Long-Term Economic Pain for American Families

A rigorous new analysis for the Rockefeller Foundation shows that Americans are more economically insecure now than they have been in a quarter of a century, and the trend lines suggest that things will only get worse. Rampant joblessness and skyrocketing medical costs are among the biggest factors tearing at the very fabric of American economic life so painstakingly put together in the early post-World War II decades. The analysis was done by a team of researchers led by Professor Jacob Hacker of Yale University. They created an economic security index, which measures the percentage of Americans who experience a decrease in their household income of 25 percent or more in one year without having the financial resources to offset that loss. (Major medical expenses were counted as a decrease in available income.) The team’s findings were grim. Simply stated, more and more families are facing utter economic devastation: completely out of money, with their jobs, savings and retirement funds gone, and nowhere to turn for the next dollar.

U.S. Cities, Counties Poised to Cut 500,000 Jobs, Report Finds

U.S. local governments may cut almost 500,000 jobs through next year to cope with sliding property taxes, a decline in state and federal aid and added need for social services, according to a report released today. The report, a result of a survey by the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Counties, showed local governments are moving to cut the equivalent of 8.6 percent of their workforces from 2009 to 2011. That suggests 481,000 employees will lose their jobs, according to the report, which said the tally may yet rise.

The Market Is a Hologram Masking Deflation | Max Keiser

Getting back to what happened in 2008, when the markets hit the skids, the government reacted by increasing the money supply; just as they did after the 1987 crash, the Long Term Capital Management crisis, the dot-com crash, 9/11, and the sub-prime crash. But unlike any of those instances, the money supply kept shrinking and prices kept deflating (notwithstanding the price of a few items). At first it looked like the liquidity stimulus was going to revive the economy and there was an anemic bounce in 2009, but that death rattle has now expired and the primary trend of falling real estate prices, falling wages, and deteriorating bank balance sheets has reasserted itself and threatens to take the economy down again dramatically (read: depression). The question of a ‘double dip’ is misleading. The economy started down a depressionary slide in 2008 and hasn’t looked back.”

Deportation of illegal immigrants increases under Obama administration

In a bid to remake the enforcement of federal immigration laws, the Obama administration is deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants and auditing hundreds of businesses that blithely hire undocumented workers. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency expects to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year, nearly 10 percent above the Bush administration’s 2008 total and 25 percent more than were deported in 2007. The pace of company audits has roughly quadrupled since President George W. Bush’s final year in office.

The Great Decoupling of Corporate Profits from Jobs | Robert Reich

Second-quarter earnings reports are coming in, and they’re making Wall Street smile. Corporate profits are up. And big American companies are sitting on a gigantic pile of money. The 500 largest non-financial firms held almost a trillion dollars in the second quarter, and that money pile is growing larger this quarter. Profits that plummeted in the recession have bounced back. Big businesses have recovered almost 90 percent of what they lost. So with all this money and profit, they’ll start hiring again, right? Wrong – for three reasons. First, lots of their profits are coming from their overseas operations. So that’s where they’re investing and expanding production.

Greenpeace activists close down BP stations in London

BP filling stations across London have been shut down by activists. Environmental group Greenpeace said it had cut fuel supplies to all 50 BP stations in the city. The oil firm said 35 to 40 had been shut but many of them have now reopened. The protesters stopped the fuel by removing safety switches on forecourts. The action comes as BP reported an £11bn loss after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and confirmed chief executive Tony Hayward is to step down.

Why Wikileaks’ Doc-Dump Is Such a Big Deal (Even if There’s Nothing New Within)

There is a tendency among People Who Pay Close Attention To Things to think other Americans are also paying attention — to decent information — and are therefore somewhat in the know. That leads to people trying to get away with ridiculous claims, such as this: ANYONE who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 military field reports and other documents made public by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan and have no regular access to classified information, yet I have seen nothing in the documents that has either surprised me or told me anything of significance. I suspect that’s the case even for someone who reads only a third of the articles on Afghanistan in his local newspaper. That paragraph was from an op-ed piece by Andrew Exum, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) — a pro-Afghanistan war think-tank — in The New York Times. Exum’s message seems to be, ‘move along, folks, there’s nothing to see here.’ Understandable — CNAS, according to a WaPo report last year, “may emerge as Washington’s go-to think tank on military affairs” in the Obama era. CNAS staff have “filled key posts in the new administration (such as former CNAS president Michele Flournoy, who is now undersecretary of defense for policy), and its top people include John Nagl, who helped draft the Army’s counterinsurgency manual, and David Kilcullen, a former adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus. And his suspicion that everyone already knows this stuff is bullshit.

