Kevin Charles Redmon - China’s Growing Unhappiness Gap

In 1974, a University of Pennsylvania economics professor named Richard Easterlin published the innocuously titled study, “Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot?” (The conventional wisdom at the time being, “Duh.”) In it, he examined 30 surveys conducted in 19 countries, and came up with an unexpected conclusion: while income correlated closely to happiness within countries—richer Nigerians were happier than poorer Nigerians—it wasn’t clear that, on balance, richer countries were any happier than poorer countries. Happiness was purely relative.

The so-called Easterlin Paradox became a cornerstone of “happiness economics” and remains hotly contested. (Critics says its rubbish, and absolute $ = absolute ☺. Easterlin stands by his evidence.) Now, a new study (PDF) from Easterlin and his colleagues at USC builds on the theory. In the case of China, the authors found, a booming economy may be making everyone wealthier—but only a fraction of them are happier because of it.

For the last two decades, China has hewed closely to the old capitalist saw, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” Across demographics and geographies—rich and poor, young and old, urban and rural—economic liberalization has meant higher incomes and standards of living for all Chinese. Per capita consumption has increased four-fold, the authors report, but “life satisfaction” hasn’t risen with it. Instead, a growing wealth gap has created a shadow happiness gap.

Read More:

http://www.psmag.com/culture/chinas-growing-unhappiness-gap-42517/?utm_source=Newsletter216&utm_medium=email&utm_content=0605&utm_campaign=newsletters

Yoko Kubota - Japanese Manufacturers Are Reversing Everything That Made The Country An Economic Powerhouse

In a darkened industrial hangar in eastern Osaka, Yoshihiro Yamanaka is tearing up the rule book that once made Japanese manufacturing the feared global standard of efficiency.

At Fuji Spring, a company with one factory, one product and 18 workers, Yamanaka has dimmed the lights, allowed inventories to pile up and - most strikingly - shut off an automated part of his assembly to do more jobs by hand.

The goal is to slash power consumption in the face of possible electric shortages, a new uncertainty that has pushed Japan's already embattled manufacturers closer to the brink.

But in rejecting Japan's accepted industrial wisdom, Yamanaka is also accepting the do-or-die risk that customers will pay more for his springs.

"Until recently, my priority had been to cut people and unnecessary steps as much as possible. Unless we did so, we could not win the pricing battle," Yamanaka, 59, said on a recent tour of his factory, which makes springs that go into console boxes in the Nissan Leaf electric car and Panasonic Corp's fuel cells assemblies.

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http://www.businessinsider.com/tag:reuters.com,0000:newsml_L3E8H3067#ixzz1wv26IqGT

Immanuel Wallerstein - The World Class Struggle: The Geography of Protest

When times are good, and the world-economy is expanding in terms of new surplus-value produced, the class struggle is muted. It never goes away, but as long as there is a low level of unemployment and the real incomes of the lower strata are going up, even if only in small amounts, social compromise is the order of the day.

But when the world-economy stagnates and real unemployment expands considerably, it means that the overall pie is shrinking. The question then becomes who shall bear the burden of the shrinkage – within countries and between countries. The class struggle becomes acute and sooner or later leads to open conflict in the streets. This is what has been happening in the world-system since the 1970s, and most dramatically since 2007. Thus far, the very upper strata (the 1%) have been holding on to their share, indeed increasing it. This means necessarily that the share of the 99% has been going down.

The struggle over allocations revolves primarily around two items in the global budget: taxes (how much, and who) and the safety net of the bulk of the population (expenditures on education, health, and lifetime income guarantees). There is no country in which this struggle has not been taking place. But it breaks out more violently in some countries than in others – because of their location in the world-economy, because of their internal demographics, because of their political history.

