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.
Jesus made fun of individualism and profit-oriented economic systems. Winning people to trust the infinite, invisible and transcendent God was surely his central goal. “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?”“No sparrow falls to the ground without your Father’s consent..."
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.
Financial Markets and National Socialism (tags)
Joseph Goebbels was appointed "Reich Minister for National Enlightenment and Propaganda "7 on March 15, 1933.: "The people should begin to think and react in a unified way. [...]" They should stand behind the actions of the government with full sympathy and support.
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."
The financial economy uncoupled from the real economy.
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.
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.
How Economists Change the World (tags)
Theory development is also a war over dominance. The goals of Hayek's war were expulsion of the Keynesians, liberalization of the financial markets, abandonment of full employment policy, dismantling the social state and weakening unions.
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.
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.
The Neoliberal Model: Profits without Investments (tags)
According to the neoliberal myth, higher profits would lead to more investments and more jobs. In truth, higher profits lead to corporations buying back their stock and currency speculation. In truth, higher investments lead to higher profits.
Rigging Foreign Exchange Markets (tags)
markets
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.
Capitalism is not the Opposite of the State (tags)
Without the permanent intervention of the state, there would be no functioning capitalism. No economic branch depends on the state like the financial branch The deregulation was based on the trick of slandering state regulation as strait-jackets.that could strangle the economy.
Politics Serving Free Financial Markets Creates False Incentives (tags)
Stable exchange rates, a strict regulation of (financial-) capital transactions, a transactions tax and low interest rates should make financial speculation so unattractive (“euthanasia of the profiteer”) that real investments would quickly expand to maintain full employment.
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.
Gold Drops Most in 30 Years (tags)
gold
Three Approaches to the Economic Crisis (tags)
Before 1980, wages, productivity, investments and production pushed one another and ensured general prosperity. After 1980 wages were dropped as a driving force of economic demand. Demand gaps were filled by consumer credits.
Economists Argue over Distribution Question (tags)
More and more economists take distribution questions seriously. When inequality becomes too great in a national economy, the economy becomes unstable. Private indebtedness and income inequality massively increased in the US Financial markets uncoupled from real economy
Capitalism Can Be Cured (tags)
"The Occupy movement protests worldwide against the power of banks. The Indignados in Spain demonstrate against the system that gives them this crisis and high unemployment. No saying has been criticized more vigorously than Margaret Thatcher's `there is no alternative'."
"A seeming consensus among economists can virtually force the shaping of political opinions.. For 30 years, neoliberalism marginalized all other schools, above all Keynesianism - and all of us hit a brick wall.."
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.."
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.
So much crisis was never analyzed with a crisis-conditioned satisfaction guarantee! Instead of seeking culprits, we must seek the systemic causes of the indebtedness dynamic. These gigantic debt mountains were necessary to keep capitalism functioning. Fewer and fewer workers can producer more and more goods in an ever-shorter time.
Shock Strategy for Europe (tags)
The cocktail of social cuts, deregulation and privatization struck societies like a blow. The economy hit the wall; social securities were taken away. The debt problems were used as "timely opportunities" to gain new ground for the free market.
Alternative for the Euro Zone (tags)
In a new study, leftist economists from a dozen EU countries criticize the policy of the German government in the Euro crisis. Its analysis and the proposed solutions are wrong. The state deficits are not the cause of the crisis. The financial crisis caused the state deficits.
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."
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
Occupy World - The Protest Against the Financial System Intensifies (tags)
Since the beginning of the financial crisis, governments from Berlin to Washington solemnly vowed to regulate the financial system more strongly, close the casino on the financial markets and call to account financially the speculators.for their inflicted damage. Deeds did not follow.
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
Manifesto of Appalled Economists: The Shocked and the Outraged (tags)
Tax cuts for the super-rich and corporations promised economic growth and more jobs but produced exploding inequality and generalized insecurity. The US faces a revenue crisis and a war spending crisis. Tax cuts, wars and bailouts of banks and firms caused massive US deficit.
Manifesto of Appalled Economists (tags)
State debts may be caused more by reduced corporate tax revenues than excess spending. Through "location competition," corporations play off state and countries and harvest tax write-offs and sweetheart-assessments. Through "state capture," the state becomes a trough.
The End of the "Golden Age" of Capitalism and the Rise of Neoliberalism (tags)
"The central point is that the financial sphere has the potential of developing into an autonomous subsystem of the whole economy with an enormous capacity of self-expansion..Like cancer, it has no internal control mechanism. It can only be brought under control by external interventions"
Manifesto of French Economists: Why We Are Shocked (tags)
On October 11 three million French workers were on strike against President Sarkozy's authoritarian attacks on social security and pensions. "Despite its obvious debacle, the neoliberal dogma is still regarded as the only correct economic system."
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.."
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."
"Severe Austerity Programs will have Catastrophic Consequences" (tags)
"Instead of real growth, the financial sector has only promoted phantom growth. The state functions differently than a family. Less should be spent for unproductive purposes like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and unconditional bank bailout packages.."
Stimulus or Austerity: the People vs. the Banks (tags)
The most powerful nations in the world met recently at the G-20 in Toronto and managed to agree on only one thing of significance: the need to reduce deficits, “half by 2013.” Implied by the statement is the need to lower deficits via “austerity,” meaning eliminating or reducing social programs. Why does every mainstream political pundit or corporate CEO fanatically agree that reducing deficits is the most important thing to do now? Let Obama explain:
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.
There is only one economy (tags)
The stock exchange produces nothing. Speculations and bets do not create any assets, even if the daily stock market reports on television try to get us to believe the opposite. That the financial markets make themselves independent is the result of political decisions.
