By Mark Guarino |

Ever want to own a domed football stadium?

The question was a plausible one Monday when it was announced that the Pontiac Silverdome — once home to the NFL’s Detroit Lions — was sold for $583,000, or about 1 percent of the $55.7 million it took to build in 1975.

The Silverdome, an 80,300-seat stadium located in Pontiac, Mich., is the latest example of how comprehensively the recession has socked southeastern Michigan.

Mass layoffs and automotive plant closures have wreaked havoc on the local economy. Budget deficits are deep, foreclosures are widespread, and the population shrinking – from about 2 million people in the 1960s to about 900,000 today.

“It’s certainly one of the most severe points in [the area’s] history, because of the economic crisis and the falling housing prices,” says Mark Skidmore, professor of economics at Michigan State University in East Lansing. “There’s been a massive exodus and the ones who are left are those who, by and large, are [lower] income.”

The foreclosure crisis started in the communities servicing the auto plants, but is now spreading to more affluent areas, says Jamele Hage, who is currently running a mortgage foreclosure program for Wayne County that counsels residents and works with lenders to renegotiate loans.

“We’re not just talking about blue collar workers anymore, we’re talking about well-paid, white collar professionals,” she says.

This year in Harper Woods, located west of Detroit in Wayne County, property values fell 19 percent. City Assessor Gerald Owczarzak says he expects values to fall another 19 percent in 2010.

“Every city’s been hit,” says Mr. Owczarzak. “In our city we have our share of foreclosures. Fortunately, we have people buying which is good. People are getting great deal on homes. But that is what is causing assessments to drop.”

The depth of the real-estate crisis also led to the collapse of the value of the Silverdome, which was considered to be worth $20 million as recently as last year and at least $3 million now. An Oakland County judge has halted the sale until at least Monday. A rival buyer filed an injunction to block the sale.

The city of Pontiac now owns the stadium and is keen to offload it because of high maintenance costs.

The more poignant indicator of Detroit’s economic slide, however, is the number of foreclosures. Across the four counties of southeast Michigan, there have been 150,000 this year.

The speed of foreclosures is ruining property values, Ms. Hage says. Home prices for resales are dropping on their own, but not precipitously. The average home sale dropped to $84,000 from $94,000 between 2006 and today, according to the Detroit Office of Foreclosure Prevention and Response. But foreclosed properties are worth one-fourth of what they were worth in 2008 – $12,000 today versus $48,000 in 2008. [Editor’s note: This paragraph was adjusted to correct a mathematical error.]

“That’s what’s devastating our community,” she says.

But Hage is hopeful that foreclosures will slow, leading to a turnaround. Already, her program helped 2,100 families stay in their homes this year – a 60 percent retention rate. Her counselors get a warm reception at union halls, churches, and community centers.

“I thought it was going to be failure, but it’s cathartic,” she says. “People love it, they say,… ‘I’m not alone.’ ”

See also:

Detroit’s lessons for industrial America

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We have been conditioned from birth to believe that everything wrong in our society is about Greed: The inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth.

However, my research concludes the earth’s environmental damage and pollution was not the result of greed and the unintended consequences of our capitalistic consumer society, but was the goal.

Until the common man became “civilized” he had almost no environmental impact on the earth. Hunters, foragers and gatherers are unable to upset the ecological structures of the planet. [1]

The first civilized societies and their agrarian economies had an environmental impact but the damage was negligible because only 3% of the population, Kings and Lords were consumers.

The earth wasn’t in trouble until the House of Rothschild unleashed the middle class on the planet when they financed and fomented the American and French Revolutions. [2]

Now the Third Estate (97% of the population) was freed to become the consumers of useless and toxic products from the Industrial Revolution.  And thanks to those scoundrels behind the Federal Reserve, former serfs and slaves could now have their own castle with a Sport Utility Pollution Vehicle (SUPV) in the driveway.

The first industrial revolution, the textile industry, based on the one plant that does more damage to the environment than coffee or tobacco…cotton, marked the last time the earth would be in ecological balance. [3]

A Theory of Ecocide Explains the Unexplainable

To support my theory, I point out that the Federal Reserve isn’t evil because they print our money and make us pay interest on the principal.

They are evil because Rockefeller, Kuhn, Loeb and Morgan, all connected to the House of Rothschild’s global financial empire, directed the Federal Reserve (until October of 2008) to create money out of thin air to pay for the American Dream, an environmental nightmare for the planet. [4]

These scoundrels, at the beginning of the 20th century owned or controlled 1/6^th of the world’s real wealth: raw materials, commodities, copper, iron ore, petroleum, lead, silver and gold.

And when I write, “So how do they get rich exchanging real wealth for about $500 trillion of the Monopoly money they printed?”

I assume the answer is intuitive because their real wealth has been used up; they are the losers, not the middle class!

And I remind anyone still listening:

Remember those trees we chopped down and mountains we blew up so we could experience unprecedented prosperity for the last 60 years?

All of those resources (raw materials for the American Dream) “now used up”, were once owned or controlled by the scoundrels of our history books.

Their real wealth, not yours or mine has been “cut, mined and hauled away so consumers could trash the planet with houses, second houses, cars, RVs, TVs and DVDs— the material possessions we associate with the good life that put the planet on the downward spiral to ecocide.

Although this premise first appeared in Dem Bones is Connected To De Debt Bone (published at The Market Oracle and G. Edward Griffins website January 2009 [5]), the Internet is not buzzing about a theory of ecocide, which would explain the failure of public policies, government actions and inactions to protect the environment.

A theory of ecocide would allow hot, flat, and crowded Thomas L. Friedman to know what planet George W. Bush is on. Our last president Bush (we hope) wasn’t “stupid” if his goal was Ecocide.

At the G8 summit, Dubya was deadly serious about Ecocide when, after rejecting the global climate change targets of the July 2008 G8 summit, he said, “Goodbye, from the (then) world’s biggest polluter.”

He proposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, which would trash America’s last arctic wilderness. Sonar testing is about torturing whales and dolphins, and the border fence that keeps everything out but the illegals is disrupting an extraordinary source of biological diversity along a 2,000-mile-long region that includes deserts, mangrove forests, plains, mountains, river valleys and wetlands.

