Cindy >Sheehan's Soapbox > >Sunday 2-3 (PST) > >www.Green960.com > >ONLINE AND ON RADIO! > >The situations (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Palestine, Israel, >Pakistan) in the Middle East are worsening as is the US economy! > >The wars and the downward spiral of the economy are inexorably >linked and to save our jobs and homes, we must end the wars in Iraq >and Afghanistan and we must end belligerence as a foreign policy >tool! The anti-war movement must not wait a minute longer or waver >even for a second in our resolve for peace! > >Actions that you can do! > >Let's >Jam up the War Machine! > >Join legendary anti-war Musician, Country Joe McDonald, legendary >Pentagon whistle-blower, Daniel Ellsberg: music acts, Joey Racano >and Cool Hand Uke, with Cindy Sheehan on Thursday, March 19th (6th >Anniversary of the invasion of Iraq) from 7-10pm at the >Grand >Lake Theater in Oakland. Tickets are only $10.00/each and all >proceeds go to Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox! > >Voters >for Peace > >Take the Voters for Peace pledge and read timely info about US >foreign "policy" in the Middle East...pressure your Congress reps to >blockade any additional troops to Afghanistan and for a speedy and >complete withdrawal from Iraq. > >IVAW >Winter Soldier at UC Berkeley on Weds, March 11th. > >World >Can't Wait > >Join World Can't Wait on Thursday, March 19th for nationwide >protests. Go to their website for more info. > >ANSWER >Coalition > >Join the ANSWER Coalition Saturday, March 21st for nationwide >protests. Go to their website for more info. > >Florida >Mass March for Peace: Saturday, March 28th > >Where's Cindy? > >Cindy will be at rallies in >Berkeley >on the 19th, in >San >Diego on the 21st and in >Fresno >on the 22nd. Click on the names of the cities for more info. Hope >you can come out and meet Cindy if you are in the area! > >Listen >to Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox at our archives. Every show is archived >for free and on Sunday, March 15th, Cindy will chat with former >Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Country Joe McDonald. > >If you want the Soapbox to promote your peace/justice activity, send >an email with the info and a link to: >Cindy at CindySheehansSoapbox.com, and please put: "Peace/Justice >Event" in the subject line. > >DONATE >TO KEEP THE SOAPBOX ON THE AIR! > >OR SEND A CHECK MADE OUT TO: > >CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX, LLC to > >CINDY SHEEHAN'S SOAPBOX, LLC > >55 CHUMASERO DR STE 5D > >SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94132 > >Cindy Recommends: > >We Hold These Truths > >by economist Richard C. Clark > >(her first Soapbox guest) > >TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS LIST, SEND AN EMAIL WITH "UNSUBSCRIBE" IN >THE SUBJECT LINE TO: CINDY at CINDYSHEEHANSSOAPBOX.COM -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 5619 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090312/49a0bbcc/attachment.txt From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Mar 13 09:23:12 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 08:23:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [A-List] Commentary: Chrysler secrecy is a big stick Message-ID: <642348.83012.qm@web180108.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090313/OPINION03/903130343 ? Friday, March 13, 2009 Daniel Howes Commentary: Chrysler secrecy is a big stick Chrysler LLC's got a confusing Canada complex. In testimony before a parliamentary committee, Vice Chairman ?Tom LaSorda threatened to shutter Chrysler's three plants ?there unless it can cut labor costs, secure an $800 ?million loan from the government and resolve a nagging tax problem worth some $335 million to the struggling automaker. "Failure to satisfactorily resolve these three factors ?will place our Canadian manufacturing operations at a significant disadvantage relative to our manufacturing operations in North America and may very well impair our ability to continue to produce," LaSorda told the automotive subcommittee of the House of Commons in Ottawa. Brinksmanship by a Windsor native whose father ?was a longtime member of the Canadian Auto Workers? You bet. That, and yet more evidence of Chrysler's penchant for using its private-company status to send mixed messages and sow confusion amid anxiety. Just five days before LaSorda dropped the hammer on parliament, the CAW and such plant towns as Windsor, Etobicoke and Brampton, his alter ego, Vice Chairman Jim Press, said this in an internal memo: "In Canada, we were the No. 1 selling vehicle manufacturer in February for the first time ever in our 84-year history," ?he wrote in an e-mail dated March 6. "Congratulations ?to our Canadian operations and our dealers for doing such a great job in challenging times." Translation: Thanks for doing so well in Canada under trying circumstances. But if we don't get what we want, ?we'll be forced to shut it all down, to make nearby Windsor an economic ghost town and to blame the government for euthanizing 9,400 direct Chrysler jobs and thousands more at dealerships. If nothing else, the Chrysler controlled by the shadowy Cerberus Capital Management LP of New York has shown a recurring willingness to muscle constituents ?reluctant to accede to its demands. Just ask Julie Brown's ?Plastech Engineered Products Inc., the Dearborn supplier driven into liquidation last year in a fight with Chrysler. Could the Canadians be next? Probably not, considering ?rising joblessness, dismal auto sales and the fact a Chrysler pull-out would have serious repercussions for ?the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Ontario's status as the epicenter of Canada's foreign-owned auto industry. But the tactic? More of the same for a company whose owner won't tell the public who owns it and won't ask ?those investors to pump more capital into the nearly failing enterprise because that would violate Cerberus's ?investor guidelines. Instead, American taxpayers -- and, now, the Canadians -- are expected to write fat checks for an automaker whose major investors could be public pension funds or Warren Buffett or sovereign wealth funds controlled by foreign governments. At least struggling General Motors ?Corp., its market cap whittled to $1.33 billion, is obligated to disclose the large owners of whatever equity remains. Chrysler's got a credibility problem exacerbated by secrecy, less scrutiny and more corporate muscle. ?It gets a $4 billion lifeline from Treasury, launches a ?massive incentive program that pumps its retail market share higher and then, in Press's words, emphasizes "that no government loan money was used to fund customer incentives." How do we know? Rival Ford Motor Co., for one, has been privately accusing Chrysler of doing just that -- using government money to drive sales that prove Chrysler's viability long enough to bank more government ?money and then finalize an alliance with Fiat SpA of Italy. Not true, Chrysler says. And we'll all just have to take their word for it. Daniel Howes' column runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at (313) 222-2106, dchowes at detnews.com or detnews.com/howes. Catch him Fridays with Paul W. Smith on 760-WJR. From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Mar 13 10:38:12 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 09:38:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [A-List] As capitalism stares into the abyss, was Marx right all along? ( Yes) Message-ID: <899963.53885.qm@web180101.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Does a bear s___ in the woods ? ^^^^^^ Stephen King: As capitalism stares into the abyss, was Marx right all along? We may avoid a 1930s Depression but the best we can hope for may be a 1990s Japan Monday, 2 March 2009 ? http://us.mg204.mail.yahoo.com/dc/launch?.partner=sbc&.rand=c27i56kobk3ja ????"Modern bourgeois society ... a society that has conjured up ?such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether ?world whom he has called up by his spells." Those of you with revolutionary zeal will immediately recognise these words. Penned by Karl Marx in 1848, they form part of the Communist Manifesto. Marx, like Adam Smith before him, had ?a historical view of society's development. Capitalism, with its bourgeoisie, had replaced feudalism, but capitalism, according to Marx, would be replaced by communism. Capitalism was inherently unstable, as Marx noted later in the same paragraph: ".....the commercial crises... by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, ?there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity ? the epidemic of over-production." Whatever else one thinks of Marx, he certainly knew a thing ?or two about the business cycle. Were he alive now, he would ?surely claim his theories were being vindicated. We are, after all, witnessing the most remarkable collapse in economic activity around the world. Take Japan. In November, industrial production ?fell 8 per cent. That was bad enough. In December, production dropped another 9 per cent. That was even more remarkable. January's production figures, though, are simply eye-wateringly awful, showing a further 10 per cent decline. Production, then, is down almost 30 per cent in just three months, a pace of decline unprecedented in Japanese post-war economic history. Or how about the US, where we discovered last week that national income contracted in the final quarter of last year at an annual rate of more than 6 per cent, the biggest drop since the early 1980s. Then there's Taiwan, where exports have been in freefall in recent months. Not to mention dear old Blighty, where the economy might end up shrinking by approaching 4 per cent this year. The pace of decline in global economic output is extraordinary. On virtually any metric, we are seeing the worst global downturn ?in decades: worse than the aftermath of the first oil shock in the mid-1970s and worse than the early-1980s downswing, when the ?world economy had to cope with a doubling of the oil price, the ?tough love of monetarism and the onset of the Latin American debt crisis. Moreover, this time we cannot use the resurgence of inflation as an excuse for lost output: the credit crunch in all its many guises has seen to that. Instead, we have a world of collapsing output combined with falling prices: a world, then, of depression. For many years, Marxist ideas appeared to be totally irrelevant. ?The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 brought to an end the era of Marxist-Leninist Communism, while China's decision to join the ?modern world at the beginning of the 1980s drew a line under its earlier Maoist ideology. In western economies, Marxist ideas were at their most potent after the First Word War when the likes of Rosa Luxemburg could smell revol-ution in the air and as the Roaring Twenties gave way to the Great Depression of the 1930s. ?I'm not suggesting we're entering revolutionary times. However, it seems increasingly likely that the economic landscape in the years ahead will be fundamentally different from the landscape ?that has dominated the working lives of people like me who entered the workforce in the 1980s. We've lived through decades of plenty, where incomes have risen rapidly, where credit has been all too easily available and where recessions have been mostly modest affairs. Suddenly, we're facing a collapse in activity on a truly Marxist scale. It's difficult to imagine the world's love affair with free markets being sustained under this onslaught. The extreme ?nature of this downswing will change our lives for decades to come. The first change relates to the allocation of capital. Increasingly, ?policymakers are accepting that market forces, left to their own devices, will lead to a race to the bottom. The dangers are becoming greater by the day. Interest rates are close to zero while prices and wages ?are in danger of declining. If deflation takes hold, real interest rates ?on cash will start to rise, creating perverse incentives in capital markets. Why bother to buy equities or corporate bonds if you are nicely rewarded for hanging on to an entirely risk-free piece of paper? The efforts to stop this vicious circle are increasingly focused on bypassing the banking and financial system. As central banks ?widen the assets they are prepared to purchase to maintain the flow of credit to the economy at large, they are increasingly getting into the capital allocation game. They, and not the market, will at the margin decide whether companies and households are creditworthy. ?And as governments increase their spending plans to ward off a ?catastrophic loss of demand, they, rather than companies, will decide on how our savings should be allocated. The second change relates to an increased national bias in the ?allocation of capital. As Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, ?pushes to offer government funding to French car companies on condition they don't outsource French jobs abroad, as US Congress ?signs off a stimulus package with more than a hint of a "Buy American" ?policy, and as the UK Government pushes to encourage bailed-out banks to lend domestically as opposed to internationally, we appear ?to be turning our backs on the previous world of heightened cross-border trade and capital flows. While these flows have undoubtedly been volatile, they have nevertheless allowed emerging ?economies, in particular, to gain a foothold on the development ladder. ?Are we about to cast these countries asunder in our desperate attempt to fix our domestic problems? The third change relates to interference in the price mechanism. When it comes to Sir Fred Goodwin's pension, this isn't so surprising, but the price mechanism extends far and wide. At the microeconomic ?level, we'll enter a world of subsidised loans with murky political ?undertones. At the macroeconomic level, countries may take the opportunity to manipulate their exchange rates in an attempt either to ?gain a competitive advantage or to "default" to foreign creditors. Some of these changes may be absolutely necessary to prevent an outright collapse in global economic activity (although the rise ?in protect-ionist pressures is surely a retrograde step). They also suggest, though, that there will be no return to "business as usual" for ?market forces. The cost of avoiding depression is a heightened ?level of state intervention on a scale unimaginable for those who believe in the virtues of free markets. While such intervention may ?help prevent the worst ravages of economic collapse, it will ultimately do little to foster the entrepreneurial spirit and risk-taking behaviour which have, in the past, contributed so much to rising living standards. ?We may avoid a 1930s Depression but, increasingly, we may find the best we can hope for is a 1990s Japan. Not quite a Marxist revolution, ?then, but certainly a lasting sea-change in economic performance. From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Mar 13 10:42:49 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:42:49 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Benito Mussolini In Pantheon Of Latvian Heroes Message-ID: <627C9F2865FE4A369C0C0A125BBDBC1F@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 9:26 AM Subject: [stopnato] Benito Mussolini In Pantheon Of Latvian Heroes http://www.regnum.ru/english/1136182.html Regnum (Russia) March 13, 2009 Mussolini is one of the official heroes of Latvia Benito Mussolini is one of the official heroes of Latvia, said Sergey Malakhovskiy, the member of the Anti-Fascist Committee of Latvia during the press conference in Moscow on March, 12, reports a REGNUM correspondent. According to Malakhovskiy, the name of Mussolini is among other names inscribed on plaques in the ?pantheon of Latvian heroes?. In reply to a request by a REGNUM correspondent for details about the ?pantheon? and what attitude Latvia has nowadays toward the Italian dictator, the member of the Latvian Anti-Fascist Committee said: "The pantheon of Latvian heroes is a Memorial Complex in the Fraternal Cemetery in Riga, where on the memorial plaques are inscribed the names of chevaliers of the Order of Lacplesis ? the highest military award of Latvia. "In due course, the Order was awarded to some leaders of states, participants of World War II being allies of Germany. I am not aware if Hitler has been awarded the Order, but Mussolini was awarded it in 1925. His name is on the plaque. And by this Benito Mussolini is caught in the circle of the heroes of Latvia," said Sergey Malakhovsky. ... It is worth mentioning that there are memorial plaques of chevaliers of the Order of Lacplesis at the Memorial Complex of the Fraternal Cemetery in Riga. The name of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini is among other names inscribed on these plaques. The central grave hosts a memorial to the general-lieutenant of SS troops Gruppenfuhrer Rudolf Bangerskis and one of the operators of the mass shootings of civilians in 1941-1942, Voldemars Weiss. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls MARKETPLACE From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Mar 13 10:43:27 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:43:27 -0400 Subject: [A-List] New Europe: Latvian Waffen SS Veterans Plan March Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 9:18 AM Subject: [stopnato] New Europe: Latvian Waffen SS Veterans Plan March http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=41927&cid=219&p=13.03.2009 Voice of Russia March 13, 2009 Waffen SS veterans plan to hold demo in Latvia Former members of Latvian Waffen SS have announced their readiness to hold a march on the 16th despite a ban from the authorities. Parliamentary deputies in Riga banned the march for fear of clashes with anti-fascists and mass riots. Members of Latvia?s 150-thousand strong SS legion set up by Hitler's command during the Second World War took part in punitive operations and mass killings of Jews, Belorussians and Latvians. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls MARKETPLACE From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Mar 13 10:46:18 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:46:18 -0400 Subject: [A-List] NATO Summit: Romania Backs Takeover Of Black Sea, Balkans Message-ID: <0F85AB8248464C00BC69D08A47CD7AA0@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 8:51 AM Subject: [stopnato] NATO Summit: Romania Backs Takeover Of Black Sea, Balkans http://www.financiarul.ro/2009/03/13/attending-nato-summit-romania-will-support-continuation-of-enlargement-process/ Financiarul (Romania) March 13, 2009 Attending NATO Summit, Romania will support continuation of enlargement process Attending the NATO Summit to be held in early April, Romania will support the continuation of the enlargement of the Alliance, said President Traian Basescu on Thursday at the end of the meeting of the Supreme Council for the Country's Defence (CSAT). The Head of State made it clear that Romania stuck to its position to Ukraine in the process meant to make it come nearer to the North Atlantic Alliance. "Romania will support the continuation of NATO enlargement and, from this point of view, we would like a solution to be found to the problem of Macedonia, which got an invitation on condition it should come to an understanding with Greece as regards the name of the country. "We hope that this summit will see that they have found a solution for Macedonia to start the process of integration with NATO structures," said the President. .... "Last but not least we shall try to develop the themes connected to the NATO presence in the Black Sea region and in the Western Balkans as elements of security for the states in the region. At the same time we shall stick to the position made known in Bucharest, which was also mentioned in the documents of the summit referring to the NATO responsibilities in point of energy security," concluded the Head of State. Traian Basescu said that the high-level meeting of the Alliance to be held in April would sanction the reintegration of France's military forces in the NATO structures. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 11New Members Visit Your Group Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Mar 13 10:47:03 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:47:03 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Ukraine, Georgia To Join NATO: Scheffer Message-ID: <7DB89BFE59C54BF09D4DC8493CD5A099@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: rwrozoff at yahoo.com To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 8:45 AM Subject: [stopnato] Ukraine, Georgia To Join NATO: Scheffer http://www.kyivpost.com/world/37325 Interfax-Ukraine March 13, 2009 Ukraine, Georgia will join NATO, Secretary General Scheffer asserts Poland, Warsaw - Ukraine and Georgia will eventually become members of NATO, NATO Secretary General Jaap De Hoop Scheffer reiterated at a Warsaw conference Friday, commemorating Poland's accession to NATO 10 years ago. "That decision stands: Ukraine and Georgia will eventually be members of NATO [...], but enlargement is a performance-based project, and the question of when depends on their performance," Scheffer said. NATO has set up Ukrainian and Georgian commissions, which will work together with the governments of those countries to bring about the necessary reforms for accession, Scheffer added. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls MARKETPLACE From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Mar 13 10:51:44 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:51:44 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Paper: Washington Plans Global NATO To Replace UN Message-ID: <077664E88D414C1BA5AAD564B83F861C@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, March 13, 2009 8:43 AM Subject: [stopnato] Paper: Washington Plans Global NATO To Replace UN http://www.russiatoday.com/Politics/2009-03-13/NATO_s_expansion_vector___global.html Russia Today March 13, 2009 NATO?s expansion vector ? global? -The idea to exclude Russia and China from global decision making is counterproductive. The expert added: ?This community of democratic nations is like a new Holy Alliance [a 19th century alliance between Russia, Prussia and Austria meant to provide pan-European security and promote Christian values] and a very anachronistic idea.? Barack Obama?s administration sees NATO as the nucleus for a global organization of democracies that will eventually replace the United Nations, believes an influential Russian newspaper. Washington wants NATO to be expanded by inviting counties like Australia, Japan, Brazil and South Africa and become a global organization tackling not only security issues but also epidemics and human rights, reports Kommersant daily on Friday. The next US Ambassador to NATO Ivo H. Daalder is a great supporter of this idea. Daalder, expert of the Brookings Institution and a foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama during the election campaign, is a strong proponent of the so-called Concert of Democracies. Exclusive club for democratic nations The idea, coined by the think-tank Princeton Project on National Security, is that the United Nations is outdated, because it was created to prevent a war between great nations, but now this threat is negligible. On the other hand, the UN is inefficient in dealing with local conflicts between small nations or between a great power and a small nation. Examples of those include conflicts in Darfur, Kosovo or, a more recent example, in South Ossetia. Authors of the concept, including Daalder, see the solution in an organization of democratic nations with resources both diplomatic and military to answer these challenges. According to them, democracies are eager to co-operate for the sake of defending human rights and providing securities, while authoritarian nations are not. If you drop out authoritarian regimes ? including the great powers of Russia and China ? then decision making will be quicker and action is far more likely to be taken. This Concert of Democracies will serve as a magnet for other nations and coerce them into becoming democracies in order to have a say on global affairs. The argument continues, saying that actions by this limited club including military ones will be legitimate, even if they violate national sovereignty of non-democratic nations, and will not need the sanction of the UN. Daalder believes that NATO is a prototype of the proposed concert, being an alliance of democracies with a long success record, and can be extended to the new global organization. The upcoming anniversary summit of the alliance in April may be the time when Daalder presents Washington?s reform plan to other NATO members, the newspaper Kommersant continues. The event will be a sort of ?family reunion? with no would-be members like Ukraine and Georgia invited. The event will be dedicated to a discussion of the future of the organization. Kommersant cites a source in the White House as saying that Vice President Joe Biden is among the supporters of the Concert of Democracies. During the security conference in Munich he mentioned that Washington wants its European partners to play a larger role, but this means they?ll have to take a larger share of the burden of maintaining international security. Inviting new non-European members to NATO will allow Europeans not to increase their expenditures. However it is not known what President Obama himself thinks about the idea, since he never commented on it in public. Experts doubt radical NATO reform The idea is unlikely to find much support, as both countries that would be invited to a Concert of Democracies and even present-day NATO members may see it as a US-dominated club and be reluctant to join it, Viktor Mizin, a political analyst from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, told RT. ?I doubt that countries like Australia, South Korea or Japan for that matter would rush to support future military operation both financially and militarily,? he said. The idea to exclude Russia and China from global decision making is counterproductive. The expert added: ?This community of democratic nations is like a new Holy Alliance [a 19th century alliance between Russia, Prussia and Austria meant to provide pan-European security and promote Christian values] and a very anachronistic idea,? he said. Ivo Daalder?s personal views do not determine US policy towards NATO, but it may help him in dealing with NATO members eager to increase the alliance?s influence, says Sergey Utkin from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations. .... =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 11New Members Visit Your Group Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Mar 13 11:10:12 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:10:12 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Decade Later: Poland Under NATO Nuclear Umbrella; War Zone Training Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: rwrozoff at yahoo.com To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 2:59 PM Subject: [stopnato] Decade Later: Poland Under NATO Nuclear Umbrella; War Zone Training http://www.polskieradio.pl/zagranica/news/artykul104114_Poland_s_10_years_in_NATO.html Polish Radio March 12, 2009 Poland's 10 years in NATO On March 12, 1999, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary entered NATO. The foreign ministers of those states signed accession documents in the US, in the presence of Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State in the Clinton administration. Bronislaw Geremek, the then Polish Foreign Minister, said at the commemoration ceremony that Poland has come back to the place where it belongs - the free world - and is no longer alone in the fight for freedom and independence. Poland joined NATO for "yours and our freedom", Geremek said then. For Poland, in 1999, the main argument to join NATO was the military safety of the country. Thankfully, the famous Article Five of the Washington Treaty, according to which an attack against one member state is treated as an offensive on them all, did not have to be used to defend Poland. Today Polish troops take part in all most important NATO operations: in Afghanistan and Kosovo, the training mission in Iraq and on the Mediterranean Sea. Thanks to the involvement of Polish troops in missions abroad, the country's military capabilities improved. Currently, NATO has 26 members....The youngest NATO states are Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria. Albania, Macedonia and Croatia are official candidates to the alliance. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 11New Members Visit Your Group Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From tal1 at cogeco.ca Fri Mar 13 11:10:37 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:10:37 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Latest US Missile Strike Kills At Least 14 In Pakistan Message-ID: <08573F7F0C2A4C058BF174CB9721BD74@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2009 3:15 PM Subject: [stopnato] Latest US Missile Strike Kills At Least 14 In Pakistan http://www.ptinews.com/pti%5Cptisite.nsf/0/599B5D98C3996365652575770061F607?OpenDocument Press Trust of India March 12, 2009 US drone attack kills 7 in Pak Islamabad - At least seven persons were killed in missile strikes carried out by a US drone in Pakistan's Kurram tribal region today. The US drone fired at least four missiles at a home in a village in Kurram agency, official sources were quoted by TV channels as saying. There was no official word on the casualties though TV channels and witnesses said seven persons were killed in the attack. .... ---------------------------------------------------------- http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-38479920090312 Reuters March 12, 2009 Suspected U.S. missiles kill 14 in Pakistan ISLAMABAD - Missiles believed to have been fired by U.S. pilotless drone aircraft hit a militant hideout and training camp in Pakistan on Thursday, a local official told Reuters, and a villager said at least 14 people were killed. The missiles struck in the Barjo area of Kurram tribal region, close to the Afghan border. "The training camp was completely destroyed," said Noor Islam, a villager in Barjo. He said 14 bodies had been recovered from the debris of the blitzed camp. .... The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of sensitivity over U.S. missiles strikes on Pakistani territory. Pakistan has told its American ally that the strikes are counter-productive in the long run because they often cause civilian casualties and fuel support for the militant cause. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Recent Activity 11New Members Visit Your Group Give Back Yahoo! for Good Get inspired by a good cause. Y! Toolbar Get it Free! easy 1-click access to your groups. Yahoo! Groups Start a group in 3 easy steps. Connect with others.. __,_._,___ From the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com Fri Mar 13 11:22:35 2009 From: the.buffalo.in.the.midst at gmail.com (Leighm) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:22:35 -0700 Subject: [A-List] Stewart hammers Cramer on `The Daily Show' In-Reply-To: <103167.78996.qm@web180112.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> References: <103167.78996.qm@web180112.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49BA965B.50202@gmail.com> Travus T. Hipp discusses the state of modern American political humor today: [March 13 2009] Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: ?Pundit Power To The People!?? Why Is Al Franken So Repugnant To The Rethuglicans? They Cannot Abide A Comedian In A Position Of Power My Site: http://leighm.net/wp/2009/03/13/tth_090313/ ArchiveDOTorg: http://www.archive.org/details/tth_090313 In... Other "News" [linkage onsite): The Obama White House has renewed the restrictions on Iran over their non-existent according to the IAEA ?nuclear weapons program?. But don?t worry ?little people?, it?s just ?routine?. . . . The NAACP has announced it will sue Wells Fargo and HSBC Holdings for ?red-lining? the type of loans issued to white and black Americans with similar credit scores. The NAACP has filed a class action suit but common sense and the criminality of this blatant act of racism would indicate a RICO Act lawsuit seems appropriate. . . . Bush?s Brain?s death squads - Dick Cheney controlled an ?off-the-government-books? and out-of-his office Assassination Squad. Seymour Hersh is about to publish on it in the New Yorker and there will be a forthcoming book on the topic including information on CIA activities in-country, in the US that is, which is absolutely illegal. . . . The CIA responds to Hersh?s accusations [Here] [The bullshit after the commentary is the result of letting comedians into the newsroom, The Onion News room.] http://leighm.net/wp/2009/03/13/tth_090313/ http://www.archive.org/details/tth_090313 Charles Brown wrote: > Stewart hammers Cramer on `The Daily Show' > By JAKE COYLE > AP Entertainment Writer > > AP Photo/Jason DeCrow > > Stewart hammers Cramer on `The Daily Show' > > NEW YORK (AP) -- Jon Stewart hammered Jim Cramer and > his network, CNBC, in their anticipated face-off on "The Daily > Show," repeatedly chastising the "Mad Money" host for putting > entertainment above journalism. > "I understand that you want to make finance entertaining, but > it's not a ... game," Stewart told Cramer, adding in an expletive during > the show's Thursday taping. The episode was scheduled to air at 11 p.m.EDT on Comedy Central. > It was perhaps the hardest lashing Stewart has given to a > TV commentator since 2004 when he called Tucker Carlson > and his then co-host Paul Begala "partisan hacks" on CNN's "Crossfire,"the since canceled political commentary program. > > The program opened in mock hype of the confrontation, > which caught headlines through the week as each snipped > at the other over the air. The show announced it as "the > weeklong feud of the century." > In his opening, Stewart announced that it was "go time." > He played a video clip of Cramer's Thursday guest appearance > on "The Martha Stewart Show" in which Cramer beat a mound > of dough, pretending it was Stewart. > Said Stewart: "Mr. Cramer, don't you destroy enough dough > on your own show?" > Once Cramer came out for the interview, Stewart wondered: > "How the hell did we get here?" > Cramer, his sleeves characteristically rolled up, said > he was a "fan of the show." > But the humorous tone - at least for Stewart - changed > as the interview continued. > Stewart repeatedly said Cramer wasn't his target, but > aired clip after clip of the CNBC pundit. > "Roll 210!" announced Stewart, like a prosecutor. "Roll 212!" > Most were from a 2006 interview not meant for TV in which > Cramer spoke openly about the duplicity of the market. > "I can't reconcile the brilliance and knowledge that you have of > the intricacies of the market with the crazy ... I see you do > every night," said the comedian. > Stewart said he and Cramer are both snake-oil salesman, > only "The Daily Show" is labeled as such. He claimed CNBC > shirked its journalistic duty by believing corporate lies, > rather than being an investigative "powerful tool of illumination." > And he alleged CNBC was ultimately in bed with the businesses > it covered - that regular people's stocks and 401Ks were > "capitalizing your adventure." > For his part, Cramer disagreed with Stewart on a few points, > but mostly acknowledged that he could have done a better > job foreseeing the economic collapse: "We all should have seen it more." > Cramer said CNBC was "fair game" to the criticism and > acknowledged the network was perhaps overeager to believe > the information it was fed from corporations. > "I, too, like you, want to have a successful show," said Cramer, > defending his methods on "Mad Money." He later added: > "Should we have been constantly pointing out the mistakes > that were made? Absolutely. I truly wish we had done more." > Cramer insisted he was devoted to revealing corporate > "shenanigans," to which Stewart retorted: "It's easy to get > on this after the fact." > At one point, Cramer sounded the reformed sinner, responding > to Stewart's plea for more levelheaded, honest commentary: > "How about I try that?" said Cramer. "I'll do that." > By the end, the two-segment interview went far beyond its > allotted time. Comedy Central said the on-air version would > be cut by about eight minutes, though the entire interview would > be available unedited on ComedyCentral.com on Friday. > --- > On the Net: > http://www.thedailyshow.com/ > http://www.cnbc.com/ > ? 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy. > > > From rasherrs at eircom.net Fri Mar 13 13:39:55 2009 From: rasherrs at eircom.net (Paddy Hackett) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:39:55 -0000 Subject: [A-List] Fianna Fail's strategy Message-ID: <003401c9a413$7d2db090$778911b0$@net> The following is my opinion: The Fianna Fail party has a strategy. It is my opinion that Brian Cowan, as Taoiseach, is being increasingly viewed by the Fianna Fail Party as a transitory leader of the Party. The Party will sacrifice him to save its skin. He will be saddled, so it hopes, with all the blame concerning the harsh decisions that are currently being made by the Fianna Fail led government. Consequently, in true Stalinist fashion, he will be eventually sacrificed to "the masses" to save the Party. When he has done the "dirty work" he will be shouldered with the blame for Fianna Fail's lack of popularity. He will then be replaced by a new and "shining" leader. Since many of the nasty decisions will have already been taken by Cowan, the new leader will appear as free from such blame --a smiling and kinder figure -a people's person. It is hoped in this way that any popular support lost by the party will be recovered as a result of the election of its new leader. The mass media will give her/him the customary honeymoon period. In this way it is hoped that the party will win the next general election. Fianna Fail hopes to be able to claim too that it saved the nation from collapse under very adverse global economic conditions. In this way Cowan, as a figure from Greek tragedy, will have fallen on his own sword. The Party, by distancing itself from Brian Cowan, will have saved the day by exclusively holding Cowan responsible for having imposed harsh policies on the working class. There is no better party than Fianna Fail to successfully appeal to patriotism as a device for rallying the Irish people behind it. Paddy Hackett htttp:\\patrickhackett.blogspot.com From cdb1003 at prodigy.net Fri Mar 13 16:07:14 2009 From: cdb1003 at prodigy.net (Charles Brown) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:07:14 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [A-List] Fictitious capital and the transition out of capitalism - Loren Goldner Message-ID: <11364.71526.qm@web180116.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> Subject: Fictitious capital and the transition out of capitalism - Loren Goldner Fictitious capital and the transition out of capitalism - Loren Goldner Submitted by libcom on Nov 17 2005 An exploration of the growing fictitious dimension of the economy and its implications for class struggle. This text is from theBreak Their Haughty Power web site ?at http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner Fictitious Capital and the Transition Out of Capitalism (Loren Goldner) The following is a "thought experiment" which attempts to see fictitious capital in relation to the end of capitalism. By pursuing the concept of fictitious capital as far as we can, ?by illuminating the unbelievable distortions it has fomented in ?what is called "economic development" on a world scale, we can highlight the nature of contemporary struggles as well as explain why there are not more struggles. We can also address the reasons why a "society beyond capitalism" seems such a remote possibility at present. In discussing fictitious capital, we must never forget that it is ?subordinate to, and derivative from, capital generally. It is ?important not to foment the illusion that the struggle is against "fictitious capital", leaving "real" capital itself unexamined. But at the same time, it is indispensable to sort out the fictitious dimension of the contemporary economy, if only conceptually. ?Many people today, including people on the radical left, regard contemporary capitalism as functioning normally, more or less ?the way it always has. I could not disagree more. Perhaps, as contemporary ideologies assert, capitalism has "reinvented" or is "reinventing" itself, as it has done several times in the past. ?Be that as it may, the post-1973 period presents one of the strangest, ?if not the strangest phases in the history of capitalism. What, then, is fictitious capital? Fictitious capital is, on first approach, paper claims on wealth ?(in the form of profit, interest and ground rent) in excess of the total available surplus value, plus available loot from primitive accumulation. There is $33 trillion in outstanding debt (Federal, state, local, corporate, personal) in the U.S. economy, three times GDP. (No one knows how much is tied up in the international hedge ?funds and derivatives.) The state (including Federal, state and local levels) consumes 40% of GDP. The net U.S. debt abroad ?is $3 trillion ($11 trillion held by foreigners minus $8 trillion in U.S. assets abroad) That amount is growing by $500 billion a year at current rates. Foreigners hold an increasing percent of U.S. government debt; the four major Asian central banks (Japan, China, ?South Korea, Taiwan) alone hold over $1 trillion. It is the Federal government's debt which makes possible the reflationary actions of the Federal Reserve Bank. If Doug Noland's notion of "financial arbitrage capitalism" is right, the old conceptualization of the role of the banking system and the Fed's (apparent) ability to expand and contract credit availability through it, is superceded; increasing amounts of "virtual" credit are created ?by "securitized finance" independent of banks. One must also consider the government-linked entities (Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae), which backed the reflation of mortgages of the past 4 years, leading to an incredible housing bubble. This entire edifice depends on 1) low inflation in the U.S., as higher inflation would scare off foreign lenders; 2) the willingness of U.S, "consumers" to go more and more heavily into debt (with debt service now taking 14% ?of incomes, as opposed to 11% a few years ago) 3) the willingness and ability of foreigners to go on re-lending U.S. balance-of-payments deficits ?back to the U.S. Let's shift to another level altogether: the extent of unproductive labor and unproductive consumption in the U.S. economy. Marx defines the state debt as fictitious; he defines labor performed for revenue (as opposed to capital) as unproductive. Many Marxists would agree that military expenditure performed for the revenue of the state is ?unproductive labor, even if it produces a profit for an individual capitalist. ?One can extend that paradigm, I think, much farther in terms of other goods and services commanded by state revenue, and/or the ?fictitious capital of the state debt. To be productively consumed, surplus-value that is concretely means of production (Dept. I) or means of consumption (Dept. II) must RETURN to C or V for further expanded reproduction; by that criterion, it would seem that unproductive consumption in the U.S. economy must be enormous. Now perhaps for the most controversial point: what do individual reported corporate profits mean in such a situation? Do they really ?correspond to a proportional amount of surplus-value? The amount of profit from interest and ground rent relative to profit from manufacture grows every year. Even within profit of "manufacture", what does this mean when companies like GE and GM are now earning more profits from ?their financial departments than from production? And if a significant amount of that production (with GE, a very significant amount) ?is for (unproductive) capitalists' consumption (i.e. military) then what does the expanded M' that returns to each corporation as profit mean? ?What does it correspond to in terms of C and V in their material form that must be productively consumed in further expansion for the capital circuit to continue? We know the countervailing tendencies that must partly ?subsidize the circulation of so much fictitious capital and so ?much capitalist's consumption: primitive accumulation (non-payment of equivalents) for goods imported from the less advanced parts of the world, for labor power ?recruited from Third World petty producer economies; pushing labor power below its reproductive value; using fixed capital past its replacement time; looting of nature (non-replacement of resources) or destruction of ?the environment as a whole. All of this adds up to a pretty grim picture, looking like nothing so much as a vast bankruptcy subsized by foreign creditors, who ?would themselves be bankrupted by the contraction of the debt pyramid sustaining the whole operation. This is far bigger than the ?biggest Spanish bankruptcy of the 16th century in terms of its current ?and potential