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6b: Appendix: Money-Corporations-Politics – (MCP)
3 human made tools in dire need of major overhaul
As a systems troubleshooter one needs know how things
work. Since starting this project,
I’ve read a great deal of material on the subjects written by journalists,
enlightened economists and university professors. Listed in the reference notes are some of
the books I’ve read [RI] on the
topic of MCP. As other relevant
books come out, book reviews are often available. Jay Hanson of Hawaii, a long time
internet acquaintance with similar interests, searches daily for new
articles on MCP topics and shares them on email list servers. After moving from naivety with regard to
money and its influence on politics, it all seemed rather shocking, even
outrageous: unbelievable at first.
It seems that there is a layer of control over human affairs that is
hidden from view of, we the people
at the micro-view level. But perhaps
this is just a conspiracy theory?
No. In order to get a summary
glimpse of the big MCP picture, three recommended books are:
Dr. Strangelove’s Game: A
brief history of economic genius 2001 by Paul Strathern;
The New Rulers of the World, 2002
by John Pilgar; and,
The Gods Of Money: Wall St.
and the death of the American Century, 2009 by F. W. Engdahl.
While there is significant overlap in many facts, each paint
the picture with different historical details, highlights, and personal
insights.
Covered in these books
(and several others) are historical issues that deal with such things as
economic bubbles and bursts [R2].
There was the Holland originated tulip bubble around 1630 where 3000
guilders was paid for one bulb at the peak of the frenzy. And then a fast talking Scotchman started
the South Sea Bubble around 1720. Later, it was the French with the
Mississippi Company in 1763. War and easily accessible oil provided the
human activity to end the great depression of the 1930s.
The pace of economic crashes has increased since those days.
In 2002, on an internet chat group on global issues, UK economist WaThere have been currency crises in 87 countries since 1975.
Never in the history of the world have so many countries had such unstable
banking systems, and the cause is the free movement of money around the
globe. The cause is the foreign currency exchange market; the global
casino.”
I happened to be in Brazil about 1974 as their currency was
collapsing (again) with rampant inflation.
During a taxi ride in Sao Paulo I learned that the driver was given
a sheet, printed daily, which showed the expected monetary inflation rate
every 10 minutes, and at the end of the trip the price is based on the
distance rate plus inflation: Interesting, but not fun! Quantative
Easing [R3] is the
illusionary term now used for printing more and more money in US and
UK. Pumping money into the system is
a typical prelude to the collapse phase of empires or imperial powers. One characteristic of this phase is that
the rich/poor divide grows even more stark as
often pointed out by journalists [R4].
The roots of recent problems
started much earlier. In both UK and
USA, a few families were very prominent shaping today’s economic monetary
system. Two key families were the Rockefellers
and the Morgans.
Engdahl [R1] explains how a group called The Six Families exercised enormous
control, illuminated in one paragraph below.
“Between the creation of the First Bank
of the United States by Treasury Secretary Hamilton in 1791 as a private
bank, and the creation of the Federal Reserve in December 1913 – also a
privately - owned central banks – a small group of extremely wealthy
families had emerged, earlier referred to as America’s Six Families. The wealth and power of these families
were tied to their ability to control the money of the new nation, to
create shortages of money at will, leading to panics and even depressions,
in order to expand and consolidate their power over the nation. It was they who financed the expansion of
the United States beyond its borders, after the Spanish –American War of
1898, America became a de facto imperial power ay annexing the Philippines
as a gateway to the lucrative trade of China and Asia.”
Endgdahl points out that in 1934 a Canadian lawyer, Gerald McGee, was given data by the
US Secret Service indicating that Booth’s was a mercenary working for
international bankers determined to keep the money supply in private hands.
McGee made the following speech to the Cdn. parliament:
“Abraham Lincoln, the murdered
emancipator of the slaves, was assassinated through the machinations of a
group of representatives of the International bankers, who feared the US
President’s National Credit ambitions.
There was only one group in the world at that time who had any reason to desire the death of Lincoln. They were the men opposed to his national
currency program and who had fought him throughout the whole Civil War on
his policy of Greenback currency.”
This quote is followed by comment on the irony that John F.
Kennedy was assassinated shortly after he had issued, Executive Order 11110
[R5], an order to restore the money creation process to the way
it was described in the USA constitution, as a real Federal Government
issued currency – was this just a coincidence of fate? Kennedy’s bill was scuttled shortly after
his death.
There are Non
Government Organisations (NGO) throughout
the industrial world that have been trying for decades to awaken the public
to action toward resorting money creation to their national governments [R6]. But complexity
overload and other reasons prevent the vast majority of people from making
this an important issue.
Engdahl covers the Brenton Woods
Group, the Bilderbergs group, and many
others. Economic depressions leading
to wars were discussed. UK and US bankers were involved in all steps along the way,
often bankrolling both sides. These
are some of the roots of the current global economic crisis.
Even some folks who specialize in one or another aspect of
money, such as prominent economists, sometimes seem to forget that the underpinnings of their profession is rigged. And they likely forget because they
believe the self-promotion of the economics leaders telling us that economic
is a scientific profession. Even the
Nobel Prize for Economics is a deceptive hoax. This award is given by the Bank Of Sweden, not the Nobel Foundation. The 2011 book, Economics Unmasked, by Philip Smith
(a physicist) and Manfred Maz-Neef (popular
Chilean Economist/writer) explain under a section heading Furthering the intellectual prestige of
economics:
“In order to successfully fulfil
the role of defender of the status quo, economics as a discipline had to
become, like natural science, intellectually respectable. This is, however one looks at it, a
formidable task. ........ A giant step in this direction was the creation
by the Swedish National Bank in 1969, the name of Alfred Nobel (he was dead
and could no t defend himself), of a yearly prize
for the ‘best’ economist(s). The
names of the recipients are announce on the
anniversary of Nobel’s death, just as are the names of the winners of the
real Nobel Prizes. There appear to
be no impediment to choosing in one year two winners whose economic
‘truths’ are totally contradictory; nor does the bank seem to be
embarrassed if the winners turn out to be criminals.”
