Links 4/14/12

A team of scientists at the MPQ realizes a first elementary quantum network based on interfaces between single atoms and photons Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (Julia W)

The World’s First 3-D Chocolate Printer Fast Company

High-frequency trading is cuckoo Business Spectator. Readers, your thoughts?

On High Frequency Trading… Macro Rants. Readers?

Warm Winter Means More Pests Farm Journal

Rail traffic continues to soften Pragmatic Capitalist

Metal thefts putting homeowners on edge Chicago Tribune

Double Bubble Trouble Who is IOZ? on Instagram. “A billion, really?” Kinda NSFW.

Eliot Spitzer says President Barack Obama was on Wall Street’s side from Day One Reuters TV

Fracking Tied to Unusual Rise in Earthquakes in U.S. Business Week

Oil markets should heed Libor lessons Gillian Tett:

The issue revolves around the role played by price reporting agencies – PRAs – such as Platts, Argus Media and ICIS. These wield extraordinary power in the energy sector, since, as Liz Bossley, head of the Consilience Energy Advisory Group says in her submission to Iosco: “The vast majority of physical oil production moves under contracts that use PRA benchmarks as a reference point”, and “perhaps 60 to 70 per cent of OTC swaps and options are priced or cash-settled by reference to PRA quotes.”

But the PRAs do not create these indices just based on prices established by actual trades; instead, they also rely (sometimes heavily) on reported quotes from a pool of selected financial players, with sometimes as few as five participants taking part, as the Iosco report notes. And there is limited external scrutiny, let alone regulatory oversight of the prices, because reporting activities have been defined as “journalistic” activity and are shielded by free speech rules.

What could go wrong?

Battle for the Soul of Occupy Ad Busters

Yes, The 99% Spring Is A Fraud. “The first clue… was the sign-up table, where there were a bunch of Obama buttons for sale.”

How Occupy Co-Opted MoveOn.org Mother Jones. Isn’t it pretty to think so.

Interview with the occupants of Starbucks in Boğaziçi University, Istanbul

Politics in Woodlawn: Occupation of the Mental Health Clinic Gapers Block, Chicago, IL

The Eschaton Decade Sure, but why are all the wankers bit players from the media?

NYT Gives a (Very Reluctant) Kudos to Al Jazeera Columbia Journalism Review

Julian Assange show starts Tuesday, guest kept secret Reuters

Facebook advertisers lose bid for class status Reuters

It’s Not a Crime to Break a Terms of Service Agreement Gizmodo

UK’s approach to internet freedom on par with authoritarian regimes Al Jazeera

Times of London Sued in Hacking Scandal Times (Buzz Potamkin)

News Corp faces growing threat of phone-hacking lawsuits in US Guardian (Buzz Potamkin)

Spread the word about this EU push for citizen participation Guardian

Being Green: Presidential hopeful Jill Stein aims to rebuild a broken system Grist

Family seeks answers after police shooting of loved one The Miami Herald

Newark, NJ mayor [Cory Booker] rescues neighbor from burning home, is treated for burns, smoke inhalation Pravda

In Which I Rain on Everyone’s Cory Booker Parade Corey Robin

Vermont Senate Resolves to Abolish “Corporate Personhood” Truthout

Nazis get their own lobbyist on Capitol Hill The Sideshow. Make up your own jokes!

A lean to the far right in Greece? Foreign Policy

CAIR-Michigan sues FBI, Customs over alleged ‘invasive religious questioning’ Detroit News

Greenwald and his vacation fill-ins are on fire.

Looking Back on the Limits of Growth Smithsonian

Computing isn’t just getting cheaper. It’s becoming more energy efficient. Technology Review. That means a world with lots of sensors and lots of streaming data.

Titanic: the 100th anniversary Detroit News. How a propos.

Antidote ju jour: Tillman the Surfin’ Bulldog (furzy mouse):

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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.

