Links 11/20/11

By lambert strether, Corrente

Dennis Gartman: “God bless income disparity” FT Alphaville.

Laura D-Andrea Tyson, “Tackling Income Inequality” Izvestia.

[E]xecutives, managers, supervisors and financial professionals accounted for 60 percent of the increase in the top 1 percent’s income, with a widening compensation differential between those in the financial sector and those in other sectors of the economy after 1990.

Oddly, or not, exactly the class that has the means and opportunity to commit accounting control fraud.

Woman Gets Jail For Food-Stamp Fraud; Wall Street Fraudsters Get Bailouts Rolling Stone (YS).

A splendid jape from UK Uncut.

The current crsis and the Phillip Bobbitt’s Market State Macrobusiness.

The Market State in Europe Seeking Alpha.

German Parliament told about a proposed Irish Tax increase before the Irish people Irish Times.

The Moscow-Berlin-Paris axis vis the Nord Stream Gas Pipeline Immanuel Wallerstein.

Oh dear, oh dear Izvestia (YS). When Elizabeth Warren mentions accounting control fraud, we can take her seriously.

Democracy and the Like button Dissent (YS).

Shocker: DC public relations firm tries to cash in on Occupy oppo FDL (many readers).

Public relations and press manipulation works: Occupy poll numbers are sinking AP.

Sinking Occupy numbers make Democratic operatives happy TPM.

Occupy anything, anywhere, anytime David Dayen.

Police Executive Research Forum (PEF): PERF helps orchestrate assault on Occupations. More here. Somebody should find out exactly how cozy PERF’s relation to Taser International is.

The People’s LRAD (Aquifer).

Oakland Chamber of Commerce Executive Board Member Charged with Committing $19.75 Million Corporate Fraud, after trying to suppress OccupyOakland.

OccupyBangor camps out by the public library Bangor Daily News. Stores firewood under canopy.

Occupy has creative, dynamic graphic designers. Not too-tightly-wrapped cube dwellers. Because Jubilat was tired in 2008. I mean, come on. A Clarendon clone? Then again, “unconventional slab” sums up the Obama administration rather well, eh?

OWS counterprotesters have terrible collateral Salon.

Denise Vega, who let Mark Read use her sixteenth floor apartment to project the OWS “batsignal” on the Verizon building Boing Boing.

Same kind of good citizen as the guy wearing the Che T-shirt, who let Al Jzeeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin set up a live-cam in his apartment overlooking Tahrir Square Al Jazeera.

When churches let Occupiers sleep in their sanctuaries, the NPYD follows them in and counts them Izvestia (YS).

NYPD tells media to get press passes to avoid arrest, then refuses to issue them Wired. That’s some catch.

Tweet of the day diceytroop.

Occupy Arrests pass 4000, more than Iran’s Green Revolution C&L.

Anti-Mafia activist Roberto Saviano in Zuccotti Park: “10 % of the world’s GDP ends up in the pockets of crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions.” (commenter M)

Korean political humor LA Times (Valissa)

Youth is not wasted on the young firm Macroblog.

The global market for off-the-shelf surveillance technology WSJ.

Antidote du jour: Prepare yourself for the awesomeness that is Maru!

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

62 comments

    1. K Ackermann

      I saw that the other day, and I kept waiting for it to turn into propaganda/wrong/stupid but it somehow skirts all that, and much of it is very interesting.

      It does meander a bit.

    1. Richard Kline

      Oh, and what I want to know regarding the PERF-atraitors is, Who’s paying them? It would only take a few million to set up their ‘Police School of the Americas’ outfit, sinister though it’s implications are given the personnel involved, but funding shows backing, and that’s worth knowing. Follow the money . . . .

      1. K Ackermann

        I don’t know who is, but I’ll tell you this: I know those students at UC Davis did the right thing, but when I look at those cops, I feel like a Shiite in Iraq looking at a Sunni and I want to take an electric drill to those cops heads and do some venting.

