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4. People versus Corporations

Dec-02-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: We start big scale, looking at the overthrow of democratically elected leaders and the policies their people voted for in favour of the economic policies banks want. Two medium shots look at fights between people and corporations, the first by by Zellers’ employees, (targeted by Target); the second by New Hampshire residents. And we end with a heart-cheering video of something we’ve all always wanted to do: turn a slew of venomous snakes loose in the office of a bureaucrat who wouldn’t listen. (Not herpetophobic safe!)

* The Markets Distrust Democracy. Jonathan Freedland The Guardian

Democracy’s humbling has been most dramatically visible in Greece and Italy, where elected leaders have been pushed aside in favour of technocrats and fixers, elevated without so much as shaking a single voter’s hand. Their mission will include the surrender of much economic sovereignty, putting those decisions further out of the reach of their own citizens. What Greeks and Italians endure today, other eurozone nations might well face tomorrow as they are told to make similar sacrifices of autonomy to save their economic skin.

Whether in Europe or beyond, democratic leaders have seemed powerless to beat back the engulfing global crisis, the failure of the G20 at Cannes exposing their weakness for all to see. And yet, according to one who was there, the leaders of the world’s authoritarian states – China, Russia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia – had a spring in their step in Cannes, confident that they could face down whatever the economic meltdown threw at them.

… 2011 has punctured the sense of easy supremacy democratic societies used to enjoy. To reassert themselves they might have to break from the rules now choking them, and insist that it is people, not markets, that are sovereign.

* Target Canada Is Going To Fire Zellers Employees At 135 Stores, To Break The Union At 15 Stores. Globe & Mail

Target Corporation is locked in a fight to prevent Zellers employees from maintaining their union status, as the discount giant pushes to keep its costs down for its foray into the competitive Canadian retail field. Target’s blueprint for Canada entails converting about 135 Zellers stores to the Target name by 2013 after letting go all the Zellers employees and starting fresh with newly hired staff – and no union. Currently about 15 of the Zellers stores are unionized. But now, in a test case, the union has applied to the B.C. Labour Relations Board to declare Target as the “successor employer” to Zellers at an outlet in Burnaby, B.C., and keep the employees unionized.

* Unions Beat GOP Candidates as New Hampshire Blocks Anti-Labor Law NationofChange

On Wednesday, after months of wrangling over the issue, the New Hampshire House of Representatives killed a plan promoted by the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council to make New Hampshire a so-called “right-to-work” state. The law was blocked because not just Democrats but almost two dozen Republicans rejected the counsel of presidential candidate Perry — who addressed the legislature Wednesday morning — and voted with organized labor and community groups that rallied to defend collective-bargaining rights.

* Snake Charmer Releases Cobras In Tax Office 2 minute video, via Boing Boing

A snake charmer in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh was angry that the government did not grant him a plot of land to keep his reptiles. So he went into the state’s tax office and released a slew of snakes, including poisonous cobras.

5. European Economic Chaos

Dec-02-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: We start with a closeup on Greece and Spain, then try to look at the overall problem and the proposed solution. (Personal prediction: it won’t work.Countries will pull out of the EU rather than surrender sovereignty.) But Western leaders have less and less power… and that’s when right wing demagogues with simple scapegoating solutions traditionally arise.

* Nearly 50% of the Young People in Greece and Spain Are Unemployed The Atlantic

Why is unemployment in Spain so unbelievably high? Three reasons. Europe is an utter disaster zone. It’s a banking crisis wrapped in a sovereign debt crisis wrapped in a mystery: How the heck do we unwind all of this?
…. While Germany chugs along with 5.5% joblessness, Spain and Greece are battling unemployment around 20%. This year along, those countries’ jobless rates have put on an additional 2% and 3.5%, respectively. Put another way, Greece already suffers from twice the U.S. unemployment rate and most economic observers think the worst is yet to come.

* Eurozone Crisis: European Union Prepares For The ‘Great Leap Forward’ The Observer

November 2011 will be remembered as the month when Italy nearly went under as the bond markets targeted its sovereign debt, when the Greek government came perilously close to exiting the euro altogether, and when France, for five decades in the vanguard of European integration, saw its own economic credibility questioned.