Read More:

http://www.iwallerstein.com/world-class-struggle-geography-protest/

Marshall Auerback - Another One Bites the Dust: The Euro Bank Run

It might seem strange to invoke Freddie Mercury and Queen in the context of the eurozone, but it’s the first thought that springs to mind, as Brussels and the increasingly hapless ECB, continue to mismanage their way to financial and economic catastrophe. Yesterday, there were sigs that the Spanish plan to recapitalise Bankia (which came with the implied backing of the ECB’s balance sheet) introduced a potential way out of the eurozone’s metastisizing banking crisis. Sadly, it’s another idea which will never get off the bulletin board, as the ECB bluntly rejected any proposal to use its balance sheet to indirectly fund Bankia, the troubled Spanish lender

So we’re back to floundering and the markets are reacting accordingly. What most investors, experts, and policy makers fail to realize is that this bank run is not simply a Greek problem, which will cease if and when Greece is thrown out of the euro zone. If one looks at the Target 2 balances, the ELA, and the ECB’s lender of last resort facilities, it’s clear that this has extended into all of the periphery countries, including Spain and Italy. It may well end with Germany’s banks effectively serving as the deposit base for all of Europe. See this chart, courtesy of Gavyn Davies.

Read More:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/01/another-one-bites-the-dust/

Col. Ann Wright - Turkish Court Indicts Senior Israeli Military Officials in Murders on Gaza Flotilla

On the Second Anniversary of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Turkish Court Indicts Senior Israeli Military Officials in Murders of Nine Passengers

Two years ago I was a passenger on the first Gaza Freedom Flotilla which was sailing to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. I watched from a small boat called the Challenger 1, as a much larger boat, the Mavi Marmara, with almost 600 passengers, was brutally attacked by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) commandos. 30 minutes later, our boat was attacked.

Using snipers from helicopters Israeli commandos shot many of the passengers on the exposed top deck of the ship. Other commandos in boats fired live ammunition, as well as percussion grenades, into all levels of the ship. As commandos repelled down from helicopters and boarded the ship, they executed at point blank range 5 passengers, including a 19 year old American citizen Furkan Dogan, whose body had five bullets including one to the back of his head. 9 persons, 8 Turkish citizens and one American citizen, were murdered and 50 others were wounded. One severely wounded Turkish man later died after being in a coma for many months.

Each of the six ships in the flotilla was attacked by IDF commandos. Passengers on the ships were shot with tasers and beaten by commandos. Potentially lethal paintballs were shot into the faces of passengers narrowly missing eyes and soft parts of the skull.

IDF commandos took the computers, cameras, identification and credit cards and several hundred thousands of dollars in cash from the passengers. IDF commandos sold many of the stolen computers. Very few of the items taken by the IDF have been returned to passengers.

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31228

Hugo Duncan - 'Beware a rerun of the Great Panic of 2008': Head of World Bank warns Europe is heading for 'danger zone' as world markets suffer bleakest day of the year so far

The head of the World Bank yesterday warned that financial markets face a rerun of the Great Panic of 2008.

On the bleakest day for the global economy this year,  Robert Zoellick said crisis-torn Europe was heading for the ‘danger zone’.

Mr Zoellick, who stands down at the end of the month after five years in charge of the watchdog, said it was ‘far from clear that eurozone leaders have steeled themselves’ for the looming  catastrophe amid fears of a Greek exit from the single currency and meltdown in Spain.

The flow of money into so-called ‘safe havens’ such as UK, German and US government debt turned into a stampede yesterday.

In Berlin the two-year government bond yield fell below zero for the first time, with the bizarre result that jittery international investors are now  paying – rather than being paid – for lending to Germany.

There was a raft of dismal economic news from around the world, with manufacturing output falling in Britain and Europe, unemployment jumping in the eurozone and America, and fast-emerging economies such as Brazil and China showing signs of running out of steam.

Read More:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2153324/Markets-facing-rerun-Great-Panic-2008-Head-World-Bank-warns-Europe-heading-danger-zone-bleakest-day-global-economy-year.html

GLOBAL FINANCIAL MELTDOWN: Convergence of 4 Explosive Factors: Banks, Stock Exchanges, Pension Funds, Debts Sovereign debt & deadly private debt.. $30 trillion of phantom assets...

Whilst waiting for Euroland to equip itself, by the end of 2012, with a medium to long term common political, economic and social project, especially following the election of the new French president François Hollande, anticipated many months ago by LEAP/E2020, players will remain prisoners of the short-term reflexes related to the sudden Greek political tremors, the uncertainties over Euroland governance and to the risks in public debts. 