  1. Valissa

    RE: Oakland Chamber of Commerce Executive Board Member Charged with Committing $19.75 Million Corporate Fraud

    That link took me to a headline only, with no article or text. I tried searching various fragments of that title on Google News and found this very educational article on how the city of Oakland does business these days:

    Oakland’s 1%: Corporate Business Associations and Property Investment Firms
    http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/11/18/18700048.php

    While “Lake Merritt/Uptown” and “Downtown Oakland” business associations claim deep roots in Oakland history and its communities, they are in fact business improvement districts, or “BIDs,” founded in 2008 and focused on privatizing government and public space. Their sole purpose is to help corporations avoid paying city taxes which might be used outside of these business districts. The leadership of these management corporations take their orders directly from companies based outside the city. They in fact don’t represent Oakland at all but “small businesses” like AT&T ($124.3 billion in revenues last year), Bank of America ($111.4 billion), Wells Fargo ($85 billion), Waste Management ($12.5 billion), Southwest Airlines ($12.1 billion), Comcast ($9.7 billion), Visa ($3.6 billion), Clear Channel Outdoor ($2.8 billion), Grubb & Ellis real estate ($2.7 billion), Colliers International ($1.9 billion), and Joie de Vivre hoteliers ($250 million).

    These business organizations could be called Oakland’s “shadow government,” with its own staff of full-time lobbyists at City Hall, and driven by a network of corrupt power brokers like Joe Harraburda and Phil Tagami. Recently, Todd Hansen, current member of the executive committee of the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors, has been arrested by the FBI and charged with orchestrating a five-year, $19.75 million accounting fraud scheme to inflate company earnings, thereby enriching himself. Unlike Oakland residents, the banks which the Chamber of Commerce represents are exempted by the city from paying a real estate transfer tax for foreclosures. Oakland’s deficit is $58 million. Last year, this exemption alone cost the city $51 million.

    Suggest reading the whole article, especially the part about how these “BIDS” lied about the business effect of the Occupy encampment.

    1. K Ackermann

      I call total bullshit to your alert.

      Not because I don’t think it’s plausible, but because I’m not dumb enough to believe such specific allegations without any links or attribution of any kind.

      1. Valissa

        Seems a bit of an extreme response… so if you are having a bad day, this Bullshit Joke for you…

        A pheasant was standing in a field chatting to a bull. “I would love to be able to get to the top of yonder tree”, sighed the pheasant, “but I haven”t got the energy”. Well, why don”t you nibble on some of my droppings? ” replied the bull. “They”re packed with nutrients”. The pheasant pecked at a lump of dung and found that it actually gave him enough strength to reach the first branch of the tree. The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch and so on. Finally, after a fortnight, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree, whereupon he was spotted by a farmer who dashed into the farmhouse, emerged with a shotgun, and shot the pheasant right out of the tree. Moral of the Story: Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won”t keep you there.

        1. K Ackermann

          I’m having a fine day, but maybe I did drop the hammer a little hard. My point wasn’t to insult you… it was to make you look at the article with scepticism. My B.S. detector went shrill when I looked at it, and yours should’ve too. Even if everything in the article is correct, the author omitted any and all possible ways to give it cred – as though asking me to simply believe because it is written.

          It’s really important that what we believe is actually true, and this site is very good about sticking to the facts.

          1. Valissa

            fyi, I look at ALL articles with skepticism whether or not they have linked sources. The only reason I even posted that article was because I couldn’t read the one that Lambert linked to, so I was offering up one another I found instead… hoping that others might post other links on the topic we could all learn more. It’s called cooperative learning, and is my preferred style. Personally I am not a fan of competitive learning these days “been there, done that” and these days I instead speak up and tell people I want to have a conversation not an argument.

            I am not responsible for the truth of any links I post, nor for pre-screening them. I do not care for truth policing, or for domineering attitudes. I have been commenting on this list for 2-3 years now and think I have a pretty good understanding of the unspoken rules.

            So cheers, and let’s try and have more fun (and less earnest righteousness) the next time, OK?

      1. Valissa

        I still get no story of any kind from your link Lambert, only the headline. Maybe it’s a browser issue. The FBI link works fine though.

      2. rjs

        lambert, i had the same problem as valissa…i even tried “select all” & checked to see if any hidden html would copy…there’s nothing there…

        never had that problem with a blogspot before..

    2. LeonovaBalletRusse

      Valissa, thanks for the details, which I do believe because I know that this kind of chicanery is what brought the World’s Fair to New Orleans in 1984, only now it’s much worse. These are *rackets* by any other name. Bring RICO to all of the players, large and small.