Bush lost the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq, but is winning the war waged on the environment.

A theory of ecocide is also the solution to the enigma of China’s economic policy, which resulted in every person in the (rich) U.S. borrowing about $4,000 from someone in the (poor) People’s Republic of China. China wanted to be the Air Pollution champion of the world and be able to say “Goodbye, from the world’s biggest polluter.” [6]

Cognitive Dissonance could explain why no one is jumping on a theory of ecocide.

After all, the premise that anyone would intentionally damage the planet, which future generations will inherit, contradicts a strongly held belief system that those responsible would have to live with the polluted air, fouled water and a poisoned food chain. [7]

Recently I debated a “critical thinker” trying to convince her the rich aren’t getting wealthy printing their own Monopoly money.  She articulated what we are conditioned to believe from birth:

“When we have more, it is never enough. Everything is about money, it doesn’t matter how much you have you want more, that’s just the way it is and if you are telling me the Federal Reserve isn’t getting rich printing their own money then I can tell you for sure you haven’t looked into this enough.”

And a nearby listener offered up his manly wisdumb, “After all everyone knows, “he who dies with the most toys wins.”

This got me thinking: I should be agreeing with them:

“You guys are right everyone wants more, that’s our nature. But wait, in 1910 they already had 1/6th of the world’s real wealth (some estimate ½): copper, iron ore, petroleum, lead, silver and gold silver, therefore, according to your Greed theory they should have MORE copper, iron ore, petroleum, lead, silver and gold NOT Less.”

Are you saying they didn’t know their real wealth would be “used up” and the planet would be damaged when we went shopping?

Footnotes:

[1] Civilization is a complex society in which many of the people live in cities and get their food from agriculture, as distinguished from tribal societies where people live in small settlements or nomadic groups and make their subsistence by foraging, hunting, or working small horticultural gardens.

[2] Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité – Providence, Miracle or What Really Happened, Robert Singer

[3] By 1850 the United States following the lead of England built their industrial revolution around textiles.  There arose a great demand for the one crop that does more damage to the environment than planting coffee or even tobacco… Cotton. Today, our planet is in desperate trouble. Earth is suffocating as large tracts of rain forests disappear. Pollution, poisons and chemicals are killing the planet. These problems could have been avoided if the British textile industry hadn’t “suddenly” discovered Cotton. What is Cotton doing in The Game?, Robert Singer

[4] During the last 100 years those swindlers were able to distort the structure of relative prices; generate misallocations of labor and capital throughout the economy; rationalize new governmental interventions in the face of the market “instability” manipulate the patterns of and the profits from international trade which resulted in the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, the stagflation of the 1970’s, the dot-com and the housing market bubbles…all of which created unprecedented prosperity for the middle class, $500 trillion of Monopoly money for the House of Rothschild and ecocide for the Planet. “We don’t want your tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to trash the planet” The Federal Reserve, 2009, Robert Singer

[5] Dem Bones is Connected To De Debt Bone, Robert Singer

[6] Meat, Milk and Motors: The New China Syndrome, Robert Singer

[7] Cognitive Dissonance (CD is the discomfort felt at the discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation that contradicts a strongly held belief system – It’s that queasy feeling that rises in your gut and screams, I Don’t Believe That! Because, if you accepted the new information, you would have to admit you been ”had,” or ”conned,” in this case into shopping for stuff to trash the planet.

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BEIJING — The imperative of greater global currency stability means the world can no longer rely, as it has done since the end of the gold standard, on a currency issued by a single country, the head of the IMF said on Tuesday.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, restated his view that a new global currency might evolve out of the Special Drawing Right, the Fund’s in-house unit of account.

“That probably has to be a basket,” Strauss-Kahn said of the eventual replacement for the dollar. “In a globalised world there is no domestic solution,” he told a forum.

Speaking later at a news conference, Strauss-Kahn reiterated the message that has been a constant refrain during his visit — that China needs a stronger yuan as part of a package of policies to help rebalance its economy by promoting domestic demand.

“For us, because it just is consistent with the new economic policy in China, the sooner the better. How fast? It will take time. It is not something which will change in one step overnight,” Strauss-Kahn said.

China has kept the yuan, also known as the renminbi (RMB), pegged around 6.83 per dollar since July 2008, following a 21% rise over the previous three years, to help its exporters weather the global economic crisis.

“We do believe firmly in the IMF that the RMB is undervalued and that it is not only in the interests of the global economy but also in the interests of China to have a revaluation of the currency,” he said.

An undervalued currency introduces economic distortions, which might confer certain advantages but at a cost to other parts of the economy, Strauss-Kahn said. In China’s case, a cheap currency gives it an edge on trade but scrambles price signals, leading to wrong decisions about investment in the long run.

“It is now time for China, having accumulated a lot of advantages from an undervalued currency, to look more forward to investment and long-term stability, and this long-term stability goes with getting rid of this distortion,” he said.

Washington in particular has been vocal in arguing that an undervalued yuan is exacerbating economic imbalances that were a root cause of the global financial crisis.

But He Yafei, China’s vice foreign minister, defended China’s policy of keeping the yuan on a tight rein.

“In the process of tackling the financial crisis, keeping the RMB stable not only was a contribution to fighting the crisis but also helped stabilise global financial markets,” he said.

He was briefing reporters on talks President Hu Jintao held with visiting U.S. President Barack Obama, who referred only fleetingly to the currency issue.

“I was pleased to note the Chinese commitment made in past statements to move toward a more market-oriented exchange rate over time,” Obama said.

Strauss-kahn expressed concern that political willingness to overhaul the international monetary system will falter if, in a year’s time, the visible signs of the economic crisis have faded.

He said the momentum to cooperate had already eased somewhat, six months after the London summit of the Group of 20 agreed on a need for change to ensure a more stable global financial order.

A former IMF chief, Michel Camdessus, said time was of the essence to embark on reform of the global monetary system.

“This favourable window of opportunity is there. It will not stay open forever,” he told the forum at which Strauss-Kahn spoke.

