The EU report on the short-lived war between Georgia, South Ossetia, and Russia has been released and while accusing the Russians of disproportionate response clearly lays the blame at the door of Georgia and the government of Saakashvili. Here are a few exerpts:
"An investigation into last year's Russia-Georgia war delivered a damning indictment of President Mikheil Saakashvili today, accusing Tbilisi of launching an indiscriminate artillery barrage on the city of Tskhinvali that started the war.......The EU-commissioned report, by a fact-finding mission of more than 20 political, military, human rights and international law experts led by the Swiss diplomat, Heidi Tagliavini, was unveiled in Brussels today after nine months of work.
"There is no way to assign overall responsibility for the conflict to one side alone," the report found.
But the conclusions will discomfit the western-backed Georgian leader, Saakashvili, who was found to have started the war with the attack on Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, on the night of 7 August last year, through a "penchant for acting in the heat of the moment".
The war started "with a massive Georgian artillery attack", the report said, citing an order from Saakashvili that the offensive was aimed at halting Russian military units moving into South Ossetia.
Flatly dismissing Saakashvili's version, the report said: "There was no ongoing armed attack by Russia before the start of the Georgian operation ... Georgian claims of a large-scale presence of Russian armed forces in South Ossetia prior to the Georgian offensive could not be substantiated ... It could also not be verified that Russia was on the verge of such a major attack."
The conflict became somewhat of an issue in last year's presidential election especially after it was learned that McCains top foreign policy advisor was recieving hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Georgian government.
The recent decision by the IOC to bypass Chicago for the 2016 Olympics has generated all kinds of reaction including predictable right-wing Obama bashing as reported at TPM and somewhat reluctant acceptance that world has changed and they just don't like the USA that much.
Daily Kos reports on a less discussed possbilty, namely that just getting into the USA is as about as easy and visitor friendly as entering the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War:
" So when did wingnuts start cheering against America? Their unbridled joy at losing out to Brazil is a bit unseemly, isn't it? "America, fuck yeah!" has become "Fuck America, Yeah!"
While Chicago likely lost mostly because the country has hosted plenty of Olympics and South America never has, and because of lingering anti-American sentiment, this certainly didn't help:
"However, the triumphant Chicago presentation--the culmination of a $48 million package--had cold water thrown onto it when Pakistani IOC member Syed Shahid Ali correctly noted the significant difficulties facing foreigners seeking entry into the United States. Obama failed to address Ali's concerns, saying only that hosting the Games in Chicago would be "a reminder that America at its best is open to the world."
America's visa processing issues have been well-publicized throughout much of the world, with some tourists waiting six months or more to have a 10 minute appointment with a visa examiner in an embassy or consulate to visit America on a vacation. Business visas or those for cultural ambassadors, like artists and athletes, are similarly problematic. Many applicants complain that the system is opaque at best and a crap shoot at worst, with few guidelines provided for applicants and rejections issued pro forma.
The Wall Street Journal speculates that Chicago's loss stems has more to do with the heavy European membership at the IOC and Latin American IOC members lining up behind Rio; however, the visa issue has been an growing problem since new requirements were issued after 9/11. Perhaps the Chicago loss will provide some much-needed political impetus to finally spur legitimate discussions of political reform."
You create a fortress America to keep people out, they won't go out of their way fighting to bring international events inside your fortifications.
I hear wingnuts are agitating against America hosting the next Super Bowl.
Remember when liberals celebrated New York City losing out on the 2012 Olympics? You don't? "
While the world is generally supportive of Obama's goals enunciated during the election, they, like the majority of American population, are awaiting tangible proof of real change. The American wingnuts in their gloating will be seen as doing their best to accelerate the American race to the bottom.
This is the third year I've covered this subject and while not a record setter this year turns out to be the third greatest arctic melt since such things have been followed by satellite since 1979. The National Snow and Ice Data Center puts things in perspective:
"This year, the minimum extent did not fall as low as the minimums of the last two years, because temperatures through the summer were relatively cooler. The Chukchi and Beaufort seas were especially cool compared to 2007. Winds also tended to disperse the ice pack over a larger region.
While the ice extent this year is higher than the last two years, scientists do not consider this to be a recovery. Despite conditions less favorable to ice loss, the 2009 minimum extent is still 24% below the 1979-2000 average, and 20% below the thirty-year 1979-2008 average minimum. In addition, the Arctic is still dominated by younger, thinner ice, which is more vulnerable to seasonal melt. The long-term decline in summer extent is expected to continue in future years."
The Guardian outlines additional perils besides sea level changes and coastal inundations. It seems that volcanoes earthquakes and other geologic phenomena may result due to climate change:
"Reports by international groups of researchers – to be presented at a London conference next week – will show that climate change, caused by rising outputs of carbon dioxide from vehicles, factories and power stations, will not only affect the atmosphere and the sea but will alter the geology of the Earth.
Melting glaciers will set off avalanches, floods and mud flows in the Alps and other mountain ranges; torrential rainfall in the UK is likely to cause widespread erosion; while disappearing Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets threaten to let loose underwater landslides, triggering tsunamis that could even strike the seas around Britain.
At the same time the disappearance of ice caps will change the pressures acting on the Earth's crust and set off volcanic eruptions across the globe. Life on Earth faces a warm future – and a fiery one.
"Not only are the oceans and atmosphere conspiring against us, bringing baking temperatures, more powerful storms and floods, but the crust beneath our feet seems likely to join in too," said Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre, at University College London (UCL).
"Maybe the Earth is trying to tell us something," added McGuire, who is one of the organisers of UCL's Climate Forcing of Geological Hazards conference, which will open on 15 September. Some of the key evidence to be presented at the conference will come from studies of past volcanic activity. These indicate that when ice sheets disappear the number of eruptions increases, said Professor David Pyle, of Oxford University's earth sciences department."
As my friend Mark at Norwegianity has observed trying to have a science based discussion with the reality challenged crowd can be an exercise in futility.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. --Philip K. Dick
After testing out Long Range Acoustic Devices in that Kavkaz center of dermocracy, Georgia of Saakashvili, the weapons are turned on the involuntary tax payers of the OKUSA (Oligarchic Kleptokracy of the United States of America) most recently at the Pittsburgh gathering of the ultra rich.