      This shows vividly how closely the “Chamber of Commerce” anywhere is a player in the rackets of the Global 1%, while they pretend to be *the smiley-face of our home town*. What fraud! Someone ought to follow the money and connect the Chamber of Commerce with the Round Table Groups.

      That connection is similar to that between Rockefeller’s University of Chicago and “The Encyclopedia Britannica” for *educating Americans* into the party line of the Victorian Reich (“The British Empire”).According to one author the very purpose of “The Encyclopedia Britannica” was to promulgate pro-“British”/anti-*American* propaganda (Willard Huntington Wright: “Misinforming a Nation” [New York, B.W. Heubsch, MCMXVII(1917)].

      It was the University of Chicago that promulgated *Neocon Econ* propaganda on behalf of the Imperial 1%, which effected the destruction of the *real economy* of the U.S.A.–and the *power of the People*/the 99%–through an army of university *experts*. For this, see G.G. Preparata’s “THE IDEOLOGY OF TYRANNY: Bataille, Foucault, and the Postmodern Corruption of Political Dissent [New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007]).

      The Machine network of the Chambers of Commerce promulgates propaganda to the troops, and promotes the imperial world-view of the Global 1%: the Anglo-American + Holy Roman + Saudi & UAE Empire of Frauds. See: “THE ANGLO-AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT: by Carroll Quigley (San Pedro, CA; GSG & Associates Publishers, n.d.). Numerous books have been written about this complex Imperial network, connected to profitable wars for capture of *Oil and Gas*, gold, and other metals. Capitalist-Communist China now plays the *Great Game*, yielding poverty, drug addiction, maiming, ruin, and death to the 99%.

      As Roberto Saviano said to the OWS, 10% of GLOBAL GDP goes to criminal institutions. Do you see now why “DALLAS” and “The Sopranos” were on TV? Their covert purpose was to make the American People “O.K.” with corporate *white-collar* crime and *organized crime*. This was pro-crime propaganda, to encourage those trying to *rise to the top* of the Capitalist Criminal 1% Machine, to be “O.K.” with lying, cheating, stealing, fraud, and other betrayals, justified by “Greed is good” and “You gotta do wutcha gotta do! :-). Prostitution and despair go with drug addiction, squaring the circle for the profiteering 1%.

      Someone like Gabor Mate, M.D. might tell us what *We the People*’s criminal indoctrination has done to our *neuronal circuitry*. Especially the young *Occupiers*, apparently, have choose not to go down that pot-holed road. They have not yet been made victims of the *Stockholm Syndrome*.

      Valissa, I have no doubt that what you posted is true.

      1. LeonovaBalletRusse

        For the true purpose of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Chambers under them *just following orders* see the timely link today re the D.C. PR firm hired by banksters to counteract OWS. The link is to the story at FDL. Lewis Powell gave the marching orders to the *bidness* army before he was appointed to The Supreme Court, and Chambers of Commerce heads acted as Sergeants.

        The whole story is at http://www.firedoglake.com

  2. Foppe

    So the organization is proceeding via the police commissioners rather than the mayors. Thanks for finding that.

      1. aletheia33

        the “minneapolis examiner” “citizen journalist” rick ellis, reporting at examiner.com is following up on his earlier report of DOJ official mentioning collaboration on multicity beatdown of last weekend/week.

        the officials’ efforts in the second story linked below to reassure the people of the u.s. of their lack of coordination with local authorities has the opposite effect in my view, as what they openly admit to (though without identifying themselves) only verifies reason to be afraid for our society’s future. ends with an admission that they’ve blown it (my take).

        n.b.: this reporter’s reliability has been questioned at daily kos. i consider him perhaps lacking extensive experience but basically credible until/unless shown otherwise–sort of on the the level of student journalism. he is continuing to provide followup reports on his original story that seem to me useful and interesting.

        http://www.examiner.com/top-news-in-minneapolis/homeland-security-role-occupy-crackdowns-limited-says-agency

        http://www.examiner.com/top-news-in-minneapolis/worries-about-fed-involvement-occupy-crackdowns-overblown-says-official

        1. aet

          Don’t be too down on student journos – they sometimes break news which others do not see fit to, probably because some-powerful-body’s $$$flow don’t want them to break it.

