George Osborne pledge means UK taxpayers may have to prop up euro George Osborne arriving at the Paris summit of G20 ministers. Photograph: Michel Euler/AP Chancellor backs move to boost the IMF’s bailout fund, provided a deal to stabilise the eurozone can be reached reddit this Comments (4) Phillip Inman in Paris guardian.co.uk, Saturday [...]
Ron Paul’s Best Week by Kelley B. Vlahos, August 23, 2011 Email This | Print This | Share This | Antiwar Forum Campaign season’s here and the time is right, for bombast in the street. Right here on Main Street, USA, every day, they’re bloviating in the street. Invoking Martha & the Vandellas might be fun, but the prospect of [...]
Amnesty for the Indefensible White House / Pete Souza By Robert Scheer As Chomsky put it so well crime does not pay unless of course it is backed by the state. That much is all a part of capitalist democracy as much as any other system. It seems that the banks despite an official bail out [...]
Viewing the economy as a living body implies that it is self-regulating, and thus should be left alone [GALLO/GETTY] The sustained financial crisis that the US government now finds itself in was entirely avoidable, according to a paperby Berkeley economist Brad DeLong last year, “Battered but Not and Beaten”. The situation in late 2008 was dire, [...]
Biden, pictured with his granddaughter, urged China to buy more American-made goods and services [AFP] The United States will never default on its debts, Joe Biden, the vice-president, said on the final day of an official visit to China dominated by concerns over Chinese exposure to the ailing US economy. Speaking to students on Sunday [...]
] Walter Lippmann on the 6¢ stamp, part of the US Postal Service’s Great American Series. Those who have been following the world wide push to get people to accept massive cuts to just about every service available must be amazed at the depth of the cuts and the way the matters are [...]
You can view the video at: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/countingthecost/2011/08/2011813968915995.html It was a dramatic week right across the financial and economic world. It started with a historic decision to strip the US of its AAA credit rating, and turned into a rollercoaster week for global stock markets – down as much as 20 per cent, and [...]
You can watch the video interview at:http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=7131 Bart Chilton: Wall Street lobbyists trying to slow down trading regulations and defund Commission. Notwithstanding the simplicity of what is and was a fraud being perpetrated against the people once again we get a lot of talk about how complicated or complex the situation is. But there is a [...]
Standard and Poor’s: Just More Corrupt Wall Street Insiders Waging Class War on America LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing list: Sign up to stay up to date on the latest headlines via email. S&P’s downgrade provides compelling evidence of the corruption eating away at the foundations of yet another key Wall Street institution. [...]
US postal service trucks. Postmaster general Patrick Donahoe is proposing to cut mail delivery from six days a week to five. Photograph Scott Olson/Getty Images The US Postal Service has announced radical plans to cut one in five jobs, reduce services and water down staff retirement and healthcare deals as the government agency struggles to keep [...]
Meet the Global Financial Elites Controlling $46 Trillion In Wealth The economic elite have at least $46 trillion in wealth – but who are they? We look at the people and the industries picking the pockets of the working class. August 11, 2011 | The following is an adapted excerpt from David DeGraw’s new report [...]
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said that the measures were necessary to balance the budget by 2013 [Reuters] Italy’s government has approved austerity measures to balance the budget by 2013 and meet demands made by European Central Bank (ECB). The measures were approved during an emergency cabinet meeting held late on Friday. Despite denunciations by [...]
French president Nicolas Sarkozy must convince financial markets that he can meet his fiscal targets. Photograph: Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images The French economy failed to grow in the last quarter as households across the country cut their spending, in the latest sign that the European economy is stumbling. Data released by Eurostat, the region’s statistics body, [...]
The official US unemployment rate is 9.1 per cent, but the “real unemployment” rate is 22.6 per cent [GALLO/GETTY] During the Tajik Civil War of the late 1990s, soldiers loyal to the central government found an ingeniously simple way to conserve bullets while massacring members of the Taliban-trained opposition movement. They tied their victims together [...]
French president Nicolas Sarkozy will announce plans to reduce his country’s budget deficit next week. Photograph: Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images Share prices in Europe and North America were back on the slide after France became the latest country to be sucked into the deepening debt crisis. Amid rumours that France would follow the US in being [...]
Wall Street reacts to credit rating downgrade. M. Spencer Green/AP By Michael Hudson and Aaron Mehta 11 hours, 2 minutes ago Print E-mail 16 inShare As housing crisis festers, mortgage servicers spend $8 million on political contributions By Michael Hudson and Aaron Mehta August 5, 2011 As the financial markets roil, one of the critical factors weighing down the U.S. [...]
While panic among investors has subsided, many remain worried that a global recession is on the way [Reuters] European and US stock markets have again dropped sharply, a day after a US Federal Reserve annoucement on interest rates temporarily boosted markets. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped of 378 points or 3.36 per cent by lunch [...]
AMY GOODMAN: Standard & Poor’s announced Friday it’s downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time in history. The move by S&P, one of three leading credit rating agencies, came just days after Congress approved a $2.1 trillion deficit-reduction plan. S&P called the outlook “negative,” indicating that another downgrade is possible in the next 12 [...]
Spanish protestors could teach the ECB a lesson: that heavy debt repayments have a large disincentive effect [EPA] The European Central Bank (ECB) is run by people who are not very good at economics. They continue to adhere to a fundamentally wrongheaded view of the economy and the central bank’s role within it. Unfortunately, there [...]