Camdessus gave broad backing to a recent proposal by Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan that an expanded SDR could eventually replace the dollar as the global reserve currency.

“Our Chinese friends mean business,” he said of Zhou’s plan.

As a corollary of a strengthened role for the SDR, governance changes were needed at the Fund to shift power to big emerging economies, Camdessus said.

To that end, the SDR basket must be modified to include the yuan and perhaps the Indian rupee and Brazilian real as well.

“The RMB must be there. Period,” Camdessus said.

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By Shamus Cooke

In the ten years since the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle, global opposition to free trade and “globalization” has exploded.  The general public now has a basic understanding of how the world economy works … against them: companies scour the globe searching for slave wages, which help push down wages in “developed” countries; any regulation that reduces profits — environmental, financial, labor, etc. — is destroyed or ignored.

The two focal points of the anti-globalization movement have been dismantling of the WTO and free trade agreements; both legitimate targets.  However, what happens if both goals are accomplished? Mission Accomplished?

The obvious answer is no.  Corporations will continue to push for the above anti-worker policies, whether or not the WTO continues to exist or if free trade agreements stop.

Proof of this can be seen in the present condition of the WTO, an organization that, for all intents and purposes, is dead — having collapsed under its own weight. The “Doha” round of the WTO has been eight years in the making, with little sign of a deal emerging.  Powerful corporations in different countries are advocating a more “independent” approach to trade; they view the corporate-run WTO as too democratic, and would rather go it alone on the global market place.

And go alone they have.  Instead of WTO-style international trade agreements, rich nations began developing one-on-one “bi-lateral” agreements, between themselves and poorer nations.  The result is that instead of having an international agreement over trade, we have competing trade blocs.  The European Union and NAFTA are the two largest, although others exist around the world, each dominated by a regional economic powerhouse.

Promoting these bi-lateral agreements or trade blocs are the corporations residing within the boundaries of the richer nations.  To boost their profits, they need guaranteed access to markets, cheap labor, and raw materials.  Once they’ve captured these items via a free trade agreement, their overseas competitors are excluded.  Thus, the international battle for these rare commodities becomes intensified; the threat of war and “regime change” is always considered an option when diplomacy and threats fail.   It becomes clear, then, that free trade is merely a policy of corporations to pursue wider aims within a larger system.

When all the mysteries behind it are removed, free trade is revealed as simply the best fuel for capitalism; it allows money and goods to flow around the world freely (while keeping workers within national boundaries), and thus boosts profits best.  Restrictions to free trade — regulation, protectionism, state ownership, etc. — reduce profits, and are thus fought by most corporations.  But not all anti-free trade measures are equal.

For example, any worker concerned with trade will welcome certain demands of the “fair trade” movement, including the demand for living wage jobs domestically and abroad, and high labor and environmental standards internationally.

However, other demands of the fair trade movement are not so progressive. Quite the opposite.  Some fair traders are demanding that U.S. corporations be allowed to compete on a “level playing field” internationally, while also including demands that help U.S. corporations export abroad more efficiently.  Working people have no interest in helping “their” corporations battle other global corporations for global market dominance.

Unfortunately, the membership of the fair trade movement is polluted by individuals and corporations promoting such ideas.  They advocate workers and corporations uniting for “fair trade,” with a focus on pressuring the U.S. government to help U.S. corporations out-battle — by any means necessary — foreign corporations.

This attempt at worker/corporation “partnerships” has deeply infected not only the fair trade movement, but portions of the U.S. labor movement.  The most heinous example is the Alliance for American Manufacturers (AAM).  The AAM is a group consisting of giant U.S. corporations and the U.S. Steelworkers union; the president of the AAM is also the President of the Steelworkers.  The group argues that the interests of workers and corporations are one and the same — but one of these groups is being badly fooled.

For example, the AAM serves to promote its version of fair trade through media, intellectuals, and most importantly, pressuring the U.S. government to raise trade barriers against China and other countries.   The AAM has been very successful promoting U.S. animosity towards China, having persuaded Obama to act more aggressively than Bush.  Make no mistake, the AAM considers “fair trade” to mean the dominance of U.S. corporations.  In the past, confrontations over trade — i.e., international market dominance — have evolved into trade wars, evolving in some cases into military wars.

The AAM has greatly succeeded in creating a progressive image for U.S. manufacturing corporations.  Their sponsorship of TV and radio personality Ed Schultz — himself closely tied to the Democrats — is one example of how U.S. corporations have bought alleged supporters of the working-class.  The U.S. corporations behind the AAM have solid support in Congress, and use this support to advocate corporate protectionist trade policies.  To please the corporations, the Democrats pass the bills, while some labor leaders scream “victory!”  Of course, workers have no interest in befriending corporations, and for good reason.

The more workers are taught to “cooperate” with the company they work for, the less able are they to put up a fight when “their” company decides to slash jobs, wages and benefits, or destroy pensions, etc.  When attempting to organize a union or bargain a union contract, workers and employers stand opposed to each other; employers are notorious union-busters, and use intimidation, threats, and firings to achieve their aims; workers in response fight back through demonstrations and strikes. There is little room for friendly cooperation during these moments; when the workplace facade of “teamwork” is shattered, its true nature of competing interests is revealed.

This is the necessary place to start when creating worker-friendly political goals.  The fair trade movement needs some deep cleaning, so that the contaminating, corporate influence is neutralized.  Only clear, pro-worker polices should be fought for, leaving the corporations to fend for themselves.  This will require the abandonment of the corporate-bought Democrats, while clearly defining what “fair trade” is.

For many progressive workers, fair trade is an all-encompassing term that includes:  living wages and benefits, international cooperation, the strict regulation of the banks, the environment, and corporations in general.  After hearing the comprehensive aims of fair-traders, it becomes clear that many are referring to an issue wider than merely trade — they desire a complete overhaul of how our economic system works, and who it works for. They want people and the environment to be the political priority, not corporations.  This can only mean a desire to transform our current economic structure — capitalism.

If the battle against free trade is really a battle against capitalism, then it must be clearly stated.  As it stands now, many corporations are benefiting from the confusion that “free trade” creates, and use the bewilderment to help them gain workers’ and union officials’ support in fighting foreign corporations.  For workers, this is a suicidal policy.