The section
continues pointing out how the Nobel winners’ acceptance speech, will often
enhance the charade by speaking of fellow winners such as Boer, Einstein or
Newton.
Sometimes
prominent and dedicated economists have a sudden epiphany. Following is the text of James Galbraith’s written statement to members of
the US Senate Judiciary Committee delivered May 10, 2010.
I write to you from a
disgraced profession. Economic theory, as widely taught since the 1980s,
failed miserably to understand the forces behind the financial crisis.
Concepts including “rational expectations,” “market discipline,” and the
“efficient markets hypothesis” led economists to argue that speculation
would stabilize prices, that sellers would act to protect their
reputations, that caveat emptor could be relied on, and that widespread
fraud therefore could not occur. Not all economists believed this – but
most did. ....[R7]
When you give
it some thought, you may see a similarity between money and religion. There are commandments to follow and
regulations handed down from above, perhaps with sincere intention to play
a positive role in people’s lives.
But realities change and what once was positive may now be
negative. AbRealites
often reject needed change. Money,
or the lack of it, plays a very central role in our lives, and so does
religion for many. In the mid 1800s Max Weber wrote a book called, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
In it he argued that the protestant values are the basis of a good
economy, and that true socialism could not work because there would be no
way of assessing comparative values for goods or services. However, another economist, Joseph Schumpter argued that capitalism began under Calvanism long before the industrial revolution.
Along this
line of thought, in a web journal, Lissa Harris
wrote this article called, The economic heresy of Herman Daly:[R8]
“If economics is a religion, the
World Bank is perhaps its grandest church. For the last half century, the
venerable institution at 1818 H Street in Washington, D.C., has been
dispatching its missionaries around the globe, spreading the theology of
the free market to the heathens.
And if economics is a religion,
Herman Daly is its arch-heretic, a member of the high priesthood turned renegade. From 1988 to 1994, Daly was the World Bank's
senior environmental economist, a lonely voice of dissent in an
organization that frowns on unbelievers. During his six-year tenure, Daly,
the economist-turned-ecovisionary whose works
established ecological economics as a discipline, succeeded in getting the
World Bank to take notice of the environment in its policies and programs.
But he made little headway persuading his colleagues to adopt his more
radical views on economic cosmology, which, in his vision, placed the
economy squarely inside the global ecosystem, instead of the other way
around.”
The last sentence Daily points to one key systemically fatal
flaw: Today’s economic leaders consider their dismal science to be superior
to the Gaian mother system from which we emerged and within which we now toil. This brings to mind a comment by
historian Barbara Tuchman when she said: “Logic and reason are not the primary determinants of human affairs.”. (The March of Folly ’84)
Carrying on the money/religion analogy a bit further, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
has positioned itself much like the Vatican in that it can excommunicate
wayward counties if they fall into the sinful debt trap of spending more
than they make. If they defy the
church of IMF, as have Iceland & Greece 2011, they may suffer the
consequences isolation by excommunication.
But if they comply they live in permanent enslavement, controlled by
corporations. To escape corporate
tyranny, in 1995 Bolivia need a revolution [R9] to
expel Bechtel: The US multinational that had privatised
their water supply.
Here is a quotes to make the point
that that the socio economic system in which we toil has been recognized as
flawed for a long time.
Unless you become more watchful in
your States and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive
privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of
Government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your
dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations.
-- Andrew Jackson, farewell address, 04
March 1837
Since
Jackson’s days, the situating has grown steadily more severe. Much has been written about the nature of
and progression of corporate power.
In 2005 William Rivers Pit, NYTimes best
seller author, wrote an essay in the cyber journal, Truthout, called, The Supremacy of the Super-Citizen,
in which he made a historical review of the power creep of corporations. He
started with: “The word
"corporation" comes from the Latin "corpus,"
or "body." The Oxford English Dictionary defines
"corporation" as "a group of people authorized to act as an
individual." The history of corporations in America is intertwined
with the story of the revolution that birthed this nation. British
corporations in colonial America were rebelled against vigorously as
representatives of the Crown, which they were.”
The corporation is a body of people, and it now this body has
been given many of the rights and privilege that are associates with a
human individual. Originally they
were designed to carry out a specific task for the benefit of society, such
as to build a railroad or power dam.
While they still undertake both large and small projects, their
principle goal has now shifted to making money for their multinational
shareholders. Gone are
considerations for the Gaian environment or even for any particular
nation’s well being as manufacturing bases are
shifted to low cost labour markets.
The influence of corporations even effects
the nature of higher education. As
corporations demand greater and greater relief from paying taxes,
government revenues fall, including funding available for universities and
colleges. Rich corporations step in
with such measures as dedicating university buildings or research
laboratories to themselves. Not only
can they claim this as a charitable donation gaining further tax relief,
they also sign contracts with the universities demanding various future
services from the university. As a
professor of Geology from U of Brisbane suggested to me a few years ago,
the university research departments are now “development” departments,
limiting research to that which will likely benefit their financial
benefactor.
The pace of corporate control quickens. January 2010 headlines
read: [R10]
“The US Supreme Court overturned a
century-old restriction on corporations using their money to sway federal
elections and ruled that companies have a free-speech right to spend as
much as they wish to persuade voters to elect or defeat candidates for
Congress and the White House.”
