How to Solve the US Housing Problem and Avoid a Recession: A Revived HOLC and RTC (tags)
In 1933, Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act, which banned banks from underwriting securities. Financial institutions had to choose either to be a simple bank lender or an underwriter (investment banker or brokerage firm).
At universities, the reality of the financial casino is taboo (tags)
When buying or selling, high-speed trading can bring profits a few milliseconds or microseconds ahead of other high-speed trading bidders. These speculative trades have nothing to do with the good functioning of the financial markets. On the contrary, prices can be manipulated.
Why the US Bank Crisis is Not Over (tags)
There must always be a financial crash at some point. That is because interest-bearing debt grows exponentially, but the economy follows an S-curve and then turns down. And when the economy turns down... the magnitude of financial claims on the economy exceeds the ability to pay.
Blow up the banking system: A free account for all is possible (tags)
Harsh austerity policies for the vast majority of people and state socialism for bankers, both practiced at the same time in Europe and the U.S. after 2008 - this had two consequences for financialized capitalism of the past 14 years. First, this course poisoned the West's money.
Financial crisis and The time of change (tags)
A utopian society will have learned to decentralize power, to keep it manageable and controllable, instead of creating supranational institutions and conglomerates. Look at the EU & Brussels, an estimated 25,000 lobbyists besiege and work the deputies and commissioners.
Hundreds of Billions in New Lending on the Table at Cote d’Ivoire Gathering (tags)
World Development Banks Meet for Third Annual Summit
Opportunity instead of crises and End this madness! (tags)
Almost no one asks what an economic policy looks like that no longer subordinates everything to economic growth: How to reduce the debt mountain to a reasonable level without GDP growth? How can pensions be secured without GDP growth and employment be guaranteed?
Opportunity instead of crises and End this madness (tags)
History teaches that major course corrections usually emerge from crises. However, far-sighted economists and politicians should start thinking today about how to shape a future without debt crises, without ecological and social exploitation, and without compulsive growth.
95 Theses Against the Rule of the Financial Markets (tags)
The financial markets have made themselves independent of the real economy. As the selling of indulgences led to Martin Luther's 95 Theses in 1517, the rule of speculative financial markets has led to revenue shortfalls of US cities and states. Tax havens hide between $22-33 trillion.
The Curse of Financial Entrepreneurship (tags)
We are not prisoners of bad decisions made in the past. We can and should rein in Wall Street, break up its five giant “too-big-to-fail” banks, support local and state banks, resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act’s divide between investment & commercial banking, tax all financial transactions
Limitation to 1.5 degrees is not possible with our economic system (tags)
In economics, an international mainstream dominates, which establishes optimized formal models that exclude many areas of economic relations, such as feminism, historical school, as well as post-Keynesianism, which considers the importance of demand and demand to be at least as important as good conditions for companies.
Numerous economists had predicted falling real estate prices and rental prices during the pandemic. But prices are rising. Once again, economists are surprised that reality does not want to follow their models... Central banks are squeezing even more money into the financial markets than ever before.
Criminal banks and criminal capitalism (tags)
Since the 1970s, the real economy and the financial economy have been increasingly diverging. Gigantic assets vagabond around the globe, desperately looking for profitable investment opportunities.
A better future after COVID-19 (tags)
People must decide how they want to live and what they want to produce in a fair ecological exchange that respects the interests of all people. This would also reverse the logic of competition between countries which is based on lowering labor costs, and promote ecological goals.
The Forgotten History of the Financial Crisis (tags)
In the United States between late 2008 and early 2009, 800,000 people were losing their jobs every month. By 2015, over nine million American families would lose their homes to foreclosure—the largest forced population movement in the United States since the Dust Bowl.
"We do not live in capitalism" (tags)
After the transition to Atlantic turbo-capitgalism, little can be recognized from the earlier times of the initiatives of the social market economy. In this situation, the counter-factual and fact-immune creed of all conservatives is enmeshed in a deep unconsciousness about the world.
Economics in the times of the coronavirus (tags)
Most people’s thinking is determined by the development of the Covid-19 crisis, the return of “the hour of executive power” (Gerhard A. Ritter), i.e. state of exception legislation, and the fears which it evokes as well as the economic measures in response to the health crisis.
Is Capitalism Out of Order? (tags)
Growing debt is actually not a big problem in a growing economy as long as it does not grow faster than the gross domestic product (GDP). The debt mountain of the capitalist world system is growing much faster than the world economic output.
The Bank Of Israel, Gold, And The Third Temple (tags)
BUY GOLD, GLOBAL DEPRESSION COMING!
The Financial Market Casino Controls Politics (tags)
Financial markets seem to be the measure of all things. Corporations are subsidized with trillions. In their "competition," small and medium-size businesses are the fools. A complex subsidy jungle exists in nearly all states, a "socialism for the rich" or "new feudalism."
Ten Years After the Financial Crash (tags)
US economic statistics are dubious since financial markets are based on financial products and money out of nothing. Tax havens, micro-second betting, stock buybacks and corruption through lobbying are market-distorting and cause revenue shortfalls.
The Attack of Corporations and the Rich on the Rest of Society (tags)
Inconceivable sums were given out without hesitation when the banks were bailed out from bankruptcy. The rich triumph and despise others as losers. Corporations and the rich must desist from their selfishness and accept their responsibility for society again.
Driven to Consumption and Money out of Nothng (tags)
Growth originally created a material prosperity about which earlier generations could only dream. However, more economic growth does not lead to people becoming happier. We are prisoners of a system that forces us to permanent growth. Banks create credits.
Trumponomics and Wall Street Rejoices (tags)
Economics should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing creativity and self-determination. The state should serve the public interest and reduce poverty. Trumponomics is a disaster. The poor, seniors, children and students are under a vicious attack.
The Criminality of the Elites (tags)
The offenses of the upper classes are hardly publicized. People wait in vain for strong interventions in the economic realm. Financial criminality harms the state, the community and economic growth (e.g. high-frequency trading, shadow banking, financial products)
Is the Financial Crash 2.0 Coming? (tags)
Market ideology has been on the advance since the 1980s. Only a few voices warned of the risks and instability of the liberalized financial markets. After they profited from the generous bailout packages, the banks began to speculate against the most indebted countries.
Interview with Social Philosopher Friedhelm Hengsbach (tags)
The financial markets have uncoupled from the real economy since the middle of the 1970s. Politicians listen and react to every sound from the financial sector. Who paid for the bank bailout? The general public or the state made itself poor and guaranteed capital.
The World Dependent on Central Banks (tags)
The situation seems extremely contradictory. The global economic and financial system has been clinically dead since 2008. It only functions because it is artificially kept alive by the central banks like a patient in the intensive care unit $!8 trillion was pumped into the global system.
Prohibiting Micro-Second Betting on the Exchanges (tags)
The financial sector that has gone off course should serve the real economy again in the future. The exchange functions like a gigantic casino. Throwing some sand int he gears with a transactions tax would slow down the speculation.
Crisis 2.0: A Policy for the 99% (tags)
The capital surpluses are a constant source of new speculative waves and maneuvers. The crisis of state finances is mainly a crisis of tax refusal. The elites shifted the tax burden from businesses and high incomes to consumer taxes and fees.
The Unsettling Truth about the Rolling Back of Dodd-Frank Regulations (tags)
The Unsettling Truth about the Rolling Back of Dodd-Frank Regulations
Capitalism Criticism 2.0 (tags)
"Capitalism contains crisis as rain clouds contain rain" (Jean Juares, 19th century socialist). Profits increase in the neoliberal model, not investment (Nicolas Krowall). The competitive pressure drives businessmen to reduce investments in labor and wages.
Benjamin Tucker American Mutualist: Mutual Banking Part 3 and Final Conclusion Part 4 (tags)
"The abolition of compulsory taxation would mean the abolition of the state as well, Tucker asserted, and the form of society succeeding it would be on the line of a voluntary defensive institution... There were two methods of government...The other was the anarchist method of 'leadership', inducing the individual to the 'goal of an ideal civilization' through persuasion and 'attraction'...Two aims of anarchist activity, the abolition of compulsory taxation and the abolition of legally-protected money and land monopolies, form the main theme of his critical writing..."
The Fairy-tale of the End of the Financial Crisis (tags)
Between 2008 and 2010, the EU Commission approved state aid of 4.3 trillion euros. The potential crisis of the global economy has grown and not declined. A system crash was prevented by the actions of central banks and states.
How the World Heads for the Next Crash (tags)
Governments secure the money of the rich. State debts have grown in nearly all countries of the world since 2010. Ten years after the outbreak of the financial crisis, the economy is again in a standstill or mired in crisis. Trump wants to cancel the recent bank regulations and cut corp taxes.
Rethinking Economic Policy! (tags)
The economic crisis calls for social-democratic answers. The fading mass purchasing power (in Germany) is due to the increasing inequality of income and wealth. Deregulation promotes social problems like precariousness and greater income inequality.
Democracy and the Uncanny Power of Money (tags)
Growing inequality is the greatest political problem of our time. Governments are often only actors or puppets of an anonymous regime for the benefit of the privileged where the interests of simple people do not count.
Causes of Great Problems Faded Out in Elections (tags)
Elections today have one thing in common: they don't change anything. Pseudo-battles dominate in which the actors are intensely focused on evading the burning questions and diverting the electorate from the real causes of problems..
Bernie Sanders' Socialist America (tags)
Bernie believes there has been a corporate takeover of American democracy, and this is where he returns to the idea of political revolution. In nearly every speech he makes this clarion call, ...neither he nor any other politician can make the necessary changes alone.
Janet Yellen's Storytime (tags)
The US economy is not picking up speed, wages are not rising and the situation on the labor market has not improved... The world economy did not get going again after the greatest wealth redistribution in the history of humanity.
"Who is saving Whom?" shows what remains hidden. A tremendous redistribution from the bottom to the top.. Rescuing is taking place, for the 99% however there is no sign of a rescue.
Wall Street Rally: Hold the Cheers (tags)
Wall Street
Misguided Calls for More QE (tags)
QE
Deepening Greek Depression (tags)
Greece
$1.5 Quadrillion Time Bomb (tags)
finance
ECB May Deny Greek Banks More Emergency Funding (tags)
Greece
Scare-mongering Greeks to Vote "Yes" on Sunday (tags)
Greece
Greece Declares Bank Holiday, Capital Controls Imposed (tags)
Greece
Troika Intends Starving Greece Into Submission (tags)
Greece
FIFA Scandal Highlights Corruption in Global Financial System ;US Banks Named Too (tags)
FIFA, Money Laundering,World Cup, Jubilee USA Network
Russia Blamed, US Taxpayers on the Hook, as Fracking Boom Collapses (tags)
Ben Ptashnik is a former state senator from Vermont.
Economics is Onesided and Reactionary (tags)
The homo oeconomicus cannot be our hope and is not desirable or future-friendly. The economic benefits to the capitalist entrepreneur are in contradiction to nature and to the person..We face completely oversized financial markets that have uncoupled from the real economy creating value.
US Spending Bill Bonanza for Wall Street (tags)
Wall Street
Fed
economy
Banks and Investors Challenge Predatory Funds Solutions Fall Short of Comprehensive Prot (tags)
The International Capital Market Association (ICMA), a group of banks and investors, released a new debt framework this morning aimed at reducing the ability of predatory funds and holdout investors to undermine debt restructuring. The plan was created after meetings convened by the US Treasury Department in the wake of Greece's debt restructuring and comes in the aftermath of the landmark debt case between Argentina and NML Capital.
Ten threats to Americans: Lori Wallach (tags)
Lori Wallach is director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.
Southern California Mothers Fight Back Against Foreclosures for Mothers’ Day 2014 (tags)
On Mothers’ Day weekend, Los Angeles families rallied outside Wells Fargo bank to bring attention to the greed and corruption of the banks that continue to fraudulently foreclose on families across the nation.
The new indebtedness is a consequence of the crisis caused by the financial industry-and in no way owed to an excessive social state, demographic change and so forth.. There are many critics of this policy of mastering crisis by flooding the financial markets with fresh money.