          See for eg this story on why some nations – half of the countries in the world – cannot obtain ANY morphine supplies at all:

          http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/jul/19/al-jazeera-journalism-education

          No effective pain-killers for you, because effective pain relief is…..immoral…we say.

          But who cares about this? Not the “news media”.

          1. LucyLulu

            Morality has a long history in medicine.

            Anesthesia (ether) was prohibited, for example, for childbirth in Great Britain until Queen Elizabeth I insisted upon being given some when she gave birth to a son. The clergy of England had professed that if God didn’t want women to suffer through childbirth, He would have made it painless. Christianity has long seen pain and illness as some sort of divine retribution. Even during the 20th Century, after religious prohibitions had faded, the relief of pain during childbirth continued to intermittently pose moral and philosophical issues and give birth (pun intended) to periods of “natural childbirth” movements. Most here probably remember LaMaze, which while still used by some (masochistic) women has lost the popularity it had two to three decades ago.

  3. smiley mcnuggette

    “Denise Vega, who let Mark Read use her sixteenth floor apartment to project the OWS “batsignal” on the Verizon building Boing Boing.”

    Brilliant! But I wonder how long it will be before Lord Bloomberg has the perp hauled in to stand before the magistrates.

  4. craazyman

    Lambert does Yves know you’re turning the board into a front for the American Communist Party?

    Can we have a little balance here, maybe something from the New York Times style section about how hard it is to live on half a million a year? It hurts my feelings to see all this negativity.

    And this Taibbi dude, what’s wrong with putting welfare queens in jail for lying to the govermint? Two rongs don’t make a rite. Even when I’m wrong, I’m right. So there’s never two rights, just one wrong and only one right and that’s me.

    Yours truly,
    John E. Cash, CFA, PhD, MBA, AAA, CCC-, AA, BYOB
    Head of Regulatory Arbitrage
    Lootem & Howe Capital Velocity Partners

    1. craazyman

      I spoke to soon Lambert. I see that Mr. Gartman is represented here, thankfully, to bring some fairness and balance to these links. You are commended for your even-handedness. I rushed to judgment, which is when the govemint usually bails me out.

      -Mr. John E. Cash, CDO, OCD, AA, BYOB

    2. wunsacon

      >> maybe something from the New York Times style section about how hard it is to live on half a million a year?

      I *love* that article! Saved offline for posterity. :-)

    3. Doug Terpstra

      I think Taibbi’s point was about the obscene proportionality — about a woman given years in debtors prison for stealing bread (lying about victimless drug convictions) to feed her children, while the racketeers who would run down peasants in their carriages skate scott-free.

      My guess is she was sentenced by some “family-values” judge, who quite likely rubber-stamps forged foreclosure docs for the bankster class and has his eye on the US Supine Court.

      1. craazyman

        I get it, Doug and agree with Matt totally. I think his journalism is a national treasure. Just spoofing around with fake totally made up characters (John E. Cash is a favorite of mine, he’s such an idiot, but he is a metaphor for what’s out there).

        1. Doug Terpstra

          D’oh! For a second there, I thought your reich-wing coworkers had co-opted you. My funny-bone is too dull.

  5. K Ackermann

    That lobbiest group wanting to throw OWS under the bus for profit may not have found a taker in the ABA, but you can bet DHS is all ears.

    That is going to be the tactic: the same old divide and conquer trope proven so effective. It will be organized and funded, though. Not merely people like Peter King calling OWS dirty, filthy losers (which should automatically bar him from ever being a representative again), but possibly very nasty tactics.

    They could run false flag operations in the name of OWS, coupled with an array of nasty “OWS is un-american” memes to get the 50% who are prone to fear against OWS.

    I guarantee TPTB would rather promote civic strife than civic harmony.

    Hell, they barely need real people in this new economy. Remember… “corporations are people, my friend.”

    Those kind of people are preferred by 10 out of 10 politicians.

    Remember… a mother was just sentenced to 3 years for fraudulently applying for food stamps to feed her kids, and she was essentially forced to commit the fraud.

    The government is out of effing control, and people have to understand this.

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      K, I touched up your comment just a bit.

      Note that one beneficial aspect of having a very transparent process of consensus-based decicision making is that it makes false flag operations much harder to run. It’s not like some agency can just infiltrate a ringer into a closed revolutionary cell who can say, “Say, I’ve got a source for weapons and uniforms…”

      1. K Ackermann

        They don’t have to infiltrate – they only have to appear at the back of the crowd before they throw the firebomb.