Even long before this declaration, a common expression stated,
We have the best government money can
buy! But after this change in
the law, in USA the word “corporation”
can now be substituted for “people”
in this once proud statement of democracy: – government for the people, by the people. Corporations have far more money that individual voters.
In September 2010, another step of corporate personhood. A Supreme Court ruling overturned a long
established Freedom Of Information
law as it applied to data that governments may hold regarding
corporations. This means that
evidence found by government inspectors regarding a corporation’s failure
to meet government standards, either financial or environmental, could not
be made public.
Evolved to be psychopathic, corporations’ tightened grip on
governance, it is now clear that the corporate foxes are in charge of the
hen house. Much has been written
about the purpose of corporations [R11] but to
have heavy handed influence on government is not one of their original
purposes.
Echoing Jackson from 30 years earlier, Thomas Jefferson said
in 1860:
If the American people ever allow
the banks to control the issuance of the currency, first by inflation, and
then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them
will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake up
homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power of money should be
taken from banks and restored to Congress and the people to whom it
belongs. I sincerely believe the banking institutions have the issuing
power of money, are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.
For hundreds of years, wise
political leaders have recognized the problems: but they have not fixed
it. It becomes clear that, political leaders, are not the actual leaders of our society. Books like John Perkins', Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man, and his latest, the just-released, Secret
History of the American Empire, explain how corporations now pull the
strings of national and global affairs.
In another revealing book, the 2008 book by Kevin Carson, The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand:
Corporate Capitalism as State Guaranteed Privilege, Carson writes:
The current
structure of capital ownership and organization of production in our
so-called “market” economy, reflects coercive state intervention prior to
and extraneous to the market. From the outset of the industrial revolution,
what is nostalgically called “laissez-faire” was in fact a system of
continuing state intervention to subsidize accumulation, guarantee privilege,
and maintain work discipline.
Clearly, the existing Money
Corporations Political system [R12] have
more control over the money in most of our pockets and accounts than our
political governments. But even if
an enlightened government came to power, the interlocking nature of several
elements of today’s paradigm make this a wicked
multi-headed problem. We-the-people, treasure the money in our pockets and feel
dependent on corporations even though the relationship has turned
abusive. This interlock was
highlighted by Professor Bill Rees [13] UBC's School of Community and Regional Planning as he
states:
In this kind of context
[where we seem incapable of acting intelligently], what I’m talking about
has been scientifically necessary but is politically unfeasible. Can you
imagine being elected on a platform of reducing the economy by 80%? It’s
not going to happen. It’s not politically feasible. But what’s politically
feasible – you know, carbon sequestration, carbon trading and all of that
stuff – has no effect whatsoever on the reality in which we’re operating.
It’s scientifically irrelevant.
This appendix on MCP does not delve into many other weird
realities of the world of economics, such as the commoditisation
of money, fractional reserve banking, derivative trading, etc., etc. These imaginative creations employ
thousands of people that produce no goods or service for humanity. But those who work
there are among the most highly paid employs on the planet. When this unsustainable monopoly game
ends, we need to have in place a viable system of, Money, Corporations and
Politics (MCP). As Milton Friedman once wrote: “Only a crisis—actual or
perceived—produces real change.”
The inevitable economic crash in our near-term future will provide
such a crisis.
<<<<<ó>>>>>
Back to Index: http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/1a-Index.pdf
To Appendix 6c – Graphics, Before PJ &
After PJ http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/6c-GraphicBeforeAfter.pdf
12 pages of reference notes and links
follow:
After the
reference notes below there remain a few quotes and notes among thousands
that could be used to help make the key points to this chapter. That point being that it is urgent for us
to understand that we must trash and replace the MCP parts of today’s
guiding paradigm.
[R1] Books read by
troubleshooter that relate to this chapter (listed by date published). Other books referred take data from book
reviews by others or from email listserver clips
from credible sources.
§ Economics
Unmasked: From power and greed to compassion and the common good
2011 - Philip B. Smith & Manfred Max-Neef
§ The
End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality
2011 – Richard Heinberg
§ Agenda
for a New Economy: From phantom wealth to real wealth
2009 David Korton
§ The
End of Money: Future of Civilization 2009
Thomas Grecko Jr.
§ Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the
American Century 2009 F.W. Engdahl
§ The
Ownership Solution: Toward a shared capitalism for the 21st
Century 1998 Jeff
Gates
§ The
Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a caring economics 2007
Riane Eisler
§ American
Theocracy: the peril and politics of radical religion, oil, and borrowed
money in the 21st Century 2005 Kevin
Phillips
§ The
Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism 2006 Naomi
Klein
§ This
Changes Everything 2015 Namoi
Klein
§ Life,
Money & Illusion: Living on Earth as if we wanted to stay
2006 Mike Nickerson
§ Gaian
Democracies: Redefining Globalism & People-Power 2003
Roy Madron & John Jopling
§ Cooperative
Capitalism: A Blueprint for Global Peace and Prosperity
2003 J.W. Smith
§ The
New Rulers Of The World 2002
John Pilger
§ Seven
Steps to Justice: Two Basic Incomes for All, Capital Ownership for All: A
Proper Deal for Women, Solution to the Middle Ease and Kashmire 2002
Rodney Shakespeare & Peter Challen
§ Dr.