74 comments

  1. F. Beard

    re A team of scientists at the MPQ realizes a first elementary quantum network based on interfaces between single atoms and photons :

    I poo poo the idea of computer consciousness with conventional computers but a non-deterministic quantum computer might be a different story.

    Ah, but the ethical problems ala Steven Spielberg’s “AI” are sobering. Dare we make a machine that is capable of suffering?

    And if humans can be demon possessed might not a quantum computer?

    But we will no doubt press on to an interesting conclusion, I’d bet.

    1. K Ackermann

      If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend The Emperor’s New Mind, by Roger Penrose. It’s quite amazing and gives reason to the views you express.

      I’m of the same belief that no deterministic algorithm exists that would give rise to consciousness close to the level we express. I don’t care one bit for all that crap about thermostats or any system exhibiting hysteresis as being conscious in its own right.

      I don’t even think the Turing test is good enough. Until an artificial construct picks up a small rock and throws it at a dog for no good reason it can articulate… and report being oddly satisfied at hearing a yelp – the kind of thing a young boy might do – well, until that happens, I’ll know it as a machine.

      1. Aquifer

        So, if “Quantum information is extremely fragile and cannot be cloned”, and consciousness is a quantum process, then how can any hypothesis re consciousness be adequately “tested”? Seems to me it renders any such hypothesis non falsifiable, and as such “unscientific”; we can’t even get to the “theory” stage …

        So “science” will not be able to nail down consciousness – aw gee, what a surprise …

          1. Aquifer

            Very interesting – and thought provoking (in between the ads), but not quite sure i get the connection – can think of a couple of possibilities, but i guess I am, indeed, a bit dense …

          2. kris

            @Thread blogger
            Quite interesting. Please continue the exchange. Never had this angle of thinking before.

          3. F. Beard

            Well, the show implied that consciousness could be cloned so after a teleportation was verified the original was murdered!

            However, if consciousness cannot be cloned but only transfered then no problem of duplicate personalities could arise.

          4. Aquifer

            The suggestion being, i suppose, that either quantum phenomena are not too fragile to be cloned, if you have “evolved” to the level of “thinking like a dinosaur” or consciousness is not a quantum phenomenon …

            Is there anything that man thinks he cannot control once he “understands” it? Or is that what the dino metaphor is phor?

            I think the Dr. Spock image was a bit more appealing – or maybe Spock was a dino who shape shifted …

          5. just me

            Star Trek TOS, first season, The Enemy Within. Magnetic dust on transporter causes Kirk to transport twice, split into positive Kirk, negative Kirk. Best representation of Democrats and Republicans I’ve seen. Good Kirk (Democrat) is pale and weak. Jellyfish angel cannot make a decision, lies down. Bad Kirk (Republican) is a sneaky raping bully, but ultimately afraid, afraid, afraid. (“I’M Captain Kirk!” hysterics!)

            Scottie could put America back together again. Just fix the blasted transporter. Turns out we need each other.

      2. wunsacon

        >> Until an artificial construct picks up a small rock and throws it at a dog for no good reason it can articulate

        It’s just programming, man.

        And…do you really want us to add that feature in something that’ll be smarter and more powerful than us?

        (Of course, most of us probably won’t get a say in how far the US, Chinese or Russian militaries push their drone technology. I do fear where our path seems to lead us.)

  2. F. Beard

    “Under my plan, each American household could borrow $10 million from the Fed at zero interest. The more conservative among us can take that money and buy 10-year Treasury bonds. At the current 2 percent annual interest rate, we can pocket a nice $200,000 a year to live on. The more adventuresome can buy 10-year Greek debt at 21 percent, for an annual income of $2.1 million. Or if Greece is a little too risky for you, go with Portugal, at about 12 percent, or $1.2 million dollars a year. (No sense in getting greedy.)

    Think of what we can do with all that money. We can pay off our underwater mortgages and replenish our retirement accounts without spending one day schlepping into the office. With a few quick keystrokes, we’ll be golden for the next 10 years.” Sheila Bair from http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/04/fed-access-for-all/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheBigPicture+%28The+Big+Picture%29

    Sounds like a plan!

