Parkinson’s ‘linked with solvent’ BBC
Antihunger Campaign Forgoes Images of Starving Children New York Times. Huh? I suppose this is product differentiation.
Putting the Brakes on Web-Surfing Speeds New York Times (hat tip reader furzy mouse)
How the US Justice Department legally hacked my Twitter account Guardian (hat tip reader May S)
Andrew Bacevich, The Passing of the Postwar Era TomDispatch (hat tip reader Aquifer)
Bundesbank warns against intervention Financial Times
Pressure on the ECB grows as Mario Monti rides to rescue Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Telegraph
Eurozone, why did we bother FT Alphaville
Standard & Poor’s shoots France in the head, then says it’s sorry. Time for a duel. FireDogLake (hat tip reader Carol B
The only way to save the eurozone from collapse Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times
Cities Hit as Funds From Bonds Pay Other Bills Wall Street Journal
It’s Recall Time for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Mother Jones
Deficit Panel Seeks to Defer Details on Raising Taxes New York Times
Dealing With the Budget Deficit: Does the Middle Class Have to Take the Hit? Dean Baker
Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal Los Angeles Times (hat tip reader 1 SK)
Occupy Wall Street plans NYSE shutdown Crains New York (hat tip reader furzy mouse)
The Bidding of the Many, Not the Few: APEC Gets Occupied and Serenaded Common Dreams (hat tip reader Aquifer. See the song performed here.
The Global Super Rich Stash: Now $25 Trillion Nation of Change (hat tip reader RC)
BofA Says Regulators May Limit Transfer of Merrill Derivatives Bloomberg. Maybe shutting the barn door after most of the horses have left.
Fears rise over banks’ capital tinkering Financial Times
Antidote du jour:
67 comments
Comments are closed.
That reminds me; need to get peanuts for the squirrels before they invade again.
why is your new banner a boa advertisement? None of your readers will click the ad, and most would never use as boa service. it seems they are wasting their (actually our)money on extremely poor ad placement.
1. I don’t sell these ads, my ad service does. And what ad you get served depends on a lot of things (for instance, where you are located, how often you visit the site in a day)
2. Only Google ads are click through ads (in terms of payment structure)
3. It is sort of annoying to see them, but the flip side it is sort of funny that the TBTF banks are contributing to the upkeep of this site.
It’s the dark heart of Britain, the place where democracy goes to die, immensely powerful, equally unaccountable. But I doubt that one in ten British people has any idea of what the Corporation of the City of London is and how it works. This, at last, could be about to change. Alongside the Church of England, the Corporation is seeking to evict the protesters camped outside St Paul’s cathedral. The protesters, in turn, have demanded that it submit to national oversight and control(1).
What is this thing? Ostensibly it’s the equivalent of a local council, responsible for a small area of London known as the Square Mile. But, as its website boasts, “among local authorities the City of London is unique”(2). You bet it is. There are 25 electoral wards in the Square Mile. In four of them, the 9,000 people who live within its boundaries are permitted to vote. In the remaining 21, the votes are controlled by corporations, mostly banks and other financial companies. The bigger the business, the bigger the vote: a company with ten workers gets two votes, the biggest employers, 79(3). It’s not the workers who decide how the votes are cast, but the bosses, who “appoint” the voters(4). Plutocracy, pure and simple.
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/10/31/wealth-destroyers/
Skippy…barf.
If you go to Tim Worstall’s blog you’ll see people mocking the inaccurate Moonbat.
http://timworstall.com/2011/11/01/george-on-the-city/#more-27917
Get some historical facts.
Local authority role
Local government legislation often makes special provision for the City to be treated as a London borough and for the Common Council to act as a local authority. The Corporation does not have general authority over the Middle Temple and the Inner Temple, two of the Inns of Court adjoining the west of the City which are historic extra-parochial areas, but many statutory functions of the Corporation are extended into these two areas.
The Chief Executive of the administrative side of the Corporation holds the ancient office of Town Clerk of London.
An attempt at reform was made, intending to amalgamate the corporation with the local government structures serving the rest of London at the end of the 19th century. A Royal Commission on the Amalgamation of the City and County of London reported a mechanism for this to be achieved in 1894. However, this proposed reform failed. The City also avoided major modernising in the London Government Act 1963, where it the was the only one of the 33 London local authorities not to be a London Borough.
[edit] Elections
The City of London Corporation was not reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, nor by subsequent legislation, and with time has become increasingly anomalous. In 1801 the City had a population of about 130,000, but increasing development of the City as a central business district led to this falling to below 5,000 after the Second World War.[7] It has risen slightly to around 9,000 since, largely due to the development of the Barbican Estate.
