Cacophony of Corporatism, Subsidies & Inheritance Tax (tags)
History is written by the winners. The Orwellian "memory hole" has long been a reality and could soon lead to subsequent generations no longer being able to develop any awareness at all of what it means to lead a free and dignified life.
Sanction the oligarchs, not the people! (tags)
It is time to develop a new kind of sanctions. They must be targeted specifically at the oligarchs who have become wealthy as a result of the regime. This would require the establishment of an international financial registry, a measure that will not please the Western wealthy.
Social Inequality and Universal Basic Income (tags)
The welfare state in Germany is not as efficient as in the Nordic countries. In Germany, more than twice as many persons are at risk of income poverty - particularly children and single parents. We have to make a decision: entrepreneurial paradise or a little less faith in the market.
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and the Wealth Tax (tags)
Warren's proposal earmarks a 2% tax on wealth between $50 million and a billion dollars and a 3% tax on wealth over a billion. Between 1930 and 1980, top incomes were taxed at 81% and top inherited wealth at 74%. Obviously, this did not destroy American capitalism.
EBALDC’s partnership with Urban Core has resulted in protests (tags)
Considering that EBALDC had a fund balance of $22,884,524 during 2014, it appears that EBALDC, a so-called nonprofit housing developer, may be sucking it’s buildings dry financially with it’s general and administration fees, property management fees, repairs and maintenance fees, developer fees, and other charges it uses to collect huge sums of money from its many buildings and properties.
Largest bank robbery robs ussr and California and regional FDIC (tags)
Stunning weapons leave the ussr a broken up nation and likely robbed. The same thing happened at the FDIC in 1999. Murder mayhem advanced warfare from space and the ground. Desperado seeks wife to impregnate before his death.
Economic Crises as Sicknesses and Catastrophes (tags)
The 2008 financial crisis is often wrongly described as a "state debt crisis" where cause and effect are inverted and economists and the market are released from responsibility. Sickness and catastrophe metaphors dominate discussion
Britain Targets Russian Media (tags)
Britain
Irresponsibly Freezing Russian Assets (tags)
Russia
Average wages in the US are lower than 30 years ago. Profits and income inequality explode, not investments. The austerity policy that has always worsened unemployment and economic growth is promoted as without alternative by German chancellor Merkel.
Rebirth of the One-Thousandth Society (tags)
The richest thousandth (0.1%) could increase their share in the total wealth very intensely since the 1980s. Their share is as much as the bottom 90%..While the millionaires increased their wealth enormously, the mass of the population is exposed to the continuing economic crisis.
Thomas Piketty and the Growing Inequality in Capitalism (tags)
"When capital profit is permanently higher than the growth rate for production and income which was the case up to the 19th century, capitalism automatically produces unacceptable and arbitrary inequalities that radically put in question the achievement principle..."
Corporate Predators Want Compensation for Lost Cuban Assets They Stole (tags)
Cuba
No Redistribution Without the Social State (tags)
In Austria 30 percent of the gross domestic product is spent on social services (not including education spending)...Since the 1990s social security has been increasingly discussed as a financial burden and less as a social achievement
TheInheritance of Inequality and Rethinking Growth (tags)
The economy exists for people, not vice versa. Economics should be pluralist, not a monolith. The economy should be embedded in society; society should not be embedded in the economy. Thomas Piketty and alternative economics emphasize inequality and mass unemployment.
Why a Global Wealth Tax Reduces Inequality (tags)
The distribution of income and assets is one of the most controversial themes today. History teaches us that economic forces press in different directions - either to more equality or away from equality. Which will prevail depends on what political decisions we make.
A Frenchman Admonishes Americans to Equality (tags)
With his book and the data, Thomas Piketty has shaken the self-understanding of American society.. In 2010 the richest one percent had around 20 percent of the total income. In the 1970s the share was under 10 percent.
The Middle Class Continues Shriveling (tags)
A century ago people said a progressive income tax would never happen. Today it is reality. The top tax rate in the US between 1930 and 1982 was 82 %. That was a very interesting experiment because very high incomes were covered.