The counter-offensive is to be a risky route march to a form of economic and political union; it is likely to be deep, far-reaching and for many, whether on the political left or right, deeply problematic. Brussels officials will exercise unprecedented powers of intervention over national budgets, tax policies, labour markets. The scrutiny may extend even to a country’s schools, universities and courts. Dissent, whether expressed through referendums, elections or the debating chambers of national parliaments, will have only a limited impact. The direction of travel is non-negotiable. For “Europe” – the idea rather than the geographical entity – it is now or never.

* The Only Power World Leaders Have Is To Frustrate Each Other Andrew Rawnsley The Observer

Forbes magazine has just published its annual list of the “World’s Most Powerful People”. At the top of the supposed premier league is Barack Obama, a man so powerful that he can get almost nothing past an obstructive Congress which will not work with him to address America’s huge problems, never mind those of the rest of world. At number two, Forbes places Vladimir Putin, which strikes me as plain wrong…. Russia has long since surrendered to China its status as America’s principal global rival and its economic strength, such as it is, depends riskily on the price of commodities. At number three is Hu Jintao, the president of China. That sounds more like it, because just about everyone buys into the Rise of the East thesis… Only one Brit makes the Forbes list – David Cameron just scrapes into the top 10. This is not the most patriotic observation I have ever made, but 10th most powerful person in the world is probably over-generous to the prime minister of the United Kingdom.

For some onlookers, the G20 was a snapshot which captured the shift in global economic clout from a declining west to an ascendant east and south…. A symbolic visual image was supplied: the French president waiting on his red carpet for a late-running Dr Hu to turn up. Who then brushed off the plea for help. To look like a supplicant is unfortunate; to be a spurned one is humiliating. China does indeed have a bulging wallet thanks to its enormous reserves of foreign exchange…You can see why the Chinese (average income about $5,000 a year) are reluctant to write a cheque to save the Greeks ($28,000 a year) when the Germans ($40,000) don’t want to pony up any more.

* Far Right On Rise In EuropeThe Guardian

The far right is on the rise across Europe as a new generation of young, web-based supporters embrace hardline nationalist and anti-immigrant groups, a study has revealed ahead of a meeting of politicians and academics in Brussels to examine the phenomenon. Research by the British thinktank Demos for the first time examines attitudes among supporters of the far right online. The study reveals a continent-wide spread of hardline nationalist sentiment among the young, mainly men. Deeply cynical about their own governments and the EU, their generalised fear about the future is focused on cultural identity, with immigration – particularly a perceived spread of Islamic influence – a concern.

The report highlights the prevalence of anti-immigrant feeling, especially suspicion of Muslims. “As antisemitism was a unifying factor for far-right parties in the 1910s, 20s and 30s, Islamophobia has become the unifying factor in the early decades of the 21st century,” said Thomas Klau from the European Council on Foreign Relations, who will speak at Monday’s conference.

8. Black Friday Shopping Tips

Nov-25-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: We’ll start with Adbusters, as today is “Buy Nothing Day”. Not sold on buying nothing? Here are the top 100 highest rated products on Amazon, worth a scan (Vox pop, click shop as the Romans almost said.) Still not sure. Well, what every Tikkunista reader needs is … ok, maybe not every, maybe only a few, or even none. But look at it. Ain’t nothing like it, nowhere.

* Buy Nothing Day + Buy Nothing ChristmasAdbustersCulturejammer Headquarters

You’ve been sleeping on the streets for two months pleading peacefully for a new spirit in economics. And just as your camps are raided, your eyes pepper sprayed and your head’s knocked in, another group of people are preparing to camp-out. Only these people aren’t here to support occupy Wall Street, they’re here to secure their spot in line for a Black Friday bargain at Super Target and Macy’s.

Occupy gave the world a new way of thinking about the fat cats and financial pirates on Wall Street. Now lets give them a new way of thinking about the holidays, about our own consumption habits. Lets’ use the coming 20th annual Buy Nothing Day to launch an all-out offensive to unseat the corporate kings on the holiday throne.

This year’s Black Friday will be the first campaign of the holiday season where we set the tone for a new type of holiday culminating with #OCCUPYXMAS. As the global protests of the 99% against corporate greed and casino capitalism continues, lets take the opportunity to hit the empire where it really hurts…the wallet.