Mad As Hell Doctors made a much anticipated visit to Madison today to further the cause of healthcare for all Americans. A crowd of a thousand or so (according to Mrs. WINston smITh who attended the the rally and provided the above photos) greeted the physicians who've had enough on the steps of the Wisconsin Capitol. These guys along with a kindred group, Physicians for a National Health Plan represent at least 17,000 doctors who have had enough of the American hellth care system. Within the medical profession there is a growing division between the specialists and primary care providers about the need for real healthcare reform. What the politicians don't realize is that the whole system now is basically held together with the economic equivalent of string, chewing gum, and spit. In other words if this attempt at reform fails we will be be in a very bad (as in worse than now)place.
In a time when the main stream media is preoccupied with the likes of industry funded astroturfers and Joe Wilson it is more than refreshing to gather in Baraboo Wisconsin and hear the voices of sane progressives rail against the general insanity.
This year was no exception as the crowd of 5,000-10,000 was treated to a stellar lineup of speakers including Senator Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Scahill, Jim Hightower, Tom Harkin, and Greg Palast. A consistent theme throughout was healthcare reform, which every speaker rightly cast as a defining issue for President Obama and the entire country. It's quite obvious that failure to accomplish this will have far reaching reprecussions and will probably bring about a collapse of the entire American healthcare system (a word I use loosely). One of the truly enlightening moments was the appearance of Wendell Potter, a former health insurance executive and PR shill, whose insights were alone worth the trip. His apology should be mandatory viewing for freedom from healthcare nitwits everywhere. Here is an insightfull interview with Bill Moyers, another beacon of sanity in a sea of corporate disinformation:
Ted Kennedy died and so with him some of the best attributes of an otherwise dismal generation. I refer to the Baby Boomers, an insufferable lot who gave us the likes of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and myself.When you look around at American society and its many short comings keep us in mind whether its schools that teach nothing and resemble medium security prisons or mile after mile of McMansion subdivisions and strip malls.Now it appears that we will drag down our offspring and their progeny for years if not decades to come. Dave Cohen fills in the blanks in this illuminating if not depressing article. Here are some highlights if you can call them that:
"I was born in 1953, which makes me a post-World War II “Baby Boomer” (those born between 1946 and 1964). First off, I want to issue a blanket apology to younger cohorts (generations X & Y) for the excesses of my generation. No generation in the human history was given so large an opportunity to ravage the Earth through excess consumption, and Boomers did not squander that opportunity. No generation has adversely affected the welfare of future generations as the Boomers have. So much for Woodstock and the Age of Aquarius...
"I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “spend money like there’s no tomorrow.” That’s precisely what the Boomers did. It was an unprecedented debt-fueled spending spree made possible by easy credit. See my Don’t Buy Stuff You Can Not Afford for some details. As Bill Bonner put it at the Daily Reckoning, that household debt now “represents spending that has been taken from the future.”
The first Boomers reach retirement age in 2011. Business Week reports that it has long been expected that aging Boomers would cash out and decrease their spending. But the real Big Chill arrived a few years early.
When 79 million people—nearly a third of Americans—start spending less and saving more, you know it won’t be pretty. According to consulting firm McKinsey, boomers’ conversion to thrift could stifle the economy’s hoped-for rebound and knock U.S. growth down from the 3.2% it has averaged since 1965 to 2.4% over the next 30 years. “We would have gotten here in 5 or 10 years as boomers retire, but [the economic crisis] pushed it up,” says Michael Sinoway, managing director of consulting firm AlixPartners. “Now [companies] are scared things won’t come back”…
Not so long ago, boomers were never going to die. Filled with a self-confidence born of unprecedented prosperity, many thought rising markets would assure their future. If the economy faltered, well, it would rebound more strongly than ever, as it had so many times before. And so boomers spent—and borrowed—as if there were no tomorrow.
Tomorrow is here. With retirement looming, the Great Recession has put Boomers into emergency thrift mode. Unsurprisingly, McKinsey Quarterly reports that most of them are unprepared for their golden years.
The low savings rate and extensive liabilities of the boomers have left about two-thirds of them unprepared for retirement. We reached this conclusion by assessing the level of post-retirement income and assets that the boomers would need to maintain 80 percent of their peak pre-retirement spending.This analysis—based on net financial assets such as bank deposits, stocks, and bonds, minus credit card balances, car loans, and other non-mortgage debt—indicates that 69 percent of the boomers are not prepared to maintain their lifestyles. The inclusion of home equity, whose value is declining in many regions below the levels prevailing when we undertook our analysis, only reduces the proportion of the unprepared to 62 percent.
The home equity situation is not improving. According to American CoreLogic, more than 15.2 million (32.2%) of all mortgaged properties were in negative equity in June, 2009. (Negative equity means your mortgage debt exceeds the value of your house.) An additional 2.5 million homeowners were nearly underwater. Although the rate of decline in home prices has slowed, it is not at all clear that we have reached the bottom in the housing market. Beyond home equity, Boomers’ net worth has taken a huge hit as asset values fall. Many Boomers will have to work longer than they anticipated.
Economists and demographers say Boomers will need to replace some $2 trillion of wealth lost in retirement funds [e.g. 401k plans] during the recent stock meltdown, plus the billions in home equity that have vanished in the housing crash. Government policy makers will have to figure out how to provide for a huge cohort of people who could live well into their 80s.
McKinsey found that the Boomer spending accounted for an astonishing 78% of GDP growth during the “bubble years” from 1995 to 2007. Much of that spending will disappear. The “generational crash” will be a drag on the economy for years to come."
"In this and other columns I have cast doubt on a prosperous future for the United States. Since 1983, the American consumers—rhymes with Boomers—spent tomorrow’s wealth today. GDP growth depended on ever-greater borrowing and was thus systematically inflated. All this time America’s industrial base declined (moved to China) and its (no longer cheap) imported oil dependency grew to ~66% of total consumption. To keep the party going after 1995, the U.S. blew two enormous bubbles, one in the NASDAQ and a much larger one in housing. We used those bubbles to float up to the mountain top, where all that thin air made us giddy. Now we’re sobering up as reality propels us down the other side.