Neoliberalism has brought us back to Rockefeller's best times. Bill Gates is 1.4 million times as rich as the average American. A "feudal lifestyle" is made out to be worthwhile and in no way negatively described. Thus "re-feudalization" is dulled as a polemical term.
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.
Jubilee USA Files to Supreme Court in Landmark Debt Case (tags)
75 Religious and Development Institutions Join SCOTUS Brief to Ensure Global Poor are Heard
Argentina Requests Supreme Court Reverse Federal Court Rulings that favor Predatory Hedge (tags)
Argentina officially requested that the US Supreme Court hear an appeal in a debt case that will impact people living in extreme poverty around the world. The case dates back to Argentina's 2001 default, after which 92% of all Argentine bond holders restructured their defaulted debt. Predatory hedge fund, NML Capital leads a small group of holdouts who won judgments for payment in lower US Courts. NML Capital never invested in Argentina and bought the debt cheaply after Argentina's default. Because sovereign lending is contracted in the United States, the precedent the case sets impacts some of the poorest economies around the globe and allows these hedge funds to target assets that benefit poor people. The International Monetary Fund, the Paris Club, legitimate investors, the US and most governments oppose this predatory behavior because it cancels the benefits of debt relief, makes sovereign debt restructuring more difficult and limits credit to poor countries.
Argentina Files Final Supreme Court Appeal in Global Hedge Fund Debt Case (tags)
Religious Community Joins IMF, Legitimate Investors and Governments in Opposing Exploitative Hedge Fund Behavior
Supreme Court Decides to Hear Argentine Objection to Predatory Hedge Funds Targeting Argen (tags)
The Supreme Court will review a lower court's order for banks to give information on Argentine assets, including those assets held outside of US jurisdiction, to a group of hedge funds seeking to collect from Argentina's 2001 default. Additionally, the High Court will review if it is legal for these predatory hedge funds to target assets for collection outside of a US jurisdiction.
Predatory Hedge Funds and Argentina Face Supreme Court Showdown in Landmark Global Poverty (tags)
Argentina is expected to appeal to the US Supreme Court by mid-February in response to a US 2nd Circuit Court ruling ordering the country to pay $1.33 billion to predatory hedge funds. The precedent the case sets will hurt poor countries in financial distress and could allow a small group of hedge funds to target assets that benefit vulnerable populations. At the same time, debt holders who restructured their debt with Argentina have hired lawyers to help negotiate the dispute between holdout hedge funds and Argentina. Nearly 93% of debt holders restructured their debt with Argentina after the 2001 default. The majority of bondholders are concerned that their settlements could be disrupted if hedge funds win the final ruling.
Seven Good Reasons for a More Just Tax Policy (tags)
In the US, the top tax rate was over 70% from 1938 to 1982. Reagan cut the top rate to 35% and changed taxation from corporate to individual leading to exploding inequality and generalized insecurity. Taxation, investment, labor market, trade and distribution policies must change.
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.
Ten Theses on the Crisis and its Solution (tags)
Problems don't disappear when they are ignored. Deregulation is a collective and political crisis. Language and democracy are endangered when arsonists are called firefighters, when private losses become public losses and crime in the suits is normalized as a business model.
"We need a new economic balance" (tags)
If the US removed the cap on social security taxes, public spirit and generational fairness would return to the states. At present, there is a cap at $106K. If you make $4 million, you only pay social security tax on the first $106K.
Canada Resurrects Vampire—bill C-30 That Will Suck Internet Freedom Dry (tags)
Can Canadians Hold Out Against Their Government's Forceful Efforts to Wiretap Their Lives? The Obama Government also wants the power (without a warrant) to introduce as evidence in U.S. Civil; Criminal and Administrative prosecutions any phone call record, email or Internet activity.
