". . . a republic, if you can keep it."
Eurozone finance ministers are holding talks in Brussels aimed at securing a second vital bailout for Greece. France’s Finance Minister Francois Baroin has said all the elements are in place for a deal.
Nick Dunbar, author of The Devil’s Derivatives, revealed how the country turned to investment bank Goldman Sachs for help getting around the deficit rules.
This well-meaning man, despite his degree in economic is wrong in a number of ways. Money is not evil. Only being FORCED to use a particular type of money is evil.
Money allows fr the division of labor. Without the division of labor, we are destitute, and must endure poverty as this man does. It is only mitigated by the huge amount of wealth around him which he benefits from in a variety of ways.
Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, who is being sued in California by the federal government, said she has a duty to not pay taxes because her son died in what she called an “immoral” war.
An Internal Revenue Service officer, in a federal filing Tuesday in Sacramento, said Sheehan has refused to provide financial information for the 2005 and 2006 tax years. The filing asks the court to order Sheehan to comply.
Sheehan, of Vacaville, told CNN affiliate KXTV she has not paid federal incomes taxes since 2004 — and has not disguised the fact.
“I feel like I gave my son to this country in an illegal and immoral war. I’ll never get him back,” Sheehan said. “And, so, if they can give me my son back, then I’ll pay my taxes. And that’s not going to happen.” (Read more)
The economic war is now in full swing. I fear the kinetic war will begin soon.
Swift, the body that handles global banking transactions, says it will cut Iran’s banks out of the system on Saturday to enforce sanctions.
The move will isolate Iran financially by making it almost impossible for money to flow in and out of the country via official banking channels.
It will hit its oil industry, but may also have a heavy impact on Iranians who live abroad and send money home.
The move follows EU sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme. (Read more)
Statement from SWIFT: Following an EU Council decision, SWIFT is today announcing it has been instructed to discontinue its communications services to Iranian financial institutions that are subject to European sanctions.
The new European Council decision, as confirmed by the Belgian Treasury, prohibits companies such as SWIFT to continue to provide specialised financial messaging services to EU-sanctioned Iranian banks. SWIFT is incorporated under Belgian law and has to comply with this decision as confirmed by its home country government.
Markets do not correct their own excesses. Either there is too much demand or too little. This is what the economist John Maynard Keynes explained to the world, except that he is not listened to by some people in Germany. But Keynes explained it very well — when there is a deficiency of demand, you have to use public policy to stimulate the economy.
In the rest of the interview, I think he says that Germany should bailout the Euro Zone, but as is usually the case with Keynsians, it isn’t completely clear.
This borrowing adds to the national debt, which has recently surpassed $15 trillion and is rising every second. The amount of debt is quickly approaching the federal debt ceiling, a legal limit to borrowing that currently stands at $16.4 trillion.
Much of that debt is held by private sector, but about 40 percent is held by public entities, including parts of the government. Here’s who owns the most. Foreign countries listed include private and public investors, according to monthly U.S. Treasury data.
1. Federal Reserve and Intragovernmental Holdings
U.S. debt holdings: $6.328 trillion
. . . .
2. China
U.S. debt holdings: $1.132 trillion
. . . .
3. Other Investors/Savings Bonds
U.S. debt holdings $1.107 trillion
With the most recent numbers from June 2011, this extremely diverse group includes individuals, government-sponsored enterprises, brokers and dealers, bank personal trusts, estates, savings bonds, corporate and noncorporate businesses for a total of $1.107 trillion.
. . . .
4. Japan
U.S. debt holdings: $1.038 trillion
. . . .
5. Pension Funds
U.S. debt holdings: $842.2 billion
. . . .
6. Mutual Funds
U.S. debt holdings: $653.5 billion
. . . .
7. State and Local Governments
U.S. debt holdings: $484.4 billion
. . . .
8. The United Kingdom
U.S. debt holdings: $429.4 billion
. . . .
9. Depository Institutions
U.S. debt holdings: $284.5 billion
. . . .
10. Insurance Companies
U.S. debt holdings: $250.1 billion
The question is crystal clear. The explanation is rambling and full of obfuscation.
1) His statements are vague and rambling. What I hear him saying is: “everything sucks, so you need me (and people who think like me) to set up a benign dictatorship.” He does not explain WHY things suck. That’s where I can educated him.
2) He speaks from two typical paradigms: profits and business vs. workers, and white vs. black. The first is Marxism the second is cultural Marxism, which, as a Ukrainian, I’m largely immune to :).
Both see not individual human beings but only “classes” — a vague, never-defined term at the center Marxism. There is no solidaridy within any class. Everybody struggles to be the best employer, the best customer, the best worker. Look closely, and his paradigm falls apart.
3) Inequality. Only if you accept the Marxist paradigm of class war, and stop seeing people as individuals can you make inequality a leading issue.
Rallying behind the idea of inequality is dangerous for three reasons: it calls for state-sponsored violence as a equalizing force, it inspires emotions useful to politicians — jealousy and hatred, it is impossible — thus lending it to what Lenin called “permanent revolution.”
No society in the history of the world has ever improved itself by taking money from one “class” of people and giving it to another. Many who’ve tried it turned into gigantic meat grinders. The Cambodian attempts at an agrarian based communist society slaughtered almost 1/3rd of the population.