The boom times are over. A secular change has now taken place. The U.S. will look more and more like a Third World country. In health care, compared to Canada or Europe, it already does. Thus our prospects for another economic boom in the next decade are like those of Monty Python’s famous Norwegian Blue parrot—
“This bleeding parrot wouldn’t boom if I put 4 thousand volts through it! It’s bleeding demised… It’s not pining for the fjords, it’s passed on. This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It’s a stiff! Bereft of Life, it rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies! It’s run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot!!!”
American Economy 1983-2007: Requiescat in pace
Forget about a “V-shaped” recovery or Ben Bernanke’s “green shoots.” This parrot is no more, it has ceased to be."
The American Right is having a field day as it uses fear and outright lies to derail any meaningful reform of the pay or die U.S. health care system. An integral part of the fear mongering is attacking other countries health care delivery systems, notably Canada's and the British NHS. Right-wing Americans are detached from reality and inhabit a conspiracy laden universe happily served up by corporate infotainment and thus are unaware that countries outside of their historical and geographical vacuum have begun to take notice of the lies and deceptions.
Canadians for instance take exception to Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky dissing their system as noted by this in the Ottawa Citizen:
"In Senator McConnell's home state of Kentucky, one out of three people under age 65 do not have any health insurance. They don't have to worry about wait times for hip or knee replacement or cancer surgery -- they can't get care. The median household income in Kentucky is $37,186 -- not quite enough for the $97,000 bill at the Mayo Clinic. CNN didn't mention that in its "Reality Check."
As the debate on health care reform heats up the United States, it seems certain that Canada's public health care system will be used, or more accurately misused, in the battle for hearts and minds. For years, Canadians have feared the American health care system; now Americans are being told to fear ours."
Others have a somewhat more visceral opinion of the freedom from heath care nitwits to the south. I particularly enjoyed the remarks of United Steelworkers International President, Leo Gerard, reported in the Toronto Star:
"Gerard said it was hard to stomach the right-wing attack on Canada's universal health care system as their ways of whipping public sentiment against U.S. President Barack Obama's health care plan.
"Many of you must be watching ... in disbelief at the bunch of nut bars, hairpins and lunatics collectively and every right-wing (nut) ... in the United States of America who is parading around during this health care debate," he said.
When Gerard asked if anyone in the room would give up Canadian health care for the private sector-driven system that exists in the U.S., where 48 million American don't have health care it was a resounding no.
"Remember this, when the wrong people win our most prized possession, which is health care, is put at risk," he said."
"There are few tribes more loathsome than the American right, and their vicious use of the shortcomings in the NHS to attack Barack Obama's attempts at health reform are a useful reminder."
While Canadians do have complaints about health care it's informative to know the esteem in which its chief architect, Tommy Douglas is held is such that he was selected the "Greatest Canadian" in a poll conducted by the CBC in 2004. There he nosed out the likes of Pierre Trudeau and Wayne Gretzky.
Meanwhile in the U.S. hordes of brain-eating zombies, hepped up on samples of patent protected Viagra, Aricept, and Chantix, descend on townhalls throughout the land at the behest of insurance companies, big pharma, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh. President Obama has his work cut out for him.
Yes I've had another summer hiatus from the blog but for good reasons. At the end of June Mrs. WINston SmITh and I spent the weekend in Toronto at the jazz festival observing our 25th wedding anniversery and generally having a great time. It was even greater given the the fact that this was the first time since 1969 that I visited Canada as a Canadian citizen. Yes I fulfilled a childhood dream in returning to the homeland.Yes I am a "Lost Canadian". Perhaps it should have been obvious that moving to the U.S. on November 22nd, 1963 was not the best idea. Oh well, that and a lot of other things that my parents overlooked. I am now a card carrying Canadian thank goodness.
It's no secret that the Russian economy is in trouble these days and Russian workers are showing signs of unrest. This has not escaped the notice of Vladimir Putin who, in an unusual act of theater, publicly humiliated one of Russia's leading industrial oligarchs, Oleg Deripaska, for mismanagement and poor treatment of his workers as reported here:
"MOSCOW (AFP)--Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin Thursday launched a lacerating attack on oligarch Oleg Deripaska, describing one of his factories as a "rubbish dump" and saying workers had been held hostage by unpaid wages.
Putin's comments came as he visited the BaselCement factory in the town of Pikalevo in the Leningrad region of northern Russia, acquired by Deripaska's holding company Basic Element in 2007.
"Why has your factory been so neglected? They've turned it into a rubbish dump," Putin said as was given a guided tour of the factory in the town of Pikalevo in the Leningrad region of northern Russia.
The deputy chief of the Basic Element construction firm Glavstroi, Yevgeny Ivanov, had been telling Putin about the history of the facility when Putin interrupted him with the "rubbish dump" jibe.
Ivanov said the company had found the factory in such a state when it bought it, Russian news agencies reported.
Putin was speaking two days after angry protesters from the plant and two other cement factories in the town blocked a key highway, causing serious traffic jams, in a show of social unrest rare for Russia.
The prime minister - stony faced and dressed in a beige jacket - later held a meeting in which he ordered the oligarch to pay the factory's wages and ensured he signed a document to revive its operations.
"All the unpaid wages - amounting to 41.24 million rubles ($1.35 million) - must be paid. The deadline - today," said the tough talking prime minister in comments carried on state television.
Workers were protesting against the factory's failure to play their salaries for several months as Russian industry hits problems owing to a slump in demand amid the global economic crisis.
"They (the factory owners) have made thousands of people hostage to their ambitions, unprofessionalism and maybe simply greed," said Putin.
"This is simply unacceptable. Where is the social responsibility of business?" he added.
At the meeting, Putin then produced a contract with supplies for the delivery of raw materials to revive production at the town's languishing factory.
"Has Oleg Vladimirovich signed?" he asked in reference to Deripaska. "I don't see your signature. Come and sign," said Putin grimly.
Deripaska, head bowed, then hurried to sign the document, before returning to his seat. Putin granted him a nod in acknowledgment, television pictures showed.