Strangelove’s Game: A brief history of economic genius
2001 Paul Strathern
PDF copy can be downloaded free - click
§ No
Logo: Taking aim at the brand bullies 2000 Naomi
Klein
§ Stop
Think 1999 Paul Hellyer
§ Unequal
freedoms: the global market as an ethical system
1998 John McMurtry
§ World’s Wasted Wealth: The political
economy of waste 1989 J.W. Smith
§ Emotional Intelligence 1996
Daniel Goleman
§ Doughnut Economics 2017 Kate Renworth
§ What We Must Do Gar Asperovitz
2017
§ Principles of a Pluralist Commonwealth
2017
§ Graduated in a MOOC course on Economies
http://iflas.blogspot.ca/2014/12/money-and-society-mooc.html
>>
[R2]
Dr. Glenn Berry
http://forests.org/staff/glen.asp
http://www.rainforestportal.org/
July 24,
2011 by Dr. Glen Barry, President,
Ecological Internet
Ever since the
human family embraced a growth based mentality and obsequious faith in
liberal economics, we have witnessed a series of bubbles. The most recent
boom-bust cycle has been the still unresolved financial and mortgage
bubbles, but bubbles go as far back as the Dutch tulip mania of 1637.
Exuberant yet clearly unsustainable growth, or inversely destruction,
appears to be inherent to industrial, speculative, and growth obsessed
capitalism. Bubbles represent the human proclivity for greed, to grow too
fast, overshooting demand, while often exhausting key resources. ...
[R3]
Quantitative easing is in effect a
monetarist policy (remember Milton Friedman and the Chicago school of free
market economists) that increases the supply of money.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/06/what-is-quantitative-easing
A lighter view
of imaginary money is being pumped into the system in attempt to sustain
it. [Quantitative Easing Cartoon] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k
>>
[R4]
Just consider the statistics for the United States
(borrowed from In These Times, with credit to "The Looting of
America" by Les Leopold, from a Daily Kos post by Meteor
Blades):
- in 1973 the
richest 1% of Americans received 8% of national income; by 2006 it was 23%,
the highest proportion since 1929; separately from the source cited below,
the bottom 80% of American earned near 60% of income in 1972 but only about
37% in 2007;
- today the
richest 1% earn as much as the bottom 50% combined;
- in 1970 the
top 100 CEOs on average earned 45 times as much as the average worker; by
2006 that average CEO earned 1,723 times the average worker wage;
- in constant
dollars, real wages slid from a 1973 peak of $746 per week to $612 per week
in 2007, an 18% decrease - in essence wages completely unhinged from
productivity growth (if wages had kept pace with productivity, an average
worker today would earn $1,172 per week, or $60,892 annually compared to
the actual current annual wage of $31,824, 91% difference;
---
Eleven charts that explain everything that's wrong with
America.
— By Dave
Gilson and Carolyn
Perot
Mother Jones page -April 2011
A huge share of the nation's economic growth over the past 30 years
has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph
>>
[R5]
John F. Kennedy was assassinated shortly after he had a bill in
process, Executive Order 11110,
to restore the money creation process to the way it was described in the
constitution as a real Federal currency – a coincidence of fate?
http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/executiveorder11110.htm
“On June 4, 1963, a little known attempt
was made to strip the Federal
Reserve Bank of its power to
loan money to the government at interest. On that day President John F.
Kennedy signed Executive Order No. 11110 that returned to the U.S.
government the power to issue currency, without going through the Federal
Reserve. Mr. Kennedy's order gave the Treasury the power "to issue
silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver
dollars in the Treasury." This meant that for every ounce of silver in
the U.S. Treasury's vault, the government could introduce new money into
circulation. In all, Kennedy brought nearly $4.3 billion in U.S. notes into
circulation. The ramifications of this bill are enormous.”
>>
[R6]
Organizations for many years have tried to convince governments
take the issuance of money out of the hands of private banks, and to enable
the Federal bank issue and lend:
Bromsgrove
Group of UK: http://prosperityuk.com/bromsgrove-conference/statement-of-belief/
COMMER of Canada:
Committee On Monetary and Economic Reform http://www.comer.org/
AMI The
American Monetary Institute of USA http://moneyreform.com
US Senator Kuninich: http://kucinich.house.gov/UploadedFiles/NEED_ACT.pdf
The same
message as told by a 12 year old Canadian girl:
http://www.businessinsider.com/victoria-grant-bank-lecture-video-2012-5
>>
[R7]
James Galbraith to the Senate Judiciary Committee:
“I write to you from a disgraced profession. Economic theory, as
widely taught since the 1980s, failed miserably to understand the forces
behind the financial crisis. Concepts including “rational expectations,”
“market discipline,” and the “efficient markets hypothesis” led economists
to argue that speculation would stabilize prices, that sellers would act to
protect their reputations, that caveat emptor could be relied on, and that
widespread fraud therefore could not occur. Not all economists believed
this – but most did.
“Thus the study of financial fraud received little attention.
Practically no research institutes exist; collaboration between economists
and criminologists is rare; in the leading departments there are few
specialists and very few students. Economists have soft- pedaled the role
of fraud in every crisis they examined, including the Savings & Loan debacle,
the Russian transition, the Asian meltdown and the dot.com bubble. They
continue to do so now. At a conference sponsored by the Levy Economics
Institute in New York on April 17, the closest a former Under Secretary of
the Treasury, Peter Fisher, got to this question was to use the word
“naughtiness.” This was on the day that the SEC charged Goldman Sachs with
fraud.”