Don’t believe the leftist claim that they simply didn’t do it right, and that we need to try again.
Inequality is also a very, very small price to pay for liberty and prosperity. Without exception, conditions for poor people have been best in the countries with the free-est economies.
4) He, quickly and loosely, attributes our economic crisis to freedom. Bullshit. The economic crisis was caused by inflating the monetary supply, a long history of bailouts which enouraged recklessness, and laws which **** REQUIRED **** banks to make bad loans. The only regulation that works is the free market regulation of letting people go the hell bankrupt when they’re irresponsible.
5) Quickly and loosely, he says that the people want gov’t insurance and that it’s opposed by big pharma and big insurance companies. I don’t want gov’t insurance. Don’t I count? I’ll remind you that one of the first things Obamacare did was REQUIRE people to buy medical insurance. That’s not exactly sticking it to the insurance industry. And no, finding a better, stronger, kinder, more benevolent dictator will not work. The search for one is called “the road to serfdom.”
6) His faith in democracy is charming. Reminds me of when I was a child.
7) When the hell were intellectuals on the side of free markets? It’s always been a heterodox movement.
The signs of better times are easy to spot downtown: the picturesque marina on the San Joaquin Delta, the gleaming waterfront sports arena, and the handsome high-rise that was meant to house a new city hall. But those symbols are now bitter reminders of how bad things are here today: on Tuesday this city of almost 300,000 moved a step closer to becoming the nation’s largest city to declare bankruptcy.
During a contentious meeting that stretched late into the night, the City Council decided, nearly unanimously, to begin mediation with public employee unions and major bond creditors in what is widely seen as the city’s last-ditch attempt to restructure its finances outside of bankruptcy.
. . . .
The city has already drastically cut back municipal staff, including the Police and Fire Departments. With nearly 100 fewer police officers than there were just four years ago, many residents fret about rising crime rates; there were 58 murders last year, an all-time high for the city.
. . . .
Stockton, about an 80-mile drive east of San Francisco, boomed a decade ago, as eager buyers from Silicon Valley bought up homes in the area. But in the past several years, housing values have plummeted, and the city has steadily had one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country.
During the boom times, the city eagerly began development projects to improve the area, transforming the waterfront and refurbishing several buildings that had fallen into disrepair. City officials lured a Sacramento restaurateur to open an upscale bistro, in part by offering space in a historic downtown building rent-free for five years. But the restaurant struggled and closed after just two years, and the space has sat empty and shuttered for the past year.
In 2007, after Washington Mutual shut down operations in an eight-story building here, the city bought the space for $35 million, reasoning that the price was a bargain, less than the cost of construction. Officials planned to move out of the crumbling old City Hall building and into the Washington Mutual building, but it soon became clear that the city did not have the money for the move. (Read more)
Elections were brought forward to April 2009, resulting in a left-wing coalition which condemned the neoliberal economic system, but immediately gave in to its demands that Iceland pay off a total of three and a half million Euros. This required each Icelandic citizen to pay 100 Euros a month (or about $130) for fifteen years, at 5.5% interest, to pay off a debt incurred by private parties vis a vis other private parties. It was the straw that broke the reindeer’s back.
What happened next was extraordinary. The belief that citizens had to pay for the mistakes of a financial monopoly, that an entire nation must be taxed to pay off private debts was shattered, transforming the relationship between citizens and their political institutions and eventually driving Iceland’s leaders to the side of their constituents. The Head of State, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, refused to ratify the law that would have made Iceland’s citizens responsible for its bankers’ debts, and accepted calls for a referendum.
Of course the international community only increased the pressure on Iceland. Great Britain and Holland threatened dire reprisals that would isolate the country. As Icelanders went to vote, foreign bankers threatened to block any aid from the IMF. The British government threatened to freeze Icelander savings and checking accounts. As Grimsson said: “We were told that if we refused the international community’s conditions, we would become the Cuba of the North. But if we had accepted, we would have become the Haiti of the North.” (How many times have I written that when Cubans see the dire state of their neighbor, Haiti, they count themselves lucky.)
In the March 2010 referendum, 93% voted against repayment of the debt. The IMF immediately froze its loan. But the revolution (though not televised in the United States), would not be intimidated. With the support of a furious citizenry, the government launched civil and penal investigations into those responsible for the financial crisis. Interpol put out an international arrest warrant for the ex-president of Kaupthing, Sigurdur Einarsson, as the other bankers implicated in the crash fled the country. (Read more)
Too bad Tom Wood’s Meltdown wasn’t on the list, nor was any Austrian explanation.
A while back, the MIT economist Andrew Lo set out to review a couple books about the financial crisis. Those books led to a couple more books, which led — you see where this is going — to 17 more books.
Now, Lo is about to publish “Reading About The Financial Crisis: A 21-Book Review” (PDF).
Reading 21 books about the financial crisis does not sound, on its face, like a fun experience. After you talk to Lo, it sounds even worse.
“After each book, I felt like I knew less,” he told me. “For an academic, that’s a pretty frustrating feeling.”
Lo read widely. Idea books by economists, newsy books by journalists. An 800-year history of financial crises. (The full list is on pp. 4-5 of the review.) (Read more)