Against Growth Mania and Fair Redistribution (tags)
How can we rebuild our society so we manage with less growth and not collapse when growth does not occur? Consumption beyond a certain level is pathological, a compensation or substitute for missed life (cf. Erich Fromm).
Trillions Stashed in Tax Havens (tags)
grand theft
Repaired Shoes or New Shoes (tags)
The economy demonstrates-in the Marxist sense-its primacy over politics. Whose interests are realized? New holes opened up after every bailout action in the last four years. Greece is only the tip of the iceberg. The debtor is not to blame for the disaster.
The world’s richest 22 people own more than Switzerland produces (tags)
Four heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, the two Koch brothers who inherited their father’s company and two software moguls piggybacking on the government-created Internet are among those whose wealth is in the stratosphere.
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.."
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.
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!
Troubled Eurozone Finance Capital (tags)
economy
Philippine Congress asked to suspend interest for ?corrupted debts? in 2012 budget (tags)
MANILA, Philippines ? On the last few days of the budget committee hearings, a debt watchdog has asked the House Committee on Appropriations to follow President Benigno S. Aquino III?s example by suspending interest payments for ?corrupted debts and deals? in the proposed 2012 national government budget.
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.
US Congress Represents Fellow Millionaires (tags)
Democratic Representative of San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi, claims assets of $60 million, with her home and vineyard worth about $15 million. Her investments include AT&T, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Aloca, Apple, Dow Chemical and Motorola, among others. No millionaire can possibly represent the workingclass, the 80% of us who sell our labor for less than $77,000 a year. Almost half of the US Congress are millionaires.
The Orange County Public Guardian – the Real Story the Press Doesn’t Want You to See (tags)
The real story is one of a courageous rescue of a 92-year-old woman by a loving daughter who risked her life for her mother. It is a story about continuing harassment from a government official intent on acquiring the assets of the elderly woman.
Corrupt Public Guardian Fears Questions (tags)
Corrupt Orange County Public Guardian has Prosecutor Fired for Asking Questions
Seniors, Get Out of Town Before the Public Guardian Snatches Your Life (tags)
Orange County Seniors are under fire from a Public Guardian who is seizing the assets of any senior who comes into his clutches
Someone is on the right track on the Gulf disaster (tags)
“It is this writer’s opinion that our government should seize all the assets of BP in this country and put this capital to work to rebuild and restore our communities.”
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.
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
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.
Pacifica is the basis of KPFK, and there are concerns about WBAI...more (tags)
Actions and decisions made within Pacifica affect all the KPFK people here too, even if it is New York's WBAI's main issue. We too must be concerned and informed and give input to what happens...anywhere our money goes too...
The Obama Government: Take from the Poor and Give to the Rich (tags)
These past several weeks have witnessed a stunning attack on working people, with the Obama administration leading the charge. It started with Larry Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser, responding to the A.I.G. bonuses by pontificating about the sanctity of contracts: “We are a country of law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts.” Like a mad dog pursuing its prey, he pounced on the conclusion that absolutely nothing could be done about the bonuses. Unfortunately, Summers voiced no similar outcry when the Obama administration, only weeks earlier, insisted that the U.A.W. contracts be renegotiated as a condition for the auto industry receiving a bailout, suggesting that a different set of rules applies to the rich than to the rest of us who constitute the majority and work for a living.
Obama's Latest No Banker Left Behind Scheme (tags)
the looting of America
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.
Toxic Plans for Toxic Assets (tags)
Obama stimulus from hell.
A New Administration, Tired Old Policies (tags)
Counterproductive policies heading America for depression
What's Going on at UGSOA? James D. Carney UGSOA President LOSES 710 members in one day. (tags)
Their is an uprising going on at UGSOA as 710 Security Police Professionals working for the State Department in Washington D.C., Virginia, Maryland, Colorado, Kentucky, New Orleans, Connecticut, California, South Carolina, Arizona and New York voted to DUMP UGSOA as their collective bargaining agent on 9/10/08. This was UGSOA's Largest Local Union.
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.
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.
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.