Occupy Fights Foreclosures and Dance Against Banks protest Wells Fargo and Bank of America (tags)
Citizens outraged over bank crimes, fraud-closures, and on-going corruption rallied outside Wells Fargo and Bank of America in Los Anbgeles on May 1, 2014 for #MayDay2014 #StopWellsFargo #DanceAgainstBanks #opDAB.
Banks and the New "Too Big to Jail" Doctrine (tags)
Eric Toussaint,is a historian and political scientist. He is the President of CADTM Belgium, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France. He is the co-author, with Damien Millet of Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank: Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers, and the author of many essays including entitled "The Trial ofanExemplary Man"
Federal Prohibition Against Legalized Medical Cannabis Enables Robbery, Kidnapping (tags)
The kidnapping, torture and castration of a local medical cannabis dispensary owner plays into the hands of the federal prohibition against medical cannabis and prevents the voters of states like CA and CO from being able to put their votes for legalization into practice. By creating a hostile business climate and forcing dispensary owners to deal in cash the federal government directly enables these sorts of kidnappings and robberies. Yet big banks continue to launder drug cartel money? Hypocrisy anyone?
Book Review: "The Greatest Predatory Attack of History" (tags)
The 1933 Glass-Steagal law created a firewall between commercial and investment banks and prevented speculators from gambling with the money of savers. Restoring Glass-Steagal would restore trust and public spirit. Profit-making is not profit-maximizing; speculating is not investing.
Rigging Foreign Exchange Markets (tags)
markets
Book Review: "The Victory of Capital" (tags)
A society can only provide for the future by investing today in the production of tomorrow...What may be sensible economically for a private individual or individual business could be harmful for the national economy, particularly when the economy staggers.
VIDEO: "Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis" 46 min (tags)
By spending $4 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions, Wall Street banks carried out a "quiet coup" (Simon Johnson). Banks own this place (Sen. Dick Durbin). The state has become the "errand boy" of the banks (Bill Moyers)
Market-conforming Democracy (tags)
Market-conforming democracy," Angela Merkel's guiding idea, is a pleasant-sounding description of plutocracy where the forms still exist but their substance is "financialized," where myths of privatization. corporate beneficence and self-healing markets are zombie gods.
Former Fed Official Apologizes (tags)
Fed
China Calls for De-Americanizing (tags)
China
Heiner Flassbeck on the US Budget Conflict (tags)
The current ceiling of $16.7 trillion will be reached on October 17. If the political camps cannot agree on a new upper limit, the largest economy of the world will be insolvent – with possibly disastrous consequences for the world economy. This October 2013 interview is translated from German
Video: Jon Stewart tries to end government shutdown (tags)
"Private banks create money out of nothing and lend it to us...Money is gambled on financial markets...Money supply doubled in seven years 2000-2007 in the UK...Bailing out banks perpetuates a system that will never work..Money should only be used for productive purposes."
Public Banking Avoids Today's Debacle (tags)
banking
Who is System Relevant - Banks or the People? (tags)
We are experiencing the most brutal form of the neoliberal credo since the financial crisis: privatization of profits and socialization of losses. EU crisis policy bails out banks and drives the population into misery. We must change direction. We need a change of paradigms in policy.
Is Capitalism to Blame for the Syrian War Drive? (tags)
Obama’s push for war in Syria seemed so deeply irrational, so crazed, that many people naturally asked, “Why is this happening?” And “who” wants it to happen? Few Americans actually believed that Nobel Peace Prizing winning Obama suddenly wanted to bomb Syria because “Assad gassed his own people” (especially when zero evidence was given to prove this).
Addicted to Liquidity Injections (tags)
Bernanke's announcing of lower monthly printing of money was enough to make stock exchanges collapse in many threshold countries. The monetary policy of printing money and zero interest is caught in a vicious circle. Liquidity glut generates credit growth.
America's Student Loan Racket: Stiffer Debt Boondage Coming (tags)
class war
VIDEO: Bill Moyers' "Going to Jail for Protesting" (tags)
“Lobbyists have spent years making sure these loopholes are put into the tax code.” -@NYTimes' Gretchen Morgenson http://ow.ly/lnEI1 “Corporations have a role to play in our economy, but don't have a role to play in our government.” -@dechristopher http://ow.ly/lnEz2
The exodus from the casino capitalism producing ever faster and ever deeper crises cannot succeed without a broad and powerful democratic base. Parliamentary democracy is urged to finally take up the struggle around the primacy of politics
Financial War - How Banks and Bandits Endanger our Democracy (tags)
Political failure follows market failure. Participation in system criminality is without risk of prosecution. The financial crisis is not only a system failure. It was caused by human actions in the banking sector that are objectively punishable.
Budget Cuts and Happy Times (tags)
For around three decades, a Troika from Wall Street, the US Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve pushed global (capital) investments with a mixture of tax cuts, cheap credits and overrated securities.
Lanza and Holmes Fathers Both Linked to LIBOR/FICO Scandal (tags)
The fathers of both Adam Lanza and James Holmes were both potential whistleblowers in the LIBOR/FICO scandal. Following the shootings committed by their sons, neither father will testify. This is the classic MK ULTRA scenario of mind controlled puppets distracting the public from real issues of upcoming economic collapse. The psychology of MK ULTRA is a low budget CIA tactic to disarm the people of the U.S. following controlled shootings by overmedicated individuals.
Pope Francis Concern for Poor Drives Review of Vatican Bank (tags)
Jubilee USA Executive Director Releases Statement on Pope’s Focus on Corruption and Illicit Capital Flight Impacts on Poor
Secret FDIC Plan to Loot Bank Accounts (tags)
grand theft
Are Reforms of the Financial Sector Enough? (tags)
This article focuses on seven errors and seven remedies of the financial crisis. The financial crisis was also a crisis of easy money. For years and again today, speculators exploited the situation that money was and is very easy to borrow in the US and Japan.
Public Banking: What Better Time Than Now (tags)
public banking
Depositor Haircuts: The New Normal (tags)
class war
Grand Theft Cyprus: Part II (tags)
class war
Detroit Citizen’s Prepare to Fight Their Corporate Master (tags)
Fresh from shoving his “Right to Work for Less” legislation down the throats of Michigan’s workers, Governor Rick Snyder has grown bolder in pursuing a corporate agenda. He has now appointed Kevyn Orr of Jones Day law firm to act as an Emergency Financial Manager (EFM) of Detroit.
class war
South Central Woman, 71, Evicted From Home After Years-Long Battle Against Banks (tags)
WE TALK TO A SENIOR-AGED WOMAN WHO HAS BEEN EVICTED FROM HER HOME IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES.
Wall Street's in Good Hands with Mary Jo White (tags)
Wall Street
Cancellation of Illegitmate Debts Instead of Bailout Umbrellas for Financiers (tags)
The inflation of public indebtedness was an essential element for the enhanced power of financial capital. That inflation was a result of a conscious under-financing of the state and is a lever to enforce an austerity policy. Financialization intensified the pressure to precariousness.
Occupy Fights Foreclosure Protests $10 billion Settlement (tags)
Occupy Fights Foreclosure openly denounces the $10 billion settlement
Rose Parade Completed by Occupy Fights Foreclosure Float (tags)
Occupy Fights Foreclosure group started the year 2013 by marching and chanting at the annual Rose Parade in Pasadena.
The Fiscal Cliff Is A Diversion: The Derivatives Tsunami and the Dollar Bubble (tags)
The fiscal cliff is a bipartisan excuse to introduce austerity measures in the form of "needed" cuts to social safety net programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The stage is set for "Jason vs. Freddy" or Obama vs. Boehner as we the people wait to see which politician serial killer will be cutting the U.S. people with their sharp knives of austerity.
Hernandez Family Foreclosure Sparks Anti-Eviction Outrage (tags)
Fuerza Hernandez evicted today with promises of continuing resistance.
banking
Predicting Protracted Hard Times (tags)
class war
Nationalizing banks works for the short term; why not permanently? (tags)
Temporary nationalization of big banks worked in Norway and Sweden. Permanent nationalization would avoid a return to the speculation and destruction of bankers.
Banks, Bankers and Banksters (tags)
An unrestrained speculative capitalism emerged out of investment capitalism. New financing instruments are invented. Risks are trivialized or glossed over to soothe the population. Boundless indebtedness becomes the norm. The new age led to immediate profit eclipsing investment.
European Bank Socialism (tags)
The motto "Too big to fail" frees the financial sector from all chains. In the future, the banks will not have to assume any liability for taking irrational risks. Instead they can commit fraud without limit-in a system that already leads us to the brink and creates millions of unemployed.
class war
Bailout Fraud and Unaccountability (tags)
fraud
Irrational Draghi Exuberance (tags)
class war
BANK OF AMERICA ATTACKS CT. HOMEOWNER’S RIGHTS BY COERSION AND INTIMIDATION. (tags)
The Senior Couple Has Been Referred To Foreclosure And They Need Your Help And Moral Support.
The state became indebted to bailout the banks. Now the state pays them ever higher interests. The state should guarantee the deposits of small savers, not the debts of banks to other banks or hedge funds. The financial sector must be shriveled, the sector that uncoupled.
Trillions Stashed in Tax Havens (tags)
grand theft
class war
class war
Emergency Central Bank Intervention Coming? (tags)
class war
Year-end inflation forecast down to 6.2 pct as risk perceptions recover (tags)
Ongoing optimism in Turkish markets, triggered by the latest positive indices, has influenced the risk perceptions regarding foreign investments in the country positively, Turkish Central Bank Governor Erdem Başçı told reporters in Ankara on Thursday.
For a European Anti-Crisis Front (tags)
Lowering the public debt burden is not an end-in-itself. Debts could serve to stimulate the economy and improve the living conditions of the victims of the crisis. Debt reduction must occur mainly by increasing the tax revenues (higher tax rates and combating tax evasion), not only by cuts.
Libor Scandal Reflects a Cesspool of Financial Fraud (tags)
fraud
class war
Heading for Economic Collapse (tags)
class war
JPMorgan Chase on Capitol Hil (tags)
grand theft
Spain: The Latest Shoe to Drop (tags)
class war
Contagion Affects Europe (tags)
Class war
UK Uncut's London Street Party (tags)
The fire of youth will never be put out! The future must be anticipated and protected in the present, not extrapolated from the present (J.Moltmann). Private corporations occupy the government. This is destructive of democracy.
In the Towrope of the Financial Markets (tags)
"High growth has a well-known hook. Surpluses are only possible when natural resources from clear water to rare earth are available, when the energy supply is guaranteed and when the pollutant sinks are sufficient.. The debtors are now those states that had to become indebted.."
Looming Economic Realities (tags)
class war
Debt Tribunal and Green Socialism (tags)
Qualitative growth, breaking out of the box of quantitative growth, is the key to solving mass unemployment, environmental destruction and trade imbalance. A job in education costs 1/10 what a job in a chemical dye plant costs. The media is part of a system that refuses change.
Economist criticizes "pathological allegience" to economic models (tags)
The crisis was born when Maggie Thatcher and then Bill Clinton deregulated the financial markets. The explosive force that was detonated was incalculable. Economics gave support because it provides models.
The Banks Should Serve the Real Economy (tags)
Democracy, risk and liability are turned upside down when trillions bailout the banks and workers, unemployed and pensioners must pay the bill! We live from those who say No to trivialization of crisis, to the state being reduced to a trough or errand boy for the banks (Bill Moyers). The economy should be a part of life, not a steamroller crushing creativity.
USA Laws Butchering Banks and Causing Murder, See San Bruno, See FDIC Act of 1991 (tags)
The USA government has gone into full butcher mode with murders galore in the San Francisco Bay area to vouch for mayhem caused by change in banking laws. A sort of Wal-Mart of Banking Laws in 1999 and 1991 allowing banks such as Wachovia to Be Buthchered.
class war
Group of Six shutdown Wells Fargo (tags)
April 10th was a warm sunny Tuesday and exceptionally busy in downtown riverside. Walking through the main st. mall adjacent to the mission inn with men and woman in suits meeting for business lunches all seemed to be normal. However Refund California Coalition an economic justice organization, paired with group of UCR students and Occupy Riverside organizers, began to setup signs and a microphone with the Gandhi statue overlooking. People in the mall began to turn their heads in curiosity, the conversation had started.