impact on the world economy. When Marx was writing Capital the trends described above were far less prominent. Fictitious capital was pretty much destroyed with each decennial crisis; the amount of unproductive consumption ?in the economies he studied was nothing compared to what is has become (though it was already surprisingly widespread) . ?I think his conceptual apparatus is still perfectly contemporary for sorting out what is what. Historical Overview Let us briefly review how things got to this state of affairs. Capitalism in 1890-1914 was approaching the crisis of the ?British-dominated world system. While the "sterling standard" never came close to the levels of U.S. international indebtedness until the 1914-1945 "Thirty Years War" and its aftermath, ?British industry no longer could back up Britain's financial role under the impact of U.S. and German competition. The extended single crisis of 1914-1945 must be understood as a "substitute depression", (punctuated by an actual depression ?from 1929 to ca. 1938) in which the classic bankruptcy proceedings were carried out on British capital's world hegemony. Germany and the U.S. battled for the spoils; the U.S. won. But "underneath" the financial and geopolitical transformation of that period"?one still the basis of current world arrangements"?a ?more fundamental transformation was occurring, namely the passage of world capitalism from its phase of "formal domination", with a preponderance of absolute surplus value based on the lengthening of the working day, to its phase of "real domination", based on technological ?intensification of the labor process. This was accompanied by ?a revolution in agricultural productivity and transportation costs which reduced the cost of food in the average worker's consumption ?from 50% (in the mid-19th century) to a far smaller share, thereby opening the way to "mass consumer durables" which came on stream in the 1920's, symbolized first of all by the automobile. This "automobile-oil-steel-rubber" complex of production and consumption was the heart of the world capitalist boom from 1945 to 1975. Beyond the immediate process of production, ?the automobile-centered economy had a huge impact on the development of cities, suburbs (and ultimately exurbs), hence of real estate, construction (including highways), and all the sectors that feed into construction, not to mention the environmental impact. Mass public transportation in countries ?such as the U.S. was gutted in the interests of this economy. ?Necessary travel time to and from work was significantly increased. Working-class urban culture, and public life, was weakened by the flight to the suburbs. Fictitious capital played an important role in the 1945-1975 ?boom phase, though still small by comparison with the role it has played since. U.S. government debt coming out of World War II was $250 billion, roughly 110% of GDP in 1945 dollars. ?(Today it is conservatively estimated at $11 trillion, or three times GDP.) The postwar arrangements that established the IMF, World Bank, GATT (predecessor to the WTO), and the Marshall Plan (cf. Michael Hudson's Super-Imperialism, 2nd ed. 2002) cannot concern us here. But the dismantling of the British and French empires and the subordination of Europe and Japan to U.S. hegemony created the global "economy of scale" necessary to accommodate the new productive forces ?that had been building up during the 1890-1945 period, setting the stage for the longest boom in capitalist history, based on a new standard of value expressing the increased ?average social productivity of labor. The reconstruction ?costs from World War II in Europe and Asia, however, and the role of the U.S. in providing needed liquidity for both reconstruction and the later impressive development of Japan, Germany, France, and Italy largely concealed the problem of fictitious capital from view until the system began to sputter after 1958, ?and headed into real crisis after 1968 (March 1968 closing of foreign exchange markets), becoming official in 1970 ?(Penn Central bankruptcy and liquidity crisis), 1971 (U.S. tears up Bretton Woods) and 1973 (final collapse of fixed exchange rates and emergence ?of an outright dollar standard, closely related oil crisis). Theoretical Intermezzo Where does fictitious capital originate? ?It is not discussed in the "pure capitalist" model of vols. I and II of Marx's Capital, centered for the most part on the single enterprise and the "immediate process of production", what Marx (at the end of vol. II) calls the "abstract" ?mode of presentation. It is introduced in a brief chapter in the middle sections of vol. III, and in scattered references to the fictitious nature of the state debt, etc. Fictitious capital is also absent from the Byzantine academic debates, based on the first section of vol. III, about the so-called "transformation problem" ?(values into prices) and the rate of profit, a debate which abstracts entirely from the problematic set out above and specifically from Marx's repeated admonition that "Accumulation requires the transformation of a portion of the surplus product into capital. But we cannot, except ?by a miracle, transform into capital anything but such articles as can be employed in the labor process (i.e. means of production), and such further articles as are suitable for the sustenance of the worker (i.e. means of subsistence). (Capital, vol. I, 1976, p. 727) This means that profits derived from such sectors as luxury goods and military production, when arriving at the general rate of profit and hence the total surplus value available ?for expanded reproduction, have to be treated differently than profit from the production of machine tools and bread. They cannot continue the cycle as expanded C and V, and therefore are a net deduction from the total profit available to the capitalist class for new investment. They represent objects of consumption of the CAPITALIST class; they are revenue. In real capitalist practice, means of production and ?other income-producing assets are not valued in terms of their historic costs or in terms of their current replacement ?cost; they are valued as a CAPITALIZATION of an expected ?flow of income based on the asset. Capitalization means that ?in a general environment in which the rate of profit is 5%, an asset producing an annual profit of $5 will be "worth" $100. ?"Underneath" that surface, the distribution of the average rate of profit, plus or minus the higher or lower profits going to individual firms which are above or below the average social productivity of labor, does its work, and ultimately asserts ?itself in crisis and recomposition. But the capitalist class, the central bank and the capitalist state do everything in their power to preserve those capitalized"?fictitious"?values as long as ?possible, even at the price of gutting the "real" economy. The actual surplus value available to the capitalist class as a whole to support those capitalized values comes not merely from the immediate process of production but also, once again, from non-replacement: the looting of nature, primitive accumulation of petty ?producer populations, and sometimes non-reproduction of C and V. Thus it is possible to refine the definition of fictitious capital offered initially; it is not merely the paper claims (stocks, bonds, ?income from the sale and rental of land and real property) ?in excess of total surplus value; it is the capitalized "current value" of total income-producing assets in excess of their value, defined as the socially necessary labor time of REproducing them today. The fundamental tendency of capitalism, through increased productivity of labor, is to cheapen all commodities, including the universal commodity labor power (the source of all value), ?while at the same time the capitalist class, central bank and capitalist state are mobilized to preserve existing capitalizations, ?at least for the class as a whole (while periodically sacrificing the weaker capitals) until they are overwhelmed by the next crisis. We now get to the nub of the matter: has capitalism exhausted itself as a mode of production capable of expanding the material ?reproduction of humanity? Has capital, in Marx's formulation, become an obstacle to itself? In the era of fictitious capital, where it is the drive to preserve ?existing capitalized values that dominates production rather than the expansion of production which (as in all the cycles prior to 1973) ?produced over time fictitious values capitalized in excess of current social costs of reproduction, (capitalized values that then, in the crisis, collapsed down to levels reflecting real costs, allowing a new cycle to begin), the classic cycle of boom-crisis-recomposition and new takeoff is deeply distorted. ?Instead of a 1929-style bust, capitalism since 1973 has undergone a "hidden depression", with a gradual wearing down of material reproduction under the weight of the managed mass of fictitious capital. The fundamental question is: does this post-1973 reality express ?the "fact" that the socially necessary time of reproduction on a global scale can no longer serve as the "numeraire", the universal standard of exchange? Can global reproduction still be expanded in the value form? Or has global society become too productive to be contained within it? Capital since 1973 seems to be trying to recompose the relationship between surplus-value, variable and constant capital into the foundations ?for a new expansion, but its main result, on the global scale of social reproduction, seems to be more large-scale destruction than expansion . The answer to the above questions is inseparable (following the Theses on Feuerbach, namely that activity is objective) ?from the ability of the proletariat to supersede the value form and ?found a new mode of production. There is always the possibility ?of the "mutual destruction of the contending classes" as a mode of ?production exhausts itself (as Marx indicated in the Communist Manifesto). My hypothesis is that since the appearance of a communist current in the working class (1848) every "classical" crisis of the pre-1914 period (the decennial crises of 1846, 1857, then the "great depression" of 1873-1896) has been, within the "core" of the system (the most advanced production and most advanced working class) a dress rehearsal for the end of capitalism, ?in which the proletariat "was compelled to do" (Marx) what was necessary to dissolve its status as commoditized labor power: hence the appearance of a communist current, always a ?minority (1848, 1871, 1905, 1917-1921, to a lesser extent in 1968-1976). It is not an exaggeration to say that ever since 1848 ?every major development in capitalism (and no less true for the ?post-1973 period) must be understood within the framework of xorcising the "specter of communism". (It is also important to note that three of the four major historical upsurges of the proletariat occurred as a boom was peaking: the formation of the First International in the 1860's run-up to the Franco-Prussian War, the Commune, and the 1873 depression; the formation of the Third International that emerged from the worldwide ?strike wave which preceded World War I and which continued in 1917-1921, i.e. at the beginning of the "thirty-year crisis"; finally, the ?worldwide surge of 1968-1977 as the post-World War II boom was peaking. In counterpoint to this is the formation of the Second International after 1889, in the midst of the 1873-1896 ?"great depression" or "great deflation" as it is sometimes called. Capital can only be understood in relationship to its inseparable historical counterpart, the proletariat, and the proletariat is ?historically important, not as passive "variable capital" in ?capitalism's balance sheet, but as an ACTIVITY that tends to constitute the "class for itself", pointing beyond the capitalist mode of production. "The working class is revolutionary ?or it is nothing" (Marx). The recovery from each capitalist crisis, once again, involves a vast "recomposition": fictitious capital is wiped out through ?bankruptcy, fixed capital is devalorized (often below its cost of reproduction), and the new "numeraire", or standard of value, unleashes commodities cheapened by the new generalized labor productivity. The working class "bill of consumption" (V) might contract in value terms (as a percentage of the total product), yet ?be larger in material terms because of an overall cheapening of consumer goods. Accumulation can resume with an adequate rate of profit. Ever since 1973, world capitalism, without resort to full-blown depression or a Third World War, has been struggling to establish a new standard of value to supercede the exhausted one associated with the postwar boom. To do so, it must re-equilibrate the existing total paper claims on wealth (profit, interest, ground rent) with existing surplus value in a new, acceptable rate of profit, at the same time that it expands the reproduction of global society. Yet, because of the preservation of fictitious capital against devalorization, at the expense of material production, it has failed to find this new equilibrium. It has, of course, by opening up the Soviet bloc, China, ?and parts of the Third World through "globalization", increased the total volume of production; it has cheapened commodities; it has innovated new technologies and increased ?the productivity of labor (although more slowly than in the postwar boom). ?By the unceasing demand for the "reform" (the Orwellian word par excellence of our time) ?and "flexibilization" of the wealthy, more "mercantilist" economies of Europe and East Asia, it may succeed in ?extending this process. But it has not undergone the "clearing of the decks""?full-scale deflation of fictitious valuations in harmony with a prevailing rate of profit in the production of commodities which can "return" as expanded C and V. On the contrary, by the devastation it has wrought and is wreaking in Latin America, Africa, eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia and rural China, ?not to mention austerity in the U.S. and Europe, it has compelled the world's working population and relative surplus ?population to bear the brunt of the crisis. American world power ?today stands as much in opposition to a new "healthy" phase of global capitalist expansion, (assuming one is possible) ?as British world power did in 1900. World Capitalism After 1973 This process is essential to understanding the post-1973 period. One can, I think, "write the history" of the post-1973 era around the efforts to prop up the growing mass of "nomad dollars" or "hot air" which brought down Bretton Woods and to postpone (for over thirty years!) the inevitable deflationary crash. More specifically: the 1975 U.S. reflation (under Ford and continued by Carter) took the world into ?the 1979-1980 near-inflationary blowout (gold at $850 an ounce, oil at record levels after the Iranian revolution, a threatened world flight from the dollar). This was followed by the Reagan-Volcker super-austerity: U.S. interest rates hitting 20%, leading to a massive recovery of the dollar, the latter made possible by equally massive foreign lending to the U.S., particularly in the Japanese acquisition of Treasury bills. This "wringing out" of the 1970's inflationary economy -- provoking in 1981-1982 the deepest recession of the entire post-1945 period to date,-- set off the stock market boom of 1982-2000. I contend that the U.S. stock market boom of the 80's and 90's was a continuation of the reflationary strategy begun in earnest with the 1968-1973 onset of crisis, a strategy which has not yet run its course (currently manifested in the mortgage refinancing boom) , and which constitutes in effect the largest ?"Ponzi scheme" in history. This paper boom has taken place, ?not in conjunction with a real global expansion as in 1945-1975 ?