For the remainder of the talk, go to:
http://rwer.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/i-write-to-you-from-a-disgraced-profession/
>>
[R8]
GristS: The
Economic Heresy of Herman Daly, [http://www.grist.org/article/bank]
...and
magazine.com/356-daly/357-the-end-of-growth
>>
See *ECONOMICS AS
RELIGION*: From Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond, by
Robert H. Nelson.
http://www.amazon. com/Economics- As-Religion-
Samuelson- Chicago/dp/ 0271022841
>>
[ Jay says:
A better term would be the "fundamentalist religion network" that
runs the world. These are all solders (robots) of a religion taught
in economics departments around the world. The world is going to crash
hard because almost no one in academia understands "net energy." ]
“The members
of the American economics profession, as [Thurman] Arnold contended,
performed a vital practical role in maintaining this unique system of
corporate socialism American style. It was their role to prevent the
American public from achieving a correct understanding of the actual
workings of the American economic system. Economists instead were assigned
the task to dispense priestly blessings that would allow business to
operate independent of damaging political manipulation. They accomplished
this task by means of their message of “laissez faire religion, based on a
conception of a society composed of competing individuals.” However false
as a description of the actual U.S. economy, this vision in the mind of the
American public was in practice “transferred automatically to industrial
organizations with nation-wide power and dictatorial forms of government.”
Even though the arguments of economists were misleading and largely
fictional, the practical — and beneficial — result of their deception was to
throw a “mantle of protection … over corporate government” from various
forms of outside interference. Admittedly, as the economic “symbolism got
farther and farther from reality, it required more and more ceremony to
keep it up.” But as long as this arrangement worked and there could be
maintained “the little pictures in the back of the head of the ordinary
man,” the effect was salutary — “the great [corporate] organization was
secure in its freedom and independence.” It was this very freedom and independence
of business professionals to pursue the correct scientific answer — the
efficient answer — on which the economic progress of the United States
depended.”
— Robert H. Nelson, REACHING
FOR HEAVEN ON EARTH
>>
[R9]
New York
Times, Dec. 2005:
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia — The people
of this high Andean city were ecstatic when they won the "water
war."
After days of protests and martial law, Bechtel, the U.S.
multinational that had raised rates when it began running the waterworks,
was forced out. As its executives fled the city, protest leaders pledged to
improve service and a surging left in Latin America celebrated the removal
as a major victory, to be repeated in country after country where water
utilities had been privatized.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/business/worldbusiness/14iht-water.html
Bolivia has
learned from past mistakes:
Bolivia’s Law of Mother Earth is set to pass. On Wednesday the United Nations will
discuss a proposed treaty based on the Universal
Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, which was drafted by
environmentalists last year. Both mandate legal recognition of ecosystems’
right to exist.
Controversially,
it will also enshrine the right of nature "to not be affected by
mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of
ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities".
>>
[R10]
The pace of corporate control over politics quickens....:
A U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia handed AT&T a victory by
ruling that corporations may invoke personal privacy as a legal basis for
claiming that government records about them should be exempt from
disclosure.
The administration said it marked the first time in the
35-year-history of the law that it has been extended to corporations.
Six public interest groups supported the administration's appeal.
The justices agreed to hear an Obama administration appeal arguing
that the law's personal privacy protections apply only to individuals, not
to corporations like the telecommunications giant.
http://archive.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/01/supreme-court-lifts-curbs-on-corporate-political-donations.html
or
The Story
of Citizens: This Utube is another great video by Annie Leonard of Free
Range Studios. This video illustrates corporate control of USA
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5kHACjrdEY>
.... and this one, The Story Of Stuff is a great movie for all ages
to become informed about the true cost of consumerism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM&feature=related/
or
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34822247/ns/politics-supreme_court/t/supreme-court-rolls-back-campaign-cash-limits/#.TpbglLKLMi0
>>
[R12]
Chris Martenson
To paraphrase
a famous saying, Anything
that can't be fixed, won't.
One of the
conclusions that I try to coax, lead, and/or nudge people towards is
acceptance of the fact that the economy can't be fixed. By this I
mean that the old regime of general economic stability and rising standards
of living fuelled by excessive credit are a thing
of the past. At least they are for the debt-encrusted developed
nations over the short haul -- and, over the long haul, across the entire
soon-to-be energy-starved globe.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/death-debt/58941?utm_source=newsletter_2011-06-11&utm_medium=email_newsletter&utm_content=node_teaser_58941&utm_campaign=weekly_newsletter_22
>>
Today we know
that corporations, for good or bad, are major influences on our lives. For
example, of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations
while only 49 are countries, based on a comparison of corporate sales and
country GDPs.
http://www.globalissues.org/article/234/the-rise-of-corporations
“And their sole purpose is profit....”
http://www.ariel.com.au/a/purpose-of-corporations.html
>>
[R13]
CULTURE AND BEHAVIOR: The Human Nature of
Unsustainability
William Rees
Published Aug 30, 2011 by Post Carbon Institute.
http://www.postcarbon.org/report/471929-culture-and-behavior-the-human-nature
>>
Bill Rees of
UBC's School of Community and Regional Planning on one of his many
presentations. Here’s an 8-part
series. Part 1 is accessible here <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F9cDA-R4J8>
<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>
Below are a
variety of links not referenced in the chapter text, but that are relevant
to the subject matter. They are in
no particular order.
Gasoline Additive and NAFTA Threaten Canadians’ Health, Scientists
and Groups Warn
(OTTAWA) The toxic gasoline additive MMT, and the federal
government’s failure to ban it under the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), expose Canadians to severe health risks, say two
renowned scientists, the Sierra Club of Canada and the Council of
Canadians.
