Wall Street

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Recession or Depression: You be the Judge

Posted by carnifex676 on 12/16/2011
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Gaye Levy, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

There is an old joke among economists that states: A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job.

Jokes aside, we all have an intuitive idea of what makes up a recession:  unemployment, plant and business closures and tough financial times for families.

But what about depression?  To laymen like me, depression is a more extreme form of recession.  It is characterized by extraordinary and unprecedented increases in unemployment, the reduced availability of credit, mass bankruptcies, the collapse of banking and financial systems and volatile financial markets.

Sound familiar?

Now to some there may be a fine line between the two.  As a matter of fact, I recently read that when the economy crashed in 1937, FDR and his advisers didn’t want to use the “D” word, so they came up with the term “recession”. Until that time there were no “recessions (from Murray N. Rothbard’s book America’s Great Depression). Continue Reading

Revealed – The capitalist network that runs the world

Posted by carnifex676 on 12/09/2011
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AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters’ worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study’s assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs).

“Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market,” says James Glattfelder. “Our analysis is reality-based.” Continue Reading

Economic Collapse? We’re Soaking In It!

Posted by carnifex676 on 11/15/2011
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A rather unobservant or at the very least “unlucky” man strolls across a faulty bridge; weathered, termite ridden, and over-traveled. He hops and skips and jumps about like a brain damaged orangutan without a care in the world. He does this not only because he is oblivious to the fundamental physics behind the workings of the bridge, and the structural signs of a bridge that is on the verge of collapse, but also because numerous highly paid “experts” on bridges have told him it is absolutely safe to do so. The bridge, of course, crumbles right under his feet, and he falls.

Now, if the ground was relatively close to our unfortunate freefalling dupe, the sudden collapse and the painful shock of slapping into the rocky floor would be an understandable surprise.Given only moments between the failure of the bridge and the ultimate conclusion of the spine crunching granite bottom swan dive, one could hardly ponder the situation at all. However, in this event, the ground is not close. In fact, the ravine is dark, and the fall is long. Perhaps three or four years long. In this case, a man has plenty of time to think through the circumstances of his predicament, and realize that eventually, he WILL meet the future like a warm pancake smacking cold linoleum at 200 mph.

If such a man is unable to discern the problems he faces, or to even acknowledge the fact that the ground has given way beneath him, after such a long stretch of time, it becomes very hard to feel sorry for him. But then again, we were all like this man once…

Since the derivatives and housing market implosion of 2008, America and the rest of the world has been spiraling down a chasm some in this country still refuse to take note of. The question has never been whether there “will be” a full scale financial disaster. The end to that chapter of this story was already written years ago. Rather, the real question has been “when” will this inevitable event culminate? Sadly, speculation on the matter has met an irreconcilable road block. The fact is, all the necessary elements are in place to bring down our fiscal shelter not in five years, not in one year, not in six months, but today. That’s right…..the economy as we know it has the potential to derail completely before you wake up for your morning poptart. Continue Reading

Interview of Occupy Wall Street’s Kelly Heresy

Posted by carnifex676 on 10/19/2011
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BY TAMRA SPIVEY

As I write this, the propaganda machine is cranking out stories about how Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is nothing but smelly hippies and all they’ll manage to do is guarantee the election of a GOP president and Congress as the silent majority returns in a nostalgic restoration of the 20th Century. But the truth is the silent majority today are the people occupying Wall Street. From the tech savvy kids who represent the first wave of a generation bigger than the dreaded boomers to the union guys and gals: teachers, steel workers, bus drivers, nurses, and veterans of every war including World War 2, almost everyone is represented.

What is probably most frightening to the owners of the status quo is not the intelligence of the General Assembly and their painstaking dedication to thoroughly discussing every issue with an eye to fairness and transparency. What may spook them more is the dawning realization that the media they control, the television news programs, the newspapers, and talk radio, are fading in importance, going the way of the music business. While pundits harrumph about bongo drums and spew frightened fantasies of mobs lynching rich people, the important exchange of information is happening through YouTube and Vimeo videos, by the creation of spontaneous documentaries, and by photos and eyewitness reports circulated on Facebook and Twitter.  By the time their Pony Express arrives the revolution will be over.  (White people afraid of lynching?) Continue Reading

Occupy Wall Street – Chris Hedges shuts down CBC Kevin (D-Bag) O’Leary

Posted by carnifex676 on 10/19/2011
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Occupy Wall Street is gaining momentum worldwide, crossing over to Canada and Europe. Despite the interest groups that are looking to co-opt the movement (or have co-opted, I don’t know) and opportunistic public figures who go there for PR, there are real issues at stake here.

Here’s an interesting (and very entertaining) interview with author Chris Hedges, who touches upon the vital issues of the protest. You will also see an example of how not to interview someone who knows his stuff.