Therefore the non-residential vote (or business vote), which had been abolished in the rest of the country in 1969, became an increasingly large part of the electorate. The non-residential vote system used disfavoured incorporated companies. The City of London (Ward Elections) Act 2002 greatly increased the business franchise, allowing many more businesses to be represented. In 2009 the business vote was about 24,000, greatly exceeding residential voters.[8]
[edit] Business votes
The City has come under criticism for the determining role of “undemocratic” business votes, which have been compared to the slavery franchise of chattel owners in the American South.[9] International banks and similar interests have around 24,000 votes, dwarfing the residents’ 8,000 votes.[8] Tax justice campaigner Nicholas Shaxson said: “Voting would reflect the wishes not of the City’s 300,000 workers, but of corporate managements. So Goldman Sachs and the People’s Bank of China would get to vote”.[9] Journalist George Monbiot complained: “It’s not the workers who decide how the votes are cast, but the bosses, who “appoint” the voters. Plutocracy, pure and simple.”[10]
Voters
Eligible voters must be at least 18 years old and a citizen of the United Kingdom, a European Union country, or a Commonwealth country, and either:
A resident
A sole trader or a partner in an unlimited partnership or
An appointee of a qualifying body.
Each body or organisation, whether unincorporated or incorporated, whose premises are within the City of London may appoint a number of voters based on the number of workers it employs. Limited liability partnerships fall into this category.
Bodies employing fewer than ten workers may appoint one voter, those employing ten to fifty workers may appoint one voter for every five; those employing more than fifty workers may appoint ten voters and one additional voter for every fifty workers beyond the first fifty.
Though workers count as part of a workforce regardless of nationality, only certain individuals may be appointed as voters. Under section 5 of the City of London (Ward Elections) Act 2002, the following are eligible to be appointed as voters (the qualifying date is September 1 of the year of the election):
Those who have worked for the body for the past year at premises in the City
Those who have served on the body’s Board of Directors for the past year at premises in the City
Those who have worked in the City for the body for an aggregate total of five years
Those who have worked for in the City for a total of ten years
Qualified voters can vote twice, once at local government elections in the City and once at local government elections in the district where their home address is situated. Residents of the City can only vote once.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation
Skippy…a moonbat
So I guess by your metric there are now three moonbats, if we include, tax justice campaigner Nicholas Shaxson. And lets not forget how Monbiot lost his job either, before the BBC got crutched.
Skippy…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1328270/A-Britain-STILL-belongs-aristocracy.html
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=FA091EF6395A137B93C2AB178FD85F4D8784F9
For Britain, Cahill analyses this landownership, showing how a tiny minority exploits British society. 160,000 families, 0.3% of the population, own 37 million acres, two thirds of Britain, 230 acres each. Just 1,252 of them own 57% of Scotland. They pay no land tax. Instead every government gives them £2.3 billion a year and the EU gives them a further £2 billion. Each family gets £26,875.
By contrast, 57.5 million of us pay £10 billion a year in council tax, a land tax, £550 per household. We live in 24 million homes on about four million acres. 65% of homes are privately owned, so 16 million of us own just 2.8 million acres, an average 0.18 acres each.
The top landowners are the Forestry Commission, 2.6 million acres, the Ministry of Defence 750,000, the royal family 670,000 (including the Crown Estate 400,000 and the Duchy of Cornwall 141,000), the National Trust 550,000, insurance companies 500,000, the utility companies 500,000, the Duke of Buccleuch 270,700, the National Trust for Scotland 176,287, the Dukedom of Atholl 148,000, the Duke of Westminster 140,000 and the Church of England 135,000.
The Forestry Commission, Britain’s biggest single landowner, runs its holdings conservatively and secretively. We could expand the forest estate by a million acres a year, producing rural jobs, getting profits from the sale of wood and pulp (cutting our balance of payments deficit) and reducing the output of greenhouse gases. This would cost between £588 million and £750 million.
Through the 18th century enclosures, the landowning class stole eight million acres from the people. They still hide their crimes and their takings. The 1872 Return of Owners of Land was made, but then hidden and never updated. Shares have to be registered; land doesn’t. The Land Registry does not know who owns between 30 and 50% of land.”….. FROM THIS BOOK……
WHO OWNS BRITAIN AND IRELAND? BY KEVIN CAHILL
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Owns-Britain-Ireland-Kevin-Cahill/dp/1841953105
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA091EF6395A137B93C2AB178FD85F4D8784F9
THIS SHOULD LEAD TO THE PDF ON THE NY TIMES SITE, THAT LEADS TO THE ARCHIVE OF THE ARTICLE FROM 1879.