Congress standing up to the bailout (tags)
Transcript of address from Rep. Marcy Kapitur, D-Ohio, Toledo The latest reality game - Wall Street Bailout - has a counter-game called Wall Street Reckoning. The Capitol switchboard is easy and free: 800-270-0309
Jail—Mortgage Lenders, brokers, Who Knowingly Sold or Made Fraudulent Home Loans (tags)
How can Americans possibly trust this Congress to protect $700 billion in Taxpayer Dollars that is needed to Restore US credit liquidity from being misappropriated?
H.R. 362: Proposed U.S. Naval Blockade on Iran Amounts to "an Act of War" (tags)
The National Intelligence Estimate released Dec. 3, 2007, states that Iran's nuclear weapons program was halted in 2003. The EU froze the assets of the biggest Iranian bank after Bush visited Britain in June. H.R. 362, introduced in Congress on May 22, 2008, would impose a naval blockade upon Iran which experts say would amount to "an act of war."
Game of Deceived Deceivers (tags)
The worldwide game with fictional assets has a few winners and many losers. Who has deceived whom in the game of deceived deceivers is hardly clear. The world econmy is too important to be left to gamblers. We need far more than a few new surveillance cameras and watchmen in the casino
Limits of Private Property (tags)
If life does not consist in the abundance of things and if time is borrowed from the future, do possessions invalidate community? Is life colonized by instrumental rationality (Habermas) when all life and relations are determined by money?
Why Is Oil More Expensive? (tags)
The reason for the high price of oil is that specualtive capital after the eruption of the US real estate crisis in the summer of 2007 now wreaks its havoc in the oil- and other raw material sectors. Workers have a world to win whose contours can hardly be defined.
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.
Bush and ExxonMobil v. Chavez (tags)
The latest salvo in Bush v. Chavez.
US Crisis Sends Europe's Housing Market into Free Fall (tags)
Investor George Soros sees the worst economic crisis since the Second World War as the aftermath of heavy debts and the credit crunch. Speculative greed for profits and contempt for whistle-blowers led to the crisis. Will there be system correction or only cosmetics?
On the Anti-Democratic Character of Neoliberalism (tags)
Privatization, deregulation and cuts in social spending is the trinity of the free market, Naomi Klein explains. The consciou8s production of unemployment is anti-democratic. The conscious worsening of income- and assets distribution is anti-democratic.
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.
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."
Taxes and Finance Capital: Back to the Feudal State (tags)
Taxes are the corrective to the furious free market. They safeguard the public interest, redistribution, public functions and services..For the oligarchs, tax is a confiscation and tax officials are highway robbers.. Tax reductions for the rich are the direrct cause of the debility of community.
US Locomotive Losing Steam (tags)
In 2006 after the crash of the New Economy boom, we are again witnessing irrational excess in the credit system and in the prices of assets and property titles.
PUNISHMENT FOR GOOD DEEDS (tags)
DIEBOLD WHISTLEBLOWER STRIKES PLEA DEAL ON FELONY CHARGES...Stephen Heller Agrees to Plead Guilty, Pay $10,000, Apologize and Receive Three Years Probation After Being Charged with 'Burglary' for Sharing Diebold Lawfirm's Privileged Documents with Newspaper, Election Integrity Activists Tells BRAD BLOG He Has 'No Assets Left, Other Than House' and Deal is Meant to Protect Him and His Wife as 'Best Deal I Could Get Based on the Circumstances"
In "1984," George Orwell warned that war would become a domestic necessity to divert the people from economic contradictions. Inequality may promote productivity but also undermines public spirit and social ochesion
Competition is not a Natural Law (tags)
Instead of working out and overcoming the causal problems, people put a veil of the fun society over the whole-as in the times of Rome..Ideologues elevate the principle of competition into a natural law to immunize the market econmy from all criticism.
CUCKOO ECONOMICS (Abridged Ed.) (tags)
By deliberately confusing assets that can be *produced* with assets that can only be *acquired*, modern economics laid the ideological foundation for unemployment, poverty, inequality, and the looming global depression.