The first step in fighting free trade is removing the influence of U.S. corporations, and instead, begin fighting these corporations, with the goal of democratically controlling these privately owned entities, so that the wealth of billionaires may become the wealth of whole communities.  Only then will we have a real voice over our wages, the environment, and over what we choose to produce and trade with other nations.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org).  He can be reached at shamuscook@yahoo.com

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The International Forecaster – 2009-11-11

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The United States is moving backwards…fast.  State budget cuts are decimating essential health and social services; public education is being destroyed; the social safety net is in tatters. To make matters worse, all of this is occurring when the loss of jobs stands at a twenty-six year high with no end in sight.

But this is only phase one.  The federal government intends to balance its books too, at the expense of society’s neediest. Instead of governors presiding over painful cuts, the President will be doing the gutting.  And although his proposed budget isn’t due until February, the President’s spokespeople are priming the media to play a major propaganda role in what will be a colossal blow against working and poor people.

Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, has been particularly busy promoting the future cutbacks, repeating that “the country must live within its mean;” “deficits must be brought down dramatically” — something that will “require very hard choices.”

What are these hard choices?  One possible option is no longer available.  The biggest annual deficit producer is the U.S. military, which Obama will not radically reduce.  Instead, he will increase it;  Taxpayers will pay $660 billion (!) in 2010 toward the military.  And maybe more — military commanders see more fighting in the future, not less; consequently, they want more money.   The New York Times reports:

“…Admiral. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not say how much additional money would be needed, but one figure in circulation within the Pentagon and among outside defense budget analysts is $50 billion.”  (November 4, 2009).

Senate Democrat John Murtha thinks only $40 billion extra will do the trick, making the military budget an even $700 billion for 2010.

A different “hard choice” that could fix the deficit is to drastically raise taxes on the very wealthy.  To this end, Obama has made the wholly-inadequate pledge to “roll back the Bush tax cuts.”  Taxing the super-rich an extra 4 percent isn’t going to do the trick; not even close.  At bare minimum, their taxes should be raised an additional 35 percent, to the pre-Regan level.   But Obama would never propose such an idea.

The solutions Obama has proposed are the ones that Geithner is actually referring to when he says “very hard choices.”   Last January, Obama told the conservative Washington Post that, to lower deficits, he would “reform entitlement programs” — social security, Medicare, etc.  Reform in this case means to eliminate, or drastically reduce.   The Washington Post reports:

“President-elect Barack Obama pledged yesterday to shape a new Social Security and Medicare “bargain” with the American people, saying that the nation’s long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement programs.”

When will this happen? The Post answers: “[the] administration will begin confronting the issues of entitlement reform and long-term budget deficits soon after it jump-starts job growth and the stock market.”  (January 16, 2009).  The upward swing in the stock market gave Geithner the green light to begin his anti-entitlement public relations campaign.

By choosing not to drastically reduce military spending and not to greatly increase taxes for the super rich and corporations, Obama will have few other options: the federal deficit is too high, especially after the Bush/Obama bank bailouts.

These bailouts, combined with decades of reduced taxes for the very wealthy, created the conditions that led to our “deficit crisis.”  The solution that Obama is proposing will further devastate millions already suffering from unemployment, unlivable wages, and little hope for the future.

It can be further presumed that, while Obama is getting the U.S. “financial house in order,” the Federal Reserve will assist by increasing interest rates — something demanded by U.S. foreign creditors — thereby significantly risking cutting into Wall Street’s most recent profits and opening up the possibility of transforming our Great Recession into another full-blown depression.

This is not a matter of “if,” but “when.”  The imbalances in the U.S. economy are too massive; a giant “restructuring” must take place.  The bank bailouts merely intensified the already enormous economic contradictions.  Who pays for this restructuring will shape the future for years to come.  As Obama implements his anti-worker plan, he will encounter tremendous resistance.  The once-loved President will leave office more hated than Bush.

Once the Obama illusion is completely shattered, workers can begin to act independently.  We must demand that the corporate elite pay for the crisis they created.  Their efforts to push this crisis onto us must be fought at every step.  This can be done by clearly articulating our solutions to the crisis — taxing the super-rich and the corporations, a massive public works campaign, and ending foreign wars (for starters) — and promoting these ideas through local and national coalitions of labor unions, community groups, students, the unemployed, etc.  If we are united and fighting for a clear vision of the future, we will win. If we rely on the Democrats to solve this problem our fate is sealed.

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By Shamus Cooke

Five years ago it would be unthinkable that a harsh critique of capitalism would attract a mass audience. But this is exactly what Michael Moore’s new movie — Capitalism: A Love Story — has done.  The source of Moore’s success is his willingness to focus on what the media ignores: the human faces behind unemployment, bankruptcy, foreclosures, evictions, etc., and the faces benefiting from this misery — the corporate-elite sitting atop the financial system.

This reality has quickly educated millions of Americans, who now understand that our economic system is dominated by a tiny crust of super-rich individuals, bailing themselves out with taxpayer money while playing deaf to an exploding social crisis.

To combat these truths, the corporate-elite are planning a pro-capitalist media blitz.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is an organization where the biggest U.S. corporations come together to chat, organize, and throw money at politicians.  Now, they are launching their “dream big” campaign, with the aim of “…preserving and advancing the American free enterprise system [capitalism].”

This $100 million campaign — as explained on the Chamber’s website — will focus on “national advertising,” “grassroots advocacy,” “research and ideas leadership” [think tanks and universities], and “Citizen, Community, and Youth Engagement” — combining “…outreach to governors, mayors, and young audiences…” with “…online social networking” (Facebook).

Aside from saving capitalism, the campaign aims to save “… the 7 million jobs lost to the current recession and create the 13 million new jobs that will be needed over the next decade.”

But as Albert Einstein pointed out, “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”  No serious economist is predicting that the economy is going to start pumping out jobs, let alone 20 million of them.

The Chamber of Commerce isn’t the only entity trying to shore up the profit system.  Corporate-oriented pundits and politicians are falling over themselves to sing high praises to our troubled economic system.