“the royal family 670,000 (including the Crown Estate 400,000 and the Duchy of Cornwall 141,000): I suppose you could argue that the Royal Family owns the Duchy of Cornwall, but only a fool or crook could argue that the Royal Family owns the Crown Estate. You might as well say that Barack Obama owns all the Federal land in the USA.
Wow, I guess rotten boroughs still exist.
@Dearieme. I accept your humble retraction, for diminishing the good names of afore mention persons. Although I do have a question if you’ll humor me. Were you un-mis-informed or was your intent to cloud the issue? The link you provide is just a counter Op, the actual facts_are_hard to discern, feature not bug thingy.
Skippy…maybe this time eh…http://www.reclaimthecity.org/ …why the resistance to change?
日方按經緯線劃分法將釣魚台劃入版圖，在國際法上無法律效力。如將中日兩方論據綜合起來分析，日方的「無主地先佔法」已不能成立，日本官方近年以來的聲明亦不再強調。被他們反覆強調的是「經緯線劃分法」，即堅稱釣魚台是日本領土不可分割的一部分，而事實上釣魚台是在一九五三年美國琉球民政府劃定的經緯線內，並且在其有效控制之下。
對此，中方必須從歷史文獻、地理和地質構造以及國際法理的整體分析，方能有效推翻日方的「經緯線劃分法」，贏得國際輿論的支援。
就目前的國際法標準來看，中國對釣魚台島嶼擁有兩項權利是無可剝奪的：
（一）因發現、命名、使用而取得的「原始權利」 （Inchoate Title）。
（二）根據「大陸架公約」第二條規定： 「海岸國有行使發掘大陸架與利用其天然資源之主權權利 （Sovereign Rights）」 而取得的「主權權利」。
以上兩項權利已構成對日方所持「經緯線劃分法」的本質性否定。據此，向中國政府提出解決釣魚台問題的建議。
第一步，收回原始權利 （Inchoate Title）。 釣魚台最早是由中國人發現、命名和使用的。據史籍記載，自從一四0三年至一九六九年這五百年間，中國人自由來往釣魚台，視為家常便飯，並且留下大量文字紀錄。近三十多年來，日本政府突然宣佈釣魚台為其治下領土，不許中國人自由往來釣魚台，剝奪了中國人五百年來自由來往釣魚台的權利，這不但違反國際法理，而且違背人類公理。
因此，我們要求兩岸政府一致對日本，循外交途徑收回釣魚台的原始權利，恢復中國人五百年間往來釣魚台的自由，禁止日本海上自衛隊在釣魚台列嶼周圍十二海里範圍內的活動。這完全是合乎人類公理的正當要求。
第二步，積極行使主權權利 （Sovereign Rights）。美國總統杜魯門於一九四五年九月二十八日發表的有關大陸架的一項聲明指出：「美國政府認為大陸架之底土及海床所有天然資源，由土地連接國家行使管轄權，是合理及公正的。」根據該項聲明精神，聯合國於一九五八年簽訂了《大陸架公約》（Continental Shelf），其中第二條規定：「海岸國有行使發掘大陸架、與利用其天然資源之主權權利。」
釣魚台位於中國東海淺大陸架上，中國作為海岸國，毫無疑問擁有釣魚台天然資源的主權權利。中國政府應積極行使這項主權權利，發掘和利用釣魚台的天然資源，同時應根據《大陸架公約》的原則恢復對釣魚台行使管轄權，這完全合乎國際法理的。
I do not get what is happening with the €, between the various partners.
Some want ECB intervention, the German bloke says a bail-out of Italy via bond purchases would violate Article 123 of the eurozone’s 2007 Lisbon treaty:
http://www.lisbon-treaty.org/wcm/the-lisbon-treaty/treaty-on-the-functioning-of-the-european-union-and-comments/part-3-union-policies-and-internal-actions/title-viii-economic-and-monetary-policy/chapter-1-economic-policy/391-article-123.html
Is this now all just a very sophisticated game of chicken?
Are the ECB and Germany daring the markets (read Wall St) to push Italy into default, knowing the $bn, if not $trn, of CDS insurance written against this event, is worthless?
Is this in fact the biggest Mexican stand-off of all time?
Is Wall St, having failed to get CDS to trigger over Greece, now moving on to Italy (and France) to achieve that end?