Putin's tirade added to the woes of the heavily-indebted Deripaska, who is set to miss a June 11 deadline to restructure billions of dollars in debt with international creditors."
Quite frankly I think are more than a few Americans who would like to see our own plutocracy slapped around a bit instead of being given free reign to the public's funds. This is even more concerning as the FBI weighs in on the fraud potential of the various bailouts and stimulus packages:
"Earlier this month, FBI Director Robert Mueller warned the nation to brace for a potential crime wave involving fraud and corruption related to the economic stimulus package. "These funds are inherently vulnerable to bribery, fraud, conflicts of interest, and collusion. There is an old adage, that where there is money to be made, fraud is not far behind, like bees to honey," Mueller said.,,,,,,
"Williams suggested that the fraud and theft losses from the roughly $787 billion stimulus package approved earlier this year could reach about $50 billion.
Williams said firms would be well advised to beef up monitoring of their transaction systems, and that his firm is helping clients develop software and computer systems to predict and catch fraud before it gets started.
Williams acknowledged that the FBI has geared up its efforts to focus on financial scams. He said other agencies, including the Department of Justice and industry watchdogs, are also beefing up oversight.
"They are going to spend their time making sure that this money gets to being used in the way it's supposed to be used," Williams added.
After 9-11, counterterrorism became the FBI's top priority, even as the agency grappled with corporate crime such as the Enron and WorldCom scandals, said Mueller, who took the helm of the FBI on Sept. 4, 2001, just one week ahead of the terrorist attacks.
The 9-11 attacks prompted the FBI and other government agencies to divert resources from financial fraud and other corporate crimes to fighting terrorism, including the transfer of 2,000 agents tracking white-collar crime to counterterrorism, Mueller said.
But now the focus is returning to white-collar crime and fraud in a big way.
"These rules will come right back to haunt companies if they are not careful," Williams said. "So firms need to make sure that their organizations are ready to receive funds and protect those funds diligently as the potential for fraud surfaces."
"Newfound transparency in the wake of the unfolding financial crisis will expose a scale of prior fraud, corruption, and self-dealing that many will find almost impossible to comprehend. Day in and day out, reports will surface about hidden losses, false accounting, inflated appraisals, sizable off-balance-sheet obligations, valuation discrepancies, unregulated offshore entities, phantom profits, insider trading, and businesses bled dry to enrich a few individuals at the expense of employees, investors, bankers, and bondholders. Other revelations will reinforce the idea that companies, governments, and individuals are in far worse shape than people had assumed only a few years earlier."
One can only hope president Obama takes a few notes on the Putin approach.
The disconnect between economic reality and media spin continues unabated. Now even the flimsiest of information suggesting things are getting worse at a possibly slower rate is treated as a sign of impending recovery. Witness the attempt to put a positive spin on the latest unemployment figures:
"In its good news-bad news report, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that employers shed 345,000 jobs in May, far fewer than the 500,000-plus expected in consensus forecasts. Statisticians also revised April's figures to indicate 504,000 jobs lost, not the 539,000 that first had been estimated.
The strong May numbers and the revision of April's suggest that the pace of job losses is moderating. They point to an easing of the recession that began in December 2007 and has destroyed more than 6 million jobs. In May, 14.5 million Americans were unemployed.
Alan Levenson, chief economist for investment manager T. Rowe Price Associates in Baltimore, said the labor market was showing the first signs of recovery but he cautioned that not all was good in Friday's report. For example, the length of the average workweek fell in May to 33.1 hours, the lowest it's been since recordkeeping began in 1964.
The "dip in weekly hours, meager gain in hourly earnings" suppress production and income and carry implications for the economic recovery, he said in a research note. Rather than fire workers, many employers are slashing hours, freezing pay and requiring employees to take unpaid leave, all of which affect the quality of work life.
"The slowing of employment losses is certainly welcomed news. Before we celebrate, however, note that unemployment at 9.4 percent is substantially higher than what was expected in even the most pessimistic forecasts a few months ago," said Lawrence Mishel, the president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute in Washington. "Moreover, the pace of wage growth is less than half of what it was last year. Together, these trends suggest we're heading for very high unemployment and a subdued recovery."
Meanwhile Financial Armageddon points out that Wall Street insiders continue to vote with their feet in an ongoing sell-off of their own companies stocks:
"Just as telling, why are investors buying shares in corporate America when corporate executives -- the individuals on the ground who actually know what is going on -- are on the other side of the trade, as the Pragmatic Capitalist reveals (below) in "Despite "Green Shoots" Insider Sales Spike"?
The latest data on insider selling shows little relief in the relentless unloading of company stock by corporate insiders. In the last two weeks insiders sold over $335MM in stock vs listed insider purchases of just over $12MM. As has been the trend over the course of the last few weeks the list of insider selling has been long and the amounts have been staggering. The buy side, on the other hand, is represented by low rated, low priced stocks whose insiders rarely purchase over $500K.
One might think that with all of these “green shoots” the insiders at major U.S. corporations would begin buying up their own shares voraciously. Especially after a nice little run like we’ve seen lately. After all, with stocks still 35% off their highs and a full blown economic recovery (supposedly) on the horizon it would make nothing but sense than to buy your own shares, right?
Although there were signs of life in early May the overall trend in buying remains very low. As we’ve noted before it’s not the mountain of selling that most concerns us, but the total lack of buying. Insiders sell for many reasons, but they only buy their own stock when they are confident that the price will rise. As of now, insider buying remains incredibly weak which is more than likely a vote of (no) confidence in future business operations."
For a truly disconcerting veiw of ongoing economic collapse check out the U.S. National Debt clock, though I must warn that prolonged viewing may cause light headedness and vertigo as well as precipitate panic attacks in those predisposed.
Elizabeth Warren continues her role as American heroine speaking truth in a world and area unaccustomed to truth. Her most recent declarartions about the so-called stress tests say much about what's going on as Marvin Gay would say:
"Transcript
FARAI CHIDEYA: And now we’ve got more from Elizabeth Warren. She’s the Chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel, charged with following the billions of dollars the government is giving to financial institutions through the TARP program. The oversight panel issues a report today that looks at TARP, small business lending and credit available to families with credit cards. Elizabeth, you’ve tackled the credit issue before, in part in your work as a professor and as an author. Let’s listen to a real-life example from one of our listeners. Last April we heard from Philamena from upstate New York to tell us her credit card story.