Bush gave such a speech shortly after the system crashed, where he admitted that people were beginning to equate the market economy [capitalism] with “…greed, exploitation, and failure.”  This was wrong, Bush claimed.  Instead, regulation was the culprit, a simple, easy-to-fix problem. The giant banks and other mega-corporations — owned and controlled by tiny groups of ultrarich individuals — could remain in place.

Another rescuer of capitalism is Newsweek Editor and savvy politician, Fareed Zakaria, who wrote a Newsweek article entitled, The Capitalist Manifesto.  In it, Zakaria explains, “What we are experiencing is not a crisis of capitalism. It is a crisis of finance, of democracy, of globalization and ultimately of ethics.”  To further obscure the problem, he concludes that the banks and corporations are not to blame… everybody is:

“… there is enough blame to go around and many fixes to make…But at heart, there needs to be a deeper fix within all of us, a simple gut check. If it doesn’t feel right, we shouldn’t be doing it.”  (June 13, 2009).

Of course not every defense of capitalism is as ridiculous as Bush’s or Zakaria’s.  A more nuanced approach can be heard by both Ariana Huffington and Ron Paul, who both share the same perspective: capitalism did not fail because capitalism did not exist — “corporatism” did.

Assuming that Paul and Huffington are defining “corporatism” as an economy dominated by large banks and other corporations, they’re right.  They’re wrong to think that “corporatism” and capitalism are mutually exclusive.  In fact, capitalism has been dominated by large corporations for over a hundred years, with the advent of the “robber barons” — monopoly corporation owners like Rockefeller, Morgan, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, etc.

At its foundation, however, capitalism hasn’t changed.  The system has always produced goods for the purpose of private profit, not people’s need, and the people who profit from capitalism have always been those who own the wealth, machines and buildings that produce these goods, whether they be cars, computers, or loans.

Although capitalism’s essence remains intact, its appearance has morphed over the years.  In the early days, small businesses dominated, alongside small banks.  But as transportation and technology developed, the world seemed to get smaller, while more and more goods were being produced.

This created the conditions that led to a capitalist free for all; a relentless battle to out-sell the others on the global marketplace. The big dogs ate the little dogs, and became bigger and bigger dogs — super-corporations that now span the globe, with gigantic facilities producing unimaginable amounts of commodities.

This is the world we live in today.  These companies wield absolute power over political and social life: their tremendous wealth enables them to purchase politicians and army generals, while keeping certain topics in Congress “off the table.”  This is the reality of capitalism as it exists today, a fact that must be acknowledged by anybody offering a credible solution.

We cannot regulate capitalism to meet our needs when we do not control the system; those who own the banks and corporations do.  Real social change will require that this dynamic be smashed, so that socially precious institutions are not the property of any individual or small group.  Any entity that seriously affects the general public should be run in the interest of the public, and thus owned by no one.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org).  He can be reached at shamuscook@yahoo.com

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A WorldNetDaily story reports that the bill sponsored by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) that would call for an audit of the Federal Reserve has been “gutted” in a congressional committee. The legislation, H.R. 1207, would also close loopholes that prevent transparency of Fed actions. It currently has over 300 co-sponsors in the House.

In a telephone interview with a Bloomberg reporter, Paul said that the bill had been stripped of measures closing loopholes that protect the Fed and blamed Rep. Melvin “Mel” Watt (D-NC), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology, for ripping the teeth out of the legislation. Watt has significant ties to the banking industry and received the largest share of his 2008 campaign contributions—over one-third of his total contributions for the cycle—from the finance, insurance, and real estate industry. Watt’s four largest contributors were Bank of America, headquartered in Watt’s district in Charlotte, Wachovia Corp., American Express, and the American Bankers Association.

Paul vowed to try to restore the gutted provisions of the bill through an amendment when it comes to the House floor for a vote.

The veil of secrecy that shrouds the Fed has only made it more mysterious, and monetary policy that much more complex and obscure, to the average American taxpayer. Political discourse over subjects like deficits and inflation tends to focus on fiscal policy, but this is only one half of the equation. It is time for more people to ask why the Fed should have a government-granted monopoly for the creation of money and what it does with its powers to alter the value of money and interest.

Below is an excerpt of the WND article quoting Rep. Paul on some of his criticisms of the Fed:

Paul long has been a critic of the secrecy of the Federal Reserve.

“Throughout its nearly 100-year history, the Federal Reserve has presided over the near-complete destruction of the United States dollar,” he said earlier. “Since 1913, the dollar has lost over 95 percent of its purchasing power, aided and abetted by the Federal Reserve’s loose monetary policy.”

“Since its inception, the Federal Reserve has always operated in the shadows, without sufficient scrutiny or oversight of its operations,” Paul said when the plan to audit the Fed was introduced. “While the conventional excuse is that this is intended to reduce the Fed’s susceptibility to political pressures, the reality is that the Fed acts as a foil for the government. Whenever you question the Fed about the strength of the dollar, they will refer you to the Treasury, and vice versa. The Federal Reserve has, on the one hand, many of the privileges of government agencies, while retaining benefits of private organizations, such as being insulated from Freedom of Information Act requests.”

Paul has warned, “The Federal Reserve can enter into agreements with foreign central banks and foreign governments, and the GAO is prohibited from auditing or even seeing these agreements. Why should a government-established agency, whose police force has federal law enforcement powers, and whose notes have legal tender status in this country, be allowed to enter into agreements with foreign powers and foreign banking institutions with no oversight? Particularly when hundreds of billions of dollars of currency swaps have been announced and implemented, the Fed’s negotiations with the European Central Bank, the Bank of International Settlements, and other institutions should face increased scrutiny, most especially because of their significant effect on foreign policy. If the State Department were able to do this, it would be characterized as a rogue agency and brought to heel, and if a private individual did this he might face prosecution under the Logan Act, yet the Fed avoids both fates.”

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by Mike Whitney / November 2nd, 2009

Senate Democrats are a dogged bunch. And they’re not easily deterred from their primary duty of kowtowing the big banks. Case in point, the first-time home-buyer tax credit, the controversial bill which provides an $8,000 tax credit (re: subsidy) for new home buyers. Changes in the bill, will provide a $6,500 credit to homeowners “earning up to $250,000 for couples” if they have lived in their home for five years.