(however qualified by some of the downside mentioned earlier) ?but large-scale DESTRUCTION on a world scale: the deindustrialization and downsizing of the U.S., extended mass ?unemployment in western Europe, absolute retrogression in ?Latin America, Africa, much of Asia, of Eastern Europe, and of the former Soviet bloc (both in Russia and Ukraine ?and even more so in Central Asia), and more recently for the 900 million Chinese peasants and workers left out of the "Chinese miracle". The social "balance sheet" ?of this paper boom is to be found in various phenomena of decay ranging from the destruction of the blue-collar world in many countries (even China has had a net loss of 22 million industrial jobs), the expansion of the parasitic FIRE (finance-insurance-real estate) sector (most recently in the preposterous world housing boom, centered once again in the U.S.), environmental destruction (most notably global warming), the growing role of international crime (e.g. the drug trade), ongoing economically-preventable epidemics, the disintegration ?of 60 economic basket cases into "failed states", and fundamentalism (Christian, Moslem, Jewish, Hindu). Having knocked down many of the economic "great walls of China" ?this circulation of fictitious dollars is apparent today in the ?growing pressure on Japan and Germany (in particular to?? "financialize" on the Anglo-American model, with the same effect of gutting the "real" economy, particularly as it affects working people. The instability of this "dollarization" and "financialization" of the world economy has been apparent in the Japanese deflation (1990-present), U.S. recession and real estate collapse (1991), Mexican crisis (1994), ?the Asia crisis (1997-1998), the Russian default and collapse of LTCM (1998), the Brazil crisis (1999), the U.S. dot.com collapse (March 2000) the Argentine crisis (2001) and the 35% decline of the Dow Jones Industrial average from March 2000 to September 2002. All told, roughly $3 trillion is paper wealth ?was destroyed in 2000-2002. Since that time, the acceleration of "financial arbitrage capitalism" (the term is from Doug Noland, expanding on ideas of Hyman Minsky), with the mortgage refinancing boom, has preserved the "U.S. consumer" as the "buyer of last resort" in the world economy. (As one wag put ?it recently: "I've finally understood supply-side economics. Other countries supply the goods, and then they supply the ?money to buy them".) It must also be mentioned that this circulation of fictititous capital has brought into existence new productive forces ?as companies compete in ever-tighter markets, ?expressing the pull of devalorization. In sum, on a world ?scale, a smaller percentage of production workers in ?the work force as a whole is producing a larger volume of goods, goods that have been cheapened by technological innovation. This is, as noted earlier, part of a classic pattern of capitalist crisis and recomposition. But it must equally ?be stressed that, in contrast to the 1945-1975 period, where expansion of the productive forces was driving the creation of fictitious capital (on a small scale compared to the present), today it is the necessity of ?circulating fictitious capital which is driving the development of production. The total deficits of the ?U.S. state from American independence to 1980 totaled $1 trillion; since 1980, that total has increased to $4 trillion. (That total does not include the "off-balance" sheet sums transferred ?through internal accounting from the Social Security system to smooth out the reported Federal deficit.) ?(It is also interesting that the post-1980 U.S. ?government debt is almost exactly equal to the $3 trillion net indebtedness of the U.S. The U.S. government debt is the "totem" of the world system. This difference from the historical character of earlier capitalist expansions ?will matter terribly when the "debt-deflation" phase hits, and capital (not to mention debt-strapped workers and other "consumers") will have to pay off enormous debts ?(at historic cost) with the greatly depressed current prices and wages expressing current costs of reproduction (and in reality well below the latter). What has been presented thus far is basically ?a merely "economic" analysis, as critique of political economy. But to understand the weight of fictitious ?capital in the current context, it is necessary to ?look beyond the merely economic to the class struggle. ?Despite the colossal efforts of ideology to deny or trivialize ?social antagonism, everything today is shaped by class struggle, both the one-sided class struggle waged for 30 ?years by the capitalist class, and even more so the potential ?threat of a two-sided struggle to re-emerge into the open, as ?it has already begun to do (Argentina 2001, Bolivia 2005, ongoing working-class ferment in China, the return of the wildcat in Italy, Germany and Britain). The classical workers' movement from ca. 1840 to 1945 was fundamental in pushing capital into the phase of "real domination", above all in the century-long struggle for the 8-hour day. It had its finest hour in the ?1917-1921 period, in the Russian and German revolutions, in the Italian factory occupations, a pre-revolutionary situation in Britain (January 1919), and major strike waves in France, Spain and the U,S. But the 1917-1921 radical upsurge failed ?because capitalism still had a large colonial and underdeveloped ?world, barely under the formal domination of capital, into which to expand, as well as significant potential for recomposition (cheapened mass consumer goods) and primitive accumulation ?within the advanced sector itself (50% of the U.S. and French populations, for example, still lived in rural areas and small ?towns in 1918). The 1914-1945 "Thirty Years' War" and ?its immediate aftermath, through the New Deal/Keynesian welfare state (the U.S., Britain), Social Democracy (northern Europe) ?Stalinism and then the Third World Bonapartism that emerged from de-colonization made the classical workers' movement, expressed most succinctly in the dominant Lassallean wing of German Social Democracy part of official ?society. Thereafter, in a way far more visible than in the pre-1945 period, progress in class struggle came from the unofficial workers' movement, most notably the growing wildcat strike wave ?(above all in the U.S., Britain and France) in the 1955-1973 period. A mere listing of the high points of social polarization and struggle on a world scale captures the climate of the end of the postwar boom: From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Fri Mar 13 18:59:35 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2009 09:59:35 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Scrap It Message-ID: <49BB0177.8070103@ashisuto.co.jp> Pay drivers to scrap their cars? We might as well burn ten-pound notes in power stations. by George Monbiot The Guardian (March 10 2009) The magic numbers spin before our eyes. No one can grasp the scale of the hand-outs, or understand how public money which didn't exist - could never exist - for hospitals or schools or public toilets begins to flow as soon as the bankers fall to their knees. We are punch drunk, reeling, uniquely vulnerable - because none of it makes sense any more - to new demands from every species of scrounger. So prepare yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, for the worst scam of all. It's another reward for failure, but this one offers no prospect of rescuing the economy. Thanks to its cunning disguise as an environmental measure, we seem willing to be conned. I want to show you why we should resist it. I'm talking about the scrappage payments being proposed by almost everyone linked to the motor industry: the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders {1}, most of the big car firms {2}, the AA {3} and the unions. Lord Mandelson is said to be a fan {4}. They argue that drivers should be paid around GBP 2000 a head to scrap their old cars and buy new ones. As well as saving the jobs of hundreds of thousands of workers, this, they say, will catalyse a low carbon transport revolution. It's bunkum. Let's start by getting a misconception out of the way. The media are reporting the proposal as a subsidy for switching to smaller, more efficient cars. But the manufacturers have called for no such thing. The model they keep referring to is Germany's. Here drivers are being offered E2500 to trade in cars at least nine years old for new models. The only requirement is that the new cars meet the Euro 4 standard on exhaust emissions {5}. This is another way of saying all cars: since 2005 every new car on sale in the EU has to meet this standard, which has nothing to do with carbon dioxide. So GBP 2000 from the government could help you trade in your old Citroen C1 for a new Porsche Cayenne. There is a simple way of working out whether or not a green subsidy is worthwhile: how much does it cost to save a tonne of carbon dioxide? No one appears to have done this yet so, if you'll bear with me, I'll attempt it here. I've had to make a few assumptions where data don't exist, but it gives us a rough idea of what we are exposing ourselves to (all the sources, as usual, are on my website). Let's imagine that the average age of the scrapped cars is twelve years. In 1997 new cars in the UK produced an average of 189.8 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre {6}. If they've become ten per cent less efficient since then, their average output will be 208g/km today. Cars manufactured this year will put out an average of around 160g/km {7}, which means a saving of 48g/km. This translates - with a mean annual driving distance of 16,500km {8} - into a cut of 792 kilograms per car per year. Assuming that drivers are each paid GBP 2000, that's a cost of GBP 2525 for every tonne of carbon dioxide avoided, divided by the average age of the cars on the road - 4.9 years. You'd get almost as much value for money by reclassifying ten-pound notes as biomass and burning them in power stations. The management consultants McKinsey have calculated the costs of saving carbon dioxide by other means {9}. We could do it for GBP 3.50 a tonne by investing in geothermal energy, or GBP 9 if we put our money into nuclear power plants. Mini hydroelectric schemes would save money as well as carbon against normal electricity prices. So would energy efficiency: switching from incandescent light bulbs to light-emitting diodes, for example, saves GBP 80 for every tonne of carbon dioxide you cut. I would have liked to give you some transport comparisons, but McKinsey doesn't publish figures for public transport or for promoting walking or cycling (a McKinsey consultant wouldn't be seen dead on a bus). Nor, as far as I can discover, does the government. The carbon payback for other projects - creating better cycle lanes in towns and coach lanes on motorways, helping children to walk to school, better enforcement of speed limits, better timetabling for buses - is likely to be hundreds or thousands of times higher than any returns from the scrappage scam. In fact I have grossly overstated the scheme's value for money. My rough figures take no account of the rebound effect: when driving costs you less (after buying a more efficient car), you are likely to travel further {10, 11}. Nor have I considered the fact that many people would have bought new cars anyway, which means they'll be given the money for nothing. Without this subsidy, others might have stopped driving altogether and started cycling or using public transport instead: in this case the scrappage scheme will have raised their emissions. Nor did I calculate the carbon costs of manufacturing the new cars. A paper published in 2000 by the journal Transportation Research comes to even grimmer conclusions: that replacing old cars with new ones increases carbon pollution {12}. Because between fifteen and twenty per cent of a car's emissions are produced during its manufacture, the optimal age for a car, the paper says, is nineteen years. (The average age of the UK's fleet is 4.9 years {13}). If the paper's assumptions hold (they may be out of date now), it would make more sense for the government to pay us to keep our old bangers on the road. Low-carbon transport? Pull the other one. Scrappage schemes are nothing but hand-outs for the car firms, resprayed green to fool the incautious buyer. The motor trade wants the money because it's collapsing. Some companies - notably Vauxhall and the rest of the General Motors group - are in imminent danger of insolvency {14}. So the question changes: should we support them regardless of their impact on the environment? No. State aid rules forbid scrappage schemes from discriminating between cars made here and cars made abroad. So, given that British car plants assemble only around fifteen per cent of the vehicles sold in this country {15, 16}, and given that the motor industry is highly automated and has vast capital costs, this subsidy is likely to be just as bad at saving jobs as it is at saving carbon. Every pound we spend on driving is a pound withheld from the alternatives, many of which (such as buses and trains) employ far more people for the same amount of money. This leaves only the value of preserving the industry for its own sake. It is hard to think of a less deserving cause. The motor companies have repeatedly failed to anticipate trends in demand. They have carried on producing thunderous gas guzzlers long after the market collapsed. Every so often the bosses wring their hands about jobs, put out the begging bowl, get the money then shaft their workers anyway. Like the bankers they have wrecked their own industry. And like the bankers they want the rest of us to pay. www.monbiot.com References: 1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7925484.stm 2. eg http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7924534.stm 3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7917643.stm 4. http://www.whatcar.com/news-article.aspx?NA=237910 5. http://www.smmt.co.uk/articles/article.cfm?articleid=19162 6. http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/uk_motor_industry_failing_25042006.html 7. Average emissions in 2007 were 164.9g/km. They fell by 1.4% from 2006 - http://www.lowcvp.org.uk/news/866/bulletin/. If this trend has continued, they'll be 160.3g/km this year. 8. The latest available figures are for 1999-2001: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=7231&More=Y The average distance might have increased a little since then. 9. McKinsey & Company, 2009. Pathways to a Low Carbon Economy: Version 2 of the Global Greenhouse Gas Abatement Cost Curve. http://globalghgcostcurve.bymckinsey.com/default/en-us/requestfullreport.aspx 10. There is a wide range of estimates for the rebound effect in driving. See for example this: Kenneth Small and Kurt Van Dender, January 2007. Fuel efficiency and motor vehicle travel: the declining rebound effect. The Energy Journal. http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/156418724.html and this: 11. http://www.rff.org/rff/Events/upload/20209_1.pdf 12. Bert Van Wee, Henri C Moll and Jessica Dirks, 2000. Environmental impact of scrapping old cars. Transportation Research Part D 5, pages 137-143. http://ivem.