Is Wall Street Making Life or Death Decisions?

Is your health insurance company traded on Wall Street? If so, is Wall Street deciding your medical care? It’s hard to recall that for-profit corporations were once kept out of health care — in fact, for most of the 20th century. During this time, the nation’s medical system was built largely by non-profit and charitable organizations, which is why so many hospitals are named for saints. Courts across the country ruled that for corporations to profit from medical care was simply “against sound public policy.” In the early 1980’s, however, when the financial and airline industries were deregulated, a similar process occurred for American medicine. For-profit corporations became newly encouraged to take leadership of health care. Deregulating health care into the free market was intended to drive down costs and to improve care. After all, medical care in 1980 consumed a whopping 9.1 percent of the nation’s GDP.

GE to pay 23 million dollars after Iraq bribery charges

US industrial titan General Electric has agreed to pay over 23 million dollars to settle allegations that it bribed Iraqi officials, a US financial watchdog said. GE had been accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of being part of “a 3.6 million dollar kickback scheme with Iraqi government agencies to win contracts to supply medical equipment and water purification equipment.” Four subsidiaries of the Connecticut-based company were accused of bribing officials at the Iraqi ministries of health and oil, trading cash, computer equipment and medical supplies to win lucrative contracts.

Goldman threatened with audit

Goldman Sachs is facing a threat by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to bring in outside accountants to comb through the bank’s systems for data on its derivatives business, the panel’s chairman has said. The commission will not back down from demands for information Goldman’s executives have maintained they do not track, Phil Angelides told the Financial Times. “We have a deep level of questioning about whether we’re getting the straight scoop here and whether Goldman is working with us on information that they surely have,” Mr Angelides, chairman of the US Congress-appointed commission. His comments mark the latest episode in the dispute between Goldman and the commission, which has scolded the bank for its “abysmal” response to the inquiry. The frustration of FCIC members was evident several weeks ago when two of Goldman’s executives, Gary Cohn, president, and David Viniar, chief financial officer, told the panel the bank’s accounting systems did not break out trading revenue generated strictly from derivatives.

The New Pentagon Papers: WikiLeaks Releases 90,000+ Secret Military Documents Painting Devastating Picture of Afghanistan War

Democracy Now: It’s one of the biggest leaks in US military history. More than 90,000 internal records of US military actions in Afghanistan over the past six years have been published by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. The documents provide a devastating portrait of the war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, how a secret black ops special forces unit hunts down targets for assassination or detention without trial, how Taliban attacks have soared, and how Pakistan is fueling the insurgency. We host a roundtable discussion with independent British journalist Stephen Grey; Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg; former State Department official in Afghanistan, Matthew Hoh; independent journalist Rick Rowley; and investigative historian Gareth Porter.”

Which is the Bigger Threat: Terrorism or Wall Street Bonuses?

Which is a greater threat to the nation — terrorism or the relentless decline of middle income families? Unless we abandon our core values out of unwarranted fear, terror cannot fundamentally change our way of life. The number of people affected by growing income disparity is vast. Income disparity is indicative of an underdeveloped and unstable society. The government appropriately devotes enormous resources to protect our lives and property from terrorism. It is unthinkable that a leader would display any weakness opposing this threat. Politicians have stiff backbones when it comes to terrorism. In contrast, the government is timid and half-hearted in its approach to the system which perversely rewards a few Wall Street traders with billions of dollars of bonuses, yet allows the foundation to decay.”

BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle

In the first few days after BP’s Deepwater Horizon wellhead exploded, spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, cleanup workers could be seen on Louisiana beaches wearing scarlet pants and white t-shirts with the words “Inmate Labor” printed in large red block letters. Coastal residents, many of whom had just seen their livelihoods disappear, expressed outrage at community meetings; why should BP be using cheap or free prison labor when so many people were desperate for work? The outfits disappeared overnight.

WikiLeaks Afghanistan Documents Are Out — But Did We Know Everything Already?

The Obama White House is furious about the massive leak of military documents chronicling the unvarnished truth about the Afghanistan war. At the same time, though, there must be a certain sense of relief around the West Wing. When they first learned that the whistleblower website WikiLeaks had given the New York Times, among others, an astonishing 92,0000 documents, senior Obama officials must have been in a panic about what terrible secrets might emerge. But it turns out that most of the terrible aspects of the Afghanistan war — at least those detailed by this trove of insider accounts — are already pretty well known. It’s never been a secret, for instance, that the Taliban have proven more resilient than anyone expected; that U.S. special forces hunt and eliminate Taliban leaders without the courtesy of a fair trial; that elements within our putative ally Pakistan play a sinister double game with radical Islamists; that our troops kill innocent Afghans on a regular basis. It’s not even a secret, as anyone familiar with the Pat Tillman saga knows, that the military sometimes manipulates facts about the war.”

WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange on the ‘War Logs’: ‘I Enjoy Crushing Bastards’

Assange: “These files are the most comprehensive description of a war to be published during the course of a war — in other words, at a time when they still have a chance of doing some good. They cover more than 90,000 different incidents, together with precise geographical locations. They cover the small and the large. A single body of information, they eclipse all that has been previously said about Afghanistan. They will change our perspective on not only the war in Afghanistan, but on all modern wars. “

Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation

A huge cache of secret US military files provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency. The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers’ website Wikileaks in one of the biggest leaks in US military history. The files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the last six years, which has so far cost the lives of more than 320 British and more than 1,000 US troops. Their publication comes amid mounting concern that Barack Obama’s “surge” strategy is failing and as coalition troops hunt for two US naval personnel captured by the Taliban south of Kabul on Friday. The war logs also detail: • How a secret “black” unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial. • How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles. • How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada. • How the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of their roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.

Iran gives Taliban support: leaked papers

Iran is waging a covert campaign against US-led forces in neighboring Afghanistan by providing money, arms, training and safe haven to Taliban insurgents, according to leaked US military intelligence. Reports from Afghan spies and paid informants, described in papers published on whistleblower website Wikileaks, accuse the Iranian government of directly supporting the insurgents. These “threat reports” cannot be corroborated, the Guardian newspaper said in a report summarizing the Iran findings, but high-level US diplomatic communications indicate concern over Iran’s growing involvement in the country.

Bush-era CIA director: Attack on Iran ‘seems inexorable’

A former CIA director says military action against Iran now seems more likely because no matter what the U.S. does diplomatically, Tehran keeps pushing ahead with its suspected nuclear program. Michael Hayden, a CIA chief under President George W. Bush, says that during his tenure a strike was “way down the list” of options. But he tells CNN’s “State of the Union” that such action now “seems inexorable.” He predicts Iran will build its program to the point where it’s just below having an actual weapon. Hayden says that would be as destabilizing to the region as the real thing.

Effort to plug well resumes as BP chief reportedly will exit

Amid reports that embattled BP chief executive Tony Hayward is negotiating his departure from the company, the effort to plug the leaky oil well in the Gulf of Mexico got back on track Sunday after it was delayed three days by Tropical Storm Bonnie. Early in the day, a drill rig began reconnecting to the relief tunnel that will pump in mud and cement to seal the well for good. Crews had pulled nearly a mile of segmented steel casing pipes out of the water Thursday and Friday after the government ordered an evacuation ahead of Tropical Storm Bonnie. Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said 39 of the 67 casing joints had been completed as of 11:30 a.m. EST. He expected Development Driller III, which is working on the primary relief well, to be fully connected by midnight Monday. “

Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan, Reports Assert

Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports made public Sunday. The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders. Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

Dems may keep Bush tax cuts

Democrats are considering a plan to delay tax hikes on the wealthy for two years because the economic recovery is slow and they fear getting crushed in November’s election. It could mean a big reprieve for families earning $250,000 and above annually. President George W. Bush’s tax cuts will expire at the end of the year unless Congress acts to delay their sunset. Some Democrats are now arguing forcefully that a delay is a win-win plan that would help the federal budget without hurting the economy.”