The Senate is pressing ahead with the bill despite overwhelming disapproval from liberal and conservative economists. Their main objection? It’s a waste of money. The Brookings Institute estimates that the $8,000 credit costs taxpayers $43,000 per home. This is based on the fact that 85% of the nearly 2 million buyers were planning to buy a home anyway. The new add-ons to the bill mean that its final costs will be much greater than originally anticipated.

The senate bill is nothing but a $6,500 bribe to keep people in their homes and out of foreclosure. It’s another giveaway to the banks so they don’t have to face the mountain of debt they generated through fraudulent loans. The banks aren’t satisfied with merely blowing up the financial system and extracting trillions of dollars from taxpayers to fix the mess they left behind. Now they want to ensure that they’re a constant drain on public resources, by diverting dollars earmarked for healthcare or state aid into broken institutions run by high-stakes gamblers. The Congress has played a critical role in this fiasco.

The Senate has also shrugged off the many reports of fraud related to the home-buyer credit. Here’s an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal which summarizes hundreds of similar stories:

News of the latest taxpayer-funded mortgage scam has traveled fast. The Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration, J. Russell George, recently told Congress that at least 19,000 filers hadn’t purchased a home when they claimed the credit. For another 74,000 filers, claiming a total of $500 million in credits, evidence suggests that they weren’t first-time buyers.

Among those claiming bogus credits, at least some of them were definitely first-timers. The credit has already been claimed by 500 people under the age of 18, including a four-year-old. This pre-K housing whiz likely bought because mom and dad make too much to qualify for the full credit…

As a “refundable” tax credit, it guarantees the claimants will get cash back even if they paid no taxes. A lack of documentation requirements also makes this program a slow pitch in the middle of the strike zone for scammers. The Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department are pursuing more than 100 criminal investigations related to the credit, and the IRS is reportedly trying to audit almost everyone who claims it this year.¹

Does it bother senators that the public is being plucked like a Thanksgiving turkey, once again?

Everything that has been done to prop up the ailing housing market, has really been aimed at helping the banks. The Fed has launched the biggest government intervention in history– purchasing more than $900 billion in mortgage-backed securities, $200 billion in agency debt, and another $300 billion in long-term US Treasuries–all to stabilize a market which was sabotaged by the Fed’s low interest rates and the banks abyssal lending standards. Private label “securitized” mortgages have defaulted at 5-times the rate of conventional loans, clear proof of fraud.

The Fed’s capital injections will eventually add $2 trillion to the aggregate value of the residential real estate market. The Fed is doing its best to prevent the market from clearing by keeping home prices artificially high. That’s the only way to avoid more bank failures.

The Fed’s intervention is a sign of desperation. In the long-run, the action is unlikely to have any bearing on prices which will be determined by incomes and supply. Housing inventory is still unusually high, which is putting downward pressure on prices. Distress sales (short sales, foreclosures etc) represent 45 percent of all home sales, which reduces the number of creditworthy buyers for organic sales.

So, what has the Fed’s multi-trillion dollar intervention achieved aside from creating a fake market with fake interest rates, fake financing, fake down-payment ($8,000 first-time home buyer giveaway) and fake media coverage of a fake rebound. Not much, really. The Wall Street Journal’s James Hagerty sums it up like this:

Uncle Sam’s interventions in the housing market have pushed home prices 5% higher on a national average than they would have been otherwise, Goldman Sachs estimates in a report released late Friday…

But these artificial props won’t last forever and may have created a false bottom in the market.

“The risk of renewed home-price declines remains significant,” Goldman economist Alec Phillips writes in the report, “and our working assumption is a further 5% to 10% decline by mid-2010.”²

Over $1 trillion has been committed so far, and prices have budged a mere 5%. Does Fed chair Ben Bernanke really believe this is an affordable plan?

The Administration’s Making Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) will have only a marginal effect on the rate of foreclosures when the next wave of pay-option adjustable-rate mortgages and other oddball loans come due. And, when the loans reset, more banks will default pushing even more inventory onto the market at firesale prices. Foreclosures have exceeded 300,000 for the last 3 months and the inventory-backlog suggests the worst is still to come.

This is from Diana Golobay at housingwire.com:

Recent analysis by the Amherst Securities Group indicates the housing industry will not only worsen as a delayed pipeline of foreclosed loans begins to liquidate, but that the Administration’s Making Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) will have no lasting effect on keeping delinquent loans current…

Amherst estimates this “shadow inventory” at around 7m housing units, or 135% of a full year of existing home sales, compared with 1.27m units in this bucket in early 2005. The backlog is due to high transition rates, low cure rates and a longer timeline for loan liquidation — in other words, loans continue to transition into the delinquency/foreclosure pipeline at a rapid pace, but are moving out at a very slow pace.

The loans, however, are “destined to liquidate” and will impact the signs of recovery seen in recent months by pulling down house prices through distressed sales.³

So, what can Bernanke do to head-off a bigger meltdown in housing?

The Fed revealed its long-term strategy in the minutes of its September 22-23 FOMC meeting. Here’s an except from the Fed’s statement:

The Committee agreed that it would continue to evaluate the timing and overall amounts of its purchases of securities in light of the evolving economic outlook and conditions in financial markets. Members discussed the importance of maintaining flexibility to expand the asset purchase programs should the economic outlook deteriorate or to scale back the programs should economic and financial conditions improve more than anticipated.

In other words, the Fed is planning to continue its quantitative easing (QE) program (monetisation) which pumps liquidity into the system and puts more downward pressure on the dollar. Bernanke is trying to inflate-away the problems in housing, but with little success. In fact, according to Robert Shiller, who created the index for measuring house prices in 20 major cities, the Fed may have generated another bubble. This is from the UK Telegraph:

The S&P Case-Shiller index… showed that house prices were up 1 percent from the previous month, following a 1.2 percent increase in July. However, August’s prices were still down 11.3 percent year-on-year, highlighting the continued problems in the market as a whole. Professor Shiller, who is credited with calling both the late 1990’s tech market bubble and the bubble that led to the US property market crash three years ago, pointed to price increases in areas including San Francisco and Minneapolis, which have seen double-digit gains in the last four months. He said that if these rises are viewed on an annualised basis they could be seen as “bubble territory.’⁴

Housing prices will continue to tumble through 2010 no matter what the Fed does. In fact, on Wednesday the Commerce Dept reported that sales of new one-family houses in September dropped to a rate of 402,000, down 3.8 percent from August. That’s 7.8 percent below 2008, well below economists worst predictions. The news sent stocks plummeting.