Support The Davis Dozen! Drop All Charges! (tags)
The “Banker's Dozen” were served with arrest notices one month after the U.S. Bank on UC Davis campus closed its doors for good, following weeks of protests against the university's privatization, its collusion with corporate profiteers, and the banks' role in increasing student costs and student debt. Twelve people are now threatened with 11 years each in jail and one million dollars in fines for a conspiracy to sit down. Privatization and austerity continue, more unpopular than ever. The university's policy of criminalizing dissent to protect and impose its policies continues, as it must in the face of increasing resistance.
Millionaire's Tax is the Best Debt Brake (tags)
Sahra Wagenknecht is a leader of the Left party, Die Linke, in the German Bundestag and author of "Freedom instead of Capitalism." Learning from other cultures is a strength, not a weakness. The University of British Columbia had a tuition freeze for 6 or 7 years and kept tuition at $2300.
To give a credit to a customer, a bank doesn't need to take the savings of another cutomer from its vaults. It creates the money out of nothing. In a countermove, the bank must deposit money with the central bank. There is a debate whether the creation of money can be left to the banks.
Lindsay/Osorio Campaign Announces 10-point Program (tags)
The Party for Socialism and Liberation is running Peta Lindsay for President and Yari Osorio for Vice-President in 2012. The campaign recently announced a 10-point program
Duplicitous Mortgage Settlement Deal (tags)
class war
Press Release for Monday Occupy Meeting with Wells Fargo Execs (3-5:30pm) (tags)
WHO: Occupy Activists in LA, Wells Fargo Executives, and Community Leaders WHAT: An unprecedented meeting between Bankers and Occupy Protesters WHEN: Monday, February 6, 2012 from 3pm-5pm; Press Conference at 5:30pm WHERE: Center of Nonprofit Management at California Endowment Building 1000 N. Alameda, L.A.
On Protest and the "Occupy"-Movement (tags)
National economies are now subject to the pressures of this supra-national financial "market" and to the institutions helpful to this market like the IMF and the European Central Bank. "Bailout umbrellas" at the expense of the common taxpayer are opened up.
The core of all western-individualist ideas of justice is the principle of personal responsibility. Everyone is responsible for the consequences of his/her actions. This motivates as well as disciplines. "We punish the virtuous and reward the squanderers."
Whistling Past the Graveyard (tags)
class war
Ongoing Global Economic Crisis (tags)
class war
Responsible New York Banking (tags)
banking
Deepening Global Financial Trouble (tags)
class war
Grim Holiday Season Tidings (tags)
class war
The Worthless Value System of the Financial Branch (tags)
The Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman wrote: "In a free economic system, there is only a single responsibility for the actors. Businesses must be carried out for the greatest possible profitability." To believers in the self-healing market, questions about guilt, humility and pangs of conscience must sound like questions from another world.
class war
class war
Wrecking Europe to Fix It (tags)
class war
Learning from Roosevelt (tags)
Harry Hopkins, head of WPA under Roosevelt, created 4 million jobs in 2 months. How many jobs in health care, education, bridge repair, community centers and journalism could be created today? Solutions are not lacking, only political will. Viva sharing and redistribution!
Central Bank Intervention: Much Ado About Nothing (tags)
class war
At Risk Eurozone Sovereign Credit Ratings (tags)
Eurozone
Criticism of Economists (tags)
Economists with their models could predict the values of economic variables but did not foresee the greatest worldwide economic crisis in 80 years. Mechanical-deterministic neoclassicism is a self-contained theoretical model offering simple answers.
Spreading Eurozone Contagion (tags)
class war
Neoliberalism as Greatest Error in the History of Economic Thought (tags)
Efficiency and prosperity can only be realized on capitalist markets when the economic system is bound in a social order under the primacy of politics. Democratic legitimated politics and the provision of public goods is derived from the "anatomy of market failure."
Debts? Whose Debts? and Keith Olbermann (tags)
Truth is inwardness and must well up in everyone. Life is full of supernova explosions, a universe of possibilities where stars remain invisible until they find their partner star. "We keep the madness going that we call the economy when we do nothing against business as usual."
Deepening Debt Contagion (tags)
economy
[Strategy!:] The Occupy Movement Needs a Good Fight (tags)
The Occupy Movement Needs a Good Fight "Power concedes nothing without a demand." - Frederick Douglass In a movement based on general anger about inequality and the domination of big banks, it becomes difficult to focus the rage into something concrete. For many Occupiers, being concrete is a mere distraction, meant to shift the movement into something 'less radical,” since their targets — big banks and inequality — are at the root of the problem. Why mess with the tree when you could go for the roots? But, as any tree-removal worker will tell you, the tree comes first, then the roots. The roots cannot be the immediate goal of the Occupy movement because pulling them out would require tens of millions of hands, and the vast majority of working people are not yet directly involved in the movement, though many of them are giving approving nods from a distance. Bringing these more distant people into the movement requires they be given a good reason to join. And although a general anti-1% sentiment sounds appealing to the 99%, a struggle to win worker-friendly demands can help pull these people into the streets.
Non-Violent November Fifth followed by a Forceful November Sixth (tags)
"This isn't about (political) parties," states one protestor firmly. "We're just angry citizens who don't like what we see is happening and we want to change it."
Occupy Los Angeles Marches for Bank Transfer Day (tags)
Diversified, Angry , Nonviolent. PhotoSet 3 of 3
Occupy Los Angeles Marches for Bank Transfer Day (tags)
Diversified, Angry , Nonviolent. Photo Set 2 of 3
Occupy Los Angeles Marches for Bank Transfer Day (tags)
Diversified, Angry , Nonviolent. PhotoSet 1 of 3
Unify for Occupy Oakland (tags)
To build the 99%, we must find unity across the economic and social strata, or the Occupation movement will be correctly derided as a quasi-elitist middle class project.
Hotline Now Open For Foreclosure Complaints (tags)
The Wall Street Journal Bank regulators and the mortgage industry have launched a complaint process to reach out to more than 4 million homeowners to find and compensate any who were harmed by deficiencies in banks’ foreclosure operations.
Big Banksters on Wall St. Finance Military-Industrial Complex (tags)
Big corporate banks on Wall St. not only benefitted from the "too big to fail" bailouts handed to them by BOTH Bush AND Obama (how's that for change?), these banks also benefit from the multiple wars of imperial expansion the U.S. has waged in the recent decades.
Critical thinking and cultural shock have the power to turn the world upside down (like Jesus' parables and zen koans). Trivializing structural/systemic economic problems as motivational, psychological, bumps in the road or industrial accidents is a perversion.
Eurozone Bailout Deal: Hold the Cheers (tags)
class war
[The Occupy movement] Demands and Grievances: Limit Corporate Power, Equal Rights for All (tags)
Different statements have been released by the more than 1,500 solidarity groups and occupations throughout the world..... the Move Your Money Project and Bank Transfer Day, both in solidarity with the Occupy movement, have called for people to remove their money from large corporate banks by Nov. 5, moving their money to local banks and credit unions. Excerpts from two occupations' statements of grievances and demands follow.
class war
When Financial Management Paralyzes Democracy (tags)
The 2010 Attac Bank Tribunal in Berlin was a civil society legal proceeding that decried the speculative business model: take excessive risks and burden taxpayers with the costs. Rating agencies should be public. Banks that are too big to fail are too big to exist and should be broken up
Bank Transfer Day, November 5th – Prepare Now to Move Your Money (tags)
When you keep your money in a local financial institution, that money in turn is reinvested in local businesses, which is important for building a stable economy and encouraging local growth. Put your money in the big Wall Street banks however, and they will use your deposits to make risky investments, gambling at the expense of the economy as a whole.
Global Economic Crisis Deepens (tags)
economy
Critique of Marianne Williamson at Occupy LA (tags)
A critique of a small part of Williamson's speech regarding capitalism.
economy
Six Proposals for Helping the 99% (tags)
Solidarity, social justice and sharing open doors while tax cuts for the super-rich only lead to exploding inequality. double standards and cynicism. Access could replace excess. The empire could be superseded by the republic.
Troubled Eurozone Finance Capital (tags)
economy
Dominant Finance Capital Institutions (tags)
money power
Wall Street Runs America (tags)
Wall Street
Learning Nothing in 80 Years (tags)
The crisis began in the US where the government became heavily indebted after September 11, 2001 in the war against terror and where property owners, banks and hedge funds long lived openly on credit. The German government was laughed at when it prohibited short-selling in 2010
economy
Is Capitalism Devouring Its Children? (tags)
The state was extorted by the banks. Bailing out the banks was regarded as without alternative..Rating agencies should become public institutions and system-relevant banks dismantled. Growth- and stability funds should be established as the credit-givers of last resort.
PRESS RELEASE Victimized Homeowners Fight Back (tags)
Years into the housing, foreclosure crisis homeowners continue to struggle and banks have not stopped their abuses against families across America. Listen to what victimized homeowners are doing in fighting the corruption. LISTEN LIVE HERE...http://goharrison.com/live/
In July 2011, Adbusters put out a call to redeemers, rebels and revolutionaries to occupy Wall Street on Saturday, September 17, 2011. States bail out banks and banks lend money back to states. Speculators could become servants. States must abandon trickle down mythology.
The World is Out of Joint (tags)
The financial crisis has become a state debt crisis. "The rise of democracy was not possible without the social and legal civilizing of capitalism. The deregulation euphoria of democratic governments made possible the incredible ascent of the financial oligarchy."
BTL:New York Attorney General Working to Hold Big Banks Accountable for Foreclosure Fraud, (tags)
Interview with Liz Ryan Murray, policy director at National People's Action and member of The New Bottom Line, conducted by Scott Harris
Why Not Start by Unionizing the Major Banks? (tags)
Here's how to make Wall Street pay - organize bank workers.
PRESS RELEASE: CHURCH JOINS VICTIMIZED HOMEOWNERS - TOWN HALL MEETING (tags)
IMMEDIATE RELEASE Reclaiming the "American Dream", Homeowners Fight Back! As the foreclosure and housing crisis continues to take a toll on families across America, homeowners are now sharing their experiences and arming themselves with information and resources to help those who are facing a difficult time in keeping their homes.
PRESS RELEASE/UPDATE: Homeowners Fight Back (tags)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Reclaiming the "American Dream" As the foreclosure and housing crisis continues to take a toll on families across America, homeowners are now sharing their experiences and arming themselves with information and resources to help those who are facing a difficult time in keeping their homes.
PRESS RELEASE: Homeowners Fight Back (tags)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Reclaiming the "American Dream" As the foreclosure and housing crisis continues to take a toll on families across America, homeowners are now sharing their experiences and arming themselves with information and resources to help those who are facing a difficult time in keeping their homes.
Video: Massive Jobs Program Only Way Out (tags)
Economics changes with the times as states and individuals change. Once savings was the elixir and then spending was the elixir with John Maynard Keynes. Speculative investment only leads to exploding inequality and atrophy of public spirit.
The US, the Debt Superpower (tags)
The state bailout of these gigantic real estate institutes, banks and insurances and the enormous economic package to get the crisis-weakened economy on its feet again is one of the essential causes of the present debt crisis. In two decades, $5.5 trillion was spent on a dozen wars.
Debts and a New Beginning (tags)
Problems don't disappear when they are ignored. Through deregulation, the law of profit maximization and government failure, the financial sector was expanded and made independent of the real economy. 14 million jobs could be created through the Internet.
Greek Tragedy Goes Global (tags)
financial terrorism
50 State Attorney's General Mortgage Fraud Probe, U.S. Regulators (tags)
As 2011 rolled in, the Housing Devastation and Families in Crisis is taking a never seen toll. Banks have continue to hurt Families across the Nation and every single Neighborhood is taking a devastating hit. There are multiple Investigations going on by Multiple Agencies, however, People are feeling unsecured by the wavering of those investigating the Criminals.
Broken Dreams, Pre And Post Foreclosure (tags)
This story will take you into the world of pre and post Foreclosure crisis. The pain, suffering and never ending struggles of one American Family caught in the web of Financial greed by the biggest Financial Institutions in the world.
