The Largest Economy In The World Is Imploding Right In Front Of Our Eyes

A devastating economic depression is rapidly spreading across the largest economy in the world.  Unemployment is skyrocketing, money is being pulled out of the banks at an astounding rate, bad debts are everywhere and economic activity is slowing down month after month.  So who am I talking about?  Not the United States - the economy that I am talking about has a GDP that is more than two trillion dollars larger.  It is not China either - the economy that I am talking about is more than twice the size of China.  You have probably guessed it by now - the largest economy in the world is the EU economy.  Things in Europe continue to get even worse.  Greece and Spain are already experiencing full-blown economic depressions that continue to deepen, and Italy and France are headed down the exact same path that Greece and Spain have gone.  Headlines about violent protests and economic despair dominate European newspapers day after day after day.  European leaders hold summit meeting after summit meeting, but all of the "solutions" that get announced never seem to fix anything.  In fact, the largest economy on the planet continues to implode right in front of our eyes, and the economic shockwave from this implosion is going to be felt to the four corners of the earth.

On Friday, newspapers all over Europe declared that Greece is about to run out of money(again).

The Greek government says that without more aid they will completely run out of cash by the end of November.

Of course the rest of Europe is going to continue to pour money into Greece because they know that if they don't the financial markets will panic.

But they are also demanding that Greece make even more painful budget cuts.  Previous rounds of budget cuts have been extremely damaging to the Greek economy.

The Greek economy contracted by 4.9 percent during 2010 and by 7.1 percent during 2011.

Overall, the Greek economy has contracted by about 20 percent since 2008.

This is what happens when you live way above your means for too long and a day of reckoning comes.

The adjustment can be immensely painful.

Greece continues to implement wave after wave of austerity measures, and these austerity measures have pushed the country into a very deep depression, but Greece still is not even close to a balanced budget.

Greece is still spending more money than it is bringing in, and Greek politicians are warning what even more budget cuts could mean for their society.

For example, what Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras had to say the other day was absolutely chilling....

"Greek democracy stands before what is perhaps its greatest challenge," Samaras told the German business daily Handelsblatt in an interview published hours before the announcement in Berlin that Angela Merkel will fly to Athens next week for the first time since the outbreak of the crisis.

Resorting to highly unusual language for a man who weighs his words carefully, the 61-year-old politician evoked the rise of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party to highlight the threat that Greece faces, explaining that society "is threatened by growing unemployment, as happened to Germany at the end of the Weimar Republic".

"Citizens know that this government is Greece's last chance," said Samaras, who has repeatedly appealed for international lenders at the EU and IMF to relax the onerous conditions of the bailout accords propping up the Greek economy.

But don't look down on Greece.  They are just ahead of the curve.  Eventually the U.S. and the rest of Europe will go down the exact same path.

Just look at Spain.  When Greece first started imploding, Spain insisted that the same thing would never happen to them.

But it did.

By itself, Spain is the 12th largest economy in the world, and right now it is a complete and total mess with no hope of recovery in sight.

The national government is broke, the regional governments are broke, the banking system is insolvent and Spain is in the midst of the worst housing crash that it has ever seen.

On top of everything else, the unemployment rate in Spain is now over 25 percent and the unemployment rate for those under the age of 25 is now well above 50 percent.

An astounding 9.86 percent of all loans that Spanish banks are holding are considered to be bad loans which will probably never be collected.  Before it is all said and done, probably ever major Spanish bank will need to be bailed out at least once.

Manufacturing activity in Spain has contracted for 17 months in a row, and the number of corporate bankruptcies in Spain is rising at a stunning rate.

Five different Spanish regions have formally requested bailouts from the national government, and the national government is drowning in an ocean of red ink.

Meanwhile, panic has set in and there has been a run on the banks in Spain.  The following is from a recent Bloomberg article....

Banco Santander SA (SAN), Spain’s largest bank, lost 6.3 percent of its domestic deposits in July, according to data published by the nation’s banking association. Savings at Banco Popular Espanol SA, the sixth-biggest, fell 9.5 percent the same month.

Eurobank Ergasias SA, Greece’s second-largest lender, lost 22 percent of its customer deposits in the 12 months ended March 31, according to the latest data available from the firm. Alpha Bank SA (ALPHA), the country’s third-biggest, lost 26 percent of client savings during that period.