European markets stabilised after the ECB began buying Italian and Spanish debt on Monday [AFP] The stock market ‘woes’ are symptomatic of the immorality of allowing people to deal in a created commodity like a company or corporation while they make no contribution to the company. The company or corporation only exists [...]
The European Central Bank is vehemently opposed to restructuring insolvent entities’ debt [EPA] The Great Recession of 2008 has morphed into the North Atlantic Recession: it is mainly Europe and the United States, not the major emerging markets, that have become mired in slow growth and high unemployment. And it is Europe and the US that [...]
Information screens at the London Stock Exchange in the City of London. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA 11.12am: While I pester a City expert, you can read about how Britain will lose its AAA credit rating within a few months. That’s the view of US investor Jim Rogers, in an interview with Reuters. Rogers also argues that [...]
S&P August 6, 2011: S&P Warns of Potential Finance Meltdown Gerald Epstein: Real message of S&P downgrade of US debt outlook is threat of another meltdown of finance sector May 9, 11 Why Did S&P Issue Warning on US Bond Rating? Kevin Hall and Mark Weisbrot discuss reasons for Standard and Poor’s warning US could lose [...]
Markets are anxiously looking for ECB to start buying Italian and Spanish debt to stabilise prices [AFP] The European Central Bank (ECB) has decided to intervene decisively on markets to respond to the escalating debt crisis, a eurozone monetary source said after a conference call between ECB and G7 finance ministers. Officials on the conference call [...]
A trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. There is mounting fear on Wall Street that the US is at risk of sliding into long-term economic trouble. Photograph: Jin Lee/AP 9.43pm: We’re still waiting for the full ECB statement but it looks like a bond-buying spree is on the way. “The Euro [...]
A Wall Street sign in front of the New York stock exchange. Recent events have changed the US as an unassailable economic superpower. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters When India joined China in criticising America’s chaotic handling of its hefty debts this weekend, describing the challenges facing the White House as “grave”, it was the clearest indicator yet [...]
Antonis Samaras, who once shared digs in the US with George Papandreou, has become an anti-establishment figure in Greece as well the EU. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images In his ultra-modern office, seated behind an array of photographs autographed by the likes of Ted Kennedy and George Bush Snr, Antonis Samaras does not come across as [...]
Pierre Van Peteghem, treasurer of the African Development Bank, addresses the annual meeting of the African Development Bank (AfDB) at the Congress Center in Lisbon, Portugal on 07 June 2011 [EPA] Perhaps for the first time in modern history, the future of the global economy lies in the hands of poor countries. The United States [...]
Pentagon lands extra $50 billion out of debt deal By Stephen C. WebsterTuesday, August 2nd, 2011 — 11:06 am Out of a bill that was supposed to cut government spending and waste wherever it is found, lawmakers managed to cobble together an additional $50 billion for the U.S. Defense Department‘s budget, using an accounting trick [...]
Debt Ceiling Deal Outrages Some Environmentalists The deal has prompted fear that spending cuts would harm public health and that in the end, big, profitable oil companies would keep their existing government subsidies. August 2, 2011 | LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing list: Sign up to stay up to date on the latest [...]
The following is a somewhat conservative look at Obama’s failings as President. As an employee of the elite it was never possible to expect anything more than failure. It however, is not a matter of his being doomed from the start, he really had nothing to start with. The capital and imperial projects demand total [...]
The 6 Biggest Lies About the U.S. Debt As Congress nears a vote on the various debt ceiling deals, let’s look at the lies and misinformation that got us into this mess. July 28, 2011 | LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing list: Sign up to stay up to date on the latest headlines [...]
How the Billionaires Broke the System Posted: 01 Aug 2011 01:15 PM PDT The US deficit reduction plan makes no sense – until you remember who’s behind the Tea Party movement. By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 1st August 2011 There are two ways of cutting a deficit: raising taxes or reducing spending. [...]
President Obama has criticised the Republican package and urged for a compromised legislation [Reuters] The Democratic-led US Senate has voted to set aside a House-passed Republican bill to avert a potential ruinous debt default, setting the stage for weekend talks on forging a compromise plan. Legislators voted 59-41 against Republican House Speaker John Boehner‘s measure to raise the [...]
US House Speaker John Boehner Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters As the feather fight in the US government,has a nap, it would be nice if we could hear some comment about what a default will really mean. Any working person can give you a detailed description about what happens after job loss leads to no money, [...]
Fallout from the collapse of the housing bubble is the main reason US debt has increased so precipitously since 2008 [GALLO/GETTY] Policy debates in Washington are moving ever further from reality as a small elite is moving to strip benefits that the vast majority need and support. The battle over raising the debt ceiling is playing [...]
Looking at austerity measures implemented in the past, it becomes clear that they only leave those countries poorer and more vulnerable [GALLO/GETTY] Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology – the belief in free and unfettered markets – brought the world to the brink of ruin. Even in its hey-day, from the early 1980s [...]
The White House is expressing optimisim that a compromise deal can be reached before the 2 August deadline Photograph: Charles Dharapak/AP The White House is drawing up emergency plans for next week’s debt crisis deadline in the event that Congress fails to reach a last-gasp compromise. With only six days left, the White House dismissed [...]