Strippers, Booze and Race Riots: BP’s Cleanup Workers Run Amok in Grand Isle

I hear about the race riot at Daddy’s Money almost as soon as I arrive on Grand Isle, Louisiana. My friend and I are going to the bar tonight to catch the “female oil wrestling” oil-spill cleanup workers have been packing in to see on Saturday nights. When we stop by the office of the island’s biggest seafood distributor, he tells us that two days ago a bunch of black guys and a bunch of white guys got into a big fight at the bar. It spilled out all over the street and had to be broken up by a ton of cops. According to the Census, 1,541 people live in this slow Southern resort town. An estimated 2.9 of them are black. That was before the spill. The seafood guy gestures in the direction of the floating barracks being built on barges in the bay to house the lower-skilled cleanup workers, and says that people think the barracks will keep those workers—who are mostly black—from “jumping off” onto dry land and causing trouble. That night, dozens of men in race-segregated packs crowd around to watch strippers dance around and then tussle inside the bouncy inflatable ring set up inside Daddy’s Money. Female oil wrestlers need, obviously, to be oiled. Plastic cups full of baby oil are being auctioned off, along with the right to rub their contents all over one of the thong-bikinied gals. “I hope there’s no dispersant in that oil!” someone quips. The bidding before the first match starts at $10; it ends pretty quickly when some kid offers $100.”

Boneheaded Economic Policies of U.S. [NAFTA!] Drives Many Immigrants to Our Shores

The U.S. immigration debate tends to ignore a fundamental question: Why do so many people migrate here from Mexico and other countries in Central America? The answer is that they need to look for jobs because there aren’t enough jobs at home. Several years of the wrong economic policies have destroyed millions of jobs, both in the countryside and in cities. These economic policies tend to concentrate wealth. They’re based on what’s often called the “Washington consensus” because they’re designed and dictated from institutions based in the U.S. capital like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. During the last 30 years, Mexico and other countries that have followed these policies have eliminated support mechanisms to local producers, while with trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) they have allowed big transnational companies to import cheaper products into their countries. That’s meant, for example, the arrival of cheap corn and other basic food staples, which crowded out local production and ultimately forced millions of small farmers off their land. Another result of NAFTA is that tens of thousands of small and medium companies, which provide 90 percent of Mexico’s jobs, have wound up bankrupt due to a lack of financial support.

Despite billions to banks, small businesses struggle for loans

Across the country, thousands of small business owners are fighting for survival and hurting for cash after getting the cold shoulder from banks over loan requests. The Troubled Asset Relief Program poured hundreds of billions of dollars into big banks to help spur business lending during the recession, but the cash infusion hasn’t prevented thousands of companies from closing their doors as banks have tightened their credit standards and purse strings. The Obama administration is pushing a $30 billion Small Business Lending Fund to address the problem. The proposal, which passed the House of Representatives in June, would provide smaller community banks with government loans that become cheaper as the banks lend more money to small businesses.”

Proof Of Gold Price Suppression

Adrian Douglas, board member of GATA, once again takes a long hard look at the gold market and provides evidence of gold price manipulation. His conclusions: * the gold price is suppressed through fractional reserve bullion banking * the gold market is selling on average 45 ounces of gold for every one ounce of real physical gold via “unallocated gold” (fractional reserve bullion banking). In other words the gold market is backed by only 2.3% gold * The true price of physical gold is currently around $54,000/oz if fractional reserve bullion banking did not exist. In the presence of fractional reserve banking with 2.3% gold backing the market price of “gold” is reduced to $1200/oz * The US dollar has a purchasing power that is 45 times over valued * The way to end gold price suppression is for investors to ensure they have allocated physical bullion preferably held outside of the bullion banking system.