For example, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203503204577036210042998788.html?mod=WSJEurope_hpp_LEFTTopStories:
Holders of credit-default swaps on Greek government bonds aren’t expected to receive any payout, even though the agreement would recognize just half the face value of some Greek debt, in what many market participants see as tantamount to a default.
The reason: While creditors are likely to suffer 50% “haircuts,” participation is voluntary, and therefore the deal is deemed to not technically constitute a default under derivatives contracts. It was deliberately structured to avoid triggering the credit-default-swap contracts.
The decision not to trigger the swaps could expose the limitations of the hedging strategies some firms have come to rely on.
Estimated US$4 trillion potential US bank exposure to European debt:
While the Treasury has been at pains to say that direct U.S. bank exposure to European countries now receiving bailout aid — Greece, Ireland and Portugal — is moderate, once the debt of Italy and Spain, plus credit default swaps, and U.S. bank indirect exposure through European banks are added, the potential sum could exceed $4 trillion. (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/13/us-financial-contagion-idUSTRE7AC15220111113)
Maybe triggering CDS not such an interesting experiment, after all? Put the gun down slowly, and back away now.
Re: OWS
You can’t Occupy Wall Street without Occupying D.C. It’s akin to focusing on half the tumor in a cancer patient without focusing on the other half of it.
As for the political solutions, the ONLY solution is Dylan Ratigan’s “getmoneyout.com”:
http://www.dylanratigan.com/2011/09/27/get-money-out-join-100000-americans/
It makes no difference how long a political term is or how many terms are served, a single politician in one 2 year term can easily demolish the economy or Democracy with a single vote for the highest corporate bidder.
Get the money out, create a system of public finance to inhibit any benefits for political favoritism or revolving doors. And it wouldn’t hurt to investigate certain members of the Supreme Court for their personal conflicts in the “citizens united” decision to allow unlimited bribery.
People don’t understand admiralty law, common law and the sovereign. Its how_thee_world works, the very bedrock of all other things that transpire before us.
“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”
Skippy…Every thing else is a side show.
Scalia wrote Bush v. Gore to select a President who would make nominations to the court based on Scalia’s philosophy, and not based on the law.
Since the decision isn’t legitimate, the court as composed after Bush v. Gore isn’t legitimate, and its decisions aren’t legitimate. That goes for Citizens United and everything else.
Just for you lambert.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCZB-k4jKBc&feature=related
Skippy…finance is a function_of_law, settlements, get it.
Occupy Wall Street was a stroke of genius as political theater. By going to the center of the financial Universe the protesters focused attention not on the kitchen help (the politicians) but where it belonged, on the front office. This had to be done in order to shift the national dialogue away from the memes that have favored the pro-business Right over the past 30+ years. It’s the change in focus which is the crucial precondition for campaign finance reform, banking reform, or any other change you want to make through the political system.
Agreed. Changing the dialog really is key. The right has captured not just the repubs, but the dems, the media, and even casual talk among friends. It’s suddenly ok to say in public things that were regarded as heretical just a few short months ago. I feel just a twinge of hope…
‘You can’t Occupy Wall Street without Occupying D.C.’
And Occupying K Street in particular, please.
That “Eurozone, why did we bother” is quite revealing. One commentator to the article seems to misunderstand the point of the chart by saying that those spreads in the 90s are “misleading” in that it was due to inflation, as opposed to now where they occur due to default risk. I mean, that’s precisely the point: those big spreads are such serious problems now entirely because of you-know-what, while they were not before due to the absence of you-know-what.
Yeah, I also found that omission (of an explanation) moronic.
“Free” Libya :
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/10/us-libya-idUSTRE7A96A920111110
==========================
“Tarhouni’s influence over future economic policy remains to be seen but he said he would be strongly recommending a move away from an economy in which, he said, he had been surprised to find on his return home how many Libyans received state funds.
Since many of the six million population now seemed to expect their oil-rich government to increase, rather than reduce, the level of subsidies and welfare payments, the new leadership faced a challenge of managing those expectations.
“The private sector should be the engine for the future economic development of Libya,” he said.
“The challenges will be to decrease the size of government and to give the private sector more room … What makes it challenging is that right now the level of expectations of the people are very high — and that the government will deliver more rather than less … So it’s a challenge. But Gaddafi’s dead, so everything else can be managed.”
======
Libyans under Ghaddafi had free healthcare and free education. Big government in other words. Like Iraqis under Saddam had good healthcare and education systems.
And that beacon of socialism WSJ :
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204358004577029531381366726.html
=======
Libya’s business community is lobbying the new interim government to relax many of the heavy-handed state policies that crimped corporate work during the Gadhafi regime, including foreign-currency exchange limits and a law that forced private enterprises to make Libyan employees shareholders of the business.