Listener Philamena on tape: I was talking to Bank of America yesterday because of a letter we received. We have over a 700 credit score. Never paid a bill partially, always in full, and they decided to halve our credit availability.
FARAI CHIDEYA: Is that something that the companies should be held accountable for, restricting credit at a time when there is so much government funding going to try to loosen credit? And we’re talking here about people who have good or decent scores.
ELIZABETH WARREN: Right. So this is the big policy question that’s on the table right now: Should a condition of receiving taxpayer support be that you use a little more customer-friendly practices?
John Hockenberry : Because in theory they’re getting almost free money from the Feds and they can jack up these fees and interest rates on the other side. That’s a huge business, I’d like to get into that.
ELIZABETH WARREN: No kidding. And it really boosts your profits and, you know, for the companies, that works out really well. It’s a way to boost up your profits and maybe you’ll be able to pay back your government money eventually, you’ll be able to weather this crisis. But it’s also, potentially, very destabilizing to a lot of families that budgeted close to the wire, they’re making their payments, they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. You jerk up those interest rates, you cut back on the credit line, and they’re in real trouble now.
FARAI CHIDEYA: Your book The Two Income Trap was something that you did with your daughter. Which I find, particularly as a woman, I find that fascinating. What was it like to team up to do that kind of important work with your own child?
ELIZABETH WARREN: Well, you know, we were looking at all this data that I had. I had a new study out on families that had filed for bankruptcy and I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with these date and my little baby granddaughter was born. This is Amelia, my daughter’s, baby. We kept having these conversations around when she was born and finally that became the frame to the book. We don’t really frame it that way in the book, but the truth is it’s about what happened in one generation. What it meant to start a family in the early 1970s, and how it worked on income, and housing, and schools, and costs, and budgets and savings. And what it’s been like to start a family in the early 2000s. And the world has changed profoundly in that one generation snapshot, and that’s what we ended up writing the book around.
FARAI CHIDEYA: So many people thought, “OK. This is great.” We’ve had second-wave feminism that has allowed women to go to work, and women are still having kids, and the guys are still working, what’s wrong with that equation of everything being cool?
ELIZABETH WARREN: The problem is I just keep looking at this from the economics. I’m just a straight forward… I’m just a money girl. I want to see at the end of the day what’s happening. And here’s the bottom line on what’s happening: The only way over one generation that families in one generation that families are making any increase in money is by putting a second person into the workforce. That is, the wages of a man, I hate to tell you this, adjusted for inflation, median earning male makes $800 less than he used to one generation back.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY : She was looking at me, like, I just got a pay cut here.
ELIZABETH WARREN: Just wanted you to know, $800 down.
FARAI CHIDEYA: Get those kids out working.
ELIZABETH WARREN: So the only way we can continue to get some kind of rise in family income was by putting a second income in. But the problem is core expenses outstrip that — housing, health insurance, transportation, child care and taxes, because families are paying on these two salaries. At the end of the day, today’s two-income family has less money left over after those five basic expenses than the one-income family had a generation ago.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY : So you’ve got your headphones on there?
ELIZABETH WARREN: I’ve got them on.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY : Listen to this sound here.
Sound of credit card machine
JOHN HOCKENBERRY : You know what that sound is?
ELIZABETH WARREN: Yeah, I know.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY : That’s the sound of what?
ELIZABETH WARREN: That’s the sound of those credit card processing things.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY : Not being declined.
ELIZABETH WARREN: Not being declined.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY : Kind of a cliff-hanger for consumers for a long, long time. But in this environment, where we’re told every day there’s a credit crunch. What if these two-income families that you describe as more in debt now than ever before, fall of the edge as a result of the changes that have taken place even in the last few months of this economy?
ELIZABETH WARREN: This is the part that’s really scary. Because when Amelia and I wrote the book, it was still boom times. In fact, a lot of people we talked with laughed at us. You know, “Aw, what do you mean about the deteriorating situation of the American family? Times are great. Party on. Party on.” We are in such a weakened state going into this recession. People are not stopping to account for this, that we’re hitting unemployment, we’re hitting rises in costs, at a time when the American family was already staggering economically. The federal government said in their mortgage mitigation program, that if any bank was going to take TARP money, they had to be willing to participate in the mortgage program to try to help with foreclosures. The question on the table is, should they do the same things on credit cards and other practices? There are a lot of folks, even within my own panel, who said no.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY : You say yes?
ELIZABETH WARREN: I’m one of the people who says yes.
FARAI CHIDEYA: Alright, I’m going to have to leave it right there. I’ve certainly have learned a lot from you Elizabeth Warren. Thank you.
The Georgian -Russian conflict gets deeper and at the same time more difficult for the average American to understand. The most recent episode involves a mutiny of Georgian forces days before a NATO exercise of sorts followed by histrionic actions by president (nut case) Sakashvili.The really disturbing thing to me is that Obama cannot back off from the reflexively anti-Russian policies of the previous administration. This suggests that the same military-industrial fucks that we have had running the the country are still in charge. Questions to be asked include are why does NATO even exist? Can the U.S. even afford a fraction of the present military budget given the economic implosion we can all see?
In case you missed it there was an anti-torture rally outside the White House last week in which over 100 participants were arrested, The above clip is from Russia Today of all places. Meanwhile much discussion goes on in progressive-left circles as to what to think of President Obama. Andy Zee writes on the website of The Revolutionary Communist Party of the U.S.A. of a litany of shortcomings:
"A grievous, shameful and dangerous state of affairs permeates the movements of opposition in the U.S. Their outlook and politics have collapsed into passive acquiescence and even overt criminal complicity with the policies and actions of the ruling class, and are doing so by promoting the deadly illusion that the election of Barack Obama is bringing progressive change.
This is bullshit, it’s knowable, and it must change.
