SACSIS.org.za » News » The World » Why Iceland Should Be in the News, But Is Not: "An Italian radio program's story about Iceland’s on-going revolution is a stunning example of how little our media tells us about the rest of the world. Americans may remember that at the start of the 2008 financial crisis, Iceland literally went bankrupt. The reasons were mentioned only in passing, and since then, this little-known member of the European Union fell back into oblivion."
The EU would seem to be in deep doo-doo.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
The Cause Of Riots And The Price of Food - Technology Review
The Cause Of Riots And The Price of Food - Technology Review: "The Cause Of Riots And The Price of Food
If we don't reverse the current trend in food prices, we've got until August 2013 before social unrest sweeps the planet, say complexity theorists"
If we don't reverse the current trend in food prices, we've got until August 2013 before social unrest sweeps the planet, say complexity theorists"
Monday, August 22, 2011
Big trouble ahead - macrobusiness.com.au | macrobusiness.com.au
Big trouble ahead - macrobusiness.com.au | macrobusiness.com.au: “The world economy is now in the grips of a damaging feedback loop involving deteriorating fundamentals, lagging policy responses and destabilized financial markets. If policymakers do not act boldly, and do so in a globally coordinated fashion, the world risks slipping into a prolonged recession with worrisome institutional, political and social consequences”.
Very nice summary of the global financial mess, and the reasons some of the best minds are pessimistic. The focus on aggregate demand rather than distribution is unfortunate, but that reflects the dominant economic paradigm. The world is awash in excess supply....
Very nice summary of the global financial mess, and the reasons some of the best minds are pessimistic. The focus on aggregate demand rather than distribution is unfortunate, but that reflects the dominant economic paradigm. The world is awash in excess supply....
Friday, August 19, 2011
Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances
Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances: (PhysOrg.com) -- For many years conventional wisdom has said that the whole world is controlled by the monied elite, or more recently by the huge multi-national corporations that seem to sometime control the very air we breathe. Now, new research by a team based in ETH-Zurich, Switzerland, has shown that what we’ve suspected all along, is apparently true. The team has uploaded their results onto the preprint server arXiv.
Using data obtained (circa 2007) from the Orbis database (a global database containing financial information on public and private companies) the team, in what is being heralded as the first of its kind, analyzed data from over 43,000 corporations, looking at both upstream and downstream connections between them all and found that when graphed, the data represented a bowtie of sorts, with the knot, or core representing just 147 entities who control nearly 40 percent of all of monetary value of transnational corporations (TNCs).
Using data obtained (circa 2007) from the Orbis database (a global database containing financial information on public and private companies) the team, in what is being heralded as the first of its kind, analyzed data from over 43,000 corporations, looking at both upstream and downstream connections between them all and found that when graphed, the data represented a bowtie of sorts, with the knot, or core representing just 147 entities who control nearly 40 percent of all of monetary value of transnational corporations (TNCs).
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Tax the super-rich or riots will rage in 2012 - Paul B. Farrell - MarketWatch
Tax the super-rich or riots will rage in 2012 - Paul B. Farrell - MarketWatch: "SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — What a year. Rage in London, Egypt, Athens, Damascus. All real. Just a metaphor in the new “Planet of the Apes” film? No, much more. Warning: More rage is dead ahead. Across our planet a new generation is filled with rage. High unemployment. Raging inflation. Dreams lost. Hope gone. While the super -rich get richer and richer.
Listen to that hissing: The fuse is rapidly burning, warning us. Wake up before the rage explodes in your face. This firestorm is endangering America’s future. From forces outside, yes. But far more deadly, from deep within our collective psyche. We have lost our moral compass. We are self-destructing.
Crackpot warning? No. This warning comes from the elite International Monetary Fund. A recent IMF report looked at 'the causes of the two major U.S. economic crises over the past 100 years, the Great Depression of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2007,' writes Rana Foroohar, an economics editor at Time magazine.
'There are two remarkable similarities in the eras that preceded these crises. Both saw a sharp increase in income inequality and household-debt-to-income ratios.' And in each case, 'as the poor and middle-class were squeezed, they tried to cope by borrowing to maintain their standard of living.'"
Economic History 101, The Distributional Dynamics of Revolutions. A fine rant by Paul Farrell, who has brought views put forth by this blog for years into the mainstream.
Listen to that hissing: The fuse is rapidly burning, warning us. Wake up before the rage explodes in your face. This firestorm is endangering America’s future. From forces outside, yes. But far more deadly, from deep within our collective psyche. We have lost our moral compass. We are self-destructing.
Crackpot warning? No. This warning comes from the elite International Monetary Fund. A recent IMF report looked at 'the causes of the two major U.S. economic crises over the past 100 years, the Great Depression of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2007,' writes Rana Foroohar, an economics editor at Time magazine.
'There are two remarkable similarities in the eras that preceded these crises. Both saw a sharp increase in income inequality and household-debt-to-income ratios.' And in each case, 'as the poor and middle-class were squeezed, they tried to cope by borrowing to maintain their standard of living.'"
Economic History 101, The Distributional Dynamics of Revolutions. A fine rant by Paul Farrell, who has brought views put forth by this blog for years into the mainstream.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Mainstream Economist: Marx Was Right. Capitalism May Be Destroying Itself | AlterNet
Mainstream Economist: Marx Was Right. Capitalism May Be Destroying Itself | AlterNet: "Karl Marx had it right. At some point, Capitalism can destroy itself. You cannot keep on shifting income from labor to Capital without having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. That's what has happened. We thought that markets worked. They're not working. The individual can be rational. The firm, to survive and thrive, can push labor costs more and more down, but labor costs are someone else's income and consumption. That's why it's a self-destructive process."
The "mainstream economist" is Roubini. As I've said in the past, the "immiseration of the proletariat" was not supposed to happen because "a rising tide lifts all boats." The latter was true when there was some modicum of decency governing what management and traders took out of their companies and the economy. No longer.
The big question now is whether the nation-state has the ability to tell multinational corporations what to do, or will they be blackmailed with threats to "do what we say or we'll take it all offshore."
That's where the front lines are.
The "mainstream economist" is Roubini. As I've said in the past, the "immiseration of the proletariat" was not supposed to happen because "a rising tide lifts all boats." The latter was true when there was some modicum of decency governing what management and traders took out of their companies and the economy. No longer.
The big question now is whether the nation-state has the ability to tell multinational corporations what to do, or will they be blackmailed with threats to "do what we say or we'll take it all offshore."
That's where the front lines are.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
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