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The Austerity Debacle. – NYTimes.com

31 Jan

Ah, the Confidence Fairy!

How could the economy thrive when unemployment was already high, and government policies were directly reducing employment even further? Confidence! “I firmly believe,” declared Jean-Claude Trichet — at the time the president of the European Central Bank, and a strong advocate of the doctrine of expansionary austerity — “that in the current circumstances confidence-inspiring policies will foster and not hamper economic recovery, because confidence is the key factor today.”

Such invocations of the confidence fairy were never plausible; researchers at the International Monetary Fund and elsewhere quickly debunked the supposed evidence that spending cuts create jobs. Yet influential people on both sides of the Atlantic heaped praise on the prophets of austerity, Mr. Cameron in particular, because the doctrine of expansionary austerity dovetailed with their ideological agendas.

via The Austerity Debacle. – NYTimes.com.

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Leon Panetta’s explicitly authoritarian decree – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com

30 Jan

Here we have the U.S. Defense Secretary, life-long Democrat Leon Panetta, telling you as clearly as he can that this is exactly the operating premise of the administration in which he serves: once the President accuses you of being a Terrorist, a decision made in secert and with no checks or due process, we can do anything we want to you, including executing you wherever we find you. It’s hard to know what’s more extraordinary: that he feels so comfortable saying this right out in the open, or that so few people seem to mind.

via Leon Panetta’s explicitly authoritarian decree – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com.

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Justice Department Charges Kiriakou With Dislcosing Classified Information – NYTimes.com

30 Jan

…I also remembered that President Obama came into office promising more transparency. And yet this president’s team has now prosecuted six current or former government officials for leaking information to reporters, which the Times’ Charles Savage reported is more than all previous presidents combined.

Near the start of his term, Mr. Obama ordered all agencies to review secret material with the goal, supposedly, of declassifying more of it. Instead, the government went on a classification binge. In 2010 alone, officials classified nearly 77 million documents, a one-year jump of 40 percent. That’s not just about national security. It’s also about keeping the public from learning embarrassing information.

via Justice Department Charges Kiriakou With Dislcosing Classified Information – NYTimes.com.

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Tell Congress: Don’t roll back defense spending cuts

29 Jan

Tell Congress: Don’t roll back cuts to defense spending.

It’s undeniable that we have a grotesquely bloated military budget. Even with the reductions, the United States will be on track to spend more on defense than the next ten countries combined.2

Yet Republican Rep. Buck McKeon has just introduced a bill that will substitute a reduction of the federal government workforce by 10% in place of the first year of mandatory cuts.3 And this will likely be the first of many attempts to change the law to shield military spending.

Republicans and some Democrats are now saying that the sky will fall if we do not exempt the Department of Defense from mandatory spending cuts – even as they insist that our deficit is such a problem that we must make brutal cuts to Medicare and Medicaid

Click the link and sign the petition!

via Tell Congress: Don’t roll back defense spending cuts.

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Michael Hudson: Banks Weren’t Meant to Be Like This « naked capitalism

28 Jan

Yet the banks now browbeat governments – not by having ready cash but by threatening to go bust and drag the economy down with them if they are not given control of public tax policy, spending and planning. The process has gone furthest in the United States. Joseph Stiglitz characterizes the Obama administration’s vast transfer of money and pubic debt to the banks as a “privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a ‘partnership’ in which one partner robs the other.” Prof. Bill Black describes banks as becoming criminogenic and innovating “control fraud.” High finance has corrupted regulatory agencies, falsified account-keeping by “mark to model” trickery, and financed the campaigns of its supporters to disable public oversight. The effect is to leave banks in control of how the economy’s allocates its credit and resources. …

Banking has moved so far away from funding industrial growth and economic development that it now benefits primarily at the economy’s expense in a predator and extractive way, not by making productive loans. This is now the great problem confronting our time. Banks now lend mainly to other financial institutions, hedge funds, corporate raiders, insurance companies and real estate, and engage in their own speculation in foreign currency, interest-rate arbitrage, and computer-driven trading programs. Industrial firms bypass the banking system by financing new capital investment out of their own retained earnings, and meet their liquidity needs by issuing their own commercial paper directly. Yet to keep the bank casino winning, global bankers now want governments not only to bail them out but to enable them to renew their failed business plan – and to keep the present debts in place so that creditors will not have to take a loss.

via Michael Hudson: Banks Weren’t Meant to Be Like This « naked capitalism.

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Occupying Policy | The Nation

27 Jan

One of the most substantial examples of policy efforts within Occupy is a group called Occupy the SEC, which for months has been meeting twice weekly to review the 298-page Volcker Rule through a diligent, line-by-line reading and analysis. The group’s goal is to submit a public comment to the Securities and Exchange Commission examining potential loopholes in the rule. When implemented, the Volcker Rule, part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, will restrict American banks from making certain forms of speculative investments, such as proprietary trading.

via Occupying Policy | The Nation.

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Wall Street execs are major Obama fundraisers – Contraception – Salon.com

26 Jan

The 62 bundlers who work in [the investment banking] industry have raised at least $9.4 million for Obama and the DNC. That “at least” is significant because the Obama campaign specifies only a dollar range in its disclosures, with the top category being “$500,000+.” So the real aggregate figure may be considerably higher.

Among these bundlers are employees of big-name firms including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Barclays and Citigroup.

It’s worth emphasizing that for all the talk about grass-roots fundraising by the Obama campaign, the bundlers are a major part of the effort. The data released so far shows that at least one-third of all the money raised was sent in by a bundler, according to CRP.

via Wall Street execs are major Obama fundraisers – Contraception – Salon.com.

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FBI Wants New App to Wiretap the Internet | Common Dreams

26 Jan

Big Brother wants to watch even more:

The FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) posted a ‘Request for Information (RFI)’ online last week seeking companies to build a social network monitoring system for the FBI. The 12-page document (.pdf) spells out what the bureau wants from such a system and invites potential contractors to reply by February 10, 2012….

It notes that agents need to “locate bad actors…and analyze their movements, vulnerabilities, limitations, and possible adverse actions”. It also states that the bureau will use social media to create “pattern-of-life matrices” — presumably logs of targets’ daily routines — that will aid law enforcement in planning operations.

via FBI Wants New App to Wiretap the Internet | Common Dreams.

George Soros on the Coming U.S. Class War – The Daily Beast

24 Jan

Soros is not a happy camper:

Sitting in his 33rd-floor corner office high above Seventh Avenue in New York, preparing for his trip to Davos, he is more concerned with surviving than staying rich. “At times like these, survival is the most important thing,” he says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn’t just mean it’s time to protect your assets. He means it’s time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of “evil.” Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether.

via George Soros on the Coming U.S. Class War – The Daily Beast.

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AP Interview: Davos Forum founder says capitalism is out of balance, warns conflicts await – The Washington Post

24 Jan

DAVOS, Switzerland — Capitalism is out of whack, the founder of the World Economic Forum says, welcoming critics’ ideas of how to fix it — even those camped out in protest igloos near his invitation-only gathering of global VIPs.

This anti-big money mood is surprising territory for a man who embraces free markets and whose livelihood consists of bringing world CEOs and political leaders together for elite brainstorming sessions.

Klaus Schwab is also unusually downbeat, his trademark optimism tempered by global economic turmoil and public unrest ahead of this year’s forum.

“We have unfinished business and we have to act fast,” he told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday ahead of the forum’s Wednesday opening.

via AP Interview: Davos Forum founder says capitalism is out of balance, warns conflicts await – The Washington Post.

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