Some basic reality of Obama’s first 80 days: Obama has escalated the illegal war in Afghanistan with an additional 21,000 troops. Obama has expanded the war into Pakistan areas, using troops and unmanned drones. Obama has extended the deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq to 2010—and even that date may be extended by the Pentagon. Obama said he plans to leave 35,000-50,000 troops plus 50,000-100,000 mercenaries in Iraq after that, effectively continuing the illegal occupation. Obama said he would close Guantanamo within 1 year, yet prisoners there are still being force fed with tubes shoved down their throats. Obama approved $60 million to double the size of Bagram prison in Afghanistan. Obama’s Justice Department has defended the Bush policy of illegal warrantless wiretapping and asserted far broader claims of executive branch immunity than even the Bush regime."
Obviously not only Obama but the anti-war movement in general is not immune from criticism:
"In an act which concentrates the treachery of this collapse, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), the largest anti-war coalition, at their national meeting in December 2008, voted to oppose organizing demonstrations on the 6th Anniversary of the Iraq War on March 19 and 21, 2009. In opposition to mounting a determined struggle to end the wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and instead of calling people into the streets to stand with the people of the world, they decided “to mobilize a new base of people who have been inspired by Obama” in a four month campaign in commemoration of Martin Luther King titled, “Beyond War, A New Economy Is Possible: Yes We Can!”
The practical results: first, the protests that were actually held by others to coincide with the Iraq War’s Anniversary on March 19 and 21 were not as large as they needed to be—which mattered. Then, on Saturday April 4, UFPJ led a dull routine walk through the deserted financial district of NYC with a couple of thousand people revealing their capacity for sapping the life and spirit out of a movement—egregious, but not the heart of the matter."
While the RCPUSA has a few axes to grind other critics are making their thoughts known. John Stauber at the Center for Media and Demococracy takes on MoveOn.org for its apparent shifts in emphasis and policy. He too is disturbed with the now subdued approach to the Wars of America and the loss of focus on economic issues that matter to the vast majority of Americans:
"The main online activist efforts that elected Obama -- his own Organizing for America and the liberal lobby MoveOn -- have become cheerleaders and lobbyists for his legislative agenda, policies that in many instances betray his rhetoric of change. I am referring to Obama's refusal to quickly end the war in Iraq; his military escalation in Afghanistan; his support for Wall Street bailouts; his endorsement of tax subsidies for the coal industry ("clean coal") and the nuclear power industry (saving us from global warming). Obama is about to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on health care subsidies that cater to the insurance industry and undermine the only real solution to the current crisis, the adoption of a single payer health care system such as that enjoyed by the Canadians and most other western democracies.
Yet my email box is filled with missives from MoveOn and other liberal online campaigns that spin these dismal policies as "real change," or ignore them entirely to dampen criticism from the Left of the Obama Administration.
What are grassroots activist organizations to do to avoid marginalization? Peace and justice organizations at the local and state level need to learn and adopt the new media tools of MoveOn and Obama, but use them to give birth to fundamental change that empowers people rather than seeks accommodation with powerful corporate interests. Rather than organizing for an agenda determined by a handful of partisan Democrats at the top, this new organization should work to empower and represent people from the bottom up.......
"In early 2007, I began publicly criticizing MoveOn for co-opting the peace movement on behalf of the agenda of Congressional Democrats. The Democrats gained control of the U.S. Congress in the fall of 2006 based primarily on public revulsion over Bush's war in Iraq, a war that was endorsed from the start by leading Democrats including John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Hillary Clinton, and many others. In early 2007, the Democrats had an opportunity to cut off funding for the war, but blinked. MoveOn, an organization considered by the mainstream media the leader of the peace movement, sided with Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an effort that marginalized the Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus and gave Bush all the funding he wanted to continue the war.
The peace movement has never recovered. Although Obama was elected as the peace candidate, his Iraq withdrawal plan is anemic and would leave 50,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely, while he has ramped up the U.S. war in Afghanistan. MoveOn has declared Obama's Iraq strategy a success, even as the war continues, and is refusing to oppose Obama on Afghanistan. Meanwhile the grassroots peace movement that consists primarily of the hundreds of groups that make up the United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) coalition are disorganized and dispirited and UFPJ is in danger of going broke.
It's likely that all these groups that comprise UFPJ have among their own existing email lists a total number of peace activists in the millions. Yet they have never figured out how to mobilize these lists to create the sort of mega-list that is wielded by MoveOn. Hopefully down the road a network of non-partisan, web-based local and state activists will come together and create state and national email lists of millions of mobilized activists. Until these grassroots local and state groups learn the tricks of online activism and marry it to powerful grassroots organizing campaigns, real change will be deferred."
Mr Stauber is quite right to suggest another level of organizing is needed in this country to actually reflect the the beliefs and aspirations of Americans who have tossed off Bush-Cheney and don't wish to be coopted by those who at heart have more in common with the usual centers of power in this country. Vigilance is eternal as Che Guevara once said.
So what is the latest word on what may be a potential pandemic ? The following give varied answers. Questions to be answered include is this the same virus in every country?, Is this susceptible to commonly used anti-virals?, And how bad may it get?
First its not clear if this has the same virulence or killing potential everywhere. The death rate in Mexico seems to be substantially higher than other countries and why this is so is not clear given the fact that so far this seems to be the same virus in the U.S. as Mexico.
Anecdotal reports from Mexico suggest that this disease is not as susceptible to commonly used anti-virals . The BBC has a number of concerning reports such as this:
"I'm a specialist doctor in respiratory diseases and intensive care at the Mexican National Institute of Health. There is a severe emergency over the swine flu here. More and more patients are being admitted to the intensive care unit. Despite the heroic efforts of all staff (doctors, nurses, specialists, etc) patients continue to inevitably die. The truth is that anti-viral treatments and vaccines are not expected to have any effect, even at high doses. It is a great fear among the staff. The infection risk is very high among the doctors and health staff.