Public Banking: An Idea Whose Time Has Come (tags)
public banking
Labor Representatives Under Attack, Seek Queer Democrats’ Help (tags)
Three San Diego union leaders — Central Labor Council CEO/secretary-treasurer Lorena Gonzalez, Municipal Employees’ Association general manager Michael Zucchet, and SEIU Local 221 head Eric Banks — spoke to the predominantly Queer San Diego Democratic Club April 28 on the state of the local labor movement. They focused on the attacks on public workers by the Republican party and the radical Right, which is aimed not only at driving public-sector wages and benefits below those offered by the private sector but also denying the one source of substantial campaign funding available to Democrats and thereby winning elections by eliminating effective competition. They also talked about the Right-wing bias of San Diego’s media and their success in demonizing public workers’ pensions as the source of San Diego’s financial ills.
An Expansion of Terms Used in the Coffee Party Article by RP (tags)
I apologize for the weak structure in this article. I was hoping to write something that explained some of the material in the story, but ended up going a bit afield with the information. This article attempts to be neutral and nonpartisan, or at least not shrill, and avoids too much analysis. The nature of the Great Recession is difficult to sum up in a few pages, because it's a failure of a complex system with many parts, and many related behaviors, that led to the near-collapse of capitalism.
Weekly Demonstration Against Sleazy Banks (tags)
“We were trying to figure out a way to get The People interested in supporting the financial reform effort. We thought the main reason why people weren't talking about it was because they thought it had nothing to do with them or their daily lives. That's why we chose a focus on the foreclosure crisis--the economic collapse was caused by banks and financial institutions gambling on mortgages via Wall Street. . . ." -- Heather Meyer, organizer
responsible banking
VIDEO: "Austerity America" (tags)
Obama refused to bail out states while funnelling trillions to banks. The banks chose not to increase jobs and income; they didn't share the taxpayer injections.
The Crisis, Money and Us (tags)
"One we had a coordinated social market economy. This `Rhine' capitalism embodied the insight gained in bitter experience that totally freed markets are self-destructive. This insight was lost somewhere between Friedman and Hayek, Thatcher and Reagan.."
Seven Reasons Why the Economy Can't Recover (tags)
As the recession grinds on, politicians in most industrial countries have an incentive to make exaggerated claims about the supposed coming economic recovery. Some say the recession is over. Obama is in the group that claims we're on "the road to recovery,” while other nations can only spot recovery "on the horizon.” Below are seven important social phenomena that point to a more realistic economic and political outlook. 1) Central Banks are Dumbfounded. The usual tricks that U.S. and European central banks use to avoid recessions are long-exhausted. Interest rates cannot get any lower. And because cheap money wasn't working, the printing press was turned up a notch, into what the U.S. federal reserve calls quantitative easing -- injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the world economy, escalating an emerging trade war.
Who's Behind the Deficit Crisis (tags)
From the U.S. to Europe media and politicians are singing the same tune: "budget deficits must be drastically reduced -- by cutting social programs -- so that global bond investors do not threaten the economy." Not since the "war on terror" was announced has government policy been so shrouded in confusion and unanswered questions. In the same way we are not to ask how U.S. foreign policy has angered millions in the Middle East, we must remain equally silent about questioning the recent history behind the current "deficit crisis.”
The Financial Crisis and the Failure of the Modern Economy (tags)
The US government debt shot up from 2.9% in 2007 to 5.9% in 2008 and 11.9% in 2009. At the summits of Washington, London and Pittsburg, the goat was made the gardener. Ineffective rules were resolved that hardly helped regulate the financial markets.
Israeli Banks Profiteering from Occupation (tags)
Israel banks operate like Wall Street
Quantitative Easing: Elixir or Poison? (tags)
QE indeed poison as being used
Chinese Currency War a Red Herring? (tags)
In the 1930s countries tried to gain advantages by exporting more. This is happening today.
Systemic Washington-Sanctioned Fraud (tags)
massive fraud
Foreclosure: Banks Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Obey the Law (tags)
Banks may not use terms like "vig" or "nut", but they are foreclosing as zealously as loan sharks. They're throwing innocent tenants out of their houses in the process. What can you do about it?
foreclosuregate one of many examples
The Neoliberal Experiment and Europe's anti-Austerity Strikes (tags)
"The neoliberals are fully in control of the bureaucracy, and they are reviving Margaret Thatcher's slogan, TINA: There Is No Alternative. But there is, of course. In the small Baltic economies, pro-labor parties have made it clear that the alternative to government shrinkage is to simply repeal the debts, withdraw from the Euro and break the banks. It is either the banks or labor - and Europe has just realized that this is truly a fight to the economic death. And the first test will come this Saturday, when Latvia holds its national parliamentary elections."
Ex-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker Criticizes the Federal Reserve (tags)
"Altogether the 81-year old Volcker can hardly see anything good in the development of the financial system over the last 25 years."
A World Full of Super-Bubbles: Ben Bernanke (tags)
In the last months, Ben Bernanke has emerged as a problem-intensifier, not a problem-solver. The man who flooded the world with cheap dollars faces the waste-heap of a sinking ship making the Titanic seem like a little rowing boat.
After October 2, What Next? (tags)
The October 2nd demonstration in Washington, D.C., is a great step forward. We are now beginning to take matters into our own hands, relying on ourselves, and acting collectively.
The Political Consequences of Stagnation (tags)
My apologies to T. S. Eliot, but September, not April, is the cruelest month. Before 9/11/2001, there was 9/11/1973, when Gen. Pinochet toppled the Allende government in Chile and ushered in a 17-year reign of terror. More recently, on 9/15/2008, Lehman Brothers went bust and torpedoed the global economy, turning what had been a Wall Street crisis into a near-death experience for the global financial system.
ARE STOLEN TARP BAILOUT $$ MAKING THEIR WAY INTO MEG WHITMANS MEDIA BUYS IN CALIRORNIA ? (tags)
AMERICAN TAXPAYERS HAVE HAD TENS OF BILLION$ STOLEN FROM OUR AMERICAN PIGGY BANK VIA THE GEORGE BUSH ~ KARL ROVE TARP BAILOUT PONZI SCHEME.
GREAT CLUE THAT THE GEORGE BUSH JR ~ KARL ROVE TARP THEFT REALLY WAS WELL PLANNED OUT !!! (tags)
ADD THIS ARTICLE ALSO 2 YOUR BUSH JR ~ KARL ROVE PONZI TARP FILES...little ripped~off American taxpayers !!!
The Banking and Financial Crisis (tags)
"The transition from a long-term to a short-term orientation went along with the exaggerated profit goals. The approach of shareholder value sets maximum profits and dividends in the center of business policy and no longer long-term investments and the interests of employees.."
MEG WHITMAN PLEASE TELL CA VOTERS WHERE YOUR WALL STREET ~BANKER BUDDIES HID THEIR TARP $$ (tags)
MEG WHITMAN HAS NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT where HER POLITICAL BUDDIES BUSH~ ROVE $750 BILLION TARP PONZI BAILOUT MONIES REALLY WENT !!!
Financial Crisis as Organized Irresponsibility (tags)
In the years 2002-2006, guaranteeing mortgage credits was the greatest source of profit for investment banks. US policy massively promoted and in no way curbed awarding dubious credits. In 2003 Warren Buffett described derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction."
A Financial Boom Despite the Crisis (tags)
For the banks, deficit state budgets become important clients. They compensate the private demand for credit. The financial boom is completely based on support measures of state organs. An economic upswing is not in sight.
How come banks are still overcharging while pretending to be 'reformed' ? (tags)
Wells Fargo Bank is only the latest of thieving banks trying to extort the most profits from the customers it may even want to keep as theirs....KPCC Radio Host Pat Morrison talking to a guest about how t hese games are played on The American People and the rest of us too
JERRY BROWN SHOULD JUST TELL ELITE MRS. WHITMAN ~ IT'S THE BUSH ELITE TAX CUTS MEG !!! (tags)
ARE CALIFORNIA MIDDLE~CLASS RESIDENTS WILLING 2 CONTINUE SUPPORTING OUR U.S. ELITE'S 2 TRILLION $$ BUSH TAX CUTS & PLANNED ESTATE TAX ABATEMENT ??
AFTER TAKING 750 BILLION $$ BAILOUT THEY NOW ARE ALSO DEMANDING 2 TRILLION $$ TAX CUTS ? (tags)
WOW ~ OUR AMERICAN WEALTHY ELITE REALLY MUST THINK OUR MIDDLE~CLASS AMERICANS CAN CONTINUE TO BE FOOLED AGAIN INTO BUYING INTO THEIR BILLIONAIRE MULTI~MILLIONAIRE ESTATE & PERSONAL TAX CUT WELFARE SCENE ??
U.S. SENATOR BLANCHE LINCOLN ONLY SHOPS TIFFANY'S !!! (tags)
~ WEALTHY ELITE AMERICANS DO NOT SHOP AT WALMART,THEY SHOP AND BUY IN THE PEOPLES U.S. CONGRESS ~
VIDEO: Banks are still the powerhouse in D.C. (tags)
Twenty months after the financial meltdown of 2008, the US congress is moving ahead with its financial system reform.
Overcoming the Dominance of Finance Capital (tags)
Changing power relations means taking up the social and political struggle against finance capital and regaining control over social resources. Reversing the redistribution of income from top to bottom is a prerequisite for containing the money flows in the financial sector.
Emergency Brake for Speculators (tags)
The private indebtedness brought about by unscrupulous financial managers mainly in the US was almost completely transferred to state budgets.
What Real Financial Reform Looks Like (tags)
Washington financial reform assures business as usual
Greenspan and the Guilt of Others (tags)
Before the committee, Greenspan immediately went on the offensive (cf. Creole trick). The irresponsible loans of banks caused the crisis, not the low interest of the Fed. The Fed failed in regulating the banks because its employees were not neutral.
The Bank Tribunal in Berlin (tags)
Even today most radical market liberals do not see beyond their ideological blinders and explain the financial market crisis as a state breakdown. The financial catastrophe is a fiasco of their religious doctrine. The catastrophe plunged the dominant economy into a crisis of meaning.
Attac's Bank Tribunal: The Jury's Verdict (tags)
This crisis did not break out over society like a force of nature. Financial managers spread the legend that financial crises belong to capitalism as water belongs to the ocean and that euphoric phases of bubble formation and the bursting of bubbles come and go like the seasons.
Bogus Washington-Proposed Financial Reform (tags)
banker, not people reform
Stealth Action Against the Four Biggest Banks (tags)
--Fed Up Bank Customers "Put Some Teeth" into Movement to take back the power of the ordinary citizen to affect US economic structure-- Join the stealth action AND/OR move your money out of a big bank and into a credit union/local bank today-- If you've done that already, we want to hear from you...
Applying the Emergency Brake (tags)
"The US bank model forces others in indebtedness, inflates the money supply, devalues assets and generates virtual dollars..Wall Street banks are involved in a `systemic risk' that endangers the capitalist reproduction process.."
Debt Dynamite Dominoes: The Coming Financial Catastrophe (tags)
-When the crisis is over, the middle classes of the western world will have been liquidated of their economic, political and social status. The global economy will have gone through the greatest consolidation of industry and banking in world history leading to a system in which only a few corporations and banks control the global economy and its resources; governments will have lost that right. The people of the western world will be treated by the financial oligarchs as they have treated the ‘global South’ and in particular, Africa; they will remove our social structures and foundations so that we become entirely subservient to their dominance over the economic and political structures of our society.-
CNN's cover-up of the corporate fraud of Globalization. (tags)
I am informing through Indymedia International, all the workers of the World that they themselves must build their own jobs. All institutions in America public or private are robbing the citizens. Each American must deal with the problem directly.
Selling Out America to Wall Street (tags)
pillaging American wealth
Greed, the Corrupt System and Shadow Banking (tags)
A sudden change of thought patterns has occurred. For thirty years, the dogmas were in effect: trust in the self-healing powers of the market, the sleek state is the best of all possible states and economic policy will be unnecessary if the central banks fights inflation.
"We are in the Greatrest Financial Bubble of all Time" (tags)
"An old world perishes as a new world arises-pictorially comparable to a caterpillar that dies because the butterfly comes to life. What is called financial crisis is only a superficial symptom.. One of the main causes of the debacle is the Americanized corporate governance." (F.Malik)
Obama times?
