In announcing a final agreement in Bali, Indonesia on Saturday morning, head of the World Trade Organization Roberto Azevedo, said: “For the first time in our history, the WTO has truly delivered.” Continue reading
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Category Archives: Economy
‘Rank hypocrisy’: WTO deal bows to wealth, squashes the poor
US and EU called out for protecting their own subsidies while demanding world's poorest citizens be pushed back into starvation
Amend the Fed: We need a central bank that serves Main Street
December 23 marks the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve. Dissatisfaction with its track record has prompted calls to audit the Fed and end the Fed. At the least, Congress needs to amend the Fed, modifying the Federal Reserve Act to give the central bank the tools necessary to carry out its mandates. Continue reading
When savings interest rates go negative
What is more frightening than the loss of your money? Since most people have, some meager amount held in some form of a financial institution, the prospect of the banksters’ cabal placing a charge against your account for the mere privilege of maintaining a deposit, is horrible. The Business Insider warns, In The Future, You May Have To Pay The Bank To Hold Your Money, and raises a very dreadful prospect. Continue reading
The money changers serenade: A new plot hatches
Former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a protégé of Treasury Secretaries Rubin and Summers, has received his reward for continuing the Rubin-Summers-Paulson policy of supporting the “banks too big to fail” at the expense of the economy and American people. For his service to the handful of gigantic banks, whose existence attests to the fact that the Anti-Trust Act is a dead-letter law, Geithner has been appointed president and managing director of the private equity firm, Warburg Pincus, and is on his way to his fortune. Continue reading
The dying dollar
Federal reserve & Wall Street assassinate US dollar
Since 2006, the US dollar has experienced a one-quarter to one-third drop in value to the Chinese yuan, depending on the choice of base. Continue reading
The road to demonetization: Learning to say, ‘Enough!’
Even people who are not demonetarists, people who have not heard of it or who cannot conceive of a world without money, can act in today’s capitalist and market socialist societies in ways that reflect the values that a successfully demonetized society needs. Continue reading
Public banking in Costa Rica: A remarkable little known model
In Costa Rica, publicly-owned banks have been available for so long and work so well that people take for granted that any country that knows how to run an economy has a public banking option. Costa Ricans are amazed to hear there is only one public depository bank in the United States (the Bank of North Dakota), and few people have private access to it. Continue reading
Hidden taxation
Inflation is, in fact, nothing more than taxation of everyone at a rate not announced by the government but estimated by its citizens. This inflationary process of printing money out of nothing and then using it to pay debts is camouflaged by calling it monetizing the debt. [1]. It is illegal for individuals to do it. Continue reading
Paying the toll on the economic highway
The political coma of the U.S. government induced by Congress and its failure to represent those who elect it can ultimately be traced to the unfair and complex system of income taxation. Better for the country and more equitable for its taxpayers would be a toll tax on the movement of all money along the nation’s economic highway. Continue reading
Ireland: Ground zero for the austerity-driven asset grab
The Irish have a long history of being tyrannized, exploited, and oppressed—from the forced conversion to Christianity in the Dark Ages, to slave trading of the natives in the 15th and 16th centuries, to the mid-nineteenth century “potato famine” that was really a holocaust. The British got Ireland’s food exports, while at least one million Irish died from starvation and related diseases, and another million or more emigrated. Continue reading
Debt and deficit as shock therapy
When Naomi Klein published her ground-breaking book The Shock Doctrine (2007), which compellingly demonstrated how neoliberal policy makers take advantage of overwhelming crisis times to privatize public property and carry out austerity programs, most economists and media pundits scoffed at her arguments as overstating her case. Real world economic developments have since strongly reinforced her views. Continue reading
Make the wealthy pay to save the USA!
Originally published in early 2011, before the Wisconsin Uprising, Occupy Wall Street, Idle No More, and other subsequent people’s movements for basic justice arose, this piece addresses the solution to extreme societal unfairness, such as cruel cuts to food stamps (SNAP), that has only grown worse since then. Continue reading
Is Paul Krugman a voodoo economist?
Readers ask me if Paul Krugman could be correct that deficits don’t matter and that neither does printing endless reams of money with which to purchase the Treasury’s debt instruments that finance the deficits. Continue reading
The lies that will kill America
Here in Manhattan the other day, you couldn’t miss it—the big bold headline across the front page of the tabloid New York Post, screaming one of those sick, slick lies that are a trademark of Rupert Murdoch’s right wing media empire. There was Uncle Sam, brandishing a revolver and wearing a burglar’s mask. “UNCLE SCAM,” the headline shouted. “U.S. robs bank of $13 billion.” Continue reading
JP Morgan Chase’s $13 billion settlement and a possible whale-sized tax deduction
At JPMorgan Chase, you want record earnings and deals, not record settlement payments. But the nation’s biggest bank with $2.4 trillion in assets could be days away from the biggest and most painful settlement ever. As big as the $13 billion number is, it may not preclude criminal prosecution. What’s more, it could involve an express admission of wrongdoing, something that could curtail tax deductions and fuel shareholder suits. Continue reading
US empire disintegrates into a Third World economy
As ye sow, so shall ye reap
The year 2014 could be shaping up as the year that the chickens come home to roost. Continue reading
How much of JPMorgan’s $13 billion fine will taxpayers pay?