========
And meanwhile, several militias in Tripoli (and elsewhere) have been conducting armed attacks against one another:
CSM Online has had very good coverage of Libya since the revolts began.
Thanks for the link. So it is the typical Western approach of “meddle first, think later”, and “when you can’t get something right, blow it up”.
As I understand, there were genuine pro-democracy protests at the beginning from people sick and tired of Ghaddafi’s long rule. But then the revolt was hijacked by business people (who stand to profit if the social welfare state is reduced),reactionaries (including Al-Qaeda people) and those who were pissed off by Ghaddafi in the power play. Think the original protesters wanted the social safety net maintained but with a more democratic government. And I am sure there will be Libyans who will come to the rue the day they asked for NATO intervention.
Read that Qataris who came to fight are now not going away and are dictating to the rebels pissing them off. What else did they expect?
The TCE article is another reminder that if we don’t deal with the toxics that are going into our bodies, dealing with the ones that are corroding our wallets won’t make much difference in the long run ….
Very true. TCE has been linked to other diseases too, such as the autoimmune condition scleroderma.
My father got dermatamyocitis, a supposed autoimmune disease like scleroderma. Nasty. He spent his entire career in paper mills and I always suspected a chemical connection. And his mother died of Parkinsons, so there may have been some susceptibility to toxins in his gene pool.
I say supposed autoimmune disease because there is a good research track taht suggests that autoimmune disease are actually caused by a pathogen, mycocides, that are NEVER tested for. Your normal lab can test only for a narrow type of myocides, a pulmonary version. My father with great difficulty got a blood sample to an out of state lab that could do broad spectrum tests for mycocides, and he got the report that his blood was “swimming” with them.
Bad news is hardly any MDs know the protocol (which was developed by a rheumatologist/professor/medical researcher), largely because it involves a cheap off patent drug, tetracycline (as in no research $ for uses of a drug that is off patent).
I don’t like the “antidote”.
Another one from Richard Smith?
no kidding, looks like a vivesection in progress.
what’s up with that Richard? Trying to give us a wedgie up to our heart chakra? ha ha
Another Parkinson’s link:
A recent study published in the Annals of Neurology shows exposure to household pesticides increases your risk of getting Parkinson’s disease by 70% and if exposed to garden pesticides, increases risk by 50%. (These are used out of ignorance because of lack of full disclosure labeling by the industry.) The people on your No Spray List however, are informed and do not wish to add to their inevitably already toxic body load.
“A no spray” list are people who have told the state road crews not to spray for weeds along the margin of their property. This of course applies to the avoidance of
pesticides through the consumption of organic food.
On medical/health care in the US. “Does the Middle Class Have to Take the Hit?” Free Trade is the American Way. Why stop with just allowing more foreign doctors to come here and assimilate? That will be too slow a process. We should pass a law like a Port Authority for Health Care whereby foreign doctors can bring their own clinics and their own materials and set up in special zones right here in the United States where they can provide good but inexpensive health care. Make these places accessible to all the large population centers.
Are the wealthy those making over $1 million or $400,000? Who knows?
If you have inherited a while back $1 billion in non-dividing paying, fast growing hi-tech companies, you probably have $0 income.
Taxing incomes is taxing hope. Who dosen’t hope to make a lot in the future? Some guy making $1 million a year for the last 20 years won’t be hit, but a young family hoping to make $400,000 starting next year will pay.
It’s also taxing the working, not the trust fund kids.
On the other hand, taxing wealth will also tax incomes – past incomes.
No, that would be unfair competition! Just like it’s unfair competition to allow US hospitals to buy generic drugs from abroad.
First thing I read in the am is Naked Capitalism.
Special shout-out to Carol B & Yves for linking to my article: Standard & Poor’s shoots France in the head, then says it’s sorry…
http://my.firedoglake.com/kberke/2011/11/12/standard-poors-shoots-france-in-the-head-then-says-its-sorry-time-for-a-duel/
A post from a year ago. How much has changed?:
Euro Crisis: What Happened at the European Summit
http://whereiscassandra.blogspot.com/2010/12/euro.html
OWS is getting serious. They want to shut down NYC on November 17th:
http://occupywallst.org/article/poster-n17-mass-direct-action-print-and-post-freel/
The poster looks inspired by the Tiananmen tank guy. LOL!
Tiananmen lives in Yemen.
I will not be buying any Yemenese frankincense for a while.