Crises Have Disproven Mainstream Neo-Classical Economics (tags)
"According to Tax Commissioner Cory Fong: North Dakota has been able to weather the economic crisis.
Prerequisites for Overcoming the Financial Crisis (tags)
"In analyzing financial crises, real causes should be differentiated from the side-effects. One of the essential causes for the current crisis is the discrepancy between the linear growth of the real economy and the exponential growth of financial management created by the derivative-economy,"
The Recession Is Over, the Depression Just Beginning (tags)
America's economy is dire and worsening
Lessons from the Crisis (tags)
Governments are extorted by multinational corporations. Those who made massive profits with bank business must now answer for the losses. The taxpayer may not pay for their crises. If control is not exercised by politics, banks will become absolute rulers with a state guarantee.
Joseph Stiglitz: Harsh lessons we may need to learn again (tags)
"The best that can be said for 2009 is that it could have been worse, that we pulled back from the precipice on which we seemed to be perched in late 2008, and that 2010 will almost surely be better for most countries around the world. ,,"
Are the Democrats Fighting the Banks? (tags)
How pathetic. President Obama sat at a table surrounded by super rich bankers, pleading with them to lend money to small businesses and workers. The media mislabeled Obama’s groveling as “encouraging,” “imploring,” and “pressing,” but a man who refuses to take action is powerless; and powerless people can only beg. This disgraceful meeting happened shortly after Obama got “radical” on national TV, calling the bankers “fat cats” and other tough words. But words are only that.
Tenants, Thugs and CDOs (tags)
A local tale of unmitigated greed and the criminal enterprise of one family to corner the residential real estate market in San Francisco led to the shady world of collateralized debt obligations and derivatives.
End the Fed? Or End the Market Economy? (tags)
When Republican Congressman Ron Paul recently introduced legislation to audit the Federal Reserve, diverse sections of the political spectrum applauded. And rightfully so. The Fed’s role in the still-developing bank bailouts is one of utter secrecy; the total cost of which — as estimated by the bailout’s Special Inspector General, Neil Barofsky — could cost taxpayers $23.7 trillion. The fact that legislation needed to be introduced to raise the question of the whereabouts of these funds points to a larger breakdown in U.S. democracy.
Protecting Capitalists or the Welfare State (tags)
Banks and hedge brought disaster upon themselves and their customers with their "innovations" and financial products.. Financial management may never be uncoupled from the real economy and lead a life of its own without economic justification or social responsibility.
Abolish the Fed and Return Money Creation Power to Congress (tags)
Only Congress empowered to create money
The High Risk Business of Banks (tags)
The model of financial market capitalism collapsed with the greatest crisis of the financial markets since the worldwide economic crisis at the end of the 20s. The enormous accumulation of financial assets was based on redistribution of incomes continuing for 30 years.
Long Live Tobin. Commentary on Financial Regulation (tags)
"Turner's demand for introduction of a global Tobin tax on all financial transactions is a very old demand. The tendency of banks to take flight in casino capitalism and neglect their role as servants of the real economy has made the crisis into a real fix for us.."
GERMANY: What Lessons Do We Learn from the Financial Crisis? (tags)
Rating agencies were paid by the firms to be rated. Ultimately rational individual conduct led to an irrational collective result. The lesson is clear. On the way of regulation or taxation, banks must be given a massive incentive to remain small.
Leopards Can’t Change Their Spots, Nor Can Capitalists (tags)
Despite all the rhetoric, nothing much has changed and the fundamental contradictions of the system remain. The only solution is to rid ourselves of it.
Wall Street Under Obama: Bigger and Riskier (tags)
After the financial levees broke and the crumbling banks ushered in the economic crisis, angry people clamored for drastic change in the financial system. Obama reflected these feelings well, at times using radical rhetoric to denounce the banking titans. What he promised was deep regulatory change so that such a crisis “would never happen again.” Like every other promise of substance, Obama’s pledge to “rein in” the banks has fallen by the wayside; the well-timed rhetoric smoothed over public tensions and now business is back to usual. The New York Times remarks:
The Crisis of Capitalism: Credit-Doping (tags)
"The social market economy blows the wealth of this society in speculation rather than in higher wages, higher pensions or unemployment benefits.. All capital transactions with tax havens should be prohibited.. Instead of democratization, we growing centralization in a few hands.."
Capitalism is the Problem: System Error (tags)
The chaos that we now witness is only the latest crisis of the global economic system. The system has not succeeded in keeping profits at the level of the postwar years. What is good for one capitalist is not necessarily good for the system. Triple-digit billions have been pumped into system
World Bankers Agree: The Recession is Over...Maybe (tags)
Few would consider the opinions of the world's central bankers to be unbiased or even accurate. These self-proclaimed wise men of international finance didn't see the recession coming until it blew up in their faces - a blast that destroyed their credibility. Nevertheless, it is interesting to hear them talk, not because they're fun to listen to, but because of "the messaging" that rich investors use religiously in placing their stock market bets, while the rest of us are given a calming sermon, so that the bankers' lackeys - the politicians - may continue ruining the country uncontested.
The Crisis of Speculative Capitalism (tags)
The bubble bursts when debtors cannot pay and a bankruptcy crisis develops at the end.. The illusion of the stock exchange as a roulette with guaranteed permanent profits burst with the New Economy bubble..Only the worldwide regulation of the financial markets can avert their collapse.
GENTRIFICATION: IS IT URBAN RENEWAL OR URBAN REMOVAL (tags)
et city leaders, banks, and big developers know that we will not be forced out of our neighborhoods! With massive tax breaks and generous loans granted by big banks and the city administration, big developers are pushing forward in their attempt to remove poor and working families from the vibrant and colorful neighborhoods around Los Angeles. Signs of gentrification are everywhere. Rents are increased to drive families out of their homes, to be replaced with luxury apartments. Big national mega-stores are replacing local mom and papa businesses. As residents are forced out, stable communities are torn apart. Immigrant working families, who have lived and worked here for generations, are being pushed out by a profit-driven campaign of racist gentrification
Investments of the state in the infrastructure, in educational- and social services, are urgently necessary. One positive aspect of the crisis is that the financial sector has begun to shrivel. The shriveling of the financial sector must be accompanied and controlled by the state.
Self-Abandonment of the System (tags)
The banks are seemingly on Victory Street and taxpayers face bankruptcy. Bailing out banks by printing money is a dubious recovery. Paulson, Bernanke, Summers and Geithner are the architects of a policy of easy money. The money given to banks does not reach the economy.
Dems and Reps Unite for Cuts (tags)
While billionaires get bailed out and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue THE BUDGET CRISIS IS A LIE! THERE IS MONEY THE RICH ARE STEALING IT.
The Return of the State (tags)
The state is welcome again in this plight. The brazenness with which those who caused the crisis now demand state subsidies to bailout the financial system is just as breathtaking as the state readiness to fulfill this demand.
"Tim Geithner made clear the US government does not plan any breach with disaster capitalism....No wonder Wall Street cheers. New life is breathed into speculation at state expense with junk securities.."
"The logic of the stock corporation leads to all profits ultimately being used to raise the stock price which promotes speculation." The only way to solve mass unemployment, destruction of the environment and trade imbalance is to break out of the system and pursue qualitative growth."
"The basic trust in capital still exists. Modern capitalism has gained a firm place in our subconscious. The debacle of the global financial markets should have led to a rethinking long ago. But the culprits will probably get off lightly because the capitalist system is held as divinely ordained."
Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Agenda of Imperial America (tags)
How imperial America is funded
REFUSE TO PAY YOUR CREDIT CARD BILL??? (tags)
The banks have had all the rights and all the "Bailouts" up to this point - now its time for the American public to clearly and unmistakably demand their rights!!!
Decommissioning a Superpower (tags)
"From July to September 2008, China reduced its investment in the US real estate banks Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The US tgovt needs $1.5 billion in foreign credits day after day..The greatest debtor of the world cannot force the law of trade on its creditors any more.."
Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control (tags)
global dominance, not reform is planned
Argentinization of the US and Currency War (tags)
"After the great killing of the bison, the basic food of Indians, the great killing of the US dollar, the basic food of today's credit-junkie, could now be imminent.. A deficit amounting to 13% of the GDP is more than four times what was established as the convergence criterion of the European Union."
Economic Crisis and the Crisis of Neoliberal Ideology (tags)
The crisis has his origins in the "real" economy. Inequality is the ideological motor of neoliberfalism. German president Kohler described the financial markets as a monster. The metaphor has changed from market as rational subject to monster.
America lets audit the fed who controls our money (tags)
We're almost there! HR 1207 (to Audit the Fed) has a whopping 207 co-sponsors. Can you believe we've made it this far? Here's the latest, and what you can do to push HR 1207 over the top:
General Strike Needed to Oppose Cal Gov cuts & Obama's no aid (tags)
Republican Governor Schwarzenegger refuses to ask for loans until the gains of the workingclass are destroyed and Democratic President Barack Obama has refused to provide aid to California, although he did give over $700 billion to the banks with no accountability , the same banks which refuse to provide loans to anyone who has serious need where it be private businesses or governments. Bank excess reserves have skyrocketed from almost zero to over $800 billion since Fall 2008. Labor must respond with GENERAL STRIKE.
The Market Must Serve Society (tags)
In the past, the village green and market swuare were surrounded by the church, town hall, school and hospital. Without these social institutions, there would be no market. This is also true for today's global financial markets.
Ending Today's Economic Crisis Simply and Easily, in America and Globally (tags)
The solution is simpler than imagined.
Was the Prez Obama bribed by AIG ? (tags)
see this informative article about the meltdown, the 25 main cheating money grabbers, and how much AIG, a huge bailer outed had contributed to Obama's recent campaign in 2008 =see http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/economic_meltdown/assets/img/Chart5-fullsize.jpg
Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt": Part VI (tags)
Part VI of Federal Reserve Plunder
Let's Really Attack our Economic Problems (tags)
Let’s show the trickle down theory the door. If a goodly majority ever faces economic reality, we could fashion a better world. It is however the wealthy that will have to sacrifice.
Attac Catalogue for Democratizing the Financial Markets (tags)
The financial industry contributed over $5 billion in the last year in campaign gifts and lobbying to ensure that Wall Street oligarchs have their way in the media and congress. Attac is a global justice network committed to shriveling the financial markets.
Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt:" Part IV (tags)
Federal Reserve plunder Part IV
Former S&L Regulator: Absolutely A Banking Bailout Coverup (tags)
This Bill Moyers interview is going viral so fast, I can’t even keep up with it. And for a very good reason - former S&L regulator Bill Black explains exactly why the current banking bailout is a mistake. Hat-tip to Crooks & Liars for content!
Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt:" Part II (tags)
Part II of Brown's superb book.
Reviewing Ellen Brown's "Web of Debt" - Part I (tags)
Federal Reserve debt entrapment 101
It is not a conjunctural crisis (tags)
"instinct is the hereditary knowledge of a specific program of life"
Banks Get a Bailing Grade (tags)
The average person is incensed over pyramid-king Bernie Madoff, CEO bonuses, lavish executive junkets and the diamond-studded safety nets gifted big business. But public outrage is deficient in the realm I call banking’s black hole of incompetence, a bureaucratic void which seems to suck intelligence, ability and reason from bank employees
The New Feasibility and the G20 (tags)
These fictional articles point to a future after the world turned upside down by financial speculation. They were published in a fictional issue of "DIE ZEIT," the famous Hamburg weekly.
Government Stimulus Plans are `Not Enough': Joseph Stiglitz (tags)
Governments have to do more than just spend money, says Stiglitz.
The Foxes Guard the Henhouse (tags)
The banks must be forced to give credits to small and medium-size businesses. The general strike in France on January 29 was a sign of hope. Shriveling the financial markets must be the goal. Free trade is the wrong medicine.
Leading Economist Decries Power of Wall Street "Oligarchs" (tags)
n a fascinating piece in the latest issue of The Atlantic, Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, outlines what he sees as the alarming influence of Wall Street firms over the American economy. He expounds on his thesis in our interview, making several points:
Putting Finance Capitalism "Back in Its Box" (tags)
Their scheme is permanent debt bondage
Barack Obama: Crime Boss (tags)
Obama's criminal partnership with Wall Street
France Jan 29, 2009. Public and private workers mount a one-day strike with mass support. Schools, courts and transportation shut down in several cities. This article is from: Freedom Socialist Vol30 No2 April-May 2009.
