Robert Reich - Stop the Austerity Train Wreck!

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Stop-the-Austerity-Train-W-by-Robert-Reich-111118-956.html

November 18, 2011 By Robert Reich The biggest question right now on Planet Washington is whether the congressional supercommittee will reach an agreement. That's the wrong question. Agreement or not, Washington is on the road to making budget cuts that will slow the economy, increase unemployment, and impose additional hardship on millions of Americans. The real question is how to stop this austerity train wreck. The biggest question right now on Planet Washington is whether the congressional supercommittee will reach an agreement. That's the wrong question. Agreement or not, Washington is on the road to making budget cuts that will slow the economy, increase unemployment, and impose additional hardship on millions of Americans.   The real question is how to stop this austerity train wreck, and substitute the following: FIRST : no cuts before jobs are back -- until unemployment is down to 5 percent. Until then, the economy needs a boost, not a cut. Consumers -- whose spending is 70 percent of the economy -- don't have the money to boost the economy on their own. Their pay is dropping and they're losing jobs.    SECOND : Make the boost big enough. 14 million Americans are out of work, and 10 million are working part time who need full-time jobs. The President's proposed jobs program is a start but it's tiny relative to what needs to be done. It would create fewer than 2 million jobs. We need a big jobs program -- rebuilding America's crumbling infrastructure, and including a WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps. THIRD: To pay for this, raise taxes on the super-rich. It's only fair. Never before has so much income and wealth been concentrated at the very top, and taxes on the top so low. Go back to the 70 percent marginal tax we had before 1980. And include more tax brackets at the top. It doesn't make sense that any income over $375,000 is taxed at the same 35 percent, even if it's a billion dollars. And tax all sources of income at the same rate, including capital gains.   FOURTH: Cut the budget where the real bloat is. Military spending and corporate welfare. End weapons systems that don't work and stop wars we shouldn't be fighting to begin with, and we save over $300 billion a year. Cut corporate welfare -- subsidies and special tax breaks going to big agribusiness, big oil, big pharma, and big insurance -- and we save another $100 billion. Do you hear me, Washington? Do these four things and restore jobs and prosperity. Fail to do these, and you'll make things much, much worse.

Lynn Parramore - Back to the Future? Generation X and Occupy Wall Street

By Lynn Parramore, AlterNet

Posted on November 16, 2011, Printed on November 20, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153100/back_to_the_future_generation_x_and_occupy_wall_street 

The following is an excerpt from AlterNet's forthcoming book, The 99%: How the Occupy Wall Street Movement is Changing America, which tells the gripping story of the emergence, expansion and influence of a phenomenon poised to transform our ideological landscape and unleash our potential to reinvent our society. 

The year was 1974. My family was gathered around the shrine of the living room television. I was four years old, aware only that something momentous must be happening to draw such rapt attention. A jowly, vaguely menacing-looking man with dark hair was reading a speech.

"What is it, Daddy?"

"The president is getting kicked out on his butt."

My introduction to the world of politics was learning that the leader of my country was a no-good crook. Welcome to Generation X.

People wonder why those born between 1965 and 1980 tend to be nihilistic and wary of commitment. Why many of us keep an ironic distance between ourselves and just about everything. That's because so many aspects of the culture we inherited were a form of lie told to us daily. And unlike previous generations, we never really got a hero. No FDR. No Camelot. Just one jerk after another trying to sell us snakeoil with a smile. The only president who even made an attempt to do things honestly, Jimmy Carter, was branded a fool.

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Dean Baker - Will the Euro be Destroyed?

NOVEMBER 18-20, 2011

An Ideological Tragedy

by DEAN BAKER

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/18/will-the-euro-be-destroyed/

We could be living through the last days of the euro. That is not a happy thought. While there were many negative aspects to the rules governing the European Central Bank and the eurozone economies, no one can want to see the economic chaos that will almost certainly follow the collapse of the euro.

There will likely be a wave of bank collapses as banks are forced to write down much of the debt they hold in Italy, Ireland and other heavily indebted countries. This would bring about another Lehman-type situation where finance freezes up. Banks would stop lending to each other and even healthy businesses would find it difficult to obtain credit.