I’ve made many positive remarks about OWS, but I really have to say on another positive note: they have some fantastic posters! Really well-done graphic design.
Re: the Bacevitch article…sort of wishful thinking, as one aspect of US “power projection” that is expanding rather than contracting is overseas basing, and in so-called “contested areas” particularly. Horn of Africa, Gulf States, South Asia, America’s “national security interests” still remain virtually global in outlook, and with ever-increasing drone capability throughout the above “theatres”, the US persists resolutely in the “We’re No. One” game as national policy. Centcom and Africom have been given aggressive marching orders, and whether this does or does not conform to a revised “Freedom Agenda” is irrelevant…it’s all about (1) challenging and threatening Iran in order to protect Israeli regional supremacy, and (2) protecting sources of foreign oil, in the near term. However, China is clearly the Pentagon’s next bogeyman, and in years to come, “national defense” will embrace some sort of “containment” policy of Chinese influence, much in the manner of the Cold War era when the USSR was the convenient bete noire. The US has evolved over 60yrs into a National Security State, and uses as its rationale the doctrine of Permanent War, as military supremacy will forever be maintained or pursued as the organising principle of US society, even more so as its economic/financial influences weaken. The Nixonian characterisation of the US as a “pitiful, helpless giant” who could only shed this image if it presses forward in meeting its so-called military challenges still constitutes a major tenet in its foreign policy, and indeed such a posture is firmly engraved in the national psyche as well.
Re: Scott Walker This past weekend I googled some numbers for him and was coming up with approval ratings in the mid 40’s. Combine those ratings with the benefits of incumbency and you have to wonder if it is really a wise push. I mean, they couldn’t even get a majority of the recalls to go through.
It’s interesting you can’t remove a president through a recall election.
Where did the Left go?
Trying to make a flipping link to Le Monde Diplomatique article.
This this..
Anyway, as a call to arms (explanation) it’s a decent article, but it’s still sad that people keep confusing parties who call themselves left/progressive with parties who have an actual progressive/redistributive/antimarketmechanism agenda.
Andrew Bacevich is a fascinating example of how some in the Establishment know something is wrong and can often point to bits and pieces of what is wrong but ultimately are incapable of completing the analysis and drawing all the disparate parts together. Bacevich cannot because he still believes in the Establishment and in the good faith of its elites, elites to which he belongs. He can see that some are “clueless” and others greedy, making out like bandits, but he cannot see that the problem is more fundamental with the whole conception of elites. The transformations he sees are not vast historical processes but the natural result of elite failure. He does not see that the waning of American power is itself based on an elite construction of what that American power is and what it should be, that American power most commonly translated into American Empire. For the 99%, however, this was just a bill of goods that they were sold. It never represented their aspirations or addressed their needs. Indeed it usually subtracted from them. Why should the 99% mourn its loss? More importantly, why should the 99% mourn the loss of the elites which built this empire and then drove it over a cliff?
Thank you Hugh for another of your great comments.
I really don’t have a solution other than the one I keep repeating in hopes we start talking about private ownership of things and inheritance. To me these are the two key elements of our current social structure that brought us to this juncture. We used to have an “enlightened” aristocracy but the Kennedy’s were killed as well as anyone else who pushes back of the current social structure.
Laugh the global inherited rich out of control of our society and into rooms at the Hague…..read Richard Smiths’ posting here today if you want a laugh….the rest is a work in progress.
http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2011/11/14/new-doubts-aig-bailout/900kZPcm76qNVVCvi16MlO/story.html
ALTHOUGH the continuing Greek debt crisis and the collapse of AIG three years ago have some similarities, there is one big difference. Whereas those owed money by the Greek government will probably have to settle for roughly 50 cents on the dollar, AIG’s creditors got paid in full by American taxpayers.
The explanation initially given by the New York Fed, then led by current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, was, according to a 2009 report by the special inspector general for the TARP program, that two of AIG’s biggest creditors were banks based in France. This meant that those banks were governed by French law, a provision of which made it illegal under the circumstances for the two banks to accept anything less than payment in full. As a result, because of a US law preventing unequal treatment of banks, all of AIG’s major creditors got paid in full. However, a recent report from the Government Accountability Office states that this was not the case.
Instead, the report quotes French officials who state there weren’t any legal obstacles to making the French banks take a loss, or if there were, they were far less significant than represented. In other words, the logic for paying all creditors in full was flawed from the beginning. And this flaw cost taxpayers billions.