[ http://www.canadians.org/media/trade/1998/04-Nov-98.html]
>>
On the same subject:
The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families
By Dean
Henderson June 1, 2011 <http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25080>
>>
Virginia Deane Abernethy (born in Cuba in 1934) is an American professor (emerita) of
psychiatry and anthropology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
She received a B.A. from Wellesley College, an M.B.A. from Vanderbilt
University, and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She is an anthropology fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Abernethy describes herself as an "ethnic separatist". An
outspoken opponent of immigration, Abernethy has called for a complete
moratorium on immigration into the United States. She claims that
immigrants devalue the work force, deplete scarce resources, adversely
impact carrying capacity, and that Third World immigration has led to a
rise in dangerous diseases within the United States. Abernethy is a close friend of minister
Jesse Lee Peterson.[2]
>>
Islamic
Banking
Background: Tunisia
has undergone increasing economic liberalization over the last decade: In
the 2010-2011 World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report,
it was ranked as the most competitive country in Africa, as well as the
32nd most economically competitive country globally. North
Africa’s large Muslim populations are a vast business opportunity for
Islamic banking and other businesses.
http://www.puppet99.com/?p=126
>>
*The Federal
government borrowed and spent $5.1 trillion over the past
four years to generate a cumulative $700 billion increase in the
nation's GDP.*That means we've borrowed and spent $7.28 for every $1 of
nominal "growth" in GDP
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjune11/GDP-is-not-growing6-11.html
>>
Warren Wagar, Professor of Hisory, StateU, of New York at Binghamton:
Capitalism is
the relentless accumulation of capital for the acquisition of profit. Capitalism is a carnivore. It cannot be made over into a herbivore without gutting it, i.e., abolishing it.
>>
Are You Prepared For The Coming Economic Collapse And The Next Great
Depression?
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/national-debt
>>
USdream Is
Over
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,726447-4,00.html
>>
NEF Flying
Squid - Banks
http://www.giantvampiresquid.org/?utm_source=nef+%28the+new+economics+foundation%29+List&utm_campaign=3528edcfc7-The_Great_Transition_squid&utm_medium=email
"A great vampire squid, wrapped around the face of humanity,
relentlessly jamming its blood funnell into
anything that smells like money." That was how journalist
Matt Taibbi described Goldman Sachs in a Rolling
Stone exposé from 2008.
>>
We speak with
the acclaimed Chilean economist, Manfred Max-Neef.
He won the Right Livelihood Award in 1983, two years after the publication
of his book Outside Looking In:
Experiences in Barefoot Economics. "Economists study and
analyze poverty in their nice offices, have all the statistics, make all
the models, and are convinced that they know everything that you can know
about poverty. But they don’t understand poverty," Max-Neef
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/26/chilean_economist_manfred_max_neef_on
>>
http://dailyreckoning.com/bernanke-speech-marks-striking-shift-in-us-policy/
11/23/10
Singapore, Singapore - Fed Chairman Bernanke's speech on Friday was
his most important since his "helicopter money" speech of
November 2002. In
it he conceded the Dollar Standard is flawed. He said, "As currently
constituted, the international monetary system has a structural flaw: It
lacks a mechanism, market based or otherwise, to induce needed adjustments
by surplus countries, which can result in persistent imbalances."
>>
End the Fed
by Ron Paul
>>
http://www.communitycurrency.org/chicagoreport.html
AMI report
>>
The <http://www.truth-out.org/the-disappearing-intellectual-age-economic-darwini
sm61287> Disappearing Intellectual in the Age of Economic Darwinism
Monday 12 July 2010 by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
We live at a time that might be appropriately called the age of the
disappearing intellectual, a disappearance that marks with disgrace a
particularly dangerous period in American history. While there are plenty
of talking heads spewing lies, insults and
nonsense in the various media, it would be wrong to suggest that these
right-wing populist are intellectuals.
>>
Jan 10/11
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/virginia-creates-subcommittee-study-monetary-alternatives-case-terminal-fed-breakdown-consid
In what may
one day be heralded as the formal proposal that proverbially started it
all, the Commonwealth of Virginia introduced House Resolution No. 557 to
establish a joint subcommittee to "to study whether the
Commonwealth should adopt a currency to serve as an alternative to the
currency distributed by the Federal Reserve System in the event of a major breakdown
of the Federal Reserve System." In other words, Virginia will study
the fallback plan of a "timely adoption of an alternative sound
currency that the Commonwealth's government and citizens may employ without
delay in the event of the destruction of the Federal Reserve System's
currency" and avoid or "at least mitigate many of the
economic, social, and political shocks to be expected to arise from
hyperinflation, depression, or other economic calamity related to the
breakdown of the Federal Reserve System."
>>>
Oil Age
Poster http://www.oilposter.org/
"If a
picture is worth one thousand words, then The Oil Age Poster is worth one
million words because people can not only see the oil production Hubbert's
peaks in many countries and regions, but also read the facts proving that
global peak oil is both inevitable and quite probably imminent."
 - U.S. Congressman R. Bartlett
 Maryland
(Republican)
This poster
can be obtained free for school teachers.
>>>
In humans,
this sort of single focus behaviour is
categorized as psychopathic.
Wicki -... Pschopathic:
characterized by an abnormal lack of empathy combined with strongly amoral
conduct but masked by an ability to appear outwardly normal.
Many people confuse the terms “psychotic” and
“psychopathic,” but unlike psychotics, psychopaths are not crazy. They are
fully aware of what they’re doing and the potential consequences. They make
their decisions rationally, and exercise free choice. They don’t suffer
from delusions or hallucinations, and they are not afflicted with the
anxiety or anguish that the mentally ill usually suffer. Jennefer Coply: Read more at http://www.suite101.com/content/personality-traits-of-a-psychopath-a62413
>>
Hazel
Henderson
http://sustainabilityadvantage.com/2010/12/21/hazel-henderson%E2%80%99s-7-reforms-of-the-global-financial-system/
The global financial
system and the processes of economic and technological globalization over
the last 25 years have not only failed, but have brought greater injustice,
widened inequity, increased social disruptions, and wreaked enormous
ecological damage.