There is a sense of chaos in the other hospitals and we do not know what to do. Staff are starting to leave and many are opting to retire or apply for holidays. The truth is that mortality is even higher than what is being reported by the authorities, at least in the hospital where I work it. It is killing three to four patients daily, and it has been going on for more than three weeks. It is a shame and there is great fear here. Increasingly younger patients aged 20 to 30 years are dying before our helpless eyes and there is great sadness among health professionals here. Antonio Chavez, Mexico City "
As to the last question who knows? The unpredictability of these outbreaks makes prognostication difficult. CIDRAP sums it up:
" Unpredictability stressed Schuchat stressed the unpredictability and fluidity of the swine flu situation. "We do think this virus is spreading from person to person, and we're taking steps aggressively to try to slow the spread," she said. "We are expecting things to change, and we want you to expect change as well."
In response to questions, she said it is "premature" to conclude that the disease in Mexico is different from the one in the United States, even though Mexico has had a number of deaths. "We don't have many infected people, and we don't have great information yet," she said. Though the United States has had no deaths attributed to the virus yet, "I do fear that we will have deaths here," she added.
In response to a question, Schuchat said the CDC believes that "person to person to person" (tertiary) transmission is going on. But the agency has not yet estimated how many additional cases can be expected to result from each case.
She said some of the US cases have involved US residents who traveled to Mexico, but she wasn't sure how many. The two case-patients in Kansas are a married couple, one of whom got sick after a trip to Mexico, and the spouse became ill 2 days later.
In reiterating CDC advice about self-protective steps people can take, Schuchat said, "If you're having symptoms after a trip to Mexico, that's a good time to go to the doctor and get tested." Symptoms that may suggest swine flu include a high fever, muscle aches, cough, sore throat, and possibly vomiting and diarrhea—though these could indicate many other possibilities as well, she noted.
She repeated earlier CDC assessments that the H1N1 strain in the seasonal flu vaccine is unlikely to offer protection against the new swine H1N1 strain. From the latest tests, "it doesn't look like there are cross-reacting antibodies from seasonal H1N1 to this particular strain," she said.
Commenting on the age distribution of swine flu cases, Schuchat said US patients range from about 7 years to 54 years. In Mexico, "What we know so far is that many of the patients are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, but we're still lining up information about which have an illness actually caused by this virus." Tests have shown that some of the sick people in Mexico actually had a seasonal flu virus, she said.
Though it appears there have been few if any swine flu cases in older people, "It's really too soon for us to conclude that older persons are spared," Schuchat said.
International developments Elsewhere, two Canadian provinces today reported a total of 6 confirmed swine flu cases, according to reports from Canwest News Service and Reuters. Nova Scotia health officials said that 2 of its 4 confirmed cases were students attending the same private school who recently visited Mexico. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia's chief public health officer, said the patients' illnesses were mild.
In British Columbia, a spokesman for the province's Centre for Disease Control told Reuters today that officials have confirmed 2 cases.
Israel's health ministry today reported its first swine flu case, in a man who had recently traveled to Mexico and returned with influenza symptoms, Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reported. He is hospitalized and is in isolation, the report said.
According to media reports, health authorities in several countries, including France, Spain, and New Zealand, are testing several travelers who reported flu-like symptoms after traveling to Mexico.
Mexican officials have closed schools through May 6, though many schools were closed anyway during the lead-up to the Cinco de Mayo holiday. The US Embassy in Mexico City has suspended all visa and nonessential citizen services from Apr 27 until Apr 30 as a precautionary measure to protect clients and staff, according to an Apr 25 State Department warden message. "
My favorite resources include CIDRAP, PROMED and of course the CDC.
More and more the use of Drone aircraft has become a tool of the U.S. military and the political establishment that serves it. In Pakistan and Afghanistan these are now somehow seen as "humanitarian weapons" that reduce the loss of U.S. servicemen and supposedly civilians as well. In fact they follow an almost 100 year history of aerial war on civilians that has been justified from the outset as a better way of war that in reality seems to be more and more dehumanized.
As Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn Young in their book "Bombing Civlians" point out:
"The ability to destroy an entire city and annihilate its population in a single bombing campaign was not only far more effcient and less costly for the attacker than previous methods of warfare; it also sanitized slaughter.The bombardier never looks squarely into the eyes of the victim, never even sees the victim. The act of destruction has no physical immeadiacy for the perpetrator, as in decapitation by sword or even shooting with a machine gun. This may be particularly important when the principal targets are women, children, and the elderly." TomDispatch gives a particularly chilling account of drones and their possible future:
"To those who know their air power history, that shouldn't be so surprising. Air power has had a remarkably stellar record when it comes to causing death and destruction, but a remarkably poor one when it comes to breaking the will of nations, peoples, or even modest-sized organizations. Our drone wars are destructive, but they are unlikely to achieve Washington's goals.
The Future Awaits Us
If you want to read the single most chilling line yet uttered about drone warfare American-style, it comes at the end of Christopher Drew's piece. He quotes Brookings Institution analyst Peter Singer saying of our Predators and Reapers: "[T]hese systems today are very much Model T Fords. These things will only get more advanced."
In other words, our drone wars are being fought with the airborne equivalent of cars with cranks, but the "race" to the horizon is already underway. By next year, some Reapers will have a far more sophisticated sensor system with 12 cameras capable of filming a two-and-a-half mile round area from 12 different angles. That program has been dubbed "Gorgon Stare", but it doesn't compare to the future 92-camera Argus program whose initial development is being funded by the Pentagon's blue-skies outfit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Soon enough, a single pilot may be capable of handling not one but perhaps three drones, and drone armaments will undoubtedly grow progressively more powerful and "precise." In the meantime, BAE Systems already has a drone four years into development, the Taranis, that should someday be "completely autonomous"; that is, it theoretically will do without human pilots. Initial trials of a prototype are scheduled for 2010.
By 2020, so claim UAV enthusiasts, drones could be engaging in aerial battle and choosing their victims themselves. As Robert S. Boyd of McClatchy reported recently, "The Defense Department is financing studies of autonomous, or self-governing, armed robots that could find and destroy targets on their own. On-board computer programs, not flesh-and-blood people, would decide whether to fire their weapons."
It's a particular sadness of our world that, in Washington, only the military can dream about the future in this way, and then fund the "arms race" of 2018 or 2035. Rest assured that no one with a governmental red cent is researching the health care system of 2018 or 2035, or the public education system of those years.