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/ivempubs/publart/2000/TranspResDvWee/2000TranspResDvWee.pdf 13. http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/ukbuilt+toyota+most+reliable+car/1084747 14. George Parker, 8th March 2009. Mandelson says Vauxhall is in 'trouble'. Financial Times. 15. The Office of National Statistics stopped collating data on car production in 2007, on the grounds that the sector was no longer sufficiently important (ONS, pers comm, 9th March 2009). So the last comparable figuires are for July 2007, when 28,000 cars were manufactured in Britain for the home market - http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=376 and 16. 186,000 new cars were sold here - http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_compendia/MD-Feb-2009/MD-Feb-2009.pdf Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/03/10/scrap-it/ http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From noreply at coha.org Fri Mar 13 12:09:24 2009 From: noreply at coha.org (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:09:24 -0400 Subject: [A-List] Lula Visits Washington, and a Warning for Obama on El Salvador Message-ID: <20090313180849.A2D753E4FD4@mx-out2.daemonmail.net> A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 6824 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/attachments/20090313/16a1eddf/attachment.txt From suzannedk at gmail.com Sat Mar 14 05:41:11 2009 From: suzannedk at gmail.com (Suzanne de Kuyper) Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:41:11 +0100 Subject: [A-List] Fwd: Sabbah's Blog Arming Terrorist Israel Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sabbah Date: Mar 11, 2009 10:01 PM Subject: Sabbah's Blog To: suzannedk at gmail.com Sabbah's Blog Elias Akleh - Arming Terrorist Israel Posted: 11 Mar 2009 11:37 AM PDT By Dr. Elias Akleh Since their occupation of Palestine in 1948 to establish illegal Israel in the heart of the Arab World until the present, Zionist Israelis had initiated seven wars against their Arab neighbors. Six of those were waged after 1967 to maintain their occupation of the rest of Palestine, Lebanese Sheb'a Farms, and Syrian Golan Heights; formally recognized by the international community as an occupation. Israel had maintained its occupation of the land for the last sixty years. The question that poses itself, here, is how a small state like Israel, 7 million Zionist Jews in an area of 8 thousand square miles (excluding the 1967 occupied territories), could maintain such an occupation against hundreds of millions of Arabs and against the disapproval of the civic (not political) international community? Bullying with extreme brutal force is the answer. Israel is a military society with every Zionist Israeli citizen, from childhood to old age, being militaristic in one form or another. Israel possesses all kinds of weapons including weapons of mass destruction (WMD) such as nuclear and chemical weapons. Israel did not become the fourth largest army in the world by its own merit, but by the Western countries supplying it with all kinds of weapons. In its February 23rd report "Foreign Arms Supplies To Israel/Gaza Fueling Conflict" amnestyusa.org named 18 EU member states, which authorized 1,018 arms export licenses to Israel worth a little less than 200 million Euros. All these arms exports are in violation of the EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports under Criterion 2, which states that member states are supposed to "deny an export license if there is a clear risk that the proposed export might be used for internal repression or be used in the commission of serious violations of international humanitarian law". Israel had committed such violations throughout its entire existence. France, Germany, and Romania were the top three arms suppliers to Israel worth of 126 million Euros, 28 million Euros, and 17 million Euros respectively. Other significant arms suppliers to Israel since 2001 also include alphabetically Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Columbia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, India, Italy, Poland, Romania, Serbia-Montenegro, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, and UK. The report also indicated the well-known fact that "Since 2001, the USA has been by far the major supplier of conventional arms to Israel" It also stated the logical conclusion that "Put simply, Israel's military intervention in the Gaza Strip has been equipped to a large extent by US-supplied weapons, munitions and military equipment paid for with US taxpayers' money" What the report failed to indicate is that Israel had violated all the US laws governing arms transfers. Examining the American military aid to Israel we find that since the end of WWII Israel had been the largest recipient of US aid (Armed & Dangerous Report). From 1949-2007 Israel had received more than $101 billion in total US economic and military aid. A previous Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two countries started phasing out the economic aid and increasing the military aid, and in 2008 all US aid to Israel turned into military aid only. The current MOU, singed by Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns in August 2007, has increased military aid to Israel by 25% a year for the next ten years FY2009-2018, totaling to $30 billion. During the Bush administration 2001-2007 American military aid to Israel came under three primary programs; Foreign Military Sales (FMS) ran through the Pentagon totaled $25.2 billion in arms sales and contracts, Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) ran through the States Department totaled $6.16 billion in weapons and equipment, and Excess Defense Articles (EDA) also ran through the Pentagon totaled $36 million in used weapons and equipment. The total comes to a little more than $31.4 billion. The Foreign Military Sales (FMS) provided Israel with air, missile & munitions, naval, design, vehicles, and miscellaneous military aid. Israel received $19.81 billion for their air forces that included F-35 joint strike fighters, C-130J-30 aircrafts, JP-8 aviation jet fuel, and T-6A Texan aircrafts. In missiles and munitions Israel received $2.73 billion worth of GBU-28 & 39 small diameter bombs, TOW, Hellfire, bunker buster munitions, AMRAAM, Harpoon, Sidewinder, JDAM's, and MK-80 series. US gave Israel $1.9 billion worth of the new series (Littoral) naval combat ships, $164 million worth of troop carrier armored vehicles and trucks, and $253 million worth of miscellaneous in the form of Patriot Missiles upgrade and M72A7 Light Anti-Armor weapons. Also included in this FMS package were $350 million worth of design and construction of two infantry bases. The Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) program contained about three hundred different categories of weapons transfer to Israel. The main top ten categories for FY2001-2006 were $557,896 million in aircraft spare parts, $449 million in missile spare parts, $439 million in engine jet F-100 spare parts, $254 million in engine jet F-100 series (F-15 & F-16), $210 million in ship components and spare parts, $186 million in aircraft fighter F-15 spare parts, $163 million in electronics components and spare parts, $128 million in ammunition raw materials, and $120 million in training equipment. The Excess Defense Articles (EDC) program shipped to Israel $36 million worth of used Cobra Helicopters, personnel carriers, carrier command posts, and miscellaneous articles. The most outrageous American military aid to Israel is the billions of Dollars worth of refined fuel to the Israeli army. Israel's own oil refineries in Haifa and Ashdod, which could supply Israeli military with all its fuel needs, are instead producing and selling its refined products on the open market. The Israeli army gets all its military fuel from the USA through the FMS program. The US Defense Department uses American tax money to buy oil crude from Arab Gulf States, ship it to American refineries to refine it, and then ship it to Israel. According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, from 2004 to 2008 the Bush administration had granted the Israeli army 500 million gallons of oil products worth $1.1 billion. During this period the American tax payers were faced with energy crises and had to pay $4 per gallon of gas at the pump while Israel was getting free gas from the Bush administration. Somebody has to pay for this gas, and it wasn't the Israelis. Moreover, the US provides loan guarantees to Israel so that Israel can take out loans in the international money market with lower interest rates, and if Israel happens to default on any of these loans the US will bail Israel out with American tax money similar to the latest $700 billion bailout for the American banks. There is a condition on these loan guarantees. It states that these loans can only be used to support the activities within the sovereign areas in Israel (pre-1967 war), and cannot be used in the occupied Palestinian territories. This is a facetiously misleading condition, since such loans can free other monies in the Israeli budget to be used in building illegal colonies (settlements) in the occupied territories. The US has three laws that govern arms transfer to other countries. The first is the Arms Export Control Act (P.L.80-829). This law states that American weapons given or sold to any foreign country can be used only for legitimate self-defense or for internal security. They are not to be used in occupational operations. The second is the Foreign Assistance Act (P.L.97-195), which states that any country is not illegible for any form of US aid if it engages in consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. The third is the Leahy Law (Foreign Ops Appropriations Act). This is an annual part of the Foreign Appropriations Act, and states that no aid will be given to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible evidence that such unit has committed gross violations of human rights. Expanding their occupation of the land the Israelis had violated numerous UN Resolutions, broke international laws as well as their own local laws, violated all human rights, committed grave war crimes, and perpetrated terrorism against Arabs in general and Palestinian Arabs in specific. It has been, numerously, documented by Israeli, Palestinian, and international NGOs that Israel had consistently violated international laws and human rights since 1948. In all its seven wars Israel, contrary to the false Israeli/American propaganda, had initiated the conflict in one way or another. Israel had attacked all its neighbors, committed war crimes, and occupied parts of their land. The Israelis had evicted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their country, completely wiped off many Palestinian towns and built Israeli colonies in their place, had stolen Palestinian farm land and forcefully controlled the economy. Israel had shoved thousands of Palestinian leaders and freedom fighters into prisons, and kept the rest of the Palestinian populations confined into open air virtual town-prisons within a separation wall. Attacking Palestinian civilians, mainly defenseless children and women, has become the daily entertainment of Israeli government -backed and armed extreme Zionist colonizing terrorists (settlers?). Israeli soldiers developed the sport of hunting (shooting) Palestinian children on their way to schools or while playing in front of their homes. The Israeli army is using the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories and its Palestinian inhabitants as testing fields and subjects for theirs and for the American newly developed weapons as was exhibited in Israel's latest 22-days onslaught and massacres in Gaza. Successive Israeli governments had consistently sent their armies to massacre Palestinian civilians. Israeli army had used all types of American supplied weapons; including depleted uranium tipped bombs and missiles, DIME bombs, chemical weapons such as phosphorous bombs and conventional weapons, to specifically and deliberately target Palestinian children and women. We need only go back to the Israeli last two wars; July 2006 against Lebanon and December 2008 against Gaza, still fresh in memory, to witness clear evidence of Israel's terrorism, war crimes, disrespect and contempt of international laws and human rights. The driving force for the Zionist Israeli crimes and terrorism has been the extreme racist religious ideology of establishing a pure theocratic "Jewish" state for a prejudice- god's chosen people "narcissist Zionist Jews" in the real-estate- brokering-god's promised land of Greater Israel "Eretz Israel" extending from Nile to Euphrates. This theocratic dream necessitates a holy war (not the first one against the Middle East) to evict and remove the original inhabitants of the land to make living space for world Jewry to come and live in this Promised Land. This is how Israelis perceive their "final solution" to their "Palestinian problem"; destruction, massacres and mass evictions. Although Israel has violated all EU and US arms transfer laws yet none had conducted any investigation to hold Israel accountable to these laws. The two rare incidents when under pressure the American State Department investigated Israeli violations where completely suppressed and quashed. The first was in 2002 when Israel dropped a one-ton bomb on an apartment building in Gaza City in order to extra-judicially assassinate a Hamas leader, Salah Shehadeh, and killed 14 other civilians, women and children, in the process. This investigation was quashed by none other than John Bolton, the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security at the time. The investigation was never sent to the Congress in violation of US laws. The second investigation was in 2006 when Israel dropped an estimated one million cluster bombs on the civilian areas of South Lebanon in the last 72 hours of the war, even after a seize-fire was agreed upon. This was made a top secret State Department investigation and was released to only a few senior members of the Cogress such as the Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and "Zionist" Joe Biden, the present Vice President. Needless to say that this investigation