>>
A disaster of
biblical proportions – economy
Legendary
investor Jeremy Grantham of GMO has published a treatise on the root cause
of exploding commodity prices. He
has also offered a startlingly depressing outlook for the future of
humanity
Read
more:
http://www.businessinsider.com/jeremy-grantham-commodity-prices-2011-6#ixzz1SHgKd98H
>>
The Great Depression
The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The
process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was
ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin . . .
Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to
create money, and, with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to
buy it back again . . . Take this great power away from them, and all great
fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and
happier world to live in. . . . But, if you want to continue to be the
slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers
continue to create money and control credit.[38]
- Sir Josiah Stamp, Director of the
Bank of England, 1927
>>
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/philip-pilkington-neoclassical-dogma-how-economists-rationalise-their-hatred-of-free-choice.html
By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin,
Ireland
Modern
economics purports to be scientific. It is this that lends its
practitioners ears all over the world; from the media, from policymakers
and from the general public. Yet, at its very heart we find concepts that,
having been carried over almost directly from the Christian tradition, are
inherently theological. And these concepts have, in a sense, become
congealed into an unquestionable dogma.
Pilkington
points to a biblical quote where God points out that what we think of as
free is actually divinely
... makes the point that religion is the base foundation for
today’s economics. The Invisible
Hand, the magical divine device purported by economists solve problems of
supply, demand and resource depletion by substitution
Many
commentators – including this blog’s editor Yves Smith in her book ECONNED – have pointed out that the efficient markets
hypothesis was used by policymakers to justify their cutting back on
regulations and allowing ‘the Market’ to operate without constraint. These
commentators have pointed out that it was this policy prescription that led
to the current financial crisis.
>>
>>
AMI Zarlenga – Economics - Religion
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-zarlenga/front-running-against-hum_b_937179.html
>>
Why Didn't Congress Act?
How could the Senate refuse to act? Are they some kind of demons?
No, but something almost as bad; we're confronted with a bad idea that many
people believe in: the sanctity of markets!
The vote exposes a bad methodology, an ideology based on false
axioms, a false view of markets that's been strongly promoted and not
questioned. With its negative effects not understood, markets are given a
sacred character:
·
Omnipotence: Don't try
to legislate against the market; market forces will crush your laws.
·
Omniscience: Don't try
to instruct market behavior; it has inputs from millions of participants
and knows more than your regulators ever could!
·
Benevolence: Do the
right things and the market will reward you; misbehave and you will be
punished!
Omnipotence, omniscience and benevolence are attributes of a god, and Senators don't often
fight with God!
>>
International financial markets and central banks must
stamp out any threat to their criminal syndicate. Usury (Riba) the notion of interest payments in conventional
banking is impermissible in Shariah law,
because it is considered usury and is therefore unjust. The Law of
Moses states, "Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy
brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent
upon usury "(Deut. 23:19)."
>>
http://batr. org/gulag/ 090411.html
"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from it's
profits or so dependent on it's favors, that
there will be no opposition
from that class."
Rothschild Brothers of London, 1863
Central Banks, BIS and Goldman
Sachs Coercion
>>
Breaking the Spell of Money
To fix the economy, we first have to
change our definition of wealth
by Scott Russell Sanders
Published in the July/August 2011 issue of Orion
magazine
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6343/
>>
See Economy Unmasked reviews in Misc
>>
>> Op-Ed
Columnist >> Free to Die
>> By PAUL KRUGMAN>> Published: September 15, 2011
>> Back in 1980, just as America was making its political turn to the
right, Milton Friedman lent his voice to the change with the famous TV
series “Free to Choose.” In episode after episode, the genial economist identified
laissez-faire economics with personal choice and empowerment, an upbeat
vision that would be echoed and amplified by Ronald Reagan.
>> But that was then. Today, “free to choose” has become “free to
die.”
>> I’m referring, as you might guess, to what happened during
Monday’s G.O.P. presidential debate. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked
Representative Ron Paul what we should do if a 30-year-old man who chose
not to purchase health insurance suddenly found himself in need of six
months of intensive care. Mr. Paul replied, “That’s what freedom is all
about — taking your own risks.” Mr. Blitzer pressed him again, asking
whether “society should just let him die.”
>> And the crowd erupted with cheers and shouts of “Yeah!”
>> The incident highlighted something that I don’t think most
political commentators have fully absorbed: at this point, American
politics is fundamentally about different moral visions.
http://www.nytimes. com/2011/ 09/16/opinion/ krugman-free- to-die.html? _r=1&nl=todayshe adlines&emc=
tha212
>>
"Economists
have become a plague as dangerous as rabbits, prickly pear or cane toads.
Economists have become the cultural cane toads of Canberra, oozing over the
landscape and endangering myriad indigenous species. Not only the economy
but also mental health would be greatly improved if we could lift the fog
of obfuscation on things economic. The first step is to take economists
from their pedestal and to see them as the curiosities they are. The first
step to reducing their power is to reduce their legitimacy. How is this to
be achieved? First, economists' outpourings should, as a matter of
principle, be met with laughter, derision, benign paternalism. They should
cease to be employed as media commentators. In the long term they should
cease to be hired. Let them be pensioned off and die out. Extinction is a
worthy end for a profession whose brief is rotten to the core."
-- Dr. Evan Jones, Economics Department, University of Sydney
(from Jay Sept
22)
>>
Feel free to
forward with appropriate credits. Nick Arguimbau
What happens
to a wealthy nation when its leaders advocate global free trade while
its domestic energy supplies are running low? Knowing the answer, why would
they act in this manner?
http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Jevons/jvnCQ7.html#Chapter%207
last
paragraph of chapter 7, Jevons, The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable
Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines (1865)
"Even our
superior capital will not avail us against dear fuel, because nothing more
readily flows abroad in search of profitable employment than capital. And
if we are to uphold a worldwide freedom of intercourse, let us not deceive
ourselves as to its natural results upon the material basis of our
prosperity."