        1. M.InThecity

          Agreed – they have been doing the same thing with the student protests over here in Britain – well, ex the firebombs. But it’s still impressive what the undercovers (non-uniformed) police will do. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

  6. John

    Don’t you think it is incumbent on the nyt to point out that Laura Tyson is a director at MS? If a director of Pfizer was writing an editorial in drug pricing I imagine the nyt would mention this potential conflict. And exactly what has Tyson done at MS for the 99 % she professes to care so much about? Talk is cheap.

    Signed, former Econ 1 and Econ 161 student of Prof. Tyson. (She was a very likeable prof., but cannot say I learned anything useful in either class.)

  7. Independent Accountant

    YS:
    I have complained for years of our (in)justice system’s inequities. Some poor slob passes $5,000 in bad checks here in Texas, gets caught, then spends two years in state jail. Someone politically connected, not a “1%er”, but a “.00001%er”, commits a billion dollar fraud, bankrupts his own company, then gets a bailout. What a country. While you and I are on different sides of the political spectrum, here we see eye-to-eye.

    IA

  8. johnson

    Occupy design seems to miss the point of the protests. Seeming to commodify and iconize the symbols of protest. They should be different and open to the person or place.

  9. don

    The discussion of a market state is really nothing new, though the term may be. An example of this is the famous German philosopher/sociologist Jurgen Habermas’ book ‘Legitimation Crisis’, published in the 1970’s.

    One central thrust of the small but very dense book is that as economic crisis unfolds in advanced capitalist societies, greater burden is placed on the state to manage the crisis. However, market forces restrict the ability of the state to quell the crises. Internal contradictions of that crisis impregnate the state, resulting in the failure of the state to succeed in disarming the crisis leading a state legitimation deficit.

    One binary not mentioned in the excellent Macrobusiness piece is that of economics and politics. We like to separate them out, but that leads to all kinds of difficulties.

    As for Haberma’s book, there is much more to it than this, packed into this groundbreaking theory of crisis.

    For a summary:

    http://www.arasite.org/hablc.htm

    1. Jim Pivonka

      Thank you so much for the Habermas reference and link. I was a fan of his earlier thought, in the ’70’s, but have not kept up on him and am so unfamiliar with “Legitimation Crisis”. At the time I was much less sensitized to the character of the post modernist assault on the Enlightenment, so even my earlier reading needs to be redone and reassessed. There is no question in my mind that he’s very important, however that turns out, so I’ll presume to offer a couple of additonal links:
      Amazon, for the book itself: http://www.amazon.com/Legitimation-Crisis-Jurgen-Habermas/dp/0745606091
      A Google Scholar search, which turns up some items that make me drool: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Jurgen+Habermas%E2%80%99+book+%E2%80%98Legitimation+Crisis%E2%80%99&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

    2. K Ackermann

      Don, do you know of any economic models that do a good job of flushing out the externalities of white collar crime?

      Bill Black touches on some of it, pointing out how distorting one crimogenic enterprise is on an entire sector, but it seems in general that economics avoids the subject.

      I’m using crime in a broad sense. I think Fuld walking away with money was a crime (to mention just one). Is there a correlation between executive compensation, and long-term performance of a company and incidents of malfeasance?

      1. LeonovaBalletRusse

        K Ackermann, a case in point: I once advised a hugely successful CEO of a *family business* gone global NOT to *go public* because by this he was certain to lose control of the firm’s operations, which is the downside of IPO, which gives the sellers huge income plus the ability to use public stockholder dough as a *cash cow* (this was his reason for considering the IPO). He took my advice, to his and the family’s everlasting benefit, peace, and wealth.

        What did I know? I was a communications consultant to a firm that had just gone from *private* to *public*. This sell-out provided big bucks up front and the *cash cow* thereafter. This turned the company’s purpose *upside down*. Although they continued to advertise their company as before (high on service and integrity *in your time of need*), the policy of the insiders was completely changed. More mergers and acquisitions ensued, more *road shows*; the emphasis was on profit to the top tier, while the business suffered. A McKinsey pro was brought in as consultant, later hired by the top, who profited extremely from his advice. It’s all about the dough for the 1%, and the *good name* associated with the business flies away. Making the price of the stock rise, quarter by quarter, is the name of the game; the top tier is rewarded with options and loot from the *cash cow*.