The truth is, none of the 20 leaders gathered in London has the slightest idea how to 'solve' the economic problems facing the globe....this is a crisis endemic to capitalism, where markets swallow markets and wealth is made by con games that would make the Mafia blush, by the biggest banks on earth. The latest economic summit was PR, amidst the flames of chaos.
Bail Out People, Not Banks: Protesters Picket Bank of America Downtown Corporate Building (tags)
LOS ANGELES, April 3, 2009 – Demonstrators staged a protest outside Bank of America’s downtown office building on Friday calling for an end to bank bailouts and foreclosures and evictions.
You don’t want to pay for the crisis of capital? Then just don’t do it. (tags)
A critique of the calls for demonstrations against the G20 in Berlin, Frankfurt and London under the slogan “We won't pay for your crisis! – For a solidarity society”
Obama's Latest No Banker Left Behind Scheme (tags)
the looting of America
Banks get Bailout,Public gets Credit Card Usury!!! (tags)
"If you're able to charge 30 percent or, in a payday lender case, 200 or 300 percent, you don't care so much if the loan-in fact, you actually want the loan not to be repaid. You want people to go into debt. You want to accumulate this interest. ..........................................................................
Arsonists as the Fire Brigade (tags)
Supported by ideologically-blinded deregulators, the "masters of the universe" dominant in Wall Street and the City of London could bend the rules of the game on the global financial markets. Their shadow banking system existed above politics and regulators.
What is Behind the AIG Scandal (tags)
The controversy surrounding the American International Group (AIG) is one for the ages, for it starkly reveals who is really running our economic system and to what end. In an effort to please two irreconcilable groups — the vast majority, average working Americans, versus the few financial elite — Obama has lately resembled a tightrope walker on a tattered rope. The AIG debate has now unsettled this delicate balance; no longer will it be so easy to give billions to Wall Street while fake rage is hurled against this same group. The jig is up.
Fallen Stars: On the Greed of Bankers and a New Morality (tags)
The economic ethicist Ulrich Thielemann explains how greed, false theories and the herd instinct caused the massive financial crisis. They had the theory when we make profits that is ultimately good for everyone.
The Casino is Closed: Reasons for the Crash (tags)
Ulrich Schafer discusses the greed for fast money, a world without rules and why the market alone cannot regulate everything. The crisis has a pre-history. The state simply abandoned control over many economic areas. The financial world in particular was left to itself.
Monetary and Fiscal Failure, Fraud, and Fear of What's Next (tags)
looting the treasury continues with militarism ready to confront dissent
YouTube-Susan George on the Crisis (tags)
Susan George, author of 14 books including "The Debt Boomerang," is honorary president of Attac (France). In this address from Nov 3, 2008, she shows how the financial crisis can be used to tackle other crises.
A Bank Bailout That Works (tags)
"The problem with America's banks is not just one of liquidity. Years of reckless behavior, including bad lending and gambling with derivatives, have left them, in effect, bankrupt."
Obama's Mistake in Reasoning (tags)
The accumulation of capital in fewer and fewer hands first made possible the worldwide economic crisis. For Obama's economic policy to be successful, he must reverse the assets disparity and force the 10% with two-thirds of the assets to solidarity through higher taxes.
Financial Markets: Is No One Responsible? (tags)
Enlightenment is part of overcoming crisis, not only money packages. Ten officials in every boardroom is not the solution. Rather the problem is the incredible transformation of the modern bank into a service enterprise with an adjacent casino.
Overstrained Capitalism (tags)
Neoliberalism has driven the world into the greatest disaster since Hitler and Stalin. With Ronald Reagan, a president entered the White House who constantly proclaimed the state in the end was something bad.
Dave Lindorff: Kiss the Banks Goodbye and Refocus on Rebuilding the American People (tags)
"The point here is that if people aren't willing to spend money, then what good is it to give more money to banks and their shareholders, in hopes that they will start lending it?.."
Alexander: Socialists Say Nationalize All U.S. Banks (tags)
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan thinks it’s necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in recent statements has indicated that the nationalization of some banks may be necessary under certain conditions, and many economic analysts believe nationalization is only a matter of time; however, socialists nationwide say nationalization of all U.S. banks is now necessary to achieve a national economic recovery.
Putin and China: US Responsible in the Economic Crisis (tags)
Investment banks, the pride of Wall Street, have practically ceased to exist, Putin added. In only twelve months, their losses exceeded the profits of the past 25 years. Wen said the blind pursuit of profit led to the worst crisis since the Great Depression of 1929.
Systemic Failure: Capitalism "Lays an Egg" (tags)
deepening economic crisis
Barack Obama Pirate Captain of Derivative TARP TANIC and Nuclear Iran (tags)
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
23 Theses on the Capitalist Crisis (tags)
Since the middle of the 1990s, the real economy only grew on account of the expansion of credit. After the dot.com crisis, the floodgates were opened. In the next four years, the Fed brought more dollars in circulation than in the whole 200-year US history.
Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Economic Crisis (tags)
economic conditions worsening
As the revered godlike head of the Federal Reserve, Greenspan pursued a policy of cheap money. Whenever the financial markets began to correct their own madness, he opened the floodgates for more money..The world stares so intensely at growth that it forgets distribution.
Instead of borrowing trillions and sticking future generations of taxpayers with the cost of bailing out a corrupt and ineffective financial system, the federal government should use the bailout money and charter a bank of its own,one that could offer loans directly to individuals and businesses and thereby stimulate the economy by providing capital to people who can't get it now from the private banks.
Toxic Plans for Toxic Assets (tags)
Obama stimulus from hell.
Obama's Bank Bailout: Bush's Plan Resurrected (tags)
To reintroduce an unpopular idea by a different name is a classic trick of politicians. Obama has done precisely this in unveiling his bank bailout plan. In a desperate attempt to distance himself from Bush, the Obama administration has added some complicated economic terms packaged into a system he simply calls the “bad bank.” The essence of the plan, however, is exactly what Bush originally proposed.
Banks Injure Economic Stimulus Plan by Jacking up Credit Card Interest (tags)
Could banks jacking up credit card interest during a horrendous recession—delay U.S. economic recovery and destroy the expected benefits of the Economic Stimulus Plan?
A New Administration, Tired Old Policies (tags)
Counterproductive policies heading America for depression
Resisting Foreclosure and Eviction: June Reyno, Fighting Back to Save Her Home (tags)
June Reyno who has lived in her home for the last 20 years could be facing eviction by San Diego County Sheriffs tomorrow morning. June is a victim of the predatory lending practice of banks. Duped into a refinance deal, which striped all the equity from her house, June is one of millions across the nations who are on the verge of losing their home.
Before the Bank Crisis:Where did All The Money Go??? (tags)
...or is it all just a "Big Scam" by the banks and corporations to use "Financial Terrorism" to manipulate and coerce the American public for its own greedy purposes???
An Umbrella for Workers (tags)
The economic crisis is a structural crisis where productivity has soured and wages have stagnated. The fraud in public regional banks must end. Unemployment benefits must increase. Michael Schlecht is a union spokesperson for the German Left party (Die Linke).
The Blood of the Black Sheep (tags)
Crisis and Catharsis. Capitalism begins its great self-purging to remain what it is. The Wall Street boys and girls have not forgotten how to make money amid crisis. The speculation bubbles burst. The fictional wealth dissolves in thin air thanks to falling home prices and stock prices.
Why Bailing Out Banks Doesn't Work (tags)
The New York Times recently posed an excellent question: “Why save banks if they won’t lend?” (January 19, 2009) Before the first $350 billion “installment” of the bailout, we were told that the money was needed to “unfreeze” the credit markets, meaning that banks would again be willing to lend businesses the money they needed to continue doing business. Despite hugely popular opposition, the bailout proceeded, and absolutely nothing changed.
The state wants to save the banks - why?
Back from the Wilderness: Joseph Stiglitz (tags)
Economy theory has long explained why unhindered markets do not correct themselves, why regulation was necessary and why the government had an important role to play int he economy. Many who worked for the financial markets forced a kind of market fundamentalism.
The Structural Crisis of the Financial System (tags)
"Introduction of taxation on speculative financial transactions must go along with a genuine nationalization that involves a change of the actual banking system into a public system and fixes the role of money as a neutral means of exchange for services."
The Genesis of the Financial Crisis: Greed and Repression (tags)
The self-healing market, the market that corrects itself, is at the heart of the perfect economic story. The financial crisis (now banking, real estate, jobs and credit crises) has forced the reconsideration of the role of the state. Psychology helps unmask religion of the market.
Sunday (12/21): Reports from Greece (tags)
Things are usually slow on Sundays and that was the case today. However, many local assemblies took place to decide further actions.
3 Bank of Americas attacked in Santa Cruz (tags)
Last night rocks were thrown through the windows of 2 Bank of Americas and another ATM location. We did this because the uprising of our comrades in Greece, England, Moscow and elsewhere will not go without a response. People here are killed by cops, screwed by banks, and we will revolt with just as much fury. These and the outbreaks in Europe show that it is simply for us to respond in the most direct way to the forces of repression in order for them to fall.
Excess Debt and Deflation = Depression (tags)
the worsening economy
Bank of America Forces Workers to Suffer (tags)
Bank of America, founded in California, has pressured Republic Windows to withhold paychecks from workers, AFTER gettinga 45 bil bailout from our taxes.
Global economy collapsing along with the world financial system (tags)
Conditions are going to get considerably more difficult for Americans. Chapman says in 2 years 25% to 38% of all Americans will be out of work and living or waiting outside homeless shelters for a place to sleep. Tens of thousands including the elderly or single women and children will be homeless and hungry.
Financial Injections Ensure the Assets of the Rich (tags)
The money must be taken from those who profited from the past financial system. Thus a tax reform must be on the agenda. A state investment program is also urgently necessary. The past growth model of global capitalism is in a structural crisis. A new economy is beyond profit.
Carlos Lessa proposes control of exchange rate for Brazil to overcome the crisis. (tags)
He says the biggest obstacle to Brazil overcome the crisis and get strengthened out of it is the Central Bank’s President Henrique Meirelles, formed by the Bank of Boston, and that will do nothing that would undermine the private banks.
Greed is the Nature of the System (tags)
Politics was corrupted byt he economy and lost control to the economy. In the private enterprise system, there are too many incentives that oppose the public interest. When company pensions end, workers speculate. When high profits are the norm, companies speculate.
Fed Defies Transparency On Bailout Monies: Refuses to Disclose (tags)
By Mark Pittman, Bob Ivry and Alison Fitzgerald Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
What the Economic Crisis Means for Us and How to Defend Ourselves (tags)
Gloom and Doom-----The pillars of the U.S. capitalist economy are crumbling and falling all around us while the federal government frantically races from one crisis to another, throwing money at them as if throwing water on a fire. It could well turn out that the money represents only a few drops of water thrown on threatening flames that will soon billow into an out-of-control wildfire so that nothing President-elect Barak Obama has proposed will succeed in averting the disaster.
The wages of sin have come due.
Financial Market Capitalism: Neoliberalis become State Socialists (tags)
Neoliberalism is neither new nor liberal. All freedom is demanded for capital, even though human dependence is intensified and human existences destroyed. The state becomes a functionary for neoliberal concepts. The debts of Fannie/Freddie are added to the nine trillion.
Tinkering with Symptoms (tags)
The bailout plan does not tackle the causes of the financial crisis. The question remains why financial institutions should be saved from a crisis they created and in which they earlier earned vast amounts of money. The American government has no Plan B.
The Neediest Need Help Like the Banks (tags)
The same state haggles over every bowl of soup for welfare recipients. For banks, billions appeared overnight. There must also be money for higher wages and more social services.
Growing financial crisis.
Past sins are coming home to roost.
Capitalism changed into "finance-driven" capitalism. The profit rates for industrial capital fell in the past decades. Washington could be paralyzed under the debt yoke like Japan in the early 1990s. After decades of market idolization, the US has rediscovered political power.
The Philosophies of Deregulation and Neoliberalism are Dead in the West (tags)
"The patient suffers massive internal bleeding and is given a blood transfusion. The banks lent money and accepted inflated assets as security. This bubble burst..Those who pocketed profits for years want to pin the losses on the taxpayers."