That is the story of a severe double-dip in the eurozone, with the spillover effect almost certainly pushing the United States and most of the rest of the world into recession.  It could easily be over a decade until these economies recover from the damage.

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Elizabeth Whitman - U.S. Bottled Water Companies Target Minorities, But So Do Soda Firms

Elizabeth Whitman 

IPS New, November 19, 2011

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105903

NEW YORK, Nov 19 (IPS) - Water is the lifeblood of this planet, whose inhabitants are watching its accelerated spiral into crisis mode even as they struggle to address the issues and lifestyles that are stretching the earth's resources thin.

Outwardly, the global water crisis appears straightforward - people simply consume too much water. A key factor in this spiral is the fact that water has been morphing from a natural resource into a marketable - and costly - product, experts and reports have shown. 

Exploring different aspects of the global water crisis, from privatisation of water to corporations marketing to minorities, reveals that water - as a human right, as a product, as a natural resource - is firmly entangled with a host of issues in areas, including public health. 

By 2025, 1.8 billion people will live in areas with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world's population - projected to reach eight billion by then - will be under stress conditions. Some 1.4 billion currently lack access to safe water. 

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Travis Waldron - Former JPMorgan Banker: Exploiting Consumers Is ‘The Purpose Of The Banking Organization’

By Travis Waldron, ThinkProgress

Posted on November 18, 2011, Printed on November 19, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153129/former_jpmorgan_banker%3A_exploiting_consumers_is_%E2%80%98the_purpose_of_the_banking_organization%E2%80%99

 Wall Street banks, largely spared from the economic ruin felt by millions of Americans since the financial crisis of 2008, have returned to profitability, generating higher profits in the two-and-a-half years since the crisis than they did in nearly eight years preceding it. But that hasn’t stopped them from seeking new ways to generate revenue — like Bank of America’s proposed $5-a-month debit card fee or the millions banks have made from charging consumers to receive unemployment benefits or food stamps.

If all this makes Americans feel like Wall Street banks only view them as money-making tools, well, that’s because the banks apparently do. According to David Mooney, a former JPMorgan Chase employee, Wall Street banks see consumers as an “income stream” to exploit for profit-making purposes, Reuters reports:

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BBC News - IMF says Chinese banks face risks, urges quick action

BBC News

15 November 2011

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15732276?print=true

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that China's financial system "faces a steady build up in vulnerabilities".

In a review, publicly released on Tuesday, the IMF said that banks were robust enough to withstand isolated shocks.

But not, it said, combined exposure to credit, property and currency risks.

The IMF has urged reforms, including allowing banks to rely more on market mechanisms such as interest rates.

"China's banks and financial sector are healthy, but there are vulnerabilities that should be addressed by the authorities," said Jonathan Fiechter, the head of the IMF team that conducted the review.

The IMF has recommended the Chinese government play less of a role in the banking system, and allow lending decisions to be based on commercial goals.

The current system has encouraged over-investment and fuelled asset bubbles, said the IMF.

"While the existing structure fosters high savings and high levels of liquidity, it also creates the risk of capital misallocation and formation of bubbles, especially in real estate," said Mr Fiechter.

The review said that this has lead to "low investment efficiency".

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Michael Hudson - Reforming the U.S. Financial and Tax System

Restore America’s past prosperity and rescue the future from the financial grabbers By Prof. Michael Hudson

Global Research, November 19, 2011 http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27759

On November 3, 2011, Alan Minsky interviewed Economic Professor and Global Research author Michael Hudson on KPFK’s program, “Building a Powerful Movement in the United States” in preparation for an Occupy L.A. teach-in. To clarify my points I have edited and expanded my answers from the interview transcript. Alan Minsky: I am joined now by Michael Hudson. He is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and also is president of the Institute for the Study of Long Term Economic Trends. Welcome to the show, Michael. Michael Hudson: Thank you very much. Alan Minsky: Michael Hudson is scheduled to address Occupy L.A. as part of a teach-in that includes William Black and Robert Scheer, who will be moderating the panel that Michael will be on this weekend. Michael, I’m familiar with your work and I know that you are a big-picture economic thinker. This is definitely a movement that is asking the big questions about how the global economy and the national economy should be re-organized. What would you say to the movement at large about how best to organize a high-tech modern industrial economy in a way that would produce more social and economic justice? America is being radicalized by coming to realize how radical Wall Street’s power grab is