Overall, the equivalent of 7 percent of GDP was withdrawn from the Spanish banking system in the month of July alone.

Thousands of Spaniards have become so desperate that they have resorted to digging around in supermarket trash bins for food.  In response, locks are being put on supermarket trash bins in some areas.

But Greece and Spain are not alone in seeing their economies implode.

As I wrote about recently, the number of unemployed workers in Italy has risen by more than 37 percent over the past year.

The French economy is starting to implode as well.  Just check out this article.

The unemployment rate in France is now above 10 percent, and it has risen for 16 months in a row.

It is just a matter of time before things in Italy and France get as bad as they already are in Greece and Spain.

The chief economist at the IMF is now saying that it will take until at least 2018 for the global economy to recover, but unfortunately I believe that he is being overly optimistic.

As I have said so many times before, the next wave of the global economic crisis is rapidly approaching.  Depression is already sweeping much of southern Europe, and it is only a matter of time before it sweeps across northern Europe and North America as well.

Neither Obama or Romney is going to be able to stop what is coming.  The global economy isgetting weaker with each passing day.  The central banks of the world can print money until the cows come home, but that isn't going to fix our fundamental problems.

The largest economy in the world is imploding right in front of our eyes and nobody seems to know what to do about it.

If you believe that Barack Obama, Mitt Romney or Ben Bernanke can somehow magically shield us from the economic shockwave that is coming then you are being delusional.

Just because what is going on in Europe is a "slow-motion train wreck" does not mean that it will be any less devastating.

Yes, we can see what is coming and we can understand why it is happening, but that doesn't mean that we will be able to avoid the consequences.

Read more.. http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-largest-economy-in-the-world-is-imploding-right-in-front-of-our-eyes

8 Facts That Prove Our Govt. Is Not Going Broke

Pete Peterson, the billionaire former private equity mogul, is quietly funding a noisy bus tour [3]to whip up debt hysteria across the land. The “Ten Million a Minute Tour” headed by the Peterson Foundation’s former CEO, David M. Walker (and featuring such economic soothsayers as Alan Greenspan and Ross Perot) will end this week in Washington, DC after traveling coast to coast to alert America about the myriad of alleged dangers posed by government debt and deficits.

Really, it should be called the “Million an Hour” cavalcade because that’s about how much Peterson and company made, in part, through obscene tax loopholes designed for private equity firms and hedge funds. If there really is a debt problem, then Peterson and his fellow tax-evading financial moguls have contributed mightily to it.

But America does not face a debt crisis. Nor are we likely to face one in the next 100 years. In fact, we are the last country on Earth that needs to worry about its public debt.

What’s really behind the debt histrionics is a relentless effort by these Very Important People to use a trumped-up crisis to shred the social safety net and bring forth their bleak vision of a dog-eat-dog society where government provides for no one (except the super-rich). Unfortunately, many liberals are also buying into a “debt crisis” that doesn’t exist.

It’s time to inoculate ourselves from deficit hysteria. The first step is recognizing that virtually everything we read and hear about government debt and deficits is misleading, manipulative or just plain wrong. So, here’s your handy guide to the eight biggest lies.

But first, some basic definitions and facts:

• ·         Deficits are how much the government budget goes into the red in a given year. The red ink is covered by the sale of government bonds to investors here and abroad.
• ·         The national debt is the total amount of what the U.S. owes on those government bonds. If we have deficits year after year, then the debt gets larger year after year.
• ·         The projected deficit for this fiscal year is over $1 trillion.
• ·         Our total government debt is more than $16 trillion as of Oct. 1, 2012.

1. Isn’t it extremely dangerous to have such a large government debt?

Supposedly, the danger point comes when investors no longer will buy our debt at reasonable interest rates because they fear we won’t pay it back. Are we there yet? Are we getting close?

Let’s start with a look at debt as a percentage of our nation’s annual economic activity (gross domestic product or GDP). The chart below shows our national debt as a percentage of GDP hit an all-time high of 121 percent during the depths of World War II and recently began sharply rising again in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash. In 2011 the debt/GDP percentage reached 102.9 percent. Most forecasts suggest it is now leveling off.