Part 2- World Capitalist Crisis (tags)
We expect more of the use of cheap labour in the less developed countries like China and India in order to produce cheap raw materials and semi-manufactured consumer products for the imperialist countries and thereby maximize imperialist profits. In fact the US capitalist are hell bent on transferring high paying industries to the third world and even already cheap service industries like call centers and car assemblies and other production lines in a vain attempt to cut jobs, paying insurances and other workers benefits that the people are demanding in the face of the capitalist made crisis.
The problem is that a large part of US real estate financing, the "subprime" market for real estate credits to poor borrowers, functioned according to the model of a chain letter. Radical redistribution, nationally and internationally, is the command of the hour.
AJLPP Analysis on the Current World Capitalist Crisis (tags)
The capitalist bailout rammed into the US Congress has infused into the banks more than $ 500 B out of the $ 700 appropriations. But despite the huge infusion to the capitalist system, the crisis marched on with impunity. The Alliance-Philippines (AJLPP) believes that the latest unraveling of the “free market” dogma, the ultimate exposure of the failed concept of “neoliberal globalization” and the gravity of the current level of the economic and financial crisis of the imperialist powers headed by the US is now totally exposed to the whole world. But this phenomenon must be explained and understood and should not be feared. We must act to face this crisis with renewed determination and readiness to struggle for the people and to change this rotten system.
Banks dictate conditions of US financial bailout (tags)
The 936 point rise on the US stock market yesterday was the American ruling elite’s initial verdict on the extraordinarily favorable terms the government is granting to financial firms in the $700 billion bailout passed by Congress on October 3. Far from heralding improving economic conditions for working people, the Wall Street surge reflects the financial establishment’s success in extorting massive sums of money from taxpayers.
The President of the United States, George Bush, enters today his last 100 days in power overshadowed by very high unpopularity rates and one of the worst economic crises in recent decades.
The October Surprise - Global Panic (tags)
It's not over.
STOP THE WALL STREET FALSE “NATIONALIZATION” BAILOUT OF FAILED BANKS! (tags)
The working people must fight the new capitalist Wall Street scheme to rip off even more of their tax money and bail out Wall Street further with U.S. government purchase of preferred stocks without voting rights of failed Wall Street banks.
Lee Sustar explains that the mayhem in the markets this week is symptomatic of a deeper crisis--and the leaders of the most powerful governments aren't sure what to do.
"The Market is not a Safe Bank" by Helmut Schmidt (tags)
This crisis was avoidable. The fact that American investment banks are not subject to any normal bank supervision is scandalous. Financial transactions must be subject to rules and security standards. The heavier the traffic, the more rules and regulations are needed.
"We are in an epoch shift" (tags)
Free markets became wild markets. The post-socialist blessing became the turbo-capitalist curse. The state allowed the monitoring of banks to be de facto privatized. Politics allowed the markets to run wild. In turbo-capitalism, contracting debts was trendy and saving was Philistine.
GREEDY U.S.Banks & Real Estate Cos."Created" this Financial Apocalypse!!! (tags)
In fact the "corruption and blatant greed" of big American banks and real estate companies precipitated today's financial crisis!
"Worse than in the Iraq War" (tags)
"A recapitalization of relatively sound banks could be vital for creating trust in the financial system. This must happen in a way that prevents privatizing profits while socializing losses. One can learn good crisis management in the example of Sweden's banking crisis in the 1990s
The Fleecing of America (tags)
Public and private looting.
AJLPP Condemns Capitalist Bailout (tags)
he US House of Representatives approved a $700 billion bailout package for US banks, under pressure from all sides as the effort to head off a spreading financial crisis hung in the balance. President Bush happily signed the bill into a law at the White House today. October 3, 2008.
Bush and the neocons caused it all (tags)
Al jazeera tells it all
Dollar is over, says Carlos Lessa (tags)
To Lessa, "dollar is over" and it’s necessary that a new "Bretton Woods" establishes new parameters to global economy.
Foreign countries will not finance US wars and US consumption for ever. The US must accept the new reality that countries want to diversity, not accumulate dollars. What becomes of a country that refuses systemic criticism and sets missions and agendas above facts and realities?
No to the Bailout of the Capitalist Speculators! (tags)
The financial crisis that has been heating up since early 2007 reached the boiling point in late September. Credit markets virtually stopped functioning. A full-blown panic swept stock markets worldwide. The U.S. economy is in the throes of a recession that could turn into a Depression lasting for years. In these dire straits, the Wall Street speculators who set off this crisis are demanding that the government rescue them with a bailout priced at $700 billion. The actual costs will be far higher, a trillion dollars or more. Meanwhile, the Democrats are pushing hardest for the Bush bailout of the banks. Presidential candidate Barack Obama blames "greed" for the crisis on Wall Street (capitalism without greed?) and says there must be no "blank check to Washington" -- meaning he's for putting in a few conditions as window dressing. Following in the Democrats' footsteps, the AFL-CIO labor bureaucrats called a demo for "No Blank Check for Wall Street." Yet no amount of regulation will stop the boom-bust cycle of capitalism. Meanwhile unemployment lines are growing and a million families were thrown out of their homes by bank foreclosures in the last year. While the fat cats, Democrats and bureaucrats are all going for the Bush bailout to prop up U.S. capitalism, revolutionary Marxists oppose this trillion-dollar giveaway to the Wall Street speculators, calling instead for a program of transitional demands leading to the expropriation of the banks and the entire bourgeoisie through workers revolution.
More than 60 labor and community activists protested at the downtown L.A. Federal Building against foreclosures. Organizers demand a two-year moratorium on the repossession of homes by banks and mortgage companies.
The biggest systematic looting of the US Treasury in history (tags)
The great depression is about to repeat itself. Investment banks and deposit banks are failing, money has frozen up. No loans business or personal. No money available for employers to make payroll. There will be millions of Americans with no jobs and therefore no money. Basics such as gas and food will be hard to come by and many American families will go to bed at night hungry
The Bailout! News! From Just One Human! (tags)
ACTUAL NEWS! AN OPEN LETTER FROM ONE CITIZEN OF THE PLANET --TO AMERICA'S PRESS --ON A HISTORIC, SHOCKING, WEEKEND. PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY:
... Fiscal paradises are prospering; people are suffering. Is this how humanity’s well-being can be guaranteed?
The Homeless Move to Bushville. (tags)
This is what I have been watching the wires for, a report revealing the 21st. century Hooverville.
Reviewing Danny Schechter's "Plunder" (tags)
A masterful account of the subcrime crisis.
Wall St's "Melt Down" is Ronald Reagan's "Legacy" on a Silver Platter! (tags)
The Scary Ghost of Ronnie Reagan: The Dow fell almost 450 points and the Nasdaq fell nearly 5 percent in its worst day since the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001 as rattled investors worried about who could be the next victim of the global credit crisis.
Bankruptcies Prohibited (tags)
Capitalism is a system based on debts and credit. To function, it needs trust, trust that banks will always meet their obligations. Fannie and Freddie could not do this any more. Alan Greenspan promoted market forces after extremely overrating them.
US Economy in the toilet (tags)
William Greider Raps Predatory Usury Schemes (tags)
How did the country get into this unholy financial mess? Think usury! Acclaimed author William Greider points the finger at banks, and people of great wealth, “taking advantage of poor people by lending them money on terms that are sure to fail.” He blames others, too, like “The Fed,” under the reign of Alan Greenspan, the U.S. Congress, and Wall Street. Mr. Greider charges that these parties worked to “castrate” the watchdogs.
Conservation, Conservation, Conservation! (tags)
We have lost our consumer control to the corporate dictatorships.
Monetary Policy and Stagflation (tags)
50 countries already show double-digit rates; 42% of the world population is affected. Monetary policy reacts helplessly to stagflation. The financial bubble economy is an excess. When consumers finally spend the money they don't have, everything will be just fine.
MGM, Dubai Fall Behind on $3.5 Billion Loan for Las Vegas Plan (tags)
July 29 (Bloomberg) -- MGM Mirage and Dubai World are late in raising as much as $3.5 billion for their $11.2 billion CityCenter project in Las Vegas because banks saddled with debt to casinos and hotels are wary of making new loans.
The problem is that a large part of US real estate financing, the so-called subprime market for real estate credits to poor borrowers, functioned according to the model of a chain letter. Radical redistribution, nationally and internationally, is the command of the hour.
Portland: Anarchists Attack Wells Fargo (tags)
Article below:
Global Economic Meltdown (tags)
Financial Instability is Leading to an Economic Catastrophe
Will the Neoliberal Consensus Survive the Banking Crisis? (tags)
These are hard times for the neoliberal consensus whose message was forced worldwide for three decades by the ruling classes in the imperialist metropolises on free capital flows. Business data is a fetish constructed for the goal of profit maximization.
Farewell to Neoliberalism (tags)
State interventions in the economy are unpopular and generally regarded as "against the system"-when the state interferes in profiteering. In the case of a crisis, the losses should be socialized.
Why Are Banks Failing, Mr. Giegold? (tags)
The crisis will cost massive job losses and strain public budgets. The policy of market opening that refuses social and ecological regulations is a disaster. We must raise new taxes. Closing the tax havens would also be desirable.
Senate housing bill- more grief for homeowners (tags)
Socialists across the nation are rejecting a U.S. Senate housing bill that offers little help to struggling homeowners facing foreclosure, while providing tens of billions for banks, financial institutions and big corporations. The bill (Foreclosure Prevention Act) passed in the Senate this past week by a vote of 84-12 and has been sent to the House. The vote was clearly a major setback for millions of homeowners and a big win for banks and big businesses.
Workers Pay for Their own Impoverishment (tags)
A whole series of factors are combining to undermine the financial position of banks. None of this happened by chance. It is only to be expected that brokers should seize every opportunity to line their pockets. They use innovations to kid themselves they can abolish risk.
The Great Plastic Meltdown (tags)
The real estate crisis turned out more serious than the bank's risk divisions estimated. The prices for new homes fell twelve percent in December 2007. The assets of private households shriveled two trillion dollars within a year.
The Downhill Plunge Speeds Up (tags)
The state has a social nature and cannot only be power and security state. In crisis, we are all Keynesians. Taboo for a long time, the New Deal program slowly sounds promising again. The 1933 "Home Owners Loan Act" was created in the first 100 days of Roosevelt's presidency.
The Credit Crunch: How America's Banks Lost Their Reputation (tags)
What does normality mean? The law of returns is not the only law. Awareness of risk also has to be considered. After the near collapse of Bear Stearns, some of America's biggest banks are reeling badly. The markets are falling into a state of panic.
The Rescuers of Capitalism (tags)
Banks all over the world bought these speculative objects through subsidiaries called "special conduits" that did not appear on the official balance sheets. The mortal sins of the economy are the specualtive practices, not state interventions.
The Asian Crisis of 1997-1998: Deregulation (tags)
Enormous capital streamed in short-term monetary investments that could dissolve at any time, not in lasting direct investments. Higher stock prices and home prices fueled the credit boom. Deregulated finance markets are everything but efficient.
Global Casino Capitalism (tags)
What began with cheap money for American homebuyers has expanded to the greatest financial market crisis since the war. The whole extent of bad credits with banks is not yet known, let alone the effects on the world economy.
Attac Germany on the Subprime Crisis (tags)
The crisis can't be solved with a few surveillance cameras in the global casino. The party was quickily over when the real estate prices stopped soaring. Investors are often guided by a herd behavior. Sustainable economy should have a prioirity over short-term profits.
The Crisis of Speculative Capitalism (tags)
Since the end of July 2007, the world economy was shocked by a new severe crisis of the financial markets. The courage to regulate the financial markets to prevent a future uncoupling from the productive economy is still obviously absent. The hour of truth will inevitably come.
F. William Engdahl's "A Century of War" - Part II (tags)
Part II of this epic book.
Is the "Mother of all Financial Crises" Imminent? (tags)
A trade-weighted devaluation of the dollar of around 25 percent is necessary allowing the US currency to ski "gradually and orderly" against free-floating currencies. The IMF could establish a "substitution account" with "special drawing rights" to avert a dollar panic.