In an interconnected world where instability in Greece causes US markets to plunge, many of the financial institutions vital to the global economy are not governed by US law. Financial regulators need to understand which obstacles this may pose and be prepared to confront them. They weren’t in 2008. In light of this new report, Geithner needs to explain to the American people where exactly the New York Fed went wrong in dealing with French banking regulators in 2008. It may have been a simple miscommunication or just a mistake by Americans economists pressured to learn French banking law on short notice. But, as a result, of this error, taxpayers were forced to spend billions more than they should have to bail out major financial institutions. And they deserve a full accounting for why.
Singer crashes Obama summit with ‘Occupy’ song http://news.yahoo.com/singer-crashes-obama-summit-occupy-song-212243354.html
A popular Hawaiian recording artist turned a top-security dinner of Pacific Rim leaders hosted by President Barack Obama into a subtle protest with a song in support of the “Occupy” movement.
Makana, who goes by one name, was enlisted to play a luau, or Hawaiian feast, Saturday night for leaders assembled in Obama’s birthplace Honolulu for an annual summit that is formulating plans for a Pacific free-trade pact.
But in the midst of the dinner on the resort strip Waikiki Beach, he pulled open his jacket to reveal a T-shirt that read “Occupy with Aloha,” using the Hawaiian word whose various meanings include love and peace. He then sang a marathon version of his new song “We Are The Many.” …
Makana, who was born Matthew Swalinkavich, said the song prompted awkward stares from a few of those present but the Obamas appeared too absorbed with their guests to notice what was happening.
The performance occurred at a dinner for summit participants from 21 economies around the Asia-Pacific, including Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, amid a security lockdown in Waikiki.
whew, I’m not the only one who thinks baby boomers are the worst American generation ever. (sorry for the overly broad generalization, but it’s true.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/penn-state-my-final-loss-of-faith/2011/11/11/gIQAwmiIDN_blog.html
“I have fully lost faith in the leadership of my parents’ generation”
By: David Dayen Monday November 14, 2011 6:17 am
TweetTweet2
digg stumbleupon
In a way, this primal scream from Thomas L. Day, a former member of Jerry Sandusky’s Second Mile foundation, is a familiar one from a generational standpoint. But it connects so much to the dominant theme of this era – the loss of faith in institutions – that it takes on a crucial significance.
“A record-setting year of disasters took its toll on the nation’s roads and bridges, and the federal fund to help states rebuild them has been tapped out.”
Instinct, Inception, & Key Distillation
The old man tells me that the cop he provided beachfront property to has 900 officers to investigate my background. Crack me up.
So, we left off at balancing the system by replacing redundant delay mechanisms with more effective/diverse adaptations to extend the relativity circuit, adjusting, adding, subtracting and moving gaps in the multiplexer(s). Intelligence is thereby distilled from the replicative control of memory/knowledge in the parade line. 7 billion people do not emerge from or return to vacuum. The relativity circuit looks quite different from the perspective of the rock (Enjoying the sun activity?).
The subconscious builds a decision tree of future probabilities based upon the social programs/authorities accepted over time. For example, 2x + 3y will appear in one branch, and 4x + 6y will appear in another. For the knowledge-based participants, the frames will appear as distinct perceptions, but for the learning-based the algebraic reduction to constants is automatic.
Time decelerates with knowledge and accelerates with intelligence, due to process delay. Due to historical gaming, the learner appears slower, until algebraic reduction is complete, when quantum acceleration occurs. Choose authorities carefully and diversify to distill intelligence. Swim with the outliers; the point of God the Unknown as the final authority is to avoid the black hole of the groupthink replicating virus.
Logic and emotion may compliment or destroy one another, in a feedback loop. Employ emotional intelligence to uncover and remove false assumptions to the end of resolution. Focus on the process and the symptoms will take care of themselves. The problem is the solution, turned on its head.
Don’t fuss too much over the cattle number assigned for public consumption. Allow others to underestimate. Spend private time exploring self and the economy will kick over automatically, when the difference threshold exceeds system measurement. It’s never too late to start.
Social programs are like worms or denial of service attacks. Employ your subconscious or others will do it for you. Bringing the system into equilibrium is not going to be about handing children over to false authorities so they may be trained to compete for scarce resources, produced by the resulting voices/ groupthink in their heads.
The parade leaders, world’s economic thinkers, simply participate in a reverse tree of multiple club/ponzi circles. When they are allowed to control the money supply (interest rates) and the price (employment), to define value, all other participants may only compete on the cost of replication.