We can also compare ourselves to other large economies. Here’s a list from the International Monetary Fund [4].

•  

Government Debt as a Percentage of GDP, 2011
China	25.8%
France	86.3%
Germany	81.5%
Japan	229.8%
United Kingdom	82.5%
United States	102.9%

What’s going on here? First off, China’s percentage is artificially low because it buries a good deal of public debt in opaque provincial and local government loans and land giveaways. And then you have Japan. Why isn’t everyone screaming about Japan’s debt? Because investors consider its economy to be strong, steady and safe. They’re happy to lend to Japan at very low interest rates. And where is the safest haven in the world? Here in the USA. Investors are willing to lend us money at almost no interest rate at all.

Here’s the rub. Debt is only too high if the underlying economy is shaky. Investors all over the world are betting that the U.S. is the strongest, most stable nation right now, and over the long haul. They expect our economy to grow which automatically will shrink the debt ratio. It’s simple math. Economy up, debt down as a percentage of the economy (all other things being equal).

Despite what you hear from nearly every media outlet and every politician, investors do not see our debt as dangerously high. They are more than willing to pour money into the most stable, dynamic economy in the world – one that is both safe now, and likely to grow in the future.

2. Aren’t we’re in danger of becoming the next Greece?

Greece is in a heap of trouble even though its debt-to-GDP ratio (169.8%) is far below Japan’s (229.8%). With an unemployment rate of over 25 percent, Greece’s economy is shrinking rapidly. The more it shrinks the more it has to borrow to pay back previous loans and to balance its budget. But it can’t borrow unless it cuts its budgets. To cut its budgets, it has to lay off public employees and cut its social safety net, which further increases unemployment and shrinks its economy. Unless you’re in love with retsina, this is not a great time to be living in Greece.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to Greece’s recovery is that it doesn’t have its own currency. If Greece did, it could let the value of that currency fall, which would make its economy more competitive. Obviously, both the US and Japan have their own currencies. Also, the U.S. and Japanese economies are much, much richer, stronger and diverse than Greece’s. Therefore, there is no chance – none whatsoever --- that the U.S and Japan will face Greece’s debt problems. Anyone who makes that comparison is either a fool or a demagogue hoping to skewer popular social programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

3. Won’t cutting the national debt make the economy grow?

When economic calamity strikes, we humans seem instinctively to hoard our remaining resources. (Once we had belts, we tightened them.) But complex modern economies are not like families. Economies mired in major recessions require spending, not austerity, to function properly. As John Maynard Keynes noted two generations ago, when an economy is in a depression, the worst thing you can do is pay down government debt, precisely because families and businesses already are belt-tightening so much. Instead you need to run up even more debt to make up for the demand we lose when households “tighten their belts.” If major governments move to austerity during hard times, the recession grows deeper.

You want proof? Look at Europe today, where a real-time austerity experiment is in progress. Led by Germany, each European nation is cutting back on social services and increasing taxes. The net result: The 17-nation Eurozone is falling back into another recession with unemployment now rising to 11.4%. As the New York Times [5] reports:

Greece had an unemployment rate of 24.4 percent in June, the latest month for which data were available. Spain still had the region’s highest jobless rate, at 25.1 percent, and an even bigger problem among young people. Nearly 53 percent of Spaniards younger than 25 were classified as unemployed in August.

There is no way in hell that cutting government debt will put America back to work. Instead it will send our economy into a nosedive. We’ve already unnecessarily unemployed more than 650,000 public employees due to self-destructive cuts in local, state and federal budgets. It would have been far, far, better for the government to borrow more to put America back to work.

4. But isn’t it ominous that the rating agencies took away our AAA rating?

Ludicrous, not ominous.

Rating agencies were first established to help investors judge the ability of corporations to repay their debts (corporate bonds). At first the rating agencies were paid by investors who wanted the information. But, a new business model emerged --- agencies were paid by the corporations and banks who were selling bonds in question. No one seemed to care much about the obvious conflict of interest until the recent Wall Street crash. Then we painfully discovered that these “independent” rating agencies made tens of millions of dollars doling out AAA ratings on every piece of toxic trash that investment banks paid them to rate. Then when the crash hit, the rating agencies had to reclassify thousands of mortgage-back bonds from AAA to junk. In short, the rating agencies are best viewed as pet poodles for the too-big-to-fail Wall Street banks and investment houses.