Experts speculate settlement will allow bank to write off chunk of penalty as business expense
JPMorgan—whose fraudulent mortgage claims helped take down the economy in 2008—will likely be able to write off its much-touted $13 billion fine as a business expense, experts speculate, meaning U.S. taxpayers would help foot the bill. Continue reading
Congress reopens government after 16 days and raises debt ceiling, staving off default
After shutting down the U.S. government for 16 days and driving the nation toward the brink of default, a chastened Congress voted late Wednesday to reopen federal agencies, call hundreds of thousands of civil servants back to work and raise the $16.7 trillion debt limit. Continue reading
European austerity hits America: Time to suffer
“Game over,” so to speak. The dark times are here in America. You are on your own. The federal-state-local governments are broke. No more benefits for hungry children, homeless veterans and civilians. No more full-time employment with benefit packages. Stagnating wages and income inequality are the norm. But hey, let’s cut taxes. Continue reading
The Trans-Pacific Partnership will be a windfall for foreign corporations
American businesses have never been afraid to compete amongst each other within reason. Competition is what has driven our economy to produce higher quality products at better prices. But now that competitiveness is being threatened by an international pact from hell called The Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will severely tie our hands when trying to compete with certain foreign corporations. Continue reading
Is Homeland Security preparing for the next Wall Street collapse?
Reports are that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is engaged in a massive, covert military buildup. An article in the Associated Press in February confirmed an open purchase order by DHS for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. According to an op-ed in Forbes, that’s enough to sustain an Iraq-sized war for over twenty years. DHS has also acquired heavily armored tanks, which have been seen roaming the streets. Evidently somebody in government is expecting some serious civil unrest. The question is, why? Continue reading
America needs the NEED Act
Today, our politicians squabble over healthcare legislation passed years ago and in a few more days their fight will be over the federal debt ceiling. Continue reading
The real crisis is not the government shutdown
The inability of the media and politicians to focus on the real issues never ceases to amaze. Continue reading
When lack of money prevents work: FSRN ends daily broadcast
Free Speech Radio News, a daily international news program produced for and carried by community radio stations primarily in the United States, aired for the last time on Friday, September 27, 2013. Continue reading
A bad month for the dollar
September was not a good month for the U.S. dollar. The world’s reserve currency is sustained in large part by the Petrodollar, the agreement by the Saudis and OPEC to price oil in dollars and only accept dollars for payment. The US gets a guaranteed demand for its fiat currency and, in exchange, the US has agreed to protect militarily Saudi oil fields. Continue reading
What we could do with a postal savings bank: Infrastructure that doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is the nation’s second largest civilian employer after Walmart. Although successfully self-funded throughout its long history, it is currently struggling to stay afloat. This is not, as sometimes asserted, because it has been made obsolete by the Internet. In fact the post office has gotten more business from Internet orders than it has lost to electronic email. What has pushed the USPS into insolvency is an oppressive 2006 congressional mandate that it prefund healthcare for its workers 75 years into the future. No other entity, public or private, has the burden of funding multiple generations of employees who have not yet even been born. Continue reading
The Armageddon looting machine: The looming mass destruction from derivatives
Increased regulation and low interest rates are driving lending from the regulated commercial banking system into the unregulated shadow banking system. The shadow banks, although free of government regulation, are propped up by a hidden government guarantee in the form of safe harbor status under the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Act pushed through by Wall Street. The result is to create perverse incentives for the financial system to self-destruct. Continue reading
Pro football’s unsportsmanlike conduct
When Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, his Monticello farm team was obviously not what he had in mind. They were chattel, possessions toiling in his fields. So it’s not lightly—or unreasonable—to invoke the plantation mentality to describe the National Football League. Continue reading
In Los Angeles, labor redefines itself
“It’s time to turn America right side up!” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka exhorted those in attendance at the labor alliance’s quadrennial convention in Los Angeles on Monday. Time, he said in his keynote address, to change the ratio of power, to put the 99 percent in charge rather than let the richest one percent dominate government, politics and society. Continue reading
Making the world safe for banksters: Syria in the crosshairs
Iraq and Libya have been taken out, and Iran has been heavily boycotted. Syria is now in the cross-hairs. Why? Here is one overlooked scenario . . . Continue reading
The leveraged buyout of America: Big banks are using your deposits as collateral for borrowing in the repo markets
Another reason why we need public banks
Giant bank holding companies now own airports, toll roads, and ports; control power plants; and store and hoard vast quantities of commodities of all sorts. They are systematically buying up or gaining control of the essential lifelines of the economy. How have they pulled this off, and where have they gotten the money? Continue reading
More misleading official employment statistics
Posted on December 11, 2013 by Paul Craig Roberts
The payroll jobs report for November from the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that the US economy created 203,000 jobs in November. As it takes about 130,000 new jobs each month to keep up with population growth, if the payroll report is correct, then most of the new jobs would have been used up keeping the unemployment rate constant for the growth in the population of working age persons, and about 70,000 of the jobs would have slightly reduced the rate of unemployment. Yet, the unemployment rate (U3) fell from 7.3 to 7.0, which is too much for the job gain. It seems that the numbers and the news reports are not conveying correct information. Continue reading →