In Debt Up To Our Eyeballs

Posted by carnifex676 on 10/18/2011
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By Michael Snyder
BlacklistedNews.com

The entire financial system of the western world is designed to be a debt spiral.  The total amount of money and and the total amount of debt are supposed to continually expand.  Today, we are in debt up to our eyeballs and it seems like nearly everyone is talking about “deleveraging” and reducing government debt.  But in a world where the entire financial system is based on debt, is there any way for massive deleveraging to take place without plunging us all into a horrific worldwide depression?  The governments of the western world have had a lot of fun spending money as if there was no tomorrow, but now tomorrow has arrived and all of that debt is rapidly catching up with us.  Politicians in Europe and in the United States are running around trying to come up with a “plan”, but there is no “plan” that is going to fix the current debt-based system.  Over the next few years we are going to reap what we have sown.

For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of nearly 1.3 trillion dollars.  That was the third year in a row that our budget deficit has topped a trillion dollars.

Sadly, most Americans simply have no idea how much money a trillion dollars is.

Perhaps an illustration or two would help.

If on the day when Jesus was born you began spending one million dollars every single day, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now. Continue Reading

Is a winter of discontent on the way?

Posted by carnifex676 on 10/17/2011
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LONDON (Reuters)- With the “Occupy Wall Street” movement going global and Middle East unrest stirring again, an autumn and winter of discontent looks increasingly likely.

In the corridors of Whitehall, Washington, think tanks and even investment banks, there are dark murmurs that the events of the year so far may only be the beginning.

Some fear the world faces a systemic rise in anger, protest and political volatility that could last years or even decades.

In many countries, a young social media-connected generation is losing faith in traditional structures of government and business, arguing it has been betrayed and denied opportunity.

In the developed world, the wider middle class fears its prosperity has evaporated, demanding someone be held accountable and the global elite find a way of delivering growth once more.

“This could be with us for a long time,” said Jack Goldstone, professor of public policy at George Mason University in Washington D.C. and an expert in demographics.

“You have a generation who are fed up being told what to do by rich western countries or rich western people. In Egypt, they took down one government but they may not like what replaces it and they may take that down too. It’s going to be a difficult period.”

In the Western world, the crisis initially produced rather less physical protest than many expected. But it now seems on the rise. Greece, Spain, Italy and Britain have all seen some of their worst unrest in decades.

On Saturday, the U.S. protests against the global financial system that began in a New York Park in mid-September spilt overseas to dozens of countries as sometimes hundreds, sometimes tens of thousands took to the streets.

Many were peaceful, but in Rome cars were torched and police fought running battles with “black bloc” activists. In London and several other cities, protesters in tents stayed on. Continue Reading

Iranian Assassination Plot, Cui Bono?

Posted by carnifex676 on 10/13/2011
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By Andrew McCleese

October 12, 2011

The alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Saudi Arabian ambassador Adel Al-Jubeir was described by FBI Chief Robert Mueller as something from the pages of a “Hollywood script.”  If this story strains credulity and sounds like a fabrication then there are plenty of reasons to suspect that it is a script.  A walk around the Internet to find all the details I could about this planned “terrorist act” lead me from story to story in the mainstream corporate media simply parroting the same statements made by an embattled Department of Justice (thanks to Eric Holder’s Fast and Furious scandal) and other Federal spokesmen.  Reporting in the mainstream is regurgitating.  On each media outlet’s website the same details were given about the crime, that is to say, few
details were given and all the evidence so far comes in the form of statements from an informant of unknown credibility.
What was also similar on each website were the reader comments.  Virtually every single comment about this plot said the same thing, regardless of whether or not it was CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Raw Story, Yahoo, AP or Reuters.  I can sum up the American citizenry’s sentiment about this story in one short sentence.

Dear government, we do not believe you.

And why would Americans indefinitely buy the same story?  Coincidentally this story is buttressed by the revelation from a watchdog group (sic) that Iran hasnuclear sites that can be seen on satellite images. This is all 2003 again and WMDs in Iraq.
It also seems like whenever there is a backlash about a new security measure or military action in a foreign land, or even question the eligibility of the President or now the competence of the Attorney General, the Federal government invariably trots out some mentally challenged, usually drug addicted patsy to prove to the American people how effective the Federal government is  at keeping you safe when implementing their superbly effective policies.   The early indications about assassin are that he was no
mastermind; actually he was just a used car salesman.  The terrorist in trainingconveniently confesses after 12 days of interrogation (sic) in some FBI hole, not charged with a crime and no hope of getting out or seeing an attorney.  Confession is the only hope for freedom thanks to the constant State of Emergency since 9-11 that suspends Habeas Corpus. Continue Reading