The Subprime Tsunami Reaches the EU (tags)
Subprime mortgage credits in the US should not have been issued. Nevertheless subprime credits were extended in the volume of $1.3 trillion. An avalanche of expropriation roars in the valley. The banking crisis spills over into the credit system in the real economy.
Banking- and Mortgage Fraud (tags)
The whole great world of money is infected by the banal greed for more and more. Wasn't the art of making more money out of money the most noble and top-paid pursuit? Deregulation and liberalization have consequences for democracy and the economy.
After the crisis of 1997, not one important fianncial reform was carried out in the world. Liberalizationof capital markets causes instability and not necessarily growth. In South Korea, the IMF recommended the sale of state banks to US investors.
European Central Bank pumps $500 bn into banking system (tags)
TO SUCCEED over the global credit crunch in aftermath of sub-prime crisis, the European Central Bank (ECB) has announced to grant a record double loan to its banks. The ECB has decided to pump 348.6 billion euros ($501.5 billion) into the banking system through its banks. Though lending to banks at 4.21% rate of interest is available only for two weeks, it is expected that the grant will boost the diminishing confidence of the bank.
Morgan Stanley Issues Full US Recession Alert (tags)
Morgan Stanley has issued a full recession alert for the US economy, warning of a sharp slowdown in business investments and a perfect storm for consumers as the housing slump spreads. Under the conservative definition, man is the servant of money. Long live alternative economics!
A Generalized Meltdown of Financial Institutions (tags)
By Mike Whitney 11/24/07 "ICH" -- - Reality has finally caught up to the stock market. The American consumer is underwater, the banks are buried in dept, and the housing market is in terminal distress. The Dow is now below its 200-Day Moving Average -- the first big "sell" signal. Anything below 12,500 could trigger program-trading and crash the market. The increased volatility suggests that we are watching a "real time" meltdown.
Imperial wars and genocide, Petrodollar Recycling System and meltdown of financial world (tags)
Imperial wars, crimes and genocide, Petrodollar Recycling System and meltdown of financial world order. Articles, analysis and video documentary
The Real Financial Tsunami is coming! (tags)
"The $690 billion worth of “interest only” ARMs due for interest rate hike between now and July 2008 are by and large not Sub-prime but a little higher quality, but only just. There are a total of $1.4 trillion in “interest only” ARMs according to the US research firm, First American Loan Performance. A recent study calculates that, as these ARMs face staggering higher interest costs in the next 9 months, more than $325 billion of the loans will default leaving 1 million property owners in technical mortgage default. But if banks are unable to reclaim the homes as assets to offset the non-performing mortgages, the US banking system and a chunk of the global banking system faces a financial gridlock that will make events to date truly “peanuts” by comparison. "
FCC wants to relax media ownership constraints (tags)
FCC wants to relax media ownership constraints
Rating Agencies and Prophets (tags)
Some think rating agencies inevitably take the side of their patrons - to the burden of those who buy these "financial products" in good faith in the objective judgment of the auditors. Of course, the agencies refuse liability.
Submissiveness Toward the Finance Markets (tags)
Finance market transactions must be made more expensive. Finance market critics warn of a casino capitalism. Are businesses only objects of speculation for global invewstment capital?
Central Banks Reduce Their Holdings (tags)
Japan, the largest investor in US debts, has been reducing its holdings for three years.. The decline of foreign treasury holdings is not surprising because foreign dollar investors suffered massive losses through the dollar's devaluation in the last two months.
Alan Greenspan on Thom Hartmann Monday (tags)
Tune in to the Thom Hartmann show Monday on Air America and hear Thom interview Alan Greenspan, head of the US Federal Reserve for 18 years and engineer of the present mortgage-credit-bubble crisis.
Real Estate Crisis in the US (tags)
Credit failures in the real estate business threaten the whole payment system between banks, private businesses and households handled through short-term credits..The US real estate crisis affects other economic sectors and countries and cal also lead to a shift in class relations.
Billions Dissolve in Thin Air (tags)
While the political class practices faith healing, all the participants know the end is coming when more speculative bubbles burst. The popular dogma that financial markets and the world economy are more efficient when deregulated and liberalized is over.
Beware of Falling Bankers! (tags)
Like the car, our sacred cow that is not discussed, speculation and prosperity based on credit are taboo subjects. The system is corrupt and its answers wrong. Will we mend our own pockets as China closes its wallet? Critical thinking, culture shock, alternative economic and Jesus' parables can be new beginnings.
Who Profits From the Crash? (tags)
A criminal corruption on the highest planes is at the heart of the assets transfer. Every few decades, the real owners of the world arrange an economic crisis to steal the assets of the people. The incredible sum of $325 billion was injected into the financial system within a few days.
David Walker, comptroller general, warns of impending crisis (tags)
Learn from the fall of Rome, the US is warned. There were striking similarities between America's current situation and the factors that brought down Rome including declining moral values, an over-confident and over-extended military and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government.
Stock Market Meltdown - First Signs of Global Economic Rout
HELICOPTER BEN UNLEASHES DOLLAR HYPERINFLATION (tags)
Washington DC – August 12, 2007 – By deciding to ante up $38 billion for a hopeless bailout of predatory Wall Street hedge funds and the banks that stand behind them, Federal Reserve Chairman Helicopter Ben Bernanke has placed the bankrupt US dollar on a direct course towards the precipice of hyperinflation.-
Top 8 Reason for Iraq Invasion (tags)
It’s spring of 2007, four years deep into Iraq occupation .Here’s a mature top 8 reasons that combined to trigger and perpetuate this invasion/occupation what used to be the sovereign nation of Iraq.
Israeli banks profit from Holocaust (tags)
"Investigations by the Israeli parliament have dug up disturbing evidence that Israel has been profiting for decades from vast sums invested in local banks by European Jews who died in the Nazi death camps."
A LAWFUL MEANS OF BALANCING THE BUDGET (tags)
A Proposal that Would Require the Following Amendment to the Federal Constitution:
OLd Left Radicalism on The Money Issue (tags)
During the 'teens, twenties and 'thirties of the past century, radical political formations in America called for the nationalization of the Federal Reserve System and of Credit.
Economic sanctions on Israel (tags)
It is a disgrace that the Iranian government should be able to tell the US government what to do.
Cooking the Books: U.S. Banks are Giant Casinos (tags)
This is not good news.
Why are cops always right? They got guns and badges!! (tags)
Tempe cop Sgt. Chuck Schoville tells us why cops are always right on a Tempe government propaganda TV channel Tempe StreetBeat - “You know why you say I’m right? Because I’ve got a gun and a badge. I’m always right.” Finally the cops admit something most of us know!
Illinois Congressman Jerry Weller,Refco and the collapse of Guatemala's Bancafe Bank (tags)
Illinois Republican Jerry Weller does indeed have a conflict of interest in Guatemala besides his wife Zury Rios Sosa,daughter of ex-Guatemalan dictator General Efrain Rios Montt.Refco that donated to at least one of Jerry Weller's political campaigns in the past has collapsed and been found to be committing investor fraud and hiding certain transactions that should have been accounted for as losses.This has led to billions of dollars in investor losses worldwide.
Anger with the Establishment: Jean Ziegler (tags)
Free trade is like heavyweight champion Mike Tyson climbing in the boxing ring against a half-starved unemployed from northeast Brazil..Without social justice, the republic is worthless..The world order of globalized pre-datory capitalism seems like cruel absurdity
No Cancer Tumor Goes To Waste! (tags)
cancer as weapon in the ussa...
DIRTY SECRETS OF THE TEMPLE (tags)
HOW THE US FEDERAL RESERVE HAS ABUSED THE PUBLIC SINCE INCEPTION
DIRTY SECRETS OF THE TEMPLE (tags)
AN ACCOUNT OF HOW THE US FEDERAL RESERVE HAS ABUSED THE PUBLIC SINCE INCEPTION
Brazil: "Petists" and "Toucans" have an agreement with bankers to prom (tags)
The "reform" of the Social Security, mixing interests of pension funds and of the financial system, will be implemented in the next government - no matter who will occupie the chair of the president of the republic at "Palácio do Planalto"
Riots erupt during the European Social Forum march in Athens (tags)
Anarchist rioters used dozens of Molotov cocktails as well as crowbars and flag poles to attack banks, stores, police cars, and police and government buildings.
The denomination of oil sales is a pyure transaction affair.. In the present situation, the oil bourse represents a symbolic manifestation of Iran's desire to be less dependent on a US-dominated dollar-world.
Returning Money to the People (tags)
Please share this with those you know who are tired of being a financial slave because they have been duped into accepting a fraud!
The Federal Reserve is Privately owned (tags)
The secret to enslaving a nation.
Learn about the financial fraud that has enslaved you your whole life!
The Web: The growing threat of spyware (tags)
Yet another bale out for failed capitalism - fed try to shore up online banks.
IRAQ,17 JUNE 2004: U.S.TAD, Ex-Im Bank, PMCs... (tags)
L'Irak, une journée du mois de juin 2004, une approche d'un coup d'Etat clefs en main, les moyens bancaires privés arabes et américains, les Private Military Companies, le développement économique autoritaire... la démocratie?
Hard Landing of the Dollar (tags)
The decline of the US dollar signals the economic weakness of the superpower and the structural crisis of capitalism. Since 1985 the US has become heavily indebted fo foreign countries. This foreign indebtedness amounts to 35 percent of the GDP.
National Task Force Established to Free Mumia (tags)
report on a national meeting of Mumia Abu-Jamal activists
Is China weeks away from 'Great Depression'? (tags)
Already in need of a $45 billion bailout, the CBRC suspended all lending for three days. The enormity of China's banking problem is dawning on everyone--the system is nearing meltdown.
Billions for Bankers--Debts for the People (tags)
In 1901 the national debt of the United States was less than $1 billion. It stayed at less than $1 billion until we got into World War I. Then it jumped to $25 billion.
President Kennedy the Fed and executive order 11110 (tags)
How America has slowly been enslaved by banksters, worthless paper they designed and printed, and a fraud so bold none would suspect it!
The 9-11 Hoax, the Federal Reserve and the World Bank (tags)
Scientific calculation shows that the amount of time and energy invested by nature to produce one gallon of petroleum converted into kilowatt-hours at the present commercial rates at which electricity is sold amounts to approximately $1 million per gallon....
The Wealth-Transfer Machine (tags)
If you want to know how the country is controlled you have to understand the basics of how it's done. How is done - by keeping you poor and manipulating the politicians through the use of money and debt. These are not trivial issues and require some work to understand. However, if you want to understand it is worth the effort.
An Interview with a Poet Against the War, Chase Twichell (tags)
Poetry's not window cleaning. It breaks the glass." Chase Twichell
Lawsuit filed demanding apartheid reparations from transnational corporations (tags)
Several groups have filed suit against the banks and other transnational corporations that financially propped up the apartheid government of South Africa during the sanctions era. The transnationals that funded the apartheid repression must be held accountable for their actions, and should pay reparations.
A NEW GRAPHIC SYMBOL EXTENDS IN THE WORLD (tags)
Since December 3 2001, when the "CORRALITO" in Argentina was imposed, not to say straight SWINDLE, arose a new graphical symbol in the world.
globalisation means war (tags)
The global Swiss banking syndicate that is backing the war effort
International Campaign to free Max Ntanyana I (tags)
Banks, ANC, government, water multinationals are trying to silence anti-eviction, anti-privatisation activist and union shopsteward Max Ntanyana for a very long time. This morning he was denied bail on a bogus excuse!
A Phone call to the Fed... (tags)
How many Americans know about the scam called the FED?? Not enough!
People's Economic Direct Action... (tags)
An Idea for the Movement & all of Society towards Directly Dismantling the Capitalist Machine Right Now...
Citigroup Protests: Philly 8/2; LA 8/17/00 (tags)
Citigroup, the largest U.S. bank, is being called to account by an emerging coalition of community, environmental, and human rights groups. Round One was in Philadelphia on August 2; Round Two is in Los Angeles, August 17, 9 a.m., Pershing Square. After that, for more information, visit, , or . As Citigroup's Salomon Smith Barney says (on PBS), "See How We Earn It." How? From redlining to redwoods, prisons to predatory lending...