Robert Reich - How Europe’s Double Dip Could Become America’s

Europe is in recession.

Britain’s Office for National Statistics confirmed today (Wednesday) that in the first quarter of this year Britain’s economy shrank .2 percent, after having contracted .3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011. (Officially, two quarters of shrinkage make a recession). On Monday Spain officially fell into recession, for the second time in three years. Portugal, Italy, and Greece are already basket cases. It seems highly likely France and Germany are also contracting.

Why should we care? Because a recession in the world’s third-largest economy, combined with the current slowdown in the world’s second-largest (China), spells trouble for the world’s largest.

Remember – it’s a global economy. Money moves across borders at the speed of an electronic impulse. Wall Street banks are enmeshed into a global capital network extending from Frankfurt to Beijing. That means that notwithstanding their efforts to dress up balance sheets, the biggest U.S. banks are more fragile than they’ve been at any time since 2007.

Meanwhile, goods and services slosh across the globe. If there’s not enough demand for them coming from the second and third-largest economies in the world, demand in the U.S. can’t possibly make up the difference. That could mean higher unemployment here as well as elsewhere.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/how-europe-s-double-dip-could-become-america-s-1335446855

Amitabh Pal - Austerity is Killing Europe

The austerity fetish of those making economic decisions is killing Europe’s economy.

The last few days have provided further proof.

“Spain officially slipped back into recession for the second time in three years Monday, after following the German remedy of deep retrenchment in public outlays, joining Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic,” the New York Times reported this week.

And more bad news has followed.

“Britain slid back into recession in the first quarter of the year, according to official figures released Wednesday, undercutting the government's argument that its austerity program was working,” says today’s Times.

But those in charge seem to be eternally clueless.

“We must persevere,” said Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank.

Draghi’s obliviousness becomes more understandable when you look at his background. From 2002 to 2005, Draghi was managing director and European vice president of Goldman Sachs. His outlook represents that of a hard-hearted investment banker, more interested in listening to the concerns of the financial sector than of the people. Goldman Sachs has been a master of putting such folks in charge of the global economic system.

‘They’re simply the best at building political networks, and that has earned them the name ‘Government Sachs,’ ” Marc Roche, author of a book on the firm, explained to the New Internationalist magazine. “In Europe they stay clear of ex-politicians; instead they go for ex-European Commissioners and former central bankers. These work as door openers. They help the bank to get access to those in power, and they show them how the EU works.”

Read More:

http://www.progressive.org/austerity_is_killing_europe.html

General Electric is moving its X-ray division headquarters from Wisconsin to China

GE Moving from Wisconsin.  Keep your eye on Waukesha, Wisconsin......Their biggest employer just moved out.  General Electric is planning to move its 115-year-old X-ray division from Waukesha, Wis., to Beijing.   In addition to moving the headquarters, the company will invest $2 billion in China and train more than 65 engineers and create six research centers.

This is the same GE that made $5.1 billion in the United States last year, but paid no taxes - the same company that employs more people overseas than it does in the United States.  So let me get this straight. President Obama appointed GE Chairman Jeff Immelt to head his commission on job creation (job czar).  Immelt is supposed to help create jobs. I guess the President forgot to tell him in which country he was supposed to be creating those jobs.

Thanks Jeff, you're a "real" American....give Barrack our Best!  If this doesn't show you the total lack of leadership of this President, I don't know what does. Please pass this information to others and think about it before you buy a GE product.

Read More:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/ge.asp

Lynn Parramore - News From George Soros' Berlin Conference - Economists Discover Human Beings

Economists are peculiar creatures. Last week a large posse of them descended on Berlin for the third annual conference of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), a think-tank co-founded by investor and philanthropist George Soros in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis. 

As I roamed through the various sessions and gatherings, pointy-headed folk squinted at me and rattled off facts and figures that gave them the sort of thrill I get from seeing spring flowers in bloom. The field of economics is known for attracting Asperger’s-spectrum wonks better at formulating financial models than the flow of human interaction. But if the Berlin forum is any indication, the field is now fitfully reorienting itself: it wants to understand those fascinating and often irrational beings known as “people.”

Tellingly, the title of the conference was inspired by Milton. Not Milton Friedman, but John Milton: “Paradigm Lost: Rethinking Economics and Politics.” Intriguingly, the brochure opened with a passage from Book XII of Paradise Lost describing Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden -- the moment when they look back wistfully on their former paradise, but then, teary-eyed, forge ahead, knowing that “the world was all before them.” 

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/155054/news_from_george_soros%27_berlin_conference_-_economists_discover_human_beings

Oliver Stuenkel - Does Kim Signal World Bank Changes?

Editor's note: This roundup is a new monthly feature of the Council of Councils initiative, gathering opinions from global experts on major international developments.

The selection of Jim Yong Kim, the U.S. candidate, as the next president of the World Bank has stimulated debate over reform of the institution's governance. Four experts size up the succession process, some judging it a missed opportunity for meaningful change while others seeing a crucial injection of new expertise at the sixty-eight-year-old development body.

CFR's Stewart Patrick notes a flawed process that still marks a turning point for the Bank.Oliver Stuenkel of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in Brazil laments the failure of the emerging powers to rally around Nigeria's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Both Stuenkel and Daniel Bradlow of the University of Pretoria in South Africa warn that without reform at the World Bank, some of its largest borrowers could seek alternatives, such as the proposed BRICS bank. But the East Asia Institute's Sook Jong Lee welcomes Kim's selection, saying his public health background bodes well for tackling the complex problems of development work.