        If you love the company you created, as my CEO friend did, you do not take this route to riches. He made a fortune when he ultimately sold the business to family members. The company still is in private hands. Their integrity and exemplary leadership continues along with their enrichment.

        1. K Ackermann

          Thank you for your example. Irony abounds within the structure of a publically traded company.

          The incentives and needs of a corporation are fundamentally different than those of a real person. That it enjoys “personhood” status is absurd.

    3. LeonovaBalletRusse

      Thank you, don. Yes, this marches *hand in glove* with the Neocon propaganda crying for *shrinking the size of government to fit in a bathtub*. This is the apparent justification for the 1% fraud and looting of government for the 99%.

      Say, wouldn’t that make the spokespersons complicit in the fraud and looting? They were part of the racket. Bring RICO to each and every one.

    4. craazyman

      “Internal contradictions of that crisis impregnate the state . . . ”

      Is that a scholarly way of saying the citizens get screwed?

      Wanna give a shout out to Doug Noland’s always excellent commentary over at Prudent Bear. He has convinced me Germany may well be ready just to cut loose and let the sh*t hit the fan rather than get the PIIGS’ pecker up it’s monetary rear. ha ha. sorry for the graphic imagery but if it’s a matter of being impregnated, then we have to be like physicians and not flinch to analyze this stuff.

      This dude Weidmann of the Bundesbank is a piece of work for sure, but ya know he may have a point. And I’m beginning to think Germany’s ready just to say “F*ck it”, and let them all sort it out for themselves. It’s hard to be half pregnant, or a third, or a fifth, or two thirds. YOu either are or you aren’t. Not everything is a continuum.

      The only out he’d appear to have is the notion of price stability. If the Joymens can convince themselvs prices go into a deflation free fall unless they pony up then maybe that can be the continuum. What a house of mirrors this stuff is. Reminds me of the beach weekend in high school on the boardwalk all doped up and looking at our reflections in the funhouse mirrors. I nearly injured myself laughing so hard at stump legs and truck sized rears and squished heads my head about exploded. But that was then. I don’t get the impression Weidemann is laughing but he seems so rigid he must lose it from time to time.

  10. Susan the other

    The Nord Stream Pipeline from Russia to northern Europe. This is the most significant piece of news since 1917. It makes me think we really have been discarded by Europe. Because all we had to offer them was debt. I wonder what will become of NATO. I’d give it a year, maybe. It might explain “Odyssey Dawn” as our last effort with NATO to ensure oil to southern Europe.

    But it also makes me wonder about what Russia’s refusal to give cheap oil to China will force China to do. And is this the main reason we have a new Pacific mandate to police all trade with a special emphasis on the disputed oil find just off southern China? Which came first, the Nord Stream deal or our decision to go into the Pacific? Is this The Containment of China 2.0? I really don’t think we can afford to keep doing this. Never resolving anything.

    1. LeonovaBalletRusse

      Susan the other, good thinking. “We are a Pacific nation.” I suppose it has all been worked out by the 1%.

      1. ambrit

        Dear FelLOW Travellers;
        After all, Pan Pacific Hegemony was one of the drivers behind the Pacific War of 1941-1945. Added bonus, the South China Sea aint called China Sea fer nuttin! If Peking can send troops into Tibet under the pretext it was a Chineese dependancy way beck, who’s going to stop them when they move to get Taiwan back? After all, that island really is a ‘province in revolt!’ So, add the Taiwan issue to the oil supply issue and you get… Realisticaly, if the U.S. can’t ‘pacify’ third rate powers like Iraq or Afghanistan, what does it think it’s going to do about China? I think the proper term is “Imperial Overreach.”

        1. LeonovaBalletRusse

          The U.S. already sold out Taiwan (ruled by pre-Mao’s Old 1%) via vote to give China higher standing via the CFR. This was the *first shoe* to drop. The second is poised to drop.

          History shows that the U.S.A. is a hard partner. You get what you get from *partnership* while the getting is good, then you’re dropped like a hot lead when it suits us. We have been the *800 gorilla*. But as a *Pacific nation* now, we likely have met our match, and the American 1% has sprung for the marriage of the two gorillas.