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Rick Helle - How Mindfulness Can Overcome the Greed of the 1 Percent

by Tikkun Daily

by Rick Heller

http://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2011/11/15/how-mindfulness-can-overcome-the-greed-of-the-1-percent/

I have led mindfulness and loving-kindness meditations at Occupy Boston. Meditation is, of course, valuable as a refuge from stress. Participating in an occupation, which may involve living outdoors under threat of possible arrest and police brutality, can certainly be stressful (I myself am only a day visitor to the Occupy Boston encampment). But I believe mindfulness can actually address the core problem that the Occupy movement confronts, i.e. the greed of the wealthiest 1 percent.

The thesis of my eBook, Occupy the Moment, is that greed is literally an addiction, a distortion of the brain systems that govern habits and rewards. The way to overcome greed is to “be in the moment” or to practice mindfulness.

In the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha identified inordinate desire as the fundamental source of human suffering. To overcome suffering, he identified a path that included mindfulness, the practice of focusing on the present moment with a friendly, nonjudgmental attitude.

Recent findings in neuroscience validate the Buddha’s claims. When we want something, the brain transmits a chemical called dopamine. When we get what we desire, internal opioids are released. The latter are substances chemically similar to morphine and heroin. So you can start to see how desires become literally addictive.

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Edward Miller - Enhanced US Military Presence in Australia Directed against China

By Edward Miller

Global Research, November 19, 2011 http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27747

Obama announces increased US military presence in Australia before South China Sea showdown Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and US President Barack Obama have revived their predecessors’ cordial relations, announcing an historic agreement on 16 November to house 250 US Marines at the Robertson Barracks, close to Darwin. US troops posted in Australia will conduct joint exercises and training, and by 2016 their numbers are scheduled to have grown to 2500. Under the agreement American military aircraft will also make greater usage of the Tindall Air Force base (Northern WA), and have access to the Stirling naval base at Garden Island near Perth, WA. Not one to be outdone in militaristic gaff, Opposition leader Tony Abbott promised that a Coalition government led by him would establish a new joint facility on Australian soil to accompany the two existing joint facilities, Pine Gap (near Alice Springs, NT) and Kojarena (near Geraldton, WA). The following day in his speech to the Australian parliament in Canberra, Obama stressed the common bond and values the two nations shared: “Aussies and Americans have stood together, we have fought together, we have given lives together in every single major conflict of the past hundred years.” Looking to “end today’s wars”, he described a broader shift in US foreign policy “to make our presence and mission in Asia-Pacific a top priority...[allocating] the resources necessary to maintain a strong presence in the region.” While Obama identified broad areas of trade and cooperation with Asia Pacific nations, his commitment to positive relations with China was reserved by a promise to “speak candidly to Beijing over the importance of upholding international norms and respecting the universal human rights of the Chinese people.” He also took aim at China’s devalued currency, intellectual property standards and climate change policies.

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Henry Porter - Odd as it may seem, 2011 is proving to be a year of rebirth

Something deep and impressive is going on in the new generation who have an innate sense of justice and fairness

• 

  Henry Porter

  The Observer, Saturday 19 November 2011

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/20/henry-porter-optimistic-about-world

When New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, sent stormtrooper cops – equipped with batons, pepper spray and ear-splitting pain compliance devices – to sweep the Occupy protesters from Wall Street, he was attacked by the American TV commentator Keith Olbermann as "a smaller, more embarrassing version of the tinpot tyrants who have fallen around the globe this year".

That will have pricked Bloomberg's technocratic vanity, yet there he is, three months away from his 70th birthday and worth approximately $19.5bn, ordering his police chief, Ray Kelly, who has already hit 70 but is still, incidentally, a familiar figure on the Manhattan party circuit, to unleash a shocking level of force against young people who were simply agitating for a better economic system, more equity and transparency.

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