* 100 of Amazon’s best, highest-rated products

* What You Want in BedYoutube 30 seconds

2. The Sticky Issue of the Tar Sands

Nov-18-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: An excellent article from MIT’s Technology Review explores the tar sands issue in intelligent and unbiased (ymmv) detail. Two key points it argues: the question is when and how the development will happen, not if; the Canadian government can control the amount of pollution and carbon released by setting penalties for doing that. At present, there is no penalty for pollution, so it doesn’t make economic sense to invest money in finding ways to reduce it. We follow up with an amusing etymological piece exploring why you may say “oil sands” and I say “tar sands”, and end with Peter Kent, Canada’s environment minister, accusing those who oppose the tar sands of being traitors to Canada.

*Alberta’s Oil Sands Heat Up Technology Review

The question for oil-sands innovators is whether the financial risk of developing new types of in situ technologies will pay off. Cenovus needs a global oil price of just $45 to $50 per barrel to turn a profit on its Christina Lake investments; with prices now above $75 per barrel, it is making good money. In an era of cheap natural gas and pricey oil, Canada’s bitumen producers will need an extra push before they commit billions of dollars to alternatives to mining and SAGD…. Says Heather MacLean, a professor of engineering and public policy at the University of Toronto, “There has to be some type of a policy push … to really motivate the most efficient production and reduction of greenhouse gases and other environmental impacts.” What is needed, she says, is a price on carbon. Two years ago, Alberta introduced a carbon tax of $15 per ton, but that covers only a portion of industrial emissions, and even oil executives dismiss its impact on investments. “It’s in the tens of cents per barrel,” says Zieglgansberger.

* You Say Oil Sands, I Say Tar Sands… OpenFile

Type in “Alberta tar sands” into Google, and you get 852,000 results. Perform a search for “Alberta oil sands” instead, and you end up with 334,000 results—not even half that. And if you change “Alberta” to “Alberta’s,” the gap widens even further.

So why do most media outlets tend to default to the phrase “oil sands”? Is “tar sands” pejorative? Or do both terms carry their own bias?

* Oil Sands Opponents Treacherous: Canadian Environment Minister Reuters

In a sign of the strain the Canadian government is feeling over development of the tar sands, Environment Minister Peter Kent said on Wednesday that opposition legislators who campaigned in Washington against the idea were treacherous…. Much to Kent’s anger, two members of Parliament from the opposition New Democrats went to Washington this week to argue the pipeline should not go ahead until Canada has come up with a better plan to combat climate change. “One of the opposition parties has taken the treacherous course of leaving the domestic debate and heading abroad to attack a legitimate Canadian resource which is being responsibly developed and regulated,” Kent told reporters.

5. OMG! The 1% Aren’t Monolithic!

Nov-18-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: If I have any problem with the OWS movement it would be the attribution of a single set of characteristics to “the 1%”. Some of them are deserving, some are lucky, some are psychotic: Monbiot explores the details. But some want economic justice, and some would pay a lot of money to avoid it. Just another bag of trail mix – some sweet stuff, and some nuts.

* The Self-Attribution Fallacy George Monbiot

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren’t responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves(1). He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers, across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. “The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.” Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.

Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers across Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out they blanked him. “The illusion of skill … is deeply ingrained in their culture.”

* US Millionaires Say ‘Raise Our Taxes’Al Jazeera

Nearly 140 millionaires have asked a divided US congress to increase their taxes for the sake of the nation.

“Please do the right thing, raise our taxes,” the entrepreneurs and business leaders wrote to President Barack Obama and congressional leaders on Wednesday, noting that they benefited from a sound economy and now want others to do so.

The letter was signed by 138 members of “Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength”.

* Koch Brothers: Secretive Billionaires To Launch Vast Database With 2012 In Mind The Guardian

The secretive oil billionaires the Koch brothers are close to launching a nationwide database connecting millions of Americans who share their anti-government and libertarian views, a move that will further enhance the tycoons’ political influence and that could prove significant in next year’s presidential election.