Rating agencies also evaluate debt offerings by governments and government agencies so that investors can decide how much risk to take on. The lower the rating, the higher the risk, and therefore, the higher the interest rate for the government offering. Fair enough.

But when it comes to rating major economic powerhouses like the U.S., Japan or Germany, what the rating agencies say is meaningless. When the U.S. “lost” its AAA rating, it was supposed to signal a rise in risk and therefore a rise in the interest rates the U.S. would be forced to pay investors to hold its debt. Instead, U.S. government bond rates went down as investors poured more money, not less, into buying our debt.

So why did the rating agencies bother to offer what obviously was a meaningless downgrade? Because again, they were acting as Wall Street poodles, hoping to tip government policy toward debt reduction and away from making Wall Street pay for the unconscionable mess it created. It’s amazing to watch highly educated politicians genuflect before these bogus ratings. It’s theology, not economics.

In short, the cut in our AAA rating should be viewed for what it really is: a political act to help Wall Street support the Republicans, submarine new financial regulations, and redirect the debate away from increased taxes on Wall Street and the super-rich.

5. Isn’t China buying up most of our debt and doesn’t that put us at its mercy?

The U.S. imports more from China than it exports to China. This produces a trade deficit (not government debt). In the first six months of 2012 we imported $235 billion worth of goods from China but exported only $61 billion to China for a net trade deficit of $174 billion. (There are many reasons for this imbalance, but a big one is that China keeps its currency artificially undervalued, which in turn, keeps its products cheap and ours more expensive. That makes it very hard to compete.)

Since China wants to do something with all those extra dollars, it buys U.S. government bonds. How much of our debt does China now own? About 8 cents of every dollar of outstanding U.S. debt. Other U.S. agencies like the Social Security Trust Fund and the Federal Reserve own about 30 cents of every dollar of our debt, and individual investors, corporations and other countries own the rest – about 62 cents of every dollar of debt. (See U.S Treasury Department[6] and Businessinsider.com [7].)

Yes, China is the biggest foreign player, but it's not about to make trouble. It couldn’t even if it wanted to. China needs us to buy its goods or its economy will collapse. (Think for a minute about the trade. We get real goods and China gets paper…or rather little electronic signals in a currency account. It’s not clear who’s getting the better of that deal.)

In the end, large global economies are joined at the hip. China will buy our debt because it has no other choice. It has no interest at all in roiling the U.S. debt markets. If we go down, they go down.

6. Isn’t the debt caused by runaway entitlements?

Now we’re getting down to what this debt debate is really about. The austerity folks don’t want to tighten just any belt. They want to shred our social safety net. Debt is their excuse. Instead of making an open and honest case for a dog-eat-dog society, the social Darwinists (with Paul Ryan their new leader) make the utterly untruthful claim that so-called entitlements are driving up debt.

With a little addition, we can see how bogus this claim really is.

About a decade ago we were running a yearly surplus, meaning that each year we were paying down our national debt, not adding to it. Then stuff happened.

• ·         The Bush tax cuts (continued by Obama under severe Republican pressure) cost $250 billion a year in revenue.
• ·         The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan added another $300 billion a year in unfunded expenditures.
• ·         The Wall Street crash (which destroyed 8 million jobs in six months) led to a total of $350 billion a year in lost tax revenues and increased expenditures for the unemployed.
• ·         The bailout/stimulus rescue of the economy cost an additional $300 million a year for two years.

As the bottom black line on the graph below shows, instead of our current trillion dollar deficit, we’d be very close to a balanced budget were it not for Wall Street’s reckless greed, the unnecessary wars, and tax cuts for the rich. And we’d get there without shrinking social programs.

7. Isn’t this Obama’s fault?

As we just reviewed, Obama is not the cause of the rising debt. The tax cuts, the unfunded wars, the Wall Street crash and the bailouts started on Bush’s watch. Obama did indeed push the stimulus through, but that was a good move for our economy not a bad one. Furthermore, it was too small, not too big. (And Obamacare, over the long haul, is roughly neutral when it comes to the national debt.)