As 10 years ago, there is again resistance against the chaotic, polarizing destructive power of the markets and against the false alternatives of the governments. A globally democratized climate justice requires turning away from the status quo and the "imperial lifestyle."
The Rules of the Game, Not the Players (tags)
In the last three decades, the financial markets have grown much faster than production.. The respective players (whether public or private) are not the problem but the rules of the game.. The goals and means of production must be redefined
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.
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.
Attac France on the Stiglitz Report (tags)
If the world really lives through a systemic crisis, solutions must also be sou9ght on this plane. Regrettably the mandate limits the commission to reform the international monetary system. The UN is the only institution with a democratic legitimacy.
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.
Post-neoliberalism or post-capitalism? (tags)
"Market-liberalisation was accompanied by a far-reaching de-regulation of politics. Milton Friedman called it a “neo-liberal counterrevolution” against Keynesianism..."
Austria: Crash Instead of Cash (tags)
In 1978 the Bretton Woods system broke down since the US abandoned the key function of the US dollar to print money to finance the Vietnam War.. The liberalization of the financial markets started a mechanism in which the worldwide population loses.
Manipulation - How Markets Really Work (tags)
Insiders move markets up or down for profit.
Welch's Marvelous Transformation (tags)
Nearly all the excesses summarized unter the terms turbo- or casino capitalism are based on the ideology of shareholder value: the rule of financial markets over the real economy, the short-term and short-sightedness of shareholders and waves of rationalizations."
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
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.
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.
GERMANY: Oscar Lafontaine on the Financial Markets (tags)
"The present crisis cannot be overcome without a regulation of the financial markets.. When banks are given billions through the so-called bank bailout and these billions disappear somewhere, that is a misappropriation or embezzlement of tax funds.."
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.
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.
From Real Estate Speculation to Collapse of Global Deficit Economy (tags)
Joy to the world, the world of fallen idols and bubble transfer. The truth will set us free but the truth is a process, not a cudgel or stimulus. After the dot-com bubble, trillions were "invested" in real estate speculation. The crisis of the work society is the background for low interests.
Global Crisis-Made in the USA (tags)
The ecdonomy should serve humankind; humankind should not serve the bankers.
Welcome to Finance Market Capitalism (tags)
The financial market escapades must be the problem because capitalism itself cannot be the problem. The state bailout measure prepares the ground for inflationary developments.
Political Economy of the Financial Markets (tags)
Financial markets are not described here as anonymous zones of self-regulation but as instruments of private actors enforcing their own business interests on state institutions. Structural deficits cause the crises, e.g.massive liquidity.
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:
The Time is Ripe: Democratic Controls of the Financial Markets! (tags)
Like the melting of the dollar, the energy, food and housing crises have systemic roots, the logic and dynamic of maximum profit.. The US is experiencing a "margin call." The world wants its money back. The economy and the financial markets should serve people, not vice versa.
Crisis Populism and Rose-Colored Glasses (tags)
When it concerns socializing the losses of the financial disaster, the head of Deutsche Bank no longer believes in the "self-healing power of the market." The bankruptcy of neoliberalism is blatant.
Deregulated Markets and Alternative Economics (tags)
In the last ten years there was more speculationthan ever, more than before the 1930 worldwide economic crisis. A policy of deregulated financial markets made this possible. That real investment profits turn out relatively small encourages the speculation tendency.
How Speculators Are Causing the Cost of Living to Skyrocket (tags)
Speculation results in preposterous exaggerations, with real consequences for the economy. The excesses of financial markets are sending the world economy into convulsions. The financial markets have developed into a "monster" that needs to be tamed (Horst Kohler).
World Bank president Robert Zoelick compared the food shortage to the Old Testament's "seven plagues" but forgot to mentionthe eighth is the World Bank itself. The World Bank insists on agricultural production for export, not for the local supply of the population.
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.
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.
Deregualtion and liberalization have contributed to the present chaos. Through deregualtion and internationalization, getting into and out of investments as fast as lightning becomes possible.
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.
World Trade Center 7 and Financial Markets (tags)
911 Inside job. Why World trade center 7 came down.
The fianncial markets, the fifth branch, are probably the most important markets today. Many remain excluded from this time- and space compression. Most people are barred from the advantages of globalization like greater mobility and improved communication
The New Inequality Machine (tags)
From the middle of the seventies, the interest rates exceeded the real growth rates. This made it even more attractive for owners of capital to invest their money in the financial markets rather than the real economy.
Mossad - The Israeli Connection To 911 (tags)
I think this is a nice summary of the criminals in charge. And some interesting points I didn't know like:
Representatives of orthodox market theory are not weary emphasizing that the causes of crises only refer to economic errors in the afflicted countries. This 1988 Austrian warning calls us to resist the ideology of market fundamentalists.
Short List of "Practical Necessities" (tags)
When interests rise, fewer and fewer investments occur in production and employ-ment, unemployment increases and the economy goes flat. This analysis of the Austrian economy could help the US battle deregulation and corporate enrichment.
"A Subtle Form of Hypocrisy" (tags)
Between 1980 and 2003, $1.8 trillion in interests alone flowed from the South to the North. The heavy debts of developing countries more than tripled in this time period.
The Demon and its Conjuring Trick: Money (tags)
"The light in which the glboal financial markets operate is very dim.. Unveiling the money fetish is a task of economic literacy. The monetary sphere seems uncoupled from the real economy, the world of work.."
Inflationary Deflation or the Dominance of the Global Financial Markets (tags)
"When real interests are above real growth rates of the GDP, debtors are structurally overstrained. The debt crisis of the 1980s and the financial crises of the past decade suggest that a kind of post-modern `plundering capitalism' is arising.."