By Michael Collins

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Standard and Poor's are highly placed guardians of the world economy. IMF is supposed to teach developing nations how to be just like us, i.e., onerously indebted to the big banks. Standard and Poor's is the keeper of the credit, ratings that ripple through the economy and impact hundreds of millions. Nobody elected these folks. They were begotten, not made.

After IMF finished helping Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya with privatization and free markets, those nations descended into chaos and they're now broke, all of them, with lower living standards to boot. (See IMF Rates Up Dictatorships Just Before Revolutions)

When you compare them head-to-head, the Obama and Romney tax plans are nearly identical:

Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, is offering a 20 percent tax cut for everyone. Given the mood of the conservatives in the United States today, that may not surprise you. But even President Barack Obama, who is routinely described as a socialist by his opponents, is peddling a plan under which 99 percent of Americans would pay less than they did under the last Democrat in the White House, Bill Clinton.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is like a phlegmatic dominatrix. She enjoys delivering pain, lots of it, but she does so in a sluggish fashion, without any flair. She's had a free ride for too long. Now, her day has come. Merkel is the last impediment to throwing austerity overboard in Europe and the United States. Correction: the last impediment to appearing to throw austerity overboard.

Obama gave up the rhetoric of austerity before the kickoff of his 2012 campaign. His opening speech in Columbus, Ohio was so populist-infused; you might have thought he was campaigning against himself.

Newly elected President of France François Hollande arrived at the right time to lead the move away from austerity. Andrew Grice of The Independent noted, "The French leader said the EU had to consider all ways to increase growth. And eurobonds are part of the discussion."

The interview was conducted by Martin Hesse and Thomas Schulz | May 24

Speigel Online - In a SPIEGEL interview, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman argues that this is not the time to worry about debt and inflation. To save the euro zone, he argues that the European Central Bank should loosen monetary policy and the German government should abandon austerity.

for the future?

Socialism rears its beautiful head (Article by Gar Alperovitz via Common Dreams).

The broad goal is democratized ownership of the economy for the “99 percent” in an ecologically sustainable and participatory community-building fashion.

In March 2012, the Left Forum held in New York also heard many calls for a return to nationalization.

Might as well try something new - the old way isn't working.

A range of new theorists have also increasingly given intellectual muscle to the movement. Some, like Richard Heinberg, stress the radical implications of ending economic growth. Former presidential adviser James Gustav Speth calls for restructuring the entire system as the only way to deal with ecological problems in general and growth in particular.

By Evelyn M. Rusli & Michael J. De La Merced | New York | May 23

NYT - Just days before Facebook went public, some big investors grew nervous about the company’s prospects.

After publicly warning about challenges in mobile advertising, Facebook executives held conference calls to update their banks’ analysts on the business. Analysts at Morgan Stanley and other firms soon started advising clients to dial back their expectations. One prospective buyer was told that second-quarter revenue could be 5 percent lower than the bank’s earlier estimates.

Jonathan Amos | May 22

BBC - ...
Nasa's administrator Charles Bolden said: "Today marks the beginning of a new era in exploration... The significance of this day cannot be overstated; a private company has launched a spacecraft to the International Space Station that will attempt to dock there for the first time..."

a new era, indeed;-)

May 22

BBC - Google's $12.5bn (£7.9bn) purchase of US phone maker Motorola Mobility has been completed days after it received approval from the Chinese government.

Chinese authorities said Google must keep its mobile software, Android, free for other device makers for up to five years.

The acquisition is Google's biggest to date.

That's the pretty interesting, if simplistic, question posed by The Atlantic:

Not everyone is thrilled by the prospect of radical life extension. As funding for anti-aging research has exploded, bioethicists have expressed alarm, reasoning that extreme longevity could have disastrous social effects. Some argue that longer life spans will mean stiffer competition for resources, or a wider gap between rich and poor. Others insist that the aging process is important because it gives death a kind of time release effect, which eases us into accepting it. These concerns are well founded. Life spans of several hundred years are bound to be socially disruptive in one way or another; if we're headed in that direction, it's best to start teasing out the difficulties now.

John O'Brennan cuts to the heart of the Eurozone crisis, outlining the political consequences of issuing aloof, one-size-fits-all austerity requirements from afar:

The European crisis is as much a crisis of politics as economics. The current paralysis of the Greek political system demonstrates the point very clearly. EU policy has actively contributed to this crisis by effectively sealing off discussion of the political problems thrown up by austerity.

Budgetary policy is at the core of traditional democratic politics in Europe but the management of the euro zone is increasingly being effected not through democratic institutions but via a centralised and depoliticised form of technocratic fiat. The “stability” narrative has triumphed over the need for legitimacy as the crisis in Europe has deepened.

Ivan Krastev, the eminent political scientist, argues that we have now arrived at a point where national governments have politics but are no longer in control of policy, including budgetary policy, which is moving via the fiscal treaty and other measures to the EU level.

On the other side of this divide the European Union has policies but no politics, since decisions are increasingly being made by technocratic managers rather than directly elected representatives of the European public. The euro zone crisis has thus amplified an existing problem – the absence of both a European citizenry and a transparent European level political process.