Obama, however, is not blameless. He should be faulted, not for running up the debt, but for not running it up more! Instead of kowtowing to deficit mania he should have visited unemployment line after unemployment line to make the case that Congress must allocate the funds needed to put America back to work.

With long-term interest rates at record lows (2.81% for 30 years) we could easily afford to borrow more to rebuild our infrastructure, weatherize all public buildings, provide free tuition for college students, and finance a host of other public programs that would move us to a full employment economy. And Obama could even make the case for funding much of it through a financial transaction tax on Wall Street’s casinos, as well as increased taxes on the super-rich. Of course, the Republicans wouldn’t go along with it. But the Communicator-in-Chief could have done more to educate the public that jobs, jobs and more jobs should come first. No talk of debt reduction, no “Grand Bargains” with the Republicans, until unemployment comes down to 5 percent! (And by then the debt/GDP ratio would be rapidly declining anyway because of economic growth.)

8. Won’t our kids be forced to shoulder the debt we leave behind?

Yes, this is a real tearjerker. Who among us wants to pawn off our debts onto our kids? A sad thought, if were true. But it’s not. Government debt, unlike our mortgages, is rarely repaid in full. Instead they roll over. The cost to taxpayers is the interest we pay on the outstanding debt and the refinancing of it. With the global economy at stall speed there is no danger in the foreseeable future of rising interest rates.

What about in 30 years when our darlings are at the helm? The answer depends on the economy, not on debt. If we borrow cheaply now to put our people back to work, if we invest fully in funding higher education, and if we build up our crumbling infrastructure and tend to the environment, then we’ll leave behind a prosperous economy. Debt will shrink over time as the economy grows. And more revenues will come in as our people go back to work.

However, if we become obsessed with debt and deficits, and slash to the bone the programs that develop future prosperity, we’ll leave behind a faltering economy and an even bigger environmental mess.

Debt hysteria is like a pandemic that quickly cripples logical thinking. Once infected, Very Important People with Very Impressive Degrees sound like fools.

Let’s hope there’s a cure…and soon.  

Read more.. http://www.alternet.org/economy/8-facts-prove-our-govt-not-going-broke

David Korten - America’s Deficit Attention Disorder

The political debate in the United States and Europe has focused attention on public financial deficits and how best to resolve them. Tragically, the debate largely ignores the deficits that most endanger our future.

In the United States, as Republican deficit hawks tell the story, “America is broke. We must cut government spending on social programs we cannot afford. And we must lower taxes on Wall Street job creators so they can invest to get the economy growing, create new jobs, increase total tax revenues, and eliminate the deficit.”

Democrats respond, “Yes, we’re pretty broke, but the answer is to raise taxes on Wall Street looters to pay for government spending that primes the economic pump by putting people to work building critical infrastructure and performing essential public services. This puts money in people’s pockets to spend on private sector goods and services and is our best hope to grow the economy.”

Democrats have the better side of the argument, but both sides have it wrong on two key points.

• First, both focus on growing GDP, ignoring the reality that under the regime of Wall Street rule, the benefits of GDP growth over the past several decades have gone almost exclusively to the 1 percent—with dire consequences for democracy and the health of the social and natural capital on which true prosperity depends. 
• Second, both focus on financial deficits, which can be resolved with relative ease if we are truly serious about it; and ignore far more dangerous and difficult-to-resolve social and environmental deficits. I call it a case of deficit attention disorder.

To achieve the ideal of a world that secures health and prosperity for all people for generations to come, we must reframe the public debate about the choices we face as a nation and as a species. We must measure economic performance against the outcomes we really want, give life priority over money, and recognize that money is a means, not an end.

Read more...

http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/david-korten/americas-deficit-attention-disorder 

Stephen Lendman - Goldman Sachs Free to Keep Stealing

Goldman again got off scot-free. On August 9, the Justice Department dropped criminal fraud charges. Evidence the equivalent of enough firepower to sink a carrier battle group was buried and forgotten. More on what happened below.

 Black's Law Dictionary says:

"Fraud consists of some deceitful practice or willful device, resorted to with intent to deprive another of his right, or in some manner to do him an injury."

It includes "all acts, omissions, and concealments which involve a breach of legal or equitable duty, trust, or confidence justly reposed, and are injurious to another, or by which an undue and unconscientious advantage is taken of another."