At the same time, in the United States, the disappearance of the illusion of a recovery (1) combined with the renewal of concerns over the American financial sector’s state of health (of which J P Morgan has just illustrated the fragility) and the big comeback of the country’s debt problem is leading economic and financial players to contemplate an increasingly worrying future (2). 

In the United Kingdom, the country’s return to recession is combining with the failure to control deficits and the rise of working-class anger in the face of an austerity which has however only just begun (3). 

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31166

Alexis Baden-Mayer - G8 Gives Monsanto Power to End Hunger in Africa

At the Group of 8 (G8) meetings this past weekend, President Obama and the leaders of the rest of the world’s richest nations abandoned their governments’ previous commitments to donate $7.3 billion a year to end hunger in Africa, after disbursing only 58 percent of the total pledge of $22 billion and giving less than 6 percent in new money they pledged three years ago.

Instead, rich nations will leave the problem in the hands of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition where private corporations will invest $3 billion over 10 years — Monsanto has committed $50 million – beginning in three countries, Tanzania, Ghana and Ethiopia.

Human-rights activists have questioned the inclusion of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, noting that his authoritarian government has jailed dissidents and banned media access to hunger zones. The Committee to Protect Journalists said in a letter to President Obama that the Ethiopian government “routinely downplays the extent of the crisis by denying journalists access to sensitive areas and censoring independent news coverage.”

Read More:

http://wakeup-world.com/2012/05/31/g8-leaves-monsanto-in-charge-of-ending-hunger-in-africa/

Mark Weisbrot - Europeans' Economic Future Has Been Hijacked by Dangerous Ideologues

I have argued for some time now that the recurring crisis in the eurozone is not driven by financial markets' demands for austerity in a time of recession, as is commonly asserted. Rather, the primary cause of the crisis and its prolongation is the political agenda of the European authorities – led by the European Central Bank (ECB) and European commission. These authorities (which, if we included the IMF constitute, the "troika" that runs economic policy in the eurozone) want to force political changes, particularly in the weaker economies, that people in these countries would never vote for

This is becoming more blatantly obvious here in Spain, where the government – run by the rightwing Popular party (PP) – shares the political agenda of the European authorities, perhaps even more than the IMF does. The PP government has taken advantage of the crisis to impose labour law changes that will make it easier for employers to get out of industry-wide collective bargaining agreements. They have also taken away rights that workers' had to challenge unfair firings. The goal is to weaken labour as part of a longer-term strategy to dismantle the welfare state; these changes have nothing to do with resolving the current crisis, or even reducing the budget deficit.

The government has also mandated huge cuts in healthcare spending, at €7bn. This is comparable to cutting 25% of Medicaid spending in the US, something that would be both devastating to the poor and politically impossible. Another €3bn will be cut from education.

Read More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/30/eurozone-crisis-spain-debt

Jeremy Warner - Debt crisis: a $46 trillion problem comes sweeping in

Just as you thought things couldn't get any worse, credit markets are about to be hit by a veritable tsunami of maturing corporate debt. Standard & Poor's estimates that companies in Europe, the US and the major Asian economies require a combination of refinancing and new money to fund growth over the next four years of between $43 trillion and $46 trillion. The wall of maturing debt is unprecedented, raising the prospect of further, extreme difficulties in credit markets.

With the eurozone debt crisis still at full throttle, the Chinese economy slowing fast and a still tepid US recovery, it's not clear that the banking system is in any position to deal with this incoming wave of demand.

As if the refinancing problem wasn't already challenging enough, into it all stumbles the European commissioner for internal markets, Michel Barnier, to prove the old saw that there is no mess quite so bad that official intervention won't make even worse.

A traditionalist French socialist by background, Mr Barnier positively revels in his job as the EU's top financial services regulator. In a recent interview, he said that he liked the term "shareholder spring" because it implied "a regulation spring, a rule making spring". Yes, indeed, Mr Barnier likes very much rules and regulations. He wants to regulate everything from pay to solvency. The financial crisis has given him a wide open canvass on which to paint.

Read More:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/9296117/Debt-crisis-a-46-trillion-problem-comes-sweeping-in.html