Did BP Keep Drilling Even Though It Had Lost Control of the Oil Well Much Earlier?

The New York Times noted yesterday: “Even though it was more than a month before the explosion, the [Deepwater Horizon] rig’s safety audit was conducted against the backdrop of what seems to have been a losing battle to control the well. On the March visit, Lloyd’s investigators reported “a high degree of focus and activity relating to well control issues,” adding that “specialists were aboard the rig to conduct subsea explosions to help alleviate these well control issues.” As I pointed out last month: “The Deepwater Horizon blew up on April 20th, and sank a couple of days later. BP has been criticized for failing to report on the seriousness of the blow out for several weeks. However, as a whistleblower previously told 60 Minutes, there was an accident at the rig a month or more prior to the April 20th explosion: [Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon, and one of the last workers to leave the doomed rig] … says going faster caused the bottom of the well to split open, swallowing tools and that drilling fluid called “mud.” “We actually got stuck. And we got stuck so bad we had to send tools down into the drill pipe and sever the pipe,” Williams explained. That well was abandoned and Deepwater Horizon had to drill a new route to the oil. It cost BP more than two weeks and millions of dollars.”

No Wonder the Outlook for the Economy is “Unusually Uncertain” … the Fed is Killing It

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke testified that the outlook for the economy is “unusually uncertain”. That’s not surprising. The central bankers knew exactly what was going on, a full two-and-a-half years before the big bang. All the ingredients of the looming disaster had been neatly laid out on the table in front of them: defective rating agencies, loans repackaged to the point of being unrecognizable, dubious practices of American mortgage lenders, the risks of low-interest policies. But no action was taken. Meanwhile, the Fed continued to raise interest rates in nothing more than tiny increments…

US financial system support UP $700 billion in past year, watchdog

“Indeed, the current outstanding balance of overall Federal support for the nation’s financial system…has actually increased more than 23% over the past year, from approximately $3.0 trillion to $3.7 trillion — the equivalent of a fully deployed TARP program — largely without congressional action, even as the banking crisis has, by most measures, abated from its most acute phases,” the TARP inspector general, Neil Barofsky, wrote in the report. Barofsky also in the report ramped up his criticism of the Treasury’s housing relief efforts, saying that its program to reduce monthly mortgage payments for struggling homeowners was showing “anemic” participation numbers and had failed to “put an appreciable dent in foreclosure filings.” He said Treasury had refused his repeated recommendations to announce more effective goals and benchmarks for its mortgage modification program, which could reach up to $50 billion in TARP funds.

Van Hollen, ‘Corporate Candidate’ Murray Hill Spar Over Political Rights of Businesses

Eric Hensal, the designated human delegate of public relations firm Murray Hill Inc., basked in the newfound political influence corporations enjoy. “Murray Hill wants to put a logo on your candidate,” retorted Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), telling the audience that the Supreme Court’s January decision in campaign finance case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission will allow large corporations to gain undue influence over candidates. The exchange between Van Hollen and Hensal had the audience laughing, clapping, and, occasionally, booing and hissing.”

SEC Knew About Repos Accounting Before Lehman: Report

The U.S. securities regulator was aware of Wall Street’s potentially questionable accounting practice of classifying repurchase agreements as sales instead of borrowings long before the collapse of Lehman Brothers raised the issue, the Wall Street Journal reported. Since 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has questioned 115 transactions by 102 different companies to assess if they accounted properly for repurchase agreements, or repos, among other short term trades, the Journal said citing a report prepared by research firm AuditAnalytics.com. AuditAnalytics.com has reviewed more than 115,000 comment letters the SEC had sent to companies asking questions about their securities filings, the paper said.”

The great hunger lottery – How banking speculation causes food crises

In The Great Hunger Lottery, the World Development Movement has compiled extensive evidence establishing the role of food commodity derivatives in destabilising and driving up food prices around the world. This in turn, has led to food prices becoming unaffordable for low-income families around the world, particularly in developing countries highly reliant on food imports. Nowhere was this more clearly seen than during the astonishing surge in staple food prices over the course of 2007-2008, when millions went hungry and food riots swept major cities around the world. The great hunger lottery shows how this alarming episode was fueled by the behaviour of financial speculators, and describes the terrible immediate impacts on vulnerable families around the world, as well as the long term damage to the fight against global poverty. In the report we describe how the current situation came to pass, the risks of another speculation induced food crisis, and what specifically can be done by policymakers here in the UK as well as in the US and EU to tackle the problem.