The database will give concrete form to the vast network of alliances that David and Charles Koch have cultivated over the past 20 years on the right of US politics. The brothers, whose personal wealth has been put at $25bn each, were a major force behind the creation of the tea party movement and enjoy close ties to leading conservative politicians, financiers, business people, media figures and US supreme court judges.

3. Our Economic Death Spiral

Nov-11-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Leonard Cohen sang it, “Your servant here, he has been told to say it clear, to say it cold: It’s over, it ain’t going any further.” Unless there is unenvisioned and unprecedented major structural change in the US, the economy isn’t coming back. The Eurozone may be breaking up, as it becomes clearer that its expectations are unreachable.That Eurocrisis shows where the new economic power lies: look at the change in “percentage of world GDP” on the linked chart over the next 40 years. North America 26% => 10%, Europe 28% => 10%, Developing Asia 18% => 46%.

* Ten Million Families Sliding Toward Foreclosure Counterpunch

Of the 55-million families with mortgages, 10.4-million of them “are sliding toward failure and foreclosure”—a tragedy that will depress the U.S. housing market for years to come, a result of too many houses for sale and too few buyers. That’s the blunt conclusion of distinguished economics journalist William Greider… “The more housing supply exceeds demand, the more prices fall. The more prices fall, the more families get sucked into the deep muddy. The vicious cycle is known in the industry as the death spiral. So far, there’s no end in sight.” Greider says the solution is to forgive the debtors: “Write down the principal they owe on their mortgage to match the current market value of their home, so they will no longer be underwater. Refinance the loan with a reduced interest rate, so the monthly payment is at a level that the struggling homeowner can handle.

* European Debt Crisis Spiralling Out Of Control The Guardian

Fears that Europe’s sovereign debt crisis was spiralling out of control have intensified as political chaos in Athens and Rome, and looming recession, created panic on world markets. Reports emerging from Brussels said that Germany and France had begun preliminary talks on a break-up of the eurozone, amid fears that Italy would be too big to rescue. Despite Silvio Berlusconi’s announcement that he would step down as prime minister once austerity measures were pushed through parliament, a collapse of investor confidence in the eurozone’s third-biggest economy sent interest rates in Italy to the levels that triggered bailouts in Portugal, Greece and Ireland.

* How the Eurocrisis laid bare world’s new economic order The Observer

The French Riviera in November conjures up images of ageing playboys eking out the last rays of autumn sunshine on the Croisette over a pastis. So it may be fitting that Nicolas Sarkozy has chosen Cannes as the venue for this week’s G20 summit, where the fading power of Europe’s old world economies will be thrown into sharp relief by the nouveau riche arrivistes from China, India and Brazil.

Sarkozy’s humiliating call to Beijing last week, asking if the Chinese would care to invest in the European financial stability facility, the huge euro bailout fund, was portrayed within China as grovelling. Guido Mantegna, Brazil’s finance minister, rapidly issued a statement saying his country had no intention of taking part.

* Graphic Of Predicted Change In World Economies Over Next 40 Years

4. OWS: How we Got here, Where We’re Going

Nov-11-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Certain things are clearer from the bird’s perspective, such as that the protests world-wide in the occupy movement, and the protests called the “Arab Spring” and the protests in Tel-Aviv are all focussed on the same thing: the policies that have lead to the extreme concentration of wealth. Juan Cole looks at the commonalities; ex-NY Gov. Spitzer looks at where OWS needs to go from here, and we end with a cheering and true story about a protester and his confrontation with the Man.

* From Tunisia to Oakland, How a New Age of Activism Was Born Juan ColeMother Jones

From Tunis to Tel Aviv, Madrid to Oakland, a new generation of youth activists is challenging the neoliberal state that has dominated the world ever since the Cold War ended. The massive popular protests that shook the globe this year have much in common, though most of the reporting on them in the mainstream media has obscured the similarities.

Whether in Egypt or the United States, young rebels are reacting to a single stunning worldwide development: the extreme concentration of wealth in a few hands thanks to neoliberal policies of deregulation and union busting. They have taken to the streets, parks, plazas, and squares to protest against the resulting corruption, the way politicians can be bought and sold, and the impunity of the white-collar criminals who have run riot in societies everywhere. They are objecting to high rates of unemployment, reduced social services, blighted futures, and above all the substitution of the market for all other values as the matrix of human ethics and life.