had never came to light. Israel is a terrorist entity without any specific borders. It is an expansionist colonizing regime. Its successive governments had disregarded all UN resolutions, broken international laws, violated all human rights, committed holocaustal-level genocides, and perpetrated war crimes against all its neighbors and against mother earth and against the environment. Yet the Western political power elites justify Israeli terror as a self-defense, and keep transfering more devastating arms to this terrorist entity to wage more future wars and to wreck more havoc in the Arab World. They also distort facts and describe the victims of the Israeli terror, the Palestinians, as terrorists, deny them their legitimate right to bear arms for self-defense, and send their naval war machines and serveillance equipment to tighten the illegal Israeli blockade against Gaza Strip under the guise of preventing "arms smuggling", while at the same time shedding some crockodile tears and call for humanitarian aid to Gaza's Palestinians. To the Arabs of the Middle East, Israel seems to be a military tool for the Western countries. Hatred towards these Western political regimes is the natural consequences of arming Israel. Should we keep asking "why do they hate us" any more? * Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic. You are subscribed to email updates from Sabbah To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.Email delivery powered by Google Inbox too full? Subscribe to the feed version of Sabbah in a feed reader. If you prefer to unsubscribe via postal mail, write to: Sabbah, c/o Google, 20 W Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 From shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp Sat Mar 14 08:25:54 2009 From: shimogamo at ashisuto.co.jp (Bill Totten) Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2009 23:25:54 +0900 Subject: [A-List] Bernard Madoff Message-ID: <49BBBE72.7000207@ashisuto.co.jp> Wall Street Swindler Strikes Powerful Blows for Social Justice Wall Street broker Bernard ('Bernie') Madoff, former president of NASDAQ, revered and respected investor confessed to pulling off the biggest fraud in history, a $50 billion dollar scam. Bernie was known for his generous philanthropy, especially to Zionist, Jewish and Israeli causes. by James Petras The James Petras Website (December 19 2008) "We never thought he would do this to us, he was one of our people". -- member of Palm Beach Country Club. An Introduction to the Mega-Swindle Wall Street broker Bernard ('Bernie') Madoff, former president of NASDAQ, revered and respected investor confessed to pulling off the biggest fraud in history, a $50 billion dollar scam. Bernie was known for his generous philanthropy, especially to Zionist, Jewish and Israeli causes. A one time life-guard on Long Island in the 1960s, Bernie launched his financial career by raising money from colleagues, friends and relatives among wealthier Jews in the Long Island suburbs, Palm Beach, Florida and in Manhattan, promising a modest, steady and secure return of between ten to twenty percent, covering any withdrawals in typical Ponzi fashion by drawing on funds from new investors who literally pleaded for Bernie to fleece them. Madoff personally managed at least $17 billion dollars. For almost four decades he built up a clientele, which came to include some of the biggest banks and investment houses in Scotland, Spain, England and France; as well as major hedge funds in the United States. Madoff drew almost all of the funds from high net-worth private clients who were recruited by brokers working on commission. Bernie's clients included many multi-millionaires and billionaires from Switzerland, Israel and elsewhere, as well as the US's largest hedge funds (RMF Division of the Man Group and the Tremont). Many of the swindled super-rich clients forced their money on Madoff, who sternly imposed rigorous conditions on potential clients: He insisted they have recommendations from existing investors, deposit a substantial amount and guarantee their own solvency. Most considered themselves lucky to have their funds taken by the highly respected Wall Street ... swindler. Madoff's standard message was that the fund was closed ... but because they came from the same world (board members of Jewish charities, pro-Israel fund raising organizations or the 'right' country clubs) or were related to a friend, colleague or existing clients, he would take their money. Madoff set up advisory councils with distinguished members, contributed heavily to museums, hospitals and upscale cultural organizations. He was a prominent member of exclusive country clubs in Palm Beach and Long Island. His reputation was enhanced by his funds record of never having a losing year - a big selling point in luring millionaire investors. Madoff shared with his super-rich clients (Jews and Gentiles) a common upper class life style, and mix of cultural philanthropy with low key financial profiteering. Madoff 'played' his colleagues with a soft-spoken, but authoritative, appearance of 'expertise', covered by a veneer of upper class collegiality, deep commitment to Zionism and long-term friendships. Bernie's mega-fund shared many signs with recent high level scams: The constant high returns, unmatched by any other broker; a lack of third party oversight; a backroom accounting firm physically incapable of auditing the multi-billion dollar operation; a broker-dealer operation directly under his thumb and the total obfuscation of what he was actually investing in. The obvious similarity of signs with other fraudsters were overlooked by the rich and famous, the sophisticated investors and high paid consultants, the Harvard MBAs and the entire army of regulators from the Security and Exchange Commissions (SEC) because they were totally embedded in the corrupt culture of 'take the money and run' and 'if you're making it, don't ask questions'. The reputation of the superior wisdom of a seemingly successful Jewish Wall Streeter fed into the self-delusions of the wealthy and the stereotypes held by millionaire Gentiles. The Big Swindle Madoff's investment fund only dealt with a limited clientele of multi-millionaire and billionaires who kept their funds in for the long haul; the occasional withdrawal were limited in amount and were easily covered by soliciting new funds from new investors fighting to have access to Madoff's money management. The long-term big investors looked toward passing their investments to their kin or eventual retirement. The wealthy lawyers, dentists, surgeons, distinguished Ivy league professors and others who might need to draw from their funds for an occasional fancy wedding or celebrity-studded bar-mitzvah, could draw from their funds because Madoff had no problem covering the withdrawal by attracting funds from rich owners of sweat shop garment factories, dangerous meat packing outfits and slumlords. Madoff was no Robin Hood, his philanthropic and charity contributions facilitated access to the rich and wealthy who served on the boards of the recipient institutions and proved that he was 'one of them' a kind of super-rich 'intimate' of the same elite class. The shock, awe and heart attacks that followed Madoff's confession that he was 'running a Ponzi scheme' drew as much anger for the money lost and the fall from the moneyed class as for the embarrassment of knowing that the world's biggest exploiters and smartest swindlers on Wall Street, were completely 'taken' by one of their own. Not only did they suffer big losses but their self-image of themselves as rich because they are so smart and of 'superior stock' was utterly shattered: They saw themselves as suffering the same fate as all the schmucks they had previously swindled, exploited and dispossessed in their climb to the top. There is nothing worse for the ego of a respectable swindler than to be trumped by a bigger swindler. As a result, a number of the biggest losers have so far refused to give their names or the amount they lost, working instead through lawyers fighting off other losers. The Positive Side of Madoff's Mega-Swindle (The Inadvertent Hand of Justice) While it is understandable that the super-rich and wealthy, who have lost a large portion of their retirement and investment funds are unanimous in their condemnation and cries of betrayal of trust, and the editorials of all the prestigious newspapers and weeklies have joined the chorus of moral critics, there is much to praise in Madoff's deeds, even if such praise was not at the heart of his fraudulent endeavor. It is worthwhile to list the inadvertent positive outcomes of Madoff's mega-swindle. First of all the swindle of $50 plus billion dollars may make a big dent on US Zionist funding of illegal Israeli colonial settlements in the Occupied Territories, lessen funding for AIPAC's purchase of Congressional influence and financing of propaganda campaigns in favor of a pre-emptive US military attack against Iran. Most investors will have to lower or eliminate their purchase of Israel bonds, which subsidize the Jewish State's military budget. Secondly, the swindle has further discredited the highly speculative hedge funds already reeling from massive withdrawals because of deep losses. Madoff's funds were one of the last 'respected' operations still drawing new investors, but with the latest revelations it may accelerate their demise. The dismissed promoters may finally have to perform an honest, productive day's work. Thirdly, Madoff's long-term, large-scale fraud was not detected by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) despite its claims of at least two investigations. As a result, there is a total loss of credibility. More generally, the SEC's failure demonstrates the incapacity of capitalist government regulatory agencies to detect mega frauds. This failure raises the question of whether alternatives to investing in Wall Street are better suited to protect savings and pension funds. Fourthly, Madoff's long-term association with NASDAQ, including his chairmanship, while he was defrauding his clients of billions, strongly suggests that the members and leaders of this stock exchange are incapable of recognizing a crook, and are prone to overlook felonious behavior of 'one of their own'. In other words, the investing public can no longer look to holders of high posts in NASDAQ as a sign of probity. After Madoff it may signal time to look for a king-size mattress for safe keeping of what remains of a family's wealth. The fifth point is that the investment advisors from top banks in Europe, Asia and the US managing billions of funds did not carry out the most elementary due diligence of Madoff's operation. Apart from severe bank losses, tens of thousands of influential, affluent and super-rich lost their entire accumulated wealth. The result is total loss of confidence in the leading banks and financial instruments as well as the general discrediting of 'expert knowledge'. The result is a weakening of the financial stranglehold over investor behavior and the demise of an important sector of the parasitic 'rentier' class, which gains without producing any useful commodities or providing needed services. The sixth point is that since most of the money stolen by Madoff came from the upper classes around the world, his behavior has reduced inequalities - he is the 'greatest leveler' since the introduction of the progressive income tax. By ruining billionaires and bankrupting millionaires, Madoff has lessened their capacity to use their wealth to influence politicians in their favor - thus increasing the potential political influence of the less affluent sectors of class society ... and inadvertently strengthening democracy against the financial oligarchs. A seventh point can be made that by swindling life-long friends, self-same ethno-religious investors, narrow ethnically defined country club members and close family members, Madoff demonstrates that finance capital shows no respect for any of the pieties of everyday life: Great and small, holy and profane, all are subordinated to the rule of capital. Eighth, among the many ruined investors in New York and New England, there are a number of mega slumlords (real estate moguls), sweatshop owners (fancy name-brand clothes and toy manufacturers) and others who barely paid the minimum wage to their women and immigrant laborers, evicted poor tenants and swindled employees out of their pensions before moving their operations to China. In other words, Madoff's swindle was a kind of secular 'divine' retribution for past and present crimes against labor and the poor. Needless to say, this 'unconscious Robin Hood' did not redistribute the money fleeced from the employers to their workers, he reinvested part of it in charities which enhanced his philanthropic image and to payout to some of his early investors so sustain the overall Ponzi scam. Point number nine is that Madoff struck a severe blow against anti-Semites who claim that there is a 'close-knit Jewish conspiracy to defraud the Gentiles', laying that canard to rest once and for all. Among Bernard Madoff's principle victims were his closest Jewish friends and colleagues, people who shared Seder meals and frequented the same upscale temples in Long Island and Palm Beach. Bernie was discriminating in accepting clients, but it was on the basis of their wealth and not their national origin, race, religion or sexual preference. He was very ecumenical and a strong backer of globalization. There was nothing ethnocentric about Madoff: He defrauded the Anglo-Chinese bank HSBC of $1 billion dollars and several billions from the Dutch arm of the Belgian bank Fortes. $1.4 billion was from the Royal Bank of Scotland, the French bank BNP Paribas, the Spanish bank, Banco Santander, the Japanese Nomura; not to mention hedge funds in London and the US, which have admitted holdings in Bernard Madoff Investment Securities. Indeed Bernie was emblematic of the modern up-to-date, politically correct, multicultural, international ... swindler. The ease with which the super rich of Europe forked their fortunes over caused one Madrid-based business consultant to observe that, "picking off Spain's wealthiest was like clubbing seals ..." (Financial Times, December 18 2008 page 16) The tenth point is that Madoff's swindle will likely promote greater self-criticism and a more distrustful attitude toward other potential confidence people posing as reliable financial know-it-alls. Among self-critical Jews, they are less likely to confide in brokers simply because they are zealous backers of Israel and generous contributors to Zionist fund drives. That is no longer an adequate guarantee of ethical behavior and a certificate of good conduct. In fact it may raise suspicion of brokers who are excessively ardent boosters of Israel and promise consistent high returns to local Zionist affiliates - asking themselves whether this business about 'what is good for the ...' is really a cover for another scam. The final and 11th point is the demise of Madoff's enterprise and his wealthy liberal Jewish victims will adversely affect contributions to