The Euro was a civil marriage between France and Germany, a contract designed to be broken, financed by the US and implemented by Japan, through China. Once the ponzi demand faltered in Europe, China replaced it with ponzi local government demand. Now, the entire system is collapsing and they cannot exit their contracts because there is no potential slave population to keep the ponzi growing. The internet was a double-edged sword, and the global population is awaking to a system that pays people to comply with cognitive dissonance. Evolution is quantum.
Like the conscious/subconscious, the elements are derivatives/integrals in the fusion/fission reactor, which assembles order from chaos with algebraic reduction and expansion, resulting in an ever more diverse buffer of ionic and covalent bonds. Whether a string is a proton, neutron, or electron depends upon how the multiplexer is perceived to be wired.
Self-absorption shorts into itself, in bipolar layers, building the protein, and ejects the new but complimentary element, which acts as the catalyst in the next cycle. As the fulcrum agent becomes indistinguishable from gravity, orbit/order results, in a historical equilibrium with new event horizon development. Perpetual motion/ energy transformation is the perception.
The car replaced the horse and the computer replaced the car. Apple is a cash cow as GM was before. What’s next?
Depending upon your location on the timeline, we are already done with Soros, which brings us back to ThyssenKrupp. Typical, TK sends some kids out to install cheap electronic elevators, installed like paint-by-numbers, so no thinking is involved. Outwardly, the elevators appear the same, but they are arbitrarily wired differently with different voltages and the CPU mixer allows the maintenance mechanic to use one laptop to alter the run bit of all. Low buy-in, very high maintenance fees, very profitable for TK.
The best solution is to fire the decision-maker that bought the elevator and make the elevator shaft a continuous research project. The next best solution is to rip it out and install quality, max NPV given future opportunity cost. The next best solution is to rip out the computer and wire it AC with as much of the old wiring as possible. The next best solution is to wire loops to make the CPU “think” it remains in control, but otherwise bypass it.
So, I walk into the decision-makers office…who is a mason…accustomed to a kickback from the elevator company…nasty little breed, which installs and operates the global IC chip. Microsoft is what they call nouveau riche.
Stupid always attempts to herd intelligent into the anxiety box, trapping itself every time. That’s the nature of the universe. God does not have a plan for you that you must copy from some authority. Life is an adventure. Seek and you shall find.
Civil marriage (Jewish bankers and German industrialists) always results in war, with children as the collateral damage. Get out while the getting is good, to drop the floor, and allow the little monsters to chew on each other for all eternity.
HA! Low balled install off set by maintenance contract, and all justified by quarterly statement beautification. HA!
Skippy…I quite enjoyed this one Kevin, ta.
What a Hoot Kevin!
I liked:
“Microsoft is what they call nouveau riche.”
It has special meaning to me as as a 40+ years in the trenches techie guy…..we never got to vote with our money for CP/M, its what the marketing folks sold us and all of you…sub rate technololgy.
Mic check at Blue Cross CEO Discusses Health Care Business.
http://www.c-span.org/Events/Blue-Cross-CEO-Discusses-Health-Care-Business/10737425491-1/
Skippy…personally I’m loving these!
I love these too. They thought they had got rid of the leader and then another woman starts to read. LOL! That’s the OWS spirit!
so, I was in Rochester NY doing an AD build-up for UnitedHealth some years ago…and the headline of the Ad was Family-Friendly (just don’t accidently go into any room unannounced. I walk in and …over and over and over again)
Video temporarily unavailable when I goo into the link. What’s cooking? Something fishy maybe?
But LoL – look at the list of people who got mic-checked in the last week or so – Scott Hosini Walker, Eric Cantor, NYC (education) chancellor, APEC leaders (well, kinda close – they had to listen to a 99% song for 45 minutes)….. Imagine if every townhall has a mic check.
G3 its still working for me, straight from this page, IDK?
Skippy…this is fashion I can enjoy!
OT but also re: OWS, if you want to follow NYCmarch2DC:
support springing up all around them as they walk exhausted down through the northeast; very moving (to this reader).
http://nycmarch2dc.wordpress.com/
Late night? Need something to make you smile?
“Justice Catherine M. Bartlett of New York State Supreme Court cut off the lawyer. You, she said, are telling me lies.”
Bank Excuses on Foreclosure Growing Stale
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/nyregion/patience-grows-thin-for-banks-foreclosure-excuses.html
See y’all tomorrow!
Apropos of nothing, I love how the Supercommittee is now saying that they want to “delay” tax hikes decisions until next year, even while they *have* agreed on the spending cuts…
So glad you got your HTML fixed. It’s nice being able to see the Recent Items without having to turn the CSS off first and then back on to make the rest of the page easier to read (or prettier, anyway).