* Occupy Wall Street: Eight Ideas For Making The Protests Even More Successful. Eliot Spitzer Slate Magazine

Those of us who have written and spoken vigorously in support of OWS and for its capacity, almost unparalleled in today’s political environment, to shift our political focus, have an obligation to contribute our answers to the question of what OWS should do. We should answer not because there is any reason for this organic movement—which has done just fine without advice from outsiders—to listen to any of the advice rendered, but because it will help those of us outside the movement clarify our own political ideas. So here are my answers:

From an organizing perspective, OWS should…

* “He has a right to speak,” said the cop to the banker Daily Kos

Like most bullies, the banks are cowards. They talk a big game, but if confronted with their crimes, they run for cover and go whining to “mommy”. Today, I walked up and down a sidewalk, in front of a branch of Chase and a branch of BofA. I handed out about 250 flyers during lunch hour.

They panicked and called their private security people, then more private security and finally the cops. That’s when they found out that they didn’t have a leg to stand on.

5. Life at the Very Top

Nov-11-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Here’s your factoid of the week: What is the ratio of wealth in the US in households headed by people 65 or older, to households headed by people 35 or younger? What do you think? Twice as much? Four times as much? Get a number clear in your mind before the end of this paragraph. Paul Krugman looks at the rise of oligarchy in the US, the Guardian illuminates that it’s just the same in the UK, and Ursula Le Guin meditates on the metaphor of endless growth, and why it’s a really bad image to have for our future. The answer: in 1984 that ratio was 10:1. Today it’s 47:1 ($170,494 to $3,662.)

* Oligarchy, American StylePaul Krugman,New York Times

We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only.

….So who is getting the big gains? A very small, wealthy minority. The budget office report tells us that essentially all of the upward redistribution of income away from the bottom 80 percent has gone to the highest-income 1 percent of Americans. That is, the protesters who portray themselves as representing the interests of the 99 percent have it basically right, and the pundits solemnly assuring them that it’s really about education, not the gains of a small elite, have it completely wrong.

If anything, the protesters are setting the cutoff too low. The recent budget office report doesn’t look inside the top 1 percent, but an earlier report, which only went up to 2005, found that almost two-thirds of the rising share of the top percentile in income actually went to the top 0.1 percent — the richest thousandth of Americans, who saw their real incomes rise more than 400 percent over the period from 1979 to 2005.

* Business As UsualThe Independent

The directors of Britain’s largest companies were last night condemned as “elite greedy pigs” for pocketing a 49 per cent pay rise in the past year, while average workers failed even to keep up with inflation. Unions exploded with fury after the publication of figures that showed how boardroom pay soared in the last financial year, thanks to rising salaries, bonuses and in particular the swelling value of directors’ long-term share plans.

* Clinging Desperately to a MetaphorUrsula Le Guin

Up to a point, growth is a plausible metaphor. Living things need to grow, first to their optimum size, and then to keep replacing what wears out, annually (as with many plants) or continually (as with mammalian skin). A baby to grows to adult size, after which growth goes to maintaining stability, homeostasis, balance. Growth much beyond that leads to obesity. For a baby to grow endlessly bigger would be first monstrous, then fatal.

In taking uncontrolled, unlimited, unceasing growth as the only recipe for economic health, we’ve dismissed the ideas of optimum size and keeping the organism in balance.

Maybe there are organisms that have no optimum size, like the enormous fungal network one hears about that underlies the whole Middle West, or is it just Wisconsin? But I wonder if a fungus wandering around thousands of square miles underground is the most promising model for a human economy.

7. Political Humour

Nov-11-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Sometimes political humour is written by professionals, Jon Stewart or the Onion crew. Sometimes it springs up from the politicians. We start with a must-see video, Rick Perry forgetting his lines in front of the camera. The New Yorker, which reviews the whole debate, is appropriately scathing in its comments. In Australia, The Hamster Wheel, accuses right-wing looney Chris Monckton of being Sacha Ben Cohen, to his confusion and amazement. And Rick Borowitz channels Goldman Sachs, most effectively