The sense that the economy is returning to normal, is an illusion nurtured by the financial media. This week’s dismal consumer confidence data, shows that the public “isn’t buying it.” And, neither are investors, who continue to avoid equities despite a seven-month, 68 percent rally in global stocks. According to Bloomberg, “Almost 40 percent of investors and analysts in the latest quarterly survey… say they are still hunkering down. U.S. investors are even more cautious, with more than 50 percent saying they are in a defensive crouch.” The mood is grim. The public has lost faith in the media, in the Fed, and in public institutions. The “cheery predictions” are no longer having any effect. No doubt, this will make it even harder to stabilize the teetering housing market.

1. ”First Time Fraudsters,” Wall Street Journal [↩]
2. James Hagerty, “Uncle Sam Adds 5% to Prices of Homes, Goldman Says,” Wall Street Journal [↩]
3. Diana Golobay, “Amherst Sees 7m Foreclosures Poised to Distress House Prices,” housingwire.com [↩]
4. UK Telegraph [↩]

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com. Read other articles by Mike, or visit Mike’s website.

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November 1, 2009

Sydney, Australia
JTA Wire Service

An arrest warrant was issued for a Jewish South African businessman who is alleged to have duped investors in a Ponzi scheme.

Barry Tannenbaum is alleged to have defrauded investors out of $1.61 billion.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said in parliament in Cape Town Tuesday that a warrant had been issued for Tannenbaum, who is believed to be living in Australia, as well as for his South African lawyer, Dean Rees.

Tannenbaum, 43, is believed to have enticed nearly 800 investors—many of them allegedly Jews from South Africa, Britain, Israel and Australia—with promises of returns of up to 200 percent.

His assets in South Africa have been frozen by a local court and the National Prosecuting Authority has started proceedings to extradite him, Business Day reported Wednesday.

In June, when the scandal was revealed, Tannenbaum categorically denied it as “wild allegations, conjecture and speculation.” He did not reply to an e-mailed request from Bloomberg news service for comment on the arrest warrant.

A spokesman for the South African task force set up in the wake of the scandal said Interpol could arrest the pair “no matter where they are in the world,” according to South African media.

Lay Off Iran’s Nukes, Turkish Leader Says

Turkey’s prime minister called on Western countries to stop pressuring Iran to abandon its nuclear program.

“Those who are chanting for global nuclear disarmament should first start in their own countries,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday, according to The New York Times, during a meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as part of a two-day official visit to Iran.

Erdogan called for the expansion of his country’s ties with the Islamic Republic.

“Turkey is determined to enhance its brotherly relations with Iran,” he said, the Tehran Times reported.

Erdogan’s statements come two weeks after Turkey excluded Israel from a NATO military exercise it was hosting. The drill participants, led by the United States, refused to take part in the exercise, leading to its cancellation.

Israel-Turkey relations have grown tense since the Gaza war, with Turkey taking the lead in some international forums in demanding that Israel be held accountable for alleged war crimes. Turkey also is upset with Israel over the delay of delivery of military equipment that it purchased from the Jewish state.

Also this month, Israel’s Foreign Ministry summoned Turkey’s acting ambassador over a Turkish state television program that vilified Israel by showing Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinian children and mistreating elderly Arabs.

Billionaire Gaydamak Sentenced to Prison in France

A French court sentenced Israeli-Russian billionaire Arcady Gaydamak to six years in prison for illegal arms dealing.

Gaydamak, a businessman who owns the Israeli soccer team Beitar Jerusalem, was sentenced Tuesday for being involved in the deals in the 1990s.

A French and Israeli citizen, he left Israel for Moscow 10 months ago. France and Israel have an extradition treaty; Russia and France do not.

Gaydamak and a partner formed a company to sell $791 million dollars worth of illegal arms, including tanks, helicopters and a warship, to the Angolan government. The operation involved about 40 suspects, including French government officials and public figures.

This story reprinted courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Common Dreams – 2009-10-23 by Sandy Leon Vest

With the official US unemployment rate at 10 percent and climbing (that’s more than 15 million people struggling to put food on the table) and nearly double that number if you include part-time wage-earners who need full-time jobs, never mind all of those ‘discouraged workers,’ it’s little wonder that so many of the nation’s jobless are flocking into its military recruitment offices.

After all, what better way for an unemployed American worker to survive the Great Recession of 2009 than in the ‘service’ of his or her country?

Americans have a long history of consuming and/or killing their way out of crisis. And it isn’t looking as if that model will be up for reassessment anytime soon. The parameters of what we like to call the “national conversation” are as narrow as ever, and they are not widening under the current leadership. So far at least, even Obama’s ‘Clean Energy Economy’ has failed to deliver enough ‘green jobs’ (or any other color jobs for that matter) to begin the process of  meaningful transition. With the season of consuming just around the corner, many Americans – especially those in blue collar jobs like construction, manufacturing and retail service – are staring into the economic abyss.

It is hardly surprising in such an environment that a young person with dismal employment prospects and plummeting self esteem would be easily seduced by an ad that promises “more than $49,000 in GI Bill Benefits” as does the US military’s current promo. The same ad promises that young recruits can “connect with military and veteran-friendly schools that offer VA approved education programs,” or “get information” about high-paying degrees like Criminal Justice, IT and Legal Studies.

So, when the Pentagon announced on October 13, 2009 that the military had met all of its recruitment goals for the first time since 1973, and that this just happened to coincide with the highest national unemployment rate since the government started keeping track in 1976, it wasn’t surprising that the news was met with a Big National Yawn.