the 52 Major Jewish American Organizations, numerous foundations in Boston, Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere, as well as the Clinton/Schumer militarist wing of the Democratic Party (Madoff bankrolled both of them as well as other unconditional Congressional supporters of Israel). This may open Congress to greater debate on Middle East policy without the usual high volume attacks. Conclusion Madoff's swindle and fraudulent behavior is not the result of a personal moral failure. It is the product of a systemic imperative and the economic culture, which informs the highest circles of our class structure. The paper economy, hedge funds and all the 'sophisticated financial instruments' are all 'Ponzi schemes' - they are not based on producing and selling goods and services. They are financial bets on future financial paper growth based on securing future buyers to pay off earlier cash ins. The 'failure' of the SEC is totally predictable and systemic: The regulators are selected from the regulatees, are beholden to them and defer to their judgments, claims and audit sheets. They are structured to 'miss the signs' and to avoid 'over-regulating' their financial superiors. Madoff operated in a milieu of a Wall Street where everything goes, where impunity for mega-bailouts for mega swindlers is the norm. As an individual swindler, he out-defrauded some of his bigger institutional competitors on the Street. The whole system of rewards and prestige goes to those best able to juggle the books, to cover the paper trails and who have willing victims begging to get fleeced. What a mensch, this Madoff! In a few days, one individual, Bernard Madoff, has struck a bigger blow against global financial capital, Wall Street and the US Zionist Lobby/Israel-First Agenda than the entire US and European left combined over the past half century! He has been more successful in reducing vast wealth disparities in New York than all the white, black, Christian and Jewish, reform and mainline Democratic and Republican governors and Mayors over the past two centuries. Some right-wing conspiracy theorists are claiming that Bernie is a secret Islamic-Palestinian agent (from Hamas) who set out to deliberately undermine the financial base of the Jewish State of Israel and its most powerful, affluent and generous US backers and foundations. Others claim that he is a closet Marxist whose swindles were carefully designed to discredit Wall Street and to funnel billions into clandestine radical organizations - after all ... does anyone know where the lost billions have gone? Unlike the leftist pundits, bloggers and protest marchers, whose earnest and public activities have had no effect on the rich and powerful, Madoff has aimed his blows where it hurts the most: Their mega-bank accounts, their confidence in the capitalist system, their self-esteem and, yes, even their cardiac well-being. Does that mean we on the left should form a Bernie Madoff Defense Committee and call for a bailout in line with Paulson's bailout of his Citibank cronies? Should we proclaim "Equal bailout for equal swindlers!"? Should we advocate his flight (or his right of return) to Israel to avoid a trial? It might not fly with his many Jewish victims to make the case for an Israeli retirement for Bernie. There is no reason to mount the barricades for Bernard Madoff. It's enough to recognize that he has inadvertently rendered an historic service to popular justice by undermining some of the financial props of a class-ridden injustice system. Postscript Was it out of sheer admiration or because of some covert linkages with Madoff that our current Attorney General Michael Mukasey is removing himself from the investigation? Others of equal importance and influence are most certainly tied in the Madoff Affair, and not just the 'victims'. We are facing a serious case of matters of State ... No one can believe that a single person could by himself pull off a scam of this size and duration. Nor can any serious investigator believe that $50 billion dollars has simply 'disappeared' or been squirreled into personal accounts. http://www.lahaine.org/petras/index.php?p=1769&c=1 http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com http://www.ashisuto.co.jp From tal1 at cogeco.ca Sat Mar 14 11:55:54 2009 From: tal1 at cogeco.ca (Tony B.) Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2009 13:55:54 -0400 Subject: [A-List] International Criminal Court: Western Kangaroo Court Message-ID: <26EF472549AF4D0892196F52D7124A43@TonyPC> ----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff To: stopnato at yahoogroups.com Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2009 9:42 AM Subject: [stopnato] International Criminal Court: Western Kangaroo Court http://www.southerntimesafrica.com/inside.aspx?sectid=1695&cat=10 Southern Times (South Africa) March 14, 2009 ICC ? ?Western kangaroo court? By Olley Maruma in Harare In Africa, the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague is considered by many to be a Western kangaroo court set up to hound, jail and silence African and Third world leaders who refuse to submit to the grip of Western hegemony and domination. The court's recent indictment of President Omar al Bashir of Sudan, has only provided more evidence to give credence to this view. The court was established in July 2002 as a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The statute establishing it proclaimed that the court could only prosecute crimes committed on or before the day it came into being. Although the official seat of the court is at the Hague, it's proceedings may take place anywhere in the world. One hundred and eight states are members of the court. Among those that have refused to join are China, Russia, India and the United States. For the leader of a country to be tried by the court, the case has to be referred to it by the United Nations Security Council. This was not the case with al Bashir's case. The widely held negative view of the ICC was neatly summed up by Miguel d'Escoto Brockman, the president of the United Nations General Assembly. Hitting the nail on the head, Brockman dismissed the ICC's indictment on Al Bashir as "absurd and politically motivated". "A few people with a very dubious past and with very little credibility pretend to know better than the whole African Union," Brockman observed. "This is absurd and really not an adequate way to deal with this issue." Brockman noted that for international justice to regain its credibility, "it would be important to begin by indicting people from powerful nations, not to pick on the smaller ones". Will the leaders of the West listen to him? Your guess is as good as mine. What I can do is provide Brockman with specific cases of recorded atrocities committed in Europe by Britain, the United States and their European allies to see if indictments can be brought at the ICC against those who committed them. I fear though it will be a futile exercise because as I mentioned before, the ICC is a Western kangaroo court devised to continue the Western imperialism and hegemony of the 19th century by other means. Before itemising the cases, let me give the background to the atrocities. When in 1999 Britain and the United States bombed Yugoslavia and Kosovo for several weeks in violation of United Nations' rules, multitudes around the world justly protested that what the NATO allies were doing was criminal because they had not exhausted the diplomatic option. To many it appeared as if Bill Clinton and Tony Blair wanted to wage war against Slobodan Milosevic in order to boost their images and international standing as tough, strong and decisive leaders. One could understand why Clinton, who had been a draft dodger as a young man, had decided to wage war against the demonised and embattled Milosevic. He wanted to divert press and public attention from his scandalous affair with Monica Lewinsky, as depicted in the satirical Hollywood movie, Wag The Dog. What was baffling was why Blair, who had been a longhaired advocate of nuclear disarmament in his youth, had decided to drop cluster bombs on the innocent civilians of Yugoslavia. On March 24, 1999, NATO attacked Serbia with bombers and cruise missiles. The "war" marked the first time in over 50 years that European powers had attacked another European country. The bombing and missile attacks initially occurred nightly, then day-and night, going on for 11weeks. The bombing caused major damage to Yugoslav society. NATO deliberately bombed water and power supplies, hospitals and prisons, knowing full well that without electricity and water, the people of Yugoslavia would suffer great hardship and that some would die. Their objective was to alienate Slobodan Milosevic's government from the majority of the Serbian population, in the hope that they would acquiesce to "regime change" as the only solution to their intolerable predicament. Under international law, the war was illegal from the beginning, even though its perpetrators knew that deliberate infliction of suffering upon civilians is a war crime. Before that, Serbs and Albanians had long lived together in harmony in Kosovo. At the end of the 1980s, Slobodan Milosevic made the mistake of trying to enhance his power by inducing in the Serb minority in Kosovo fear of the Albanian majority, who, after ing the example of Bosnia, were agitating for Albanian independence and the dismemberment of Yugoslavia. His objective was to kill in its infancy the Albanian movement for secession and the break-up of the Federation of Yugoslavia. His actions prompted the Albanians into organising themselves into paramilitary units, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which attacked the Serbian police. The Serbs retaliated. The hostilities escalated. The Albanians had a brilliant idea: provoke the Serbs to murder, play it up in the Western media, cry "Hitler!" and "Genocide" and, who knows, Western moralists would fall for it and become instant allies. The Serbs fell for it. The Serb police ambushed a KLA operation which was smuggling arms over the border from the Albanian mainland. The next day Albanian gunmen entered a bar in Pec and sprayed the occupants with machine gun fire, killing six Serbian teenagers. In the village of Racak the KLA killed four Serbs. The Serbian police attacked a village to which the KLA attackers had fled, killing 15 Albanians. A few days later, numerous Albanians were found dead in a ravine near the village. William Walker, the head of the Kosovo Verification Mission, was invited to see the bodies. Without any conclusive proof, and in front of Western television crews, he declared in shocked tones that the Serbian police and army were responsible for the "massacre." The KLA initiated battles in civilian areas knowing that the Serbs would retaliate and civilians would be killed. The ensuing incidents gave the US the green light to present itself as the defender of international morality and to enter the conflict on the side of the KLA. The KLA plan had worked. Before the world knew what was happening, a civil war was in progress. Many in the world were stupefied. They could not understand how such a series of seemingly unremarkable incidents could lead to the degeneration of a full scale war against Serbia. Either the war was the result of cynical calculation by the United States and its Western allies, or it was the result of amazing stupidity. Many concluded that it made sense as part of a US plan for the military domination of Europe and, perhaps, eventually Russia, under the guise of a NATO operation. Was the US aiming to acquire a military stronghold in the heart of Europe from which it could, if when necessary, threaten any European or Middle Eastern nation with the devastation of Yugoslavia and Iraq as examples to those not inclined to accept US domination? After all, Yugoslavia was the last hold-out in Eastern Europe against the neo-liberal economic system which the West had always wanted to impose on this traditionally socialist country. Following the defeat of Serbia, Milosevic was abducted by NATO commandos and taken to the Hague for trial for having committed "crimes against humanity." That the United States, which is not a member of the ICC, was the principal organizer of Milosevic's trial at the Hague exposed the fraud of the entire enterprise. America had waged war in the Balkans in order to achieve the hegemony of American capitalism over a strategic region. It was her penultimate act in the burial of communism which had begun with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1988. Her ambitions in the Balkans had nothing to do with "multi-ethnic democracy," human rights or justice. Here are some of the feeble excuses offered by NATO officials for the killing of innocent Serbian civilians during the intensive bombing of their country. "The pilot attacked what he believed to be military vehicles," said Shea, spokesman for NATO, as reported on April 15 1999, by the BBC. "He dropped his bomb in good faith, as you would expect of a trained pilot from a democratic country?..The bomb destroyed the lead vehicle which we now believe to have been a civilian vehicle." "NATO deeply regrets" the death of five people when missiles fell 600 metres short of their target and hit residences in the mining town of Aleksinac on April 5. "NATO deeply regrets" the death of at least ten people when NATO jets hit a Yugoslav passenger train travelling from Belgrade to Salonika on a bridge near Leskovac on April 12. "NATO deeply regrets" the deaths of 80 people which occurred when NATO attacked two refugee columns in Western Kosovo on April 14. "NATO deeply regrets" the death of twenty civilians which occurred when a laser-guided bomb lost its target lock over Surdulica on April 27. "NATO deeply regrets," the deaths of 39 civilians killed when a NATO missile hit a bus crossing a bridge at Luzane on May 1. The question is: were these not atrocities against innocent Serbians crimes against humanity? After all, all these victims were not military threats to the cowardly NATO fight pilots who were bombing them from a safe distance of 2000 feet high! And if they were war crimes, why has the ICC never bothered to mount a prosecution against the Western leaders who were ultimately responsible for their commission? After all if Milosevic committed any war crimes, he did it before July 2002. One can only come up with one conclusion: that at the Hague there is one law for powerful leaders of the West and another for the feeble leaders of other nations. =========================== Stop NATO http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato To subscribe, send an e-mail to: stopnato-subscribe at yahoogroups.com Daily digest option available. Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages ============================== __._,_.___ Messages in this topic (1) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic Messages | Database | Polls Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required) Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch format to Traditional Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe Rece