Corporate Media Discover Private Spies. In Other News, No WMD in Iraq | Jeremy Scahill

Stop the presses and call the government spokespeople back from Martha’s Vineyard. The corporate media have discovered that the United States is radically outsourcing national security and sensitive intelligence operations. Cable news channels breathlessly report on the “groundbreaking,” “exclusive” Washington Post series, Top Secret America, a two-year investigation by Dana Priest and William Arkin. No doubt there is some important stuff in this series. Both Arkin and Priest have done outstanding work for many years on sensitive, life-or-death subjects. And that is one of the main reasons why this series has, thus far, been incredibly disappointing. Its greatest accomplishment is forcing a discussion onto corporate TV years after it would have had an actual impact.”

The Business Case Against Overseas Tax Havens

In the U.S., thanks in part to overseas tax havens, we have one tax system for multinational companies and wealthy individuals –and another for small businesses and ordinary taxpayers. Tax havens enable the rich and U.S. multinationals to move income and assets between global subsidiaries and dodge taxes. Responsible businesses and individual taxpayers are left to pay for U.S. infrastructure, defense, education and all the public investments that contribute to a healthy business climate and economy. How does this work? A U.S. company creates a subsidiary in a secretive low tax haven such as the Luxemburg, Bermuda or the Republic of Mauritius. In the Grand Cayman Islands, one building called Ugland House, houses over 19,000 of these corporate subsidiaries. “

Wall Street Reform: Five Key Fights After The Bill Is Signed

Obama will sign into law the first serious effort to regulate Wall Street in decades. The unfortunate truth is that it ducks several of the most critical reforms needed to protect our economy from banker abuse. As regulators work to implement the legislation, reformers must turn up the heat on Congress to adopt further reforms, and recognize political opportunities to further economic progress. Five policy fights stand out as particularly pressing. Many of these policies can be implemented this year, while others will probably have to wait until the next Congress. All of them are critical to ensuring that our financial sector works to support a healthy economy, instead of a reckless bonus machine.”

Money Laundering and the Global Drug Trade Fueled by Capitalist Elites

But now a Bloomberg Markets magazine report, “Wachovia’s Drug Habit,” reveals that drug traffickers bought that plane, and perhaps fifty others, “with laundered funds they transferred through two of the biggest banks in the U.S.,” Wachovia and Bank of America. The Justice Department charge sheet against the bank tells us that between 2003 and 2008, Wachovia handled $378.4 billion for Mexican currency exchanges, “the largest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act, an anti-money-laundering law, in U.S. history.” “A sum” Bloomberg averred, equal to one-third of Mexico’s current gross domestic product.” Since 2006, some 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence. Thousands more have been wounded, countless others “disappeared,” torture and illegal imprisonment is rampant. In a frightening echo of the Reagan administration’s anti-communist jihad in Central America during the 1980s, the Bush and now, Obama administration has poured fuel on the fire with some $1.4 billion in “War on Drugs” funding under Plan Mérida. Much of that “aid” is destined to purchase military equipment for repressive police, specialized paramilitary units and the Mexican Army.

The American Aristocracy

Earlier this year, we allowed the estate tax to lapse entirely. Billionaires are now free to take a lifetime of accumulated wealth and pass it on to their heirs. We’ve come full-circle from the last Gilded Age. So it’s worth looking back at Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of Wealth for a reminder of why we needed an estate tax in the first place: The growing disposition to tax more and more heavily large estates left at death is a cheering indication of the growth of a salutary change in public opinion….Of all forms of taxation, this seems the wisest. Men who continue hoarding great sums all their lives, the proper use of which for public ends would work good to the community, should be made to feel that the community, in the form of the state, cannot thus be deprived of its proper share…This policy would work powerfully to induce the rich man to attend to the administration of wealth during his life, which is the end that society should always have in view, as being that by far most fruitful for the people.