Economism, Economic Ethics and Donations (tags)
Economism is the great ideology of our time. It claims that (1) resisting the market is impossible and (2) submitting to the market is best for everyone. Both are not true. Embedding the market in principles of useful-ness to life has a priority as an ordering task.
Other causes contribte to the economic misery besides the distribution problems. There are two developmental problems. There is the shift of profit from labor to capital. There is the worldwide opening of markets causing wage pressure.
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.
The Power of Money and Expectation (tags)
Money is a means of power over people and not only a means of exchange.. The expectation of the future gives us strength in the present.. God's love is boundless and refers to public life and economic and political conditions as much as to the individual heart.
BTL:Bush Administration Establishes New License for Publishing Projects in... (tags)
...Cuba, But with Strings Attached ~ Interview with attorney Michael Krinksy, conducted by Between the Lines' Denise Manzari
State Unclaimed Propert & Money (tags)
What is unclaimed property? By law, a holder is obligated to locate and unite unclaimed funds with owners within a specified time period. When the time period exceeds without successfully finding the owner (often times called "dormancy period"), the holder reports unclaimed property to state and federal departments.
In their own ways, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, provided the institutional frameworks for middle-class growth. Now, radical ideas are necessary to prevent a return to feudalism.
How Will Bush Deal With the Deficits? Connecting the Dots to Iraq (tags)
Bush administration's perpetual war and attendant defecit spending responsible for illusory economic prolificacy.
Millionaires and the Unemployed (tags)
"The millionaire could simply pay his unemployed. If we calculate 12X5X1000 is 60,000 Euros a year. This is the sum that the highest segment of this class saves by the lowering of the top tax rate from 48 to 42 percent planned by Mr. Schroeder."
Bush-Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951 - Federal Docs
Working Assets: Progressive Crusaders or Corporate Crooks? (tags)
Working Assets, known for it's donations to many worthy progressive causes from the proceeds of its long distance and wireless services, is now offering a credit card. An MBNA credit card. What gives?
Black Box Voting - Bev Harris FLASHPOINTS and Working Assets Radio Interviews (tags)
Bev Harris talks with Dennis Bernstein about her discovery of rigable voting machines and questionable software code, including software code that might be used to associate votes with the personally identifiable information of voters. The latter is something she is still investigating, but the main thrust of her story is beginning to be picked up by the alternative media. // mp3, 48kbps, Runtime: 15:44
Are Republicans different from Libertarians? (tags)
Libertarians advocate maximum liberty with minimum restrictions in any and all arenas of human activity. This sounds good, but carried to its logical extreme, it involves decriminalizing virtually every "vice" known to man.
Bush family made from the Nazis (tags)
NO WAR
When pro-Palestinian supporters become blind to prejudice.... (tags)
You are invited to read a debate in which a series of highly-charged comments are made against all Jews. Some might call it the harsh truth. Others might say it's typical anti-semitism wrapped up in blind zeal for justice. Wbat do you say?
Demonstration at Feinstein's Office re Palestine (tags)
Groups come together to protest Feinstein's anti-Palestinian position
Marijuana club faces property seizure (tags)
The Department of Justice ( news - web sites) is working to seize the real estate assets of a gay-run pot club in West Hollywood, Calif.
Indymedia.org is next - Bush Executive Order Begins Shutting Down Terrorist Webs (tags)
Wording of legislation sets up Indymedia for federal vigilantes busting in and siezing assets.
Bush Administration Crackdown on Travel to Cuba Challenged by... (tags)
Art Heitzer is an attorney in Milwaukee and is the chairman of the Cuba subcommittee of the National Lawyers Guild. He spoke about what he feels the Bush administration's motive for its Cuba travel crackdown and what recipients should do if they receive a letter from the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Working Assets Media: Corporate Media In Disguise? (tags)
Is Working Assets media really a for-profit corporate alternative media?