* Watch Rick Perry’s Campaign End Before Your Eyes YouTube

* Pop Goes Perry The New Yorker

With Europe in chaos, Wall Street having another conniption, and global capitalism again on the brink, light relief is badly needed. Once more, last night, the Republican Presidential candidates didn’t let us down.To begin with, of course, there was Rick Perry’s mental blackout, the tape of which [is above] But that was more snuff video than comedic entertainment…. As the Texas governor stood there abjectly, trying to recall the third federal agency he would shutter in addition to the Departments of Commerce and Education, I actually turned away from the screen, begging for somebody to put him out of his misery…. It was left to John Harwood, the CNBC co-host, to administer the fatal dose. “You can’t name the third one,” he asked. Perry looked down at some notes but still couldn’t answer. “I can’t, sorry,” he said. A ghastly smiled crossed his face. “Oops,” he whispered.

* What If Christopher Monckton Was Really A Long-Running Sacha Baron Cohen Character? Boingboing

Australian comedy-news program The Hamster Wheel covers archconservative British politician Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, a Thatcherite climate denier, and former editor for The Sunday Telegraph and other right-wing papers. The Hamster Wheel decides that Monckton (who once advocated confining people with AIDS to lifetime quarantine) must actually be a long-running Sacha Baron Cohen (“Bruno,” “Borat”) character and makes a compelling case to him that this must be so.

* A Letter from Goldman Sachs Andy Borowitz (Thanks, Dave)

Dear Investor:

Up until now, Goldman Sachs has been silent on the subject of the protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street. That does not mean, however, that it has not been very much on our minds. As thousands have gathered in Lower Manhattan, passionately expressing their deep discontent with the status quo, we have taken note of these protests. And we have asked ourselves this question:

How can we make money off them?

The answer is the newly launched Goldman Sachs Global Rage Fund, whose investment objective is to monetize the Occupy Wall Street protests as they spread around the world. At Goldman, we recognize that the capitalist system as we know it is circling the drain – but there’s plenty of money to be made on the way down

2. Greece: The Attraction of Going Bankrupt

Nov-04-2011 | Comments (1)

Bird’s Eye: We hate covering breaking stories, but here we are on deadline. A number of commentators have observed that leaving the EU and going bankrupt might be far better for Greece than accepting the EU offer. (Steve Ball, the Guardian editorial cartoonist, sums it up brilliantly and scatologically, here). We look at Argentina and Iceland, both of which refused to honour their debts, both of which prospered as a result.

* Bailout plan will sink GreeceToronto Star

Prime Minister George Papandreou is correct to put the European Union bailout package to a vote…. European leaders never came to terms with the fact that the euro, even if left to float to find a market value against foreign currencies, would be overvalued for some jurisdictions — leaving businesses unable to compete and wages too high to generate adequate exports, as in Spain, Portugal, southern Italy and Greece. Similarly, it would be undervalued for others — creating hypercompetitive enterprises able to offer their workers the very best benefits and short work weeks, as in Germany…. Mediterranean governments coped by borrowing too much. Now that string has run out and austerity is not enough to pay off all they owe. The bailout packages simply won’t work without draconian consequences.

…This is simply too draconian compared to the other way out — readopting the drachma, remarking sovereign and private debt to the reinstituted national currency, and letting the value of the drachma fall to levels consistent with a trade surplus that permits Greece to service its debts.

* Euro Referendum: Papandreou Is Right to Let the Greeks DecideDer Spiegel

Regardless how the referendum’s question is eventually worded, the Greeks will be voting on whether their country will remain in the euro zone or leave the single currency. The government could ask its citizens a very direct question: “Do you want to continue using the euro or go back to the drachma?”

How can Papandreou do this? It’s asking the same people who riot against his policies! It is already clear what the outcome will be! Such were the instant reactions to the prime minister’s announcement.

This was especially true as, up till now, the biggest fear of the other euro-zone members was that Greece would say goodbye to the currency. The formula for European apocalypse goes something like this: First Greece drops out, then Portugal and Spain fall, and then Italy pushes the single currency over the cliff. If they’re lucky, all that will remain is a northern European euro mini-zone. No question, this danger exists if the Greeks say no to Brussels’ decisions. Papandreou is going all in. Nevertheless, his decision is correct for several reasons.