The whole thing. Read.

h/t RCW.

So, now it's an imperative to "promote growth."

The joint statement (full text after the jump) from the G-8 meeting near Washington, DC,documents the utter failure of the very leaders who issued it. Were they capable leaders with the least knowledge of economic downturns, the statement would not be necessary. Nevertheless, they deserve some credit for admitting their deficiencies. (Image Banksy)

The joint statement has some weasel words like "We commit to fiscal responsibility" to balance the urgent words about growth and jobs". That reflects the atavistic positions of the austerity faction, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Merkel suffered a huge set back in the Westphalia state elections with her Christian Democratic Party losing 25% to 50%. Corporate media maintains that her popularity as a leader is higher than ever.

Merkel's comrade, PM Cameron is also pushing austerity. Nobody can pretend that his polling is any better than his party. The Conservatives were wiped out in local elections and Cameron is going down without a life jacket.

The closing paragraph is the give away. The urgent need for growth needs to accommodate "the importance of intellectual property rights (IPR) to stimulating job and economic growth" We will regulate our way out of this crisis by taking the Yellow Brick Road to oppressive copyright laws. What a relief! They're serious.

The Guardian's Helena Smith talks to Greek leftist leader Alex Tsipras:

Tsipras, who turns 38 in July, wants me to know that the war is not personal. The enemy is not Berlin, until now the biggest provider of the monumental rescue funds keeping the debt-stricken economy afloat. "It is not between nations and peoples," he says. "On the one side there are workers and a majority of people and on the other are global capitalists, bankers, profiteers on stock exchanges, the big funds. It's a war between peoples and capitalism … and as in each war what happens on the frontline defines the battle. It will be decisive for the war elsewhere."

Greece, he says, has become a model for the rest of Europe because it was the first country to fall victim to the enforcement of hard-hitting "growth through austerity" policies pursued in the name of resolving the crisis.

"It was chosen as the experiment for the enforcement of neo-liberal shock [policies] and Greek people were the guinea pigs," he insists.

"If the experiment continues, it will be considered successful and the policies will be applied in other countries. That's why it is so important to stop the experiment. It will not just be a victory for Greece but for all of Europe."

Even the old capitalist robber-barons understood that the way to get wealthy was to create wealth for all while making sure you kept the lion's share. Neoliberal austerity policies are just asset stripping under a false banner.

Via The Mahablog, here's the TED conference talk from Amazon.com venture capitalist Nick Hanauer that was initially judged too politically hot to release which now everyone is talking about.

And here's the transcript.

I can say with confidence that rich people don't create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a "circle of life" like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me.

So when businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it's a little like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it's the other way around.

Anyone who's ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalists course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it. In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn't just inaccurate, it's disingenuous.

That's why our current policies are so upside down. When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.

So simply explained even your rightwing uncle would get it if he didn't have his fingers in his ears going "la-la-la".

Montpelier, VT | May 17

CNN - Vermont's governor has signed a bill making it the first U.S. state to ban fracking, the controversial practice to extract natural gas from the ground.

"This is a big deal," Gov. Peter Shumlin said Wednesday. "This bill will ensure that we do not inject chemicals into groundwater in a desperate pursuit for energy."

Shumlin said fracking contaminates groundwater and the science behind it is "uncertain at best." He said he hopes other states will follow Vermont's lead in banning it.

Noam Chomsky writes that "The current US economy is built on 'growing worker insecurity' - people who are too busy and poor to make demands," and has a couple of new terms for us.

Plutonomy refers to the rich, those who buy luxury goods and so on, and that's where the action is. They claimed that their plutonomy index was way outperforming the stock market. As for the rest, we set them adrift. We don't really care about them. We don't really need them. They have to be around to provide a powerful state, which will protect us and bail us out when we get into trouble, but other than that they essentially have no function. These days they're sometimes called the "precariat" - people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. Only it's not the periphery anymore. It's becoming a very substantial part of society in the United States and indeed elsewhere. And this is considered a good thing.

Read the whole thing.

Not sure exactly when I said it, but I did predict that Greece would exit the Euro. I also said that it should leave the Euro sooner, rather than later and do so on its own terms. Now elite opinion has decided it's okay for Greece to exit. Mostly because the neoliberals have already raped the economy there. You heard it here first.

One might begin to see the seeds of its decline here:

iMore reports that Google may make four times the ad revenue off of their use in iOS than they do from their own Android platform. Apple wants to change that. Apple has already begun intermediating search queries though Siri, effectively cutting Google out of the valuable identity information associated with those searches. Next up is that other large data components on iOS, maps.

The results of this poll sort of reflect my own feelings and experiences with Facebook:

According to a new AP-CNBC poll, 57 percent of Facebook users say they never click ads or other sponsored content when they use the site, with another 26 percent saying they hardly ever engage in such activity.

While the company makes money, in part, simply by displaying sponsored content, user clicks are a critical part of an advertiser’s calculus when gauging how effective those ads are and how much they’re willing to pay for them. In the first quarter, Facebook generated 82 percent of its $1.06 billion in revenue from advertising sales. In the company’s online IPO pitch to retail investors, CFO David Ebersman says the company is working to make ads “more relevant, more social, and more engaging” as it looks to grow.