Goldman’s Go-Round – Paying the Piper and Still Coming Out on Top

First, the $600 million that Goldman paid to British taxpayers is a stark reminder that it is past time for the United States to tax the banks that have gone on to tremendous paydays after being bailed out; $12.9 billion was funneled to Goldman via the bailout of the American International Group alone. Why is Britain ahead of the United States on this score? When will American taxpayers see similar payback? Next is the more disturbing question: Did the S.E.C. let Goldman off too easy? As has been widely noted, the $550 million settlement, which has been approved by a federal judge, is chump change compared with Goldman’s bonus pool, and less even than Goldman’s depressed second-quarter profits. “

Gov’t Economic Policies Seen as Boon for Banks and Big Business, Not Middle Class or Poor: Overview | Pew

Fully 74% say that government policies over the past two years have done a great deal (53%) or a fair amount (21%) to help large banks and financial institutions. Majorities also say that large corporations (70% great deal/fair amount) and wealthy people (57% great deal/fair amount) have been helped. By contrast, 68% say government policies have helped small businesses not at all (29%) or not too much (39%); 68% also say middle-class people have received little or no help from these policies. And about the same percentage (64%) says poor people have not been helped.”

Will Criminals Exploit Cap and Trade?

The Obama Administration’s cap and trade proposals are misguided. Money laundering is very easy when you have an opaque pricing structure with little in the way of regulatory protections. It’s the environmental equivalent of credit default swaps. Worse, the cap and trade system doesn’t work. The European model introduced a quantity-based (capped) carbon trading system (CTS) with offsets. And, as Bill Mitchell has pointed out, Phase I was a disaster because more permits were issued than there was pollution and the market collapsed from the excess supply of permits. Phase II of the scheme was fatally compromised by heavy lobbying from large polluters who were able to gain under priced pollution permits.”

Elizabeth Warren and the Definition of “Controversial”

Recall that the charge of “too controversial” was not made by Senate Democrats against Gary Gensler, the former Goldman Sachs executive appointed by President Obama to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It was not made by most Senate Democrats against Larry Summers, a hedge fund executive subsequently appointed to a top economic position in the administration. It was not made against Citigroup executive Jack Lew when last week he was appointed to head the Office of Management and Budget. And it wasn’t made against Tim Geithner, who orchestrated massive taxpayer giveaways to major banks during his time at the New York Fed. “

15 Symptoms of a Deadly Disease That’s Destroying Capitalism & America’s Democratic Values

1. Gross denial of any moral damage caused by their rampant greed. 2. Narcissistic egomaniacs with secret “God complexes” 3. Paranoid obsessives about secrecy, guilt and non-disclosure. 4. Power-hungry need to control government using “Trojan Horses” 5. Borderline personalities who regularly ignore “conflicts of interest.”

Breaking Impasse, Senate Extends Jobless Benefits

The Senate broke a stalemate over extending unemployment benefits for Americans who have been out of work for six months or more, voting to override Republican objections. On a 60-to-40 vote, the Democratic-led Senate agreed to cut off debate on the $34 billion plan to distribute added unemployment compensation through November for those who have exhausted their standard 26 weeks of aid. The 60 yeas were the minimum needed to overcome the threat of a filibuster and advance the bill to a final vote, expected later on Tuesday, when it is all but certain to pass. Two Republicans, Senators Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, joined 56 Democrats and two independents in voting for the legislation; 39 Republicans and one Democrat, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, opposed it.

Sign the Petition: Forget what Timothy Geithner thinks. We want Elizabeth Warren to police Wall Street.

The petition reads: “Elizabeth Warren has proven that she is willing to stand up to Wall Street on behalf of consumers and is the logical choice to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Tim Geithner is a longtime Wall Street insider, and if he’s recommending against Elizabeth Warren that’s all the more reason to appoint her.” As chair of the bailout oversight panel, Elizabeth Warren held Wall Street executives’ feet to the fire and proved time and time again that she was not afraid to speak out.