 The legal dictionary calls fraud:

"A false representation of a matter of fact - whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading allegations, or by concealment of what should have been disclosed - that deceives and is intended to deceive another so that the individual will act upon it to her or his legal injury."

Criminal and civil frauds differ by level of proof required. The former needs a "preponderance of evidence." The latter must prove intent and be "beyond a reasonable doubt."

Goldman settled SEC charges for pennies on the dollar. What a business. Steal a fortune. Pay a pittance back. Goldman writes it off as operating cost.

Read more...

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2012/08/goldman-sachs-free-to-keep-stealing.html

World's Faith in Capitalism Erodes as Financial Crisis Continues: Survey

The financial crisis that has bred unemployment, austerity, and economic pain across the global for nearly fives years is also battering the reputation of the system many believe to be its main cause: "free market" capitalism.

According to a new global poll by Pew Research, only half or fewer -- in 11 of 21 nations surveyed -- now agree with the statement that people are better off in a "free market" economy than in some other kind.

In nine of the 16 countries for which there is trend data since 2007, before the financial crisis began, support for capitalism is down, with the greatest declines in Italy (down 23 percentage points) and Spain (down 20 points).

Support for capitalism is greatest in Brazil, China, Germany and the U.S, says the report. The biggest skeptics of the free market are in Mexico and Japan.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/13?print

Paul Craig Roberts - The Real Libor Scandal

According to news reports, UK banks fixed the London interbank borrowing rate (Libor) with the complicity of the Bank of England (UK central bank) at a low rate in order to obtain a cheap borrowing cost. The way this scandal is playing out is that the banks benefitted from borrowing at these low rates. Whereas this is true, it also strikes us as simplistic and as a diversion from the deeper, darker scandal.

Banks are not the only beneficiaries of lower Libor rates. Debtors (and investors) whose floating or variable rate loans are pegged in some way to Libor also benefit. One could argue that by fixing the rate low, the banks were cheating themselves out of interest income, because the effect of the low Libor rate is to lower the interest rate on customer loans, such as variable rate mortgages that banks possess in their portfolios. But the banks did not fix the Libor rate with their customers in mind. Instead, the fixed Libor rate enabled them to improve their balance sheets, as well as help to perpetuate the regime of low interest rates. The last thing the banks want is a rise in interest rates that would drive down the values of their holdings and reveal large losses masked by rigged interest rates.

Indicative of greater deceit and a larger scandal than simply borrowing from one another at lower rates, banks gained far more from the rise in the prices, or higher evaluations of floating rate financial instruments (such as CDOs), that resulted from lower Libor rates. As prices of debt instruments all tend to move in the same direction, and in the opposite direction from interest rates (low interest rates mean high bond prices, and vice versa), the effect of lower Libor rates is to prop up the prices of bonds, asset-backed financial instruments, and other "securities." The end result is that the banks' balance sheets look healthier than they really are.

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Real-Libor-Scandal-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-120714-763.html

Shamus Cooke - Obama's Second Latin American Coup

The recent coup against Paraguay's democratically elected president is not only a blow to democracy, but an attack against the working and poor population that supported and elected President Fernando Lugo, whom they see as a bulwark against the wealthy elite who've dominated the country for decades.

The U.S. mainstream media and politicians are not calling the events in Paraguay a coup, since the president is being "legally impeached" by the elite-dominated Paraguayan Congress. But as economist Mark Weisbrot explains in the Guardian:

"The Congress of Paraguay is trying to oust the president, Fernando Lugo, by means of an impeachment proceeding for which he was given less than 24 hours to prepare and only two hours to present a defense. It appears that a decision to convict him has already been written...The main trigger for the impeachment is an armed clash between peasants fighting for land rights with police...But this violent confrontation is merely a pretext, as it is clear that the president had no responsibility for what happened. Nor have Lugo's opponents presented any evidence for their charges in today's ‘trial.’ President Lugo proposed an investigation into the incident; the opposition was not interested, preferring their rigged judicial proceedings."

