Government Shutdown Solutions Could Leave Out Disaster Aid for Puerto Rico (tags)
As the Senate and White House struggle to avert a government shutdown, US disaster victims from Puerto Rico to Texas worry a deal on relief and recovery aid will continue to be delayed.
The Consequences of a Trump Shock (tags)
Now is a good time to ask whether the global economy is in good enough shape to withstand another major negative shock. The answer, unfortunately, is that growth and employment around the world look fragile. A big adverse surprise – like the election of Donald Trump in the US – would likely cause the stock market to crash...
US Spending Bill Bonanza for Wall Street (tags)
Wall Street
The Future of the Captured State (tags)
AIPAC's Federal Reserve Vice Chairman (tags)
Fed
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)
A War on the Poor by Paul Krugman (tags)
The state has a social nature and cannot only be a power and security state. Since the 1980s, the banks carried out a "quiet coup" (Simon Johnson) by spending over $4 billion on campaign contributions and lobbying over ten years.
VIDEO: "The Four Horsemen" (tags)
Finance capitalism is an outgrowth of self-healing markets and too-big-to-fail banks, perverse business models and perverse incentives where speculation and creating money out of thin air are normalized.
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
class war
Financing the Government: Romney Must Get the Message (tags)
The role of the state and the necessity of common action is a main theme in the political debate. Regulation ensures the same rules for everyone in competition. Conservative politicians in the US underrate the importance of publically provided education, technology and infrastructure.
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.
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.
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."
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.
Alternatives to Capitalism (tags)
Neoliberalism, financial market-driven capitalism, intensifies the crises. However the root of evil lies in the developmental laws of capitalism. Neoliberalism is based on double standards and double speak where CEOs are job creators and workers are cost factors.
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.."
Caught in the Infinite Loop of a Nightmare (tags)
Since politics has no strategies of its own to re-stabilize the economic system, it hopes in the self-healing powers of the market after the bank bailout... The hosts of decision-makers were simply "falsely programmed" in their education.
VIDEO: How to Get Our Democracy Back (tags)
"At the center of our government lies a bankrupt institution: Congress."
"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)
Ten Years After Seattle (tags)
We must develop a new strategy for the movement. Neoliberal policy destroys the idea of the public. Neoliberalism privatizes and instrumentalizes production, communication, language and emotions. We should prepare for a long phase of barbarism and violence.
Elite democracy leads to corruption of wealth distribution, language and community. "We must be wounded to be healed" (Dorothee Soelle).
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.."
In the US, people have lived above their means for years and now must permanently lower their living standard. In America as in Europe, economists expect a tremendous rise in unemployment in the fall. This does not mean people will shop more.
We Fight Capitalism, Not the Crisis of Capitalism (tags)
Capitalism is a social system, not a natural law. Capitalism has proven it cannot end wars, prevent crises or make possible a good life for all people. Instead of solidarity, the capitalist social system teaches us envy and egoism. Now those who privatized the state cry for state bailout packages.
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.
Democracy Alarm: Financial Management (tags)
After the stock market crash, financial management acts as though nothing happened. The state was obviously treated only as a useful idiot by parts of the moribund financial management. The little taxpayers pay for the repair.
Risk Development and Dollar Inflation (tags)
Two articles by emeritus professor Elmar Altvater reveal the contradictions of credit or bubble prosperity in the counter-revolution of capital. As work cannot define us, competitiveness and profit maximization do not define the human experience Speculation could bring a new feudalism..
Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control (tags)
global dominance, not reform is planned
From Obsuristan to Absurdistan: Barbarism or Human Future (tags)
Individual security can be emphasized so global vision fades. Half-truths and fish stories carry the day. "Communism is oppression of many by man and capitalism is just the reverse." Our challenge is to reawaken wonder and interdependence, to consider the way of nonviolent resistance.
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.
Bailout Jobs, Not Banks! (tags)
The real state of German public finance is kept secret from the public although the public should pay the bill. Union leaders parrot the fairy-tale of the evil bankers who alone caused the whole debacle. Automakers produce for the storage yard
The End of Neoliberalism and the Crisis of Capitalism (tags)
"Guaranteeing the social infrastructure and social security for everyone should be central instead of guarantees for banks and corporations and socialization and democratization of the economy instead of nationalization!"
Can the US Save the World? by Simon Johnson (tags)
Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the IMF, teaches economics at MIT.
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.
In our collective helplessness, we seek salvation in the transcendental empire of the inexplicable. "How could it be?" becomes the self-defense to forget our miserable social existence.. The economic has taken society hostage.
Mending our own pockets, setting system stabilization above profit maximization and long-term survival above short-term constraints is vital for an open, dynamic and future-friendly world.
FDR's New Deal v. Obamanomics in Their First 100 Days (tags)
stark mirror opposites
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:
Nuclear energy IS NOT CARBON NEUTRAL (tags)
by Simon Johnson