In the meantime, the skies of our world are filling with round-the-clock assassins. They will only evolve and proliferate. Of course, when we check ourselves out in the movies, we like to identify with John Connor, the human resister, the good guy of this planet, against the evil machines. Elsewhere, however, as we fight our drone wars ever more openly, as we field mechanical techno-terminators with all-seeing eyes and loose our missiles from thousands of miles away ("Hasta la Vista, Baby!"), we undoubtedly look like something other than a nation of John Connors to those living under the Predators. It may not matter if the joysticks and consoles on those advanced machines are somewhat antiquated; to others, we are now the terminators of the planet, implacable machine assassins.
True, we can't send our drones into the past to wipe out the young Ayman al-Zawahiri in Cairo or the teenage Osama bin Laden speeding down some Saudi road in his gray Mercedes sedan. True, the UAV enthusiasts, who are already imagining all-drone wars run by "ethical" machines, may never see anything like their fantasies come to pass. Still, the fact that without the help of a single advanced cyborg we are already in the process of creating a Terminator planet should give us pause for thought... or not. "
I'll have to admit I missed the initial message but here it is and it could be as game changing, if not more than, Obama in the U.S. It may seem somewhat retarded now but I think there is a great unrepresented majority that can get behind Liminov if allowed to.
Nouriel Roubini, one of the few to get it, explains the latest stock "bounce":
"Mild signs that the rate of economic contraction is slowing in the United States, China, and other parts of the world have led many economists to forecast that positive growth will return to the US in the second half of the year, and that a similar recovery will occur in other advanced economies. The emerging consensus among economists is that growth next year will be close to the trend rate of 2.5 per cent.
Investors are talking of “green shoots” of recovery and of positive “second derivatives of economic activity” (continuing economic contraction is the first, negative, derivative, but the slower rate suggests that the bottom is near). As a result, stock markets have started to rally in the US and around the world. Markets seem to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel for the economy and for the battered profits of corporations and financial firms.
This consensus optimism is, I believe, not supported by the facts. Indeed, I expect that while the rate of US contraction will slow from -6 per cent in the last two quarters, US growth will still be negative (around -1.5 to -2 per cent) in the second half of the year (compared to the bullish consensus of +2 per cent). Moreover, growth next year will be so weak (0.5 to 1 per cent, as opposed to the consensus of 2 per cent or more) and unemployment so high (above 10 per cent) that it will still feel like a recession.
In the euro zone and Japan, the outlook for 2009 and 2010 is even worse, with growth close to zero even next year. China will have a more rapid recovery later this year, but growth will reach only 5 per cent this year and 7 per cent in 2010, well below the average of 10 per cent over the last decade.
Given this weak outlook for the major economies, losses by banks and other financial institutions will continue to grow. My latest estimates are $3.6 trillion in losses for loans and securities issued by US institutions, and $1 trillion for the rest of the world.
It is said that the International Monetary Fund, which earlier this year revised upward its estimate of bank losses, from $1 trillion to $2.2 trillion, will announce a new estimate of $3.1 trillion for US assets and $0.9 trillion for foreign assets, figures very close to my own. By this standard, many US and foreign banks are effectively insolvent and will have to be taken over by governments. The credit crunch will last much longer if we keep zombie banks alive despite their massive and continuing losses.
Given this outlook for the real economy and financial institutions, the latest rally in US and global stock markets has to be interpreted as a bear-market rally. Economists usually joke that the stock market has predicted 12 out of the last nine recessions, as markets often fall sharply without an ensuing recession. But, in the last two years, the stock market has predicted six out of the last zero economic recoveries— that is, six bear market rallies that eventually fizzled and led to new lows.
The stock market's latest “dead cat bounce” may last a while longer, but three factors will, in due course, lead it to turn south again. First, macroeconomic indicators will be worse than expected, with growth failing to recover as fast as the consensus expects.
Second, the profits and earnings of corporations and financial institutions will not rebound as fast as the consensus predicts, as weak economic growth, deflationary pressures, and surging defaults on corporate bonds will limit firms’ pricing power and keep profit margins low.
Third, financial shocks will be worse than expected. At some point, investors will realise that bank losses are massive, and that some banks are insolvent. Deleveraging by highly leveraged firms— such as hedge funds— will lead them to sell illiquid assets in illiquid markets. And some emerging market economies— despite massive IMF support— will experience a severe financial crisis with contagious effects on other economies.
So, while this latest bear-market rally may continue for a bit longer, renewed downward pressure on stocks and other risky assets is inevitable.
To be sure, much more aggressive policy action (massive and unconventional monetary easing, larger fiscal-stimulus packages, bailouts of financial firms, individual mortgage-debt relief, and increased financial support for troubled emerging markets) in many countries in the last few months has reduced the risk of a near depression. That outcome seemed highly likely six months ago, when global financial markets nearly collapsed.
Still, this global recession will continue for a longer period than the consensus suggests. There may be light at the end of the tunnel— no depression and financial meltdown. But economic recovery everywhere will be weaker and will take longer than expected. The same is true for a sustained recovery of financial markets.
Nouriel Roubini is Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University, and Chairman of RGE Monitor "
According to MSM accounts the economy is on the upswing and we should quit worrying about things. There are however voices who have been around for sometime to suggest otherwise, one of my favorites is Elizabeth Warren who has always told it as it is, especially as her current position head of the Congressional Oversight Panel adds a dose of reality lacking in current analysis. This is reinforced by an article by Mike Whitney in Counterpunch that gives additional insight as seen in the following:
"That question was best answered by the former chief economist of the IMF, Simon Johnson, in an article which appeared in The Atlantic Monthly:
"The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming... is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government - a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF's staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation; recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression we're running out of time." (The Atlantic Monthly, May 2009, by Simon Johnson)
The banks have a stranglehold on the political process. Many of their foot soldiers now occupy the highest offices in government. It's up to people like Elizabeth Warren to draw attention to the silent coup that has taken place and do whatever needs to be done to purge the moneylenders from the seat of power and restore representative government. It's a tall order and time is running out."