>>
The Four
Horsemen Trailer;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLoB1eCJ93k
>>
1,000,000 Economists Can Be Wrong: The Free Trade Fallacies Steve Keen, Debtwatch | Sep. 30, 2011, 6:02 AM | 261 | 1 http://www.businessinsider.com/1000000-economists-can-be-wrong-the-free-trade-fallacies-2011-9 Steve Keen an Associate Professor of Economics& Finance at the University of Western Sydney Not only did the global financial crisis catch the vast majority of economists completely unawares, they instead expected tranquil and even buoyant times just as the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression began. My favourite such observation is from the OECD‘s Economic Outlook for June 2007—in which the Chief Economist suggested that, “the current economic situation is in many ways better than what we have experienced in years . . . Our central forecast remains indeed quite benign.”
>>
Smith’s invisible hand parable will hold true to some degree, but it
will become somewhat visible and the hand dexterity will be dynamically
attached to and limited the physical limits of the Gaian world in which it
operates.
>>
Quote form Richard Heinberg’s
The End Of Growth,
Musletter. Gaia\economics\ Aug 10
This is what we must do
Milton Friedman once wrote: “Only a crisis—actual or
perceived—produces real change.” Absent a crisis, politicians and
economists will cling to GDP even if it is flawed and superior alternatives
exist. It’s familiar, it’s simple, and it is embedded in all our existing
economic institutions.
But crisis is upon us. For the past two decades, GDP growth in the
US has mostly been captured by the financial industry. Today, unemployment
is stubbornly high, while household net worth is plummeting. Further growth
appears obtainable only through huge government deficits and ballooning
debt. Government spending has been the only thing keeping the economy on
life support, but governments across Europe and in the US have hit a crisis
of confidence, both with the financial markets and constituents. We’re at
an economic dead end. We seem to be on track for a political and social
train wreck of dashed expectations and seething public rage. Think Tahrir Square times a thousand. The only way to manage
this situation will be to change the goals and rules of our national game.
>>
The Bretton Woods system of monetary
management established the rules for commercial and financial relations
among the world's major industrial states in the mid
20th century. The Bretton Woods system was the first example of a
fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern monetary relations among
independent nation-states. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system
he Bilderberg Group, Bilderberg conference, or Bilderberg Club is an annual,
unofficial, invitation-only conference of approximately 120 to 140 guests
from North America and Western Europe, most of whom are people of
influence. About one-third are from government and politics, and two-thirds from
finance, industry, labour, education and
communications. Meetings are closed to the public and often feature future
political leaders shortly before they become household names.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group
It is
unfortunate, but understandable, that young people in the United States are
not taught (in the government's schools) the history and operation of their
country's most powerful financial institution, The Federal Reserve System. Created in 1910, codified by
Congress in 1913 (along with the personal income tax), this
"system" facilitated the US government's ability to inflame the
nation's citizens for the purpose of supporting the European war of
1914-1918 (World War I).
http://www.bigeye.com/griffin.htm
The author of
"The Creature From Jekyll Island," G. Edward Griffin explaining
the creation of the Federal Reserve, on a secret meeting of the heads of
the top leaders of the money world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWKlz2Z4Nlo
Rothschild
family. They control whole Global Currency System. However what else they
need, which is the end goal and what they want to archive by completing
their mission
>>
Subject: Attention on Economic front
Why collapse
will come
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D71aiYq7jeM&feature=related
>>
*19 Dec 2011, Al Jazeera
<http://www.aljazeer
a.com/indepth/ opinion/2011/ 12/2011121874651
469307.html>
Debt-based Money: A guarantee to destroy the planet: I
want to take a moment to explain how money is created and destroyed in our
debt based money supply. Environmentalists don’t often look for, let alone
see the relationship.
http://gilliganscorner.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/debt-based-money-a-guarantee-to-destroy-the-planet/
>>>
Chris Martenson
To paraphrase
a famous saying, Anything that can't be fixed, won't.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/death-debt/58941?utm_source=newsletter_2011-06-11&utm_medium=email_newsletter&utm_content=node_teaser_58941&utm_campaign=weekly_newsletter_22
>>
Killing the competition:
How the new monopolies are destroying open markets
/By Barry C. Lynn <http://www.harpers.
org/subjects/ BarryCLynn>/
Barry C. Lynn is the author of
/Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism
and the Economics of Destruction. / He directs the Markets, Enterprise,
and Resiliency Initiative at the New America Foundation.
Fear, in any real market, is a
natural emotion. There is the fear of not
making a sale, not landing a job, not winning a client. Such fear is
healthy, even constructive. It prods us to polish our wares, to refine
our skills, and to conjure up---every so often---a wonder.
>>
From Lorie S
email Feb 29 in Economics.
A self revealing list of Capitalism's failings spelled
out by the manager of a $97 billion investment fund at: Grantham wonders if Marx was right after
all;
See: "Capitalism will gladly sell the rope used to hang itself"
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/grantham-wonders-if-marx-was-right-after-all-2012-02-29
Jeremy Gartham manages a $97 billion investment
fund:
"He says capitalism does almost everything better than any other
economic system. It’s just that its two or three main flaws are potentially
fatal and have gone largely unaddressed. A sustainable economic system, for
instance, can’t be based on ever-increasing debt, corporations can’t be
allowed to run governments and loot treasuries, and “growth at any cost” is
a recipe for planetary suicide."
>>
Back to Index: http://gaiapc.ca/PJ/1a-Index.pdf
<<<<End
of section>>>
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