* It Worked for Argentina Mark Weisbrot Guardian

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner coasted to re-election as president of Argentina on Sunday,

Yes, it’s the economy. Since Argentina defaulted on $95bn of international debt nine years ago and blew off the International Monetary Fund, the economy has done remarkably well. For the years 2002-2011, using the IMF’s projections for the end of this year, Argentina has chalked up real GDP growth of about 94%. This is the fastest economic growth in the western hemisphere – about twice that of Brazil, for example, which has also improved enormously over past performance.

Greece, in particular, whose economy is shrinking at a 5% annual rate while it waits for the European authorities to restructure its debt, would have to consider that it might be better off going the Argentine route. It sure worked for Argentina.

* It Worked for Iceland Paul Krugman New York Times

But a funny thing happened on the way to economic Armageddon: Iceland’s very desperation made conventional behavior impossible, freeing the nation to break the rules. Where everyone else bailed out the bankers and made the public pay the price, Iceland let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net. Where everyone else was fixated on trying to placate international investors, Iceland imposed temporary controls on the movement of capital to give itself room to maneuver.

So how’s it going? Iceland hasn’t avoided major economic damage or a significant drop in living standards. But it has managed to limit both the rise in unemployment and the suffering of the most vulnerable; the social safety net has survived intact, as has the basic decency of its society. “Things could have been a lot worse” may not be the most stirring of slogans, but when everyone expected utter disaster, it amounts to a policy triumph.

And there’s a lesson here for the rest of us: The suffering that so many of our citizens are facing is unnecessary. If this is a time of incredible pain and a much harsher society, that was a choice. It didn’t and doesn’t have to be this way.

4. Looking at the 1%

Nov-04-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Why does it matter if a few people are rich? Isn’t this 1% thing just bitching by people who weren’t good enough to make it to the top? Uh, no. We start with a wonderful TED talk that looks at the demonstrable effects on countries of increasing income inequality. This is a must see video. Der Spiegel speculates on whether the US is an oligarchy, and the New York Times exposes just how low Citigroup was willing to go in search of profits. And we lighten it up with the opening cut from the new Ry Cooder album, a fine political sing along.

* How Economic Inequality Harms Societies Richard Wilkinson TED Talks

We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.

Editor’s note: A wonderful 15 minute talk. Too long for you? Look then at this one chart which is the nutgraf

* The Second Gilded Age: Has America Become an Oligarchy?Thomas Schulz Der Spiegel

“We are the 99 percent,” is the continuing chant of the protestors, who are now in their seventh week of marching through the streets of Manhattan. And, surprisingly, they have hit upon the crux of America’s problems with precisely this sentence. …Inequality in America is greater than it has been in almost a century. Those fortunate enough to belong to the 1 percent, made up of the super-rich, stand on one side of the divide; the remaining 99 percent on the other. Even for a country that has always accepted opposite extremes as part of its identity, the chasm has simply grown too vast.

Those who succeed in the US are congratulated rather than berated. Resenting other people’s wealth is viewed as supporting class struggle, which is something very frowned upon.

Still, statistics indicate that the growing disparity is genuinely overwhelming. In fact, the 400 wealthiest Americans now own more than the “lower” 150 million Americans put together. Nearly two-thirds of net private assets are concentrated in the hands of 5 percent of Americans.

Writer Mark Twain coined the phrase “the Gilded Age” to describe that period of rapid growth, a time when the dazzling exterior of American life actually concealed mass unemployment, poverty and a society ripped in two. Economists and political scientists believe the US has entered a new Gilded Age, a period of systematic inequality dominated by a new class of super-rich. The only difference is that, this time around, the super-rich are hedge fund managers and financial magnates instead of oil and rail barons.

* Did You Hear the One About the Bankers? Thomas Friedman New York Times

Citigroup had to pay a $285 million fine to settle a case in which, with one hand, Citibank sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers — securities that it knew were likely to go bust — and, with the other hand, shorted the same securities — that is, bet millions of dollars that they would go bust.