          France and Germany marry Russia. *Everything’s Jake*.

  11. Hugh

    Laura D’Andrea Tyson is a neoliberal. She gives a brief summary of the CBO report on income inequality and then advocates raising taxes on the wealthy to Clinton era levels. I think they should be a lot higher than those. But the kicker, and there is always one with neoliberals, comes at the end of piece where she proposes cutting corporate tax rates further. Once a neoliberal, always a neoliberal.

  12. Hugh

    BTW re D’Andrea Tyson, here is some of what she does when she is not being a professor at UC-Berkeley:

    •Board Member, Science, Technology and Economic Policy, The National Academies

    •Member, Committee on Research Universities, The National Academies

    •Board of Trustees, Bay Area Council Economic Institute

    •Member of Corporate Boards: AT&T Inc.; Eastman Kodak Company; Morgan Stanley; CB Richard Ellis; Silver Spring Networks

    •Advisory Board: Generation Investment Management; H&Q Asia Pacific; Newman’s Own Foundation; Observatory Group

    •Advisory Council, The Brookings Institution, Hamilton Project

    •Chair of Board of Trustees & Steering Committee Member, Blum Center for Developing Economies

    •Member of Board of Directors (Not for profit): New America Foundation; Peter G. Peterson Institute of International Economics

    •Senior Advisor: McKinsey Global Institute; Berkeley Research Group; The Rock Creek Group; Credit Suisse Research Institute

    •Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

    •Member, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Corporation

    •Commissioner, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

    •Member, Committee on Capital Markets Regulation

    •Chair, Global Agenda Council on the Gender Gap, World Economic Forum

    http://facultybio.haas.berkeley.edu/faculty-list/tyson-laura

    Note especially the membership on the board of the G. Peterson Institute of International Economics and McKinsey’s research org.

    And then note her membership on the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. This is tied to Peterson and Bowles-Simpson, i.e. the chairs of the first Cat Food Commission. It also pushed the second Cat Food Commission, the Super Committee, to go big on debt reduction.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_a_Responsible_Federal_Budget

    Sort of to top it all off, D’Andrea-Tyson is a bigtime free trader.

    1. Hugh

      Oh, and I forgot to point out the connection to the Hamilton Project, Robert Rubin’s creature which is housed at Brookings.

      1. LeonovaBalletRusse

        Thanks, Hugh, for all the excellent information. And considering how the top tier at McKenzie knows *everybody’s business*, as it were (althought of course they never share critical information across client pools), Tyson is the same kind of *free trade* booster that her predecessors, *The British East India Company* were, and she’s in a position to *profit her sphere* likewise, no doubt.

  13. barrisj

    Opened up this morning’s SEA Times, and the “hard news” section had several articles about police breaking up encampments where Egyptians protesting the policies of the military government had set up in Tahrir Square, and many demonstrators were beaten by police and tear-gassed as well. Also, the obligatory anti-government protest stories in Syria, with the usual tsk-tsking about the “brutality of Syrian police and military…yadda-yadda”. But, the events on UC Davis campus? Absolutely bugger-all, and in fact, NO stories on the many “Occupy” demos continuing in the States, where demo camps were destroyed, and dozens arrested. Nothing to see here, folks, just move along. So pathetic…”The City upon the Hill”…blechhhh.

  14. john

    This might make a good link:
    http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/81805/occupy-paris/?fb_source=message&utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=referral

    In addition to all the parallels it discusses, this is the historical moment when Keynes was writing “The Consequences of Mr. Churchill”, trying to talk the UK off its gold fixation before it was too late, an ideological fixed idea quite similar to our “deficit attention disorder”. The brutal parallel not addressed is that the conservative fixation on debts and hard money in 30s France led them to believe that they could not “afford” to extend the Maginot Line. The pathology of money love always leads to the institutional suicide of its host.

  15. aletheia33

    OWS: blog by florida high school teacher recounts first few days of watching OWS from florida, getting excited, using internet to spread the word; most recent post describing ordinary folks’ fears about getting involved in even normal political activities–people seem to have little sense of free speech entitlement or even of what free speech actually is. blog has a modest, personal voice.

    http://occupyingthefuture.wordpress.com/

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