The Few, the Proud, the Desperate

It’s hard not to wonder what would happen if, instead of dutifully reading from the Pentagon’s script on October 13, the media had done their job and informed the public about the real nature of the ‘service’ that potential enlistees were signing up for. Maybe if they had, those recruitment officers would not have been quite so busy recruiting – and stealing the lives of – unsuspecting young people in desperate need of employment.

Maybe those eager masses of young men and women wouldn’t have been so hot to sign up if, for instance, they understood that anyone enlisting in the military right now – whatever branch – is required to sign a document that states: “Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay allowances, benefits and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/re-enlistment document.” (DD Form4/1, 1998, Sec.9.5b).

In their book Army of None, published in 2007, Aimee Allison and David Solnit advise those who expect the military to pay for their college to “read the fine print.” The authors point out that only a fraction of recruits who signed up for the Montgomery GI Bill received a dime, and that 65 percent “received no money at all for college.” If you receive a less than honorable discharge (as one in four do), leave the military early (as one in three do), or later decide not to go to college, “the military will keep your deposit and give you nothing.”

And when it comes to those signing bonuses, maybe if potential recruits understood that they will be forced to repay the money if he or she leaves the military before the agreed term of service (that’s eight years for first time enlistees), perhaps they would reconsider signing away life and limb to get it. If those same applicants understood the army data from 2007 revealing that the top bonus of $20,000 was given to only 6 percent of enlistees who signed up for active duty, they might have figured out another way to survive the recession. They might be further divested of their illusions if they knew that military statistics show that 48 percent of enlistees report having “financial difficulty” and that some 33 percent of homeless men in the US are veterans, with nearly 200,000 veterans homeless on any given night.

And another thing: The military does not have to place recruits in their chosen career field or give them the specific training requested. Even if enlistees do receive training, it is often to develop skills that will not transfer to the civilian job market – like firing an M 240 machine gun.

By the way: Military recruiters are notorious liars.

Back in 2004, the New York Times reported that nearly one in five US Army recruiters was investigated for offenses ranging from “threats and coercion to false promises that applicants would not be sent to Iraq.” It’s doubtful that has changed just because the focus is now on Afghanistan. One veteran recruiter told a reporter for the Albany Times Union that, after recruiting for years, he couldn’t think of one recruiter who wasn’t dishonest about it, admitting that, “I did it myself.”

Military Service is Not the Only Option

Just because the Obama administration lacks the political courage to challenge the status quo doesn’t mean there are no other options. But Americans will need to ‘unlearn’ a lot of what we’ve been taught if there is to be a meaningful transition to a peacetime economy.

We will need, for instance, to unlearn that the military is the only legitimate form of national service. We will need also to be willing to challenge those who tell us that being an artist, a pre-school teacher or (god-forbid) an activist, is not a respectable way to earn a living – or to serve one’s country.

And while we’re un-learning things, maybe we should reconsider the US military budget.

By most estimates, maintaining the warfare state now consumes 54% of every federal tax dollar. Without first challenging that, we might as well kiss off any chances of ever seeing a ‘Clean Energy Economy’ or, for that matter, anything resembling a future worth living. But first we’ll have to rid ourselves and our children of the idea that a culture rooted in killing and consuming can also be ‘sustainable.’

Maybe then we’d have a real war tax revolution.

Since the turn of the century, a growing number of high-ranking military officers are questioning the wisdom of – and the motivation behind – the US warfare state. In an open letter dated July 8, 2004, Special Forces Vet Stan Goff wrote to US military troops in Iraq:

“The big bosses are trying to gain control of the world’s energy supplies to twist the arms of future economic competitors. That’s what’s going on, and you need to understand it, then do what you need to do to hold on to your humanity … Your so-called civilian leadership sees you as an expendable commodity. They don’t care about your nightmares, about the DU that you are breathing, about the loneliness, the doubts, the pain, or about how your humanity is stripped away a piece at a time. They will cut your benefits, deny your illnesses, and hide your wounded and dead from the public. They already are. They don’t care. So you have to. And to preserve your own humanity, you must recognize the humanity of the people whose nation you now occupy and know that both you and they are victims of the filthy rich bastards who are calling the shots.”

Humanity has passed the tipping point – economically, culturally and environmentally. The ‘consuming and killing’ model embraced by Americans as cultural norm is, in reality, a cultural aberration. It is destroying everything and everyone in its wake – including those who are fighting and dying to preserve it. In accepting such a model – often without question – Americans have become victims of their own complacency.

The price of such acquiescence may be our humanity.

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Roberts who is credited with being the father of Reaganomics asserts that the U.S. will breakdown financially very soon. He goes on to explain that the country cannot come back from the financial abyss that it’s going into.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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by Naresh Vissa

Recently by Gerald Celente: The 2nd American Revolution

Our society tends to take the Nostradamus-type forecasters with a grain of salt, but Trends Research Institute founder Gerald Celente’s record of predictions is nearly flawless. His accurate forecasts include the 1987 stock market crash, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 1997 Asian currency crash, the sub-prime mortgage scandal and the latest economic downturn caused by the breakdown of major corporate giants.

Dubbed as the world’s greatest trends forecaster by CNN, USA Today and CNBC, Celente insists that despite the latest market bounce, and increase in consumer confidence, the economy’s fundamentals are broken.

“This is a sucker’s flame,” Celente said from his office in Kingston, N.Y. “It’s a false-flag recovery. The stimulus, bailout and buyout packages being forced on the nation, by an administration that misread how bad the economy was, will only lead to Obamageddon: The Fall of Empire America.”

Celente cites the global financial system as terminally ill because it has been built on endless supplies of cheap money, rampant speculation, fraud, greed and delusion. He sees a collapse coming, and predicts that by 2012 everyone will face the truth, and we will be in the midst of the Greatest Depression of them all.

“Washington is inflating the biggest bubble ever: the bailout bubble,” Celente said. “This is much bigger than the dot-com and real estate bubbles. When the bailout bubble bursts, it should be understood that a major war could follow.”

The economist expects tax and food riots to pervade the country. People will be giving each other food stamps for Christmas. Crime will increase to all-time highs. Then the worst possible situation will arise: the United States of America will disunite.

Read the rest of the article

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