What was the real reason the right-wing Paraguay Senate wanted to expel their democratically elected president? Another article by the Guardian makes this clear:

Read More:

http://www.countercurrents.org/cooke240612.htm

Renee Parsons - The Lost Forgotten Americans of 2012

As the austerity budget crisis continues to plague diverse Euro countries, American voters may breathe a sigh of relief that even with an economy that remains sluggish, the harsh level of austerity cuts being proposed in Greece and Spain and elsewhere have not happened here. At least that's what conventional wisdom espoused by those who have not suffered from the 2008 financial collapse or experienced the $1 trillion budget cuts in 2011 would have you believe.

As the early weeks of the presidential campaign have shown, the American electorate can expect a mind-numbing election season devoid of a real debate on real issues offering real solutions for millions of desperate citizens living on the edge, confronting the daily hopelessness of an utter catastrophe, abandoned by a government that once claimed to be 'Of, By and For the People". Lost in the shuffle of birth certificates or whether a private equity multi-millionaire is qualified to be president more than a community organizer is any discussion of the impacts on the upcoming second round of $1.2 trillion budget cuts.

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/renee-parsons/the-lost-forgotten-americ_b_1574213.html

International "Crime Against Humanity" Filed At The Hague Portuguese and U.S. Children - Victims of a Mercury Dental Filling Experiment Funded by U.S. Government says DAMS

Dental Amalgam Mercury Solutions (DAMS), a U.S.-based consumer organization, has co-filed a "Crime against Humanity" complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague against those involved in an $11 million experiment conducted on approximately 1,000 children. The study of health harm from amalgam/mercury dental fillings, known as the "Children's Amalgam Trial" (CAT), was funded by the U.S. government's National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR).

International advocate Anita Tibau and documentary filmmaker Kelly Gallagher recently traveled to Lisbon to raise public awareness about the unethical research associated with silver/amalgam fillings, which contain 50% toxic mercury. The two Americans provided critical documents and film footage that became part of a shocking expose aired on Portuguese television last week, which prompted former victims of the CAT experiments to question the indignities and harm they incurred. The report by journalist Rita Maraffa Carvalho revealed many of the atrocities of CAT included in the complaint made to the ICC, which was co-signed by Tibau and Gallagher on behalf of the organization Mouth of Hope.

The CAT mercury experiments were conducted on children aged 8-10 from low-income families in New England and the Casa Pia orphanage in Lisbon between 1997-2005.

The research was authorized by NIDCR's project administrator Norman Braveman, and the Portuguese segment was managed by Timothy DeRouen, PhD, at the University of Washington.

The entire CAT study was funded by U.S. taxpayers' dollars, and even when personnel at Casa Pia were convicted of running a pedophile ring abusing the children in 2002, the study continued. Also during the course of the CAT experiments, concerns were never addressed about misleading consent forms and previously published scientific studies indicating that exposure from mercury fillings was a well-known threat to human health.

The late Sandra Duffy, an Oregon attorney, noted in 2004 that the U.S. consent forms did "not disclose how much mercury exposure or absorption occurs from the fillings," and the Portuguese consent forms, one hundred of which were signed by the same doctor for the orphans, did not even disclose that the fillings contained mercury.

Read More:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/47670745/International_Crime_Against_Humanity_Filed_At_The_Hague_Portuguese_and_U_S_Children_Victims_of_a_Mercury_Dental_Filling_Experiment_Funded_by_U_S_Government_says_DAMS

Joseph Stiglitz - The Price of Inequality and the Myth of Opportunity

America likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity, and others view it in much the same light. But, while we can all think of examples of Americans who rose to the top on their own, what really matters are the statistics: to what extent do an individual’s life chances depend on the income and education of his or her parents?

Nowadays, these numbers show that the American dream is a myth. There is less equality of opportunity in the United States today than there is in Europe – or, indeed, in any advanced industrial country for which there are data.

This is one of the reasons that America has the highest level of inequality of any of the advanced countries – and its gap with the rest has been widening. In the “recovery” of 2009-2010, the top 1% of US income earners captured 93% of the income growth. Other inequality indicators – like wealth, health, and life expectancy – are as bad or even worse. The clear trend is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top, the hollowing out of the middle, and increasing poverty at the bottom.

It would be one thing if the high incomes of those at the top were the result of greater contributions to society, but the Great Recession showed otherwise: even bankers who had led the global economy, as well as their own firms, to the brink of ruin, received outsize bonuses.

Read More:

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-price-of-inequality