It doesn’t get any more immoral than this. As the Securities and Exchange Commission civil complaint noted, in 2007, Citigroup exercised “significant influence” over choosing $500 million of the $1 billion worth of assets in the deal, and the global bank deliberately chose collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, built from mortgage loans almost sure to fail. According to The Wall Street Journal, the S.E.C. complaint quoted one unnamed C.D.O. trader outside Citigroup as describing the portfolio as resembling something your dog leaves on your neighbor’s lawn. “The deal became largely worthless within months of its creation,” The Journal added. “As a result, about 15 hedge funds, investment managers and other firms that invested in the deal lost hundreds of millions of dollars, while Citigroup made $160 million in fees and trading profits.”

* No Banker Left Behind Ry Cooder

An ode to those who were spared from the financial crisis, and the opening song from a powerfully political album from one of America’s greatest musicians. You’ll be singing along by the second chorus….while watching a clever video collage scroll by

2. The Future of OWS

Oct-28-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Now what? The Occupy movement has taped into a deep vein of anger around the world at the plutocracy. That much is clear to almost everyone, except maybe 1%. But how will that change anything? We have four answers: the increasingly fine Salon magazine analyzes the movement’s future, NY Mag views it through the focal lens of class warfare; Ratigan’s rant shows how the perspectives of the OWS movement are entering public discourse, and the Onion makes you cry, as onions do.

* The future of Occupy: Four key questions Salon

After a little more than a month of explosive growth, there’s a growing sense that Occupy Wall Street is at a crossroads. “The first phase of this movement has peaked. And now it gets interesting,” says Kalle Lasn, editor of Adbusters, the magazine that issued the original call for a Sept. 17 protest on Wall Street. “The original magic of some of those general assemblies is wearing a little thin in some — though not all — places. And winter is coming. People are wondering whether they want to hang around for three hours talking about protocol.”

With its decentralized structure, it’s impossible to predict where the Occupy movement might end up. But we can at least identify the questions that will determine its future.

Can the movement move from tactic to strategy?

Can Occupy’s decentralized structure be effective in the long term?

Will the occupations survive the winter?

Can public and media interest be sustained?

* The Class War Has Begun NY Magazine

What’s as intriguing as Occupy Wall Street itself is that once again our Establishment, left, right, and center, did not see the wave coming or understand what it meant as it broke. Maybe it’s just human nature and the power of denial, or maybe it’s a stubborn strain of all-American optimism, but at each aftershock since the fall of Lehman Brothers, those at the top have preferred not to see what they didn’t want to see. And so for the first three weeks, the protests were alternately ignored, patronized, dismissed, and insulted by politicians and the mainstream news media as a neo-Woodstock for wannabe collegiate rebels without a cause—and not just in Fox-land. CNN’s new prime-time hopeful, Erin Burnett, ridiculed the protesters as bongo-playing know-nothings; a dispatch in The New Republic called them “an unfocused rabble of ragtag discontents.” Those who did express sympathy for Occupy Wall Street tended to pat it on the head before going on to fault it for being leaderless, disorganized, and inchoate in its agenda. These efforts to domesticate and contain the protests are unlikely to succeed. It is not frustration that’s roiling America but anger, the anger of a full-fledged class war. Try as polite company keeps trying to ignore it, that war has been building in this country and abroad for much of this decade and has been waged in earnest in America since the fall of 2008.

* Dylan Ratigan Loses It On Air YouTube

In a conversation with a show panel about the country’s debt and credit downgrade, MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan passionately calls both the Democratic and Republican economic plans, “reckless, irresponsible and stupid.”

* Nation Waiting For Protesters To Clearly Articulate Demands Before Ignoring Them The Onion

“The protesters need to unify around a shared agenda with precise policy goals so I can begin paying no attention to them whatsoever,” said Tulsa, OK poll respondent Kaye Petrachonis, echoing the thoughts of millions across the country. “If they don’t have a clear power structure organized around specific demands first, then I’ll never be able to completely tune them out due to a political conflict of interest or an inability to comprehend complex, detailed economic concepts. These people really need to get their act together.”

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4. People versus Corporations

5. European Economic Chaos

8. Black Friday Shopping Tips

2. The Sticky Issue of the Tar Sands

5. OMG! The 1% Aren’t Monolithic!

3. Our Economic Death Spiral

4. OWS: How we Got here, Where We’re Going

5. Life at the Very Top

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2. Greece: The Attraction of Going Bankrupt

4. Looking at the 1%

2. The Future of OWS

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