    1. Aquifer

      Thank you for that! I have always liked Sheila Bair – would make one hell of a Tres. Sec., it seems to me …..:)

  3. Ned Ludd

    Charles Davis – who wrote the Salon article about his run-in with Jay Rockefeller – had an earlier article on Wells Fargo and the private prison industry.

    Wells Fargo has been busy expanding its stake in the GEO Group, the second largest private jailer in America. At the end of 2011, Wells Fargo was the company’s second-largest investor, holding 4.3 million shares valued at more than $72 million.[…]

    GEO’s business is aided by “strong fundamental trends” in the U.S., [CEO George] Zoley noted. Indeed, even as President Obama talks of potentially cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits, his administration is proposing an increase in federal prison spending. “[I]nitiatives related to border enforcement and immigration detention” in particular, Zoley notes, “have continued to create demand for larger-scale, cost efficient facilities,” leading his company’s revenues to rise to $1.6 billion last year – revenues that are in turn used to lobby for stricter laws.

    How many more years of “strong fundamental trends” does it take to make the United States a police state?

    1. Joeshump

      Re high frequency trading:

      Perhaps one of my biggest issues with HFT is that the markets no longer operate at a ‘human’ speed. Being full of machines making decisions 10 billion times faster than a normal human and subsequently holding positions for fractions of a second, the markets loose their ability to represent any kind of reality beyond the instantaneous macinations of front-running algorithms.

      Not only does the volume and scope of HFT lead to huge amounts of unnecessary volatility, but the algorithms themselves create large price distortions based on the incompleteness or false assumptions built into the code of the algorithm itself. The most notable example being the ‘housing prices always trend up’ assumption made by these machines pre-2008. I’ll always argue the banks reliance on HFT coupled with a hubris in their calculus (arrogance in mathematically assuming things they never should have) led to that asset bubble, and will lead to many more.

      Anyways, HFT is bullocks. I can’t imagine they still make the ‘it provides liquidity’ excuse, when it’s obviously a tool used to scrape a few cents off of every joe schmo’s 401k. While all the while increasing volatility and distorting true price discovery.

      1. Aquifer

        Don’t know how many folks know this, but there has been a Stock Transfer Tax assessed on an all trades in NYS for over 100 years – a small graduated pittance based on price. A few decades ago when NYC was going down the tubes – an entity was set up to divert the money to NYC for its bonds (please don’t jump on me if i don’t have all the proper terminology, i have already established i ain’t no financial whiz!) with what was not needed for that to be rebated to the sellers. In those years it was not all “that much” but with HFT, it took off.

        Around ’81 when those bonds were paid back – all the money was to be rebated, to the tune of around $15 billion dollars a year, give or take a couple if the stock market does “poorly”. I have seen the legislation that set this up, the forms that are used to pay and to get the rebate of the tax – the same form.

        So. we are told that NY is in such a fiscal hole that we must cut school budgets and municipal aid and Medicaid at the same time we are giving billions back to Wall Street – there is enough in that one tax alone, to put NY in surplus, if it were kept for the NY treasury instead of being rebated to the brokers and traders …

        It is still on the books – it is still being “collected” and immediately returned. Neither major party will touch it with a 10 foot pole. The Green Party candidate for Gov. ran with it in ’10 and was summarily ignored – it is just too hot to handle, apparently.

        I would love to have Yves do some stuff on this – I have some references …

        1. lambert strether

          Acquifer, if you want to shoot me some links I could get this started ASAP. I can’t shred like Yves, of course, but I could get the ball rolling…

          lambert_strether DOT corrente AT yahoo DOT com.

          1. Aquifer

            sent some stuff, any feedback would be appreciated – either this is a significant issue that should be addressed or i am blowing smoke rings – would be good to get a “second opinion”, as we say in the trades, from folks like you guys who know how to “make it real” …

          2. LucyLulu

            Lambert,
            Thanks for posting your email, I couldn’t find it anywhere. I’m going to send you some stuff on Fukushima I have that people have sent to me that isn’t posted online. Some is pretty technical but maybe you’ll find something useful.