Howard Schneider & Anthony Faiola | May 14

WaPo - Political deadlock in Greece rattled world markets Monday, reviving fears that the fractious Mediterranean country could spurn an international bailout, abandon the common European currency and risk a fresh round of world economic turmoil.

European stock indexes fell, with Greece’s market now at a 20-year low, while the euro currency continued a recent decline against the dollar. U.S. stocks also fell.

Raphael Minder | Madrid | May 13

NYT - Tens of thousands of Spaniards took to the streets during the weekend to protest austerity budget cuts and commemorate the anniversary on Tuesday of a movement that inspired other groups on Wall Street and across the Western world.

Over all, protesters gathered in about 80 Spanish cities, but again, one of the biggest turnouts was in Puerta del Sol, the Madrid square that almost a year ago became the center of a nationwide, youth-led movement seeking to overhaul Spain’s political parties and other traditional institutions. About 40,000 people gathered in the square on Saturday evening, while a similar number of protesters rallied in a square in Barcelona.

Tom Braithwaite | New York | May 14

Financial Times - Last week Jamie Dimon was not arrested. JPMorgan Chase was not seized by federal regulators. Emergency laws were not passed by Congress. A grim-faced Barack Obama did not address the nation.

Queues of worried depositors did not form outside Chase branches. Black limousines of Wall Street chief executives did not descend on the Federal Reserve for crisis talks.
...
Yet the reaction to JPMorgan’s $2bn trading losses was nonetheless incendiary

Barack Obama taking on Mitt Romney's abysmal job creation record is a little like critiquing Stalin's abysmal human rights record:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is casting Mitt Romney as a greedy, job-killing corporate titan with little concern for the working class in a new, multi-pronged effort that seeks to undermine the central rationale for his Republican rival's candidacy: his business credentials.

At the center of the push — the president's most forceful attempt yet to sully Romney before the November election — is a biting new TV ad airing Monday that recounts through interviews with former workers the restructuring, and ultimate demise, of a Kansas City, Mo., steel mill under the Republican's private equity firm.

From the Guardian's letters column:

The annual Sunday Times Rich List yields four very important conclusions for the governance of Britain (Report, Weekend, 28 April). It shows that the richest 1,000 persons, just 0.003% of the adult population, increased their wealth over the last three years by £155bn. That is enough for themselves alone to pay off the entire current UK budget deficit and still leave them with £30bn to spare.

Second, this mega-rich elite, containing many of the bankers and hedge fund and private equity operators who caused the financial crash in the first place, have not been made subject to any tax payback whatever commensurate to their gains. Some 77% of the budget deficit is being recouped by public expenditure cuts and benefit cuts, and only 23% is being repaid by tax increases. More than half of the tax increases is accounted for by the VAT rise which hits the poorest hardest. None of the tax increases is specifically aimed at the super-rich.

Third, despite the biggest slump for nearly a century, these 1,000 richest are now sitting on wealth greater even than at the height of the boom just before the crash. Their wealth now amounts to £414bn, equivalent to more than a third of Britain's entire GDP. They include 77 billionaires and 23 others, each possessing more than £750m.

The increase in wealth of this richest 1,000 has been £315bn over the last 15 years. If they were charged capital gains tax on this at the current 28% rate, it would yield £88bn, enough to pay off 70% of the entire deficit. It seems however that Osborne takes the notorious view of the New York heiress, Leonora Helmsley: "Only the little people pay taxes."
Michael Meacher MP
Labour, Oldham West and Royton

Things aren't very much different in the U.S. I wonder just how the collected wealth of the top 0.1%, say, compares to the national debt here.

Douwe Miedema & Sarah White | London | May 11

Reuters - Banks are quietly readying themselves to start trading a new Greek currency. Some banks never erased the drachma from their systems after Greece adopted the euro more than a decade ago and would be ready at the flick of a switch if its debt problems forced it to bring back national banknotes and coins.

From the end of the Soviet Union - which spawned currencies such as the Estonian Kroon and the Kazakh Tenge - to the introduction of the euro, they have had plenty of practice in preparing their systems to cope with change.

Planning behind the scenes has been underway since Europe's debt crisis erupted in Greece in 2009, said U.S.-based Hartmut Grossman of ICS Risk Advisors who works with Wall Street banks.

"A lot of the firms, particularly in Europe and also here, have been looking at that for a long time," said Grossman, who added that the latest Greek political crisis had brought matters "to a little bit of a head".

"But there really has been contingency planning at all of the financial institutions for that to happen ... Greece leaving the euro zone is not a new idea," he said.

Occupying Money.
Thursday, 01 March 2012
by John Merryman
Exterminating Angel Press

While it is natural to explain social issues in the general context to which they relate, the result is usually that the conversation goes in circles or divides into opposing sides. I think that to really peel away the processes at work, we should examine what is going on from the perspective of basic physical processes. As Newton said; “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” We need to understand what compels our actions and what the reactions will be, if we are understand where humanity is going.

continue reading after the jump