Read More:

http://www.cfr.org/world-bank/does-kim-signal-world-bank-changes/p27994?cid=emc-WorldBankPressNote-ExpertRoundup-04_20_12

Europe’s sets course for perpetual recession

Another evening of Purchasing Manager Index (PMI) data from the Eurozone. As readers may be aware my major macro theme on Europe under current policies has been the same for quite some time now:

Periphery nations weakening, France in the middle, Germany outperforming, but the whole ship slowly sinking.

A few weeks ago, when the last batch of final PMI data came out, I also stated:

Actually , to be honest, I am a little more worried about France than that statement suggests. If you have been following my European posts for a while you may remember my warning on the country back in July last year and my repeat of those concerns again in December. In case you haven’t read those posts my basic premise is that France isn’t that much different from some of the periphery nations in terms of its macro economic statistics. As I said:

A quick glance at French fundamentals tells you they are in a similar position as the Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. High debt in both the public and private sectors, trade imbalance that continues to grow and a current account that has been in the red for years.

To the last night’s data then…

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http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2012/04/europes-sets-course-for-perpetual-recession/

Groups to World Bank: Stop the Land Grabs!

As the World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty takes place in Washington DC this week, farmers and environmental groups have organized to push back against the Bank's pro-corporate, pro-privatization land grab attempts and the rights and environmental violations they bring.

Screen grab from film (see below) from La Via Campesina and Friends of the Earth International on the devasting impacts of the World Bank's land grabs on Uganda. The groups -- including Focus on the Global South, Friends of the Earth International and GRAIN -- say the World Bank is a leading force behind the land grabs, which allow giant global corporations to gobble up land and resources from local communities. 

In a group statement on the Bank's conference, the protesting groups say, "The World Bank is playing a key role in this global land grab by making capital and guarantees available for big multinational investors, providing technical assistance and support to 'improve the agricultural  investment climate' in so-called recipient countries, and promoting policies and laws that are corporate-oriented rather than people-centered."

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/04/24-3

John McMurtry - "Social State" versus "Corporate State": FROM EUROPEAN FASCISM TO "GLOBAL MONEY-SEQUENCE ABSOLUTISM"

This essay is Part X of Prof John McMurtry's "The Undeclared World War, Human Rights versus Corporate Rights"

Corporate-system drivers of “deregulation”, “privatization” and “lower taxes” lead reversals of  civil commons evolution. When 70% of France supports the strikes against raising the public pension age in the Fall of 2010, resistance to the totalizing private-profit agenda grounds in the civil commons. Yet even as they are again attacked in Italy and Greece to pay private banks and bond issuers a year later, France’s uprising dissolves from view. More profoundly, Argentina’s’ triumphant default on the very same debt as Greece in 2002 is erased from public choice space. Any example of regaining the real economy from the money-sequence party is silenced – but the unspoken Latin American revolution from Argentina’s historic default carries on. Once released from the debt-money clawhold in the face of the direst IMF threats, it regrouped its economy to public direction, spectacular agricultural productivity, capital and export controls, and world-leading reduction of poverty.  

Read More:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30425

Bill Black - Green Slime Drives Our Financial Crises

“Pink slime” just had its fifteen minutes of fame.  BPI, the producer of pink slime, calls it “Lean Finely Textured Beef.”  BPI’s slogan is “expect a higher standard.” Pink slime starts with fatty tissues that are inherently more likely to be repositories of salmonella and e coli infections.  The tissues are shredded and rendered and most of the fat drained off.  The pink slime, however, is still more likely to be infected after this processing and that makes it dangerous and can make it smell spoiled.  BPI’s “innovation” was to gas the pink slime in Mr. Clean (ammonia) to try to kill bacteria and reduce the stink.  The resultant pink slime is then frozen into bricks and shipped in bulk.

Pink slime was originally limited to dog food, but it has secretly been fed to Americans for a decade.  Major hamburger chains, grocery stores, and school lunch programs added it to make up 15% of our burgers.  The government didn’t require disclosure of pink slime or ammonia.  Tests have established that pink slime remains more likely to harbor dangerous bacteria and that the only way to reduce that problem is to add so much Mr. Clean that the pink slime stinks and tastes awful.  Because BPI could not sell the product if it continued to stink and taste awful they reduced the amount of Mr. Clean they used in processing and the risk of the pink slime harboring dangerous bacteria rose.

The New York Times revealed the pink slime scandal in a story that ran on December 31, 2009.  Unfortunately, it buried the lead.  The story broke the news that Gerald Zirnstein, a government microbiologist, had dubbed the product “pink slime” in 2002, but it did so around the 25^th paragraph and the story did not generate a demand for reform.     

Read More:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/bill-black-green-slime-drives-our-financial-crises.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

Ana Palacio - Reinventing the World Bank, Again

With three nominees now in the running to become the World Bank’s next president – Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Colombian Finance Minister José Antonio Ocampo, and the United States’ nominee, Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim – this is the moment to step back and assess the Bank’s trajectory. Unless the Bank’s next president has a clear vision of the way ahead, and the gravitas to withstand the institution’s internal pressures, he or she will be swallowed up by its complex machinery and unwieldy processes.

Global attention has been focused on weighing the three candidates’ strengths and qualifications, particularly their economic and financial credentials. But the real challenge lies in providing direction for the World Bank that reflects the world as it is, and re-calibrating the Bank’s tools accordingly. Inevitably, the new course hinges in part on recognizing that economics and finance, while integral elements of all areas of the Bank’s activities, are no longer the institution’s main drivers.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/reinventing-world-bank-again-1334504841