    2. Aquifer

      Ned, ya gotta get with the program – he’s not cutting SS, he’s making us all more “socially secure” by locking up all the bad guys!

      THAT’S the new “improved” Social Security – putting it on “solid ground” – after all, what could be more solid than an 8×10 concrete cell?

          1. LucyLulu

            They keep cutting SS and the elderly may be forced to get themselves thrown in the pen……….

            Free food, free housing, and free medical care. They’ll become the new retirement communities. Come Monday I’m calling my broker, telling him sell everything, I want to go long GEO Group. So long suckers, I’ll be joining the 1%.

          2. Aquifer

            You have read the story, true story, apparently, of the poor guy who “robbed” a bank of a dollar and waited to get arrested. He needed some medical attention and he figured the only place he could get it was jail ….

    3. Synopticist

      Another one of Greenwalds temps wrote an article critical of corporations as well. Clealry Glenn didn’t explain his Koch sucking deal to his underlings.

  4. annie

    i guess i missed the first phase, when cory booker was hailed as hero. wapost and nyt stories are sufficiently laden with irony, mockery, suspicion, envy. can’t imagine what corey robin is reacting to. not being first?

  5. K Ackermann

    With HFT, money is made by looking at order flow and jumping in ahead of a trade that is likely to move the price.

    This is effectively reading the future. It’s getting tomorrow’s stock prices today. The problem is, the information is acted upon – which moves the prices.

    The larger the trade, to larger the price swing. From what little I understand, there are strategies to disguise large trades by instantaniously slicing them up and scattering them to different market makers, each moving the price just a little (but generating more comissions.)

    So with all these dynamics going, all trying to affect or prevent extremely rapid price moves iregardless of any stock fundamentals, then the focus quickly shifts to strategies that generate asymetrical information and keep the window of time to trade on the information open as long as possible.

    I’d love to know the nuts and bolts of this business. I bet it’s nasty, and deception is the rule.

    1. Aquifer

      hmmm, if you really want to slow this down, seems to me the best way is to tax it – and if that doesn’t slow it down, at least you’ll make a LOT of money ….

    2. Frontrunning and jailed for it

      If there is one thing that humans can decide in half a second, it is that HFT is evil.

      In fact I thought front running WAS illegal already.

      It’s also one case where a sin tax would actually work. It only takes a small amount of transaction tax to make HFT unprofitable.

      This makes it one of the easiest problems in the world to solve! Da’ya think someone would try and get a feather in his cap and solve it? Looks like it got shot down in Europe already. You know..that socialist paradise….

      1. Aquifer

        Well, as i mentioned above, NY already taxes it and makes a lot of bucks – but just gives it right back to the traders – so they don’t skip a beat …

  6. Ned Ludd

    The 99% Spring appears to be little more than a Democratic front group. It’s designed to divert attention away from actual direct action. When Marc Landis, the apparent leader (*cough*) of the the Upper West Side meeting, was asked about the May Day General Strike, he said: “I don’t know anything about that. We’re talking about hypothetical situations here.” Also: “Every time somebody brought up something that was actually happening, Landis insisted that our agenda was set and we were only discussing hypothetical situations.”

    Not surprisingly, Marc Landis is a Democratic operative/politician. He is the district leader for a Democratic club on the Upper West Side and is running for city council.

    1. lambert strether

      Marc Landis — p0wned!

      This is actually a classic example of why D sneakiness and deception is far more dangerous than R over-the-top displays of the conservative Id.

    2. diptherio

      I will be attending my local 99% Spring training next weekend. Unlike the writer of the post in the link, I have no problem not following rules, at least one’s that have not been arrived at through a consensus process by those involved. So I’m going to go be a pain in their asses and make sure that everyone there knows where the REAL Occupy action is in our little burg. Can’t wait to do some Obama bashing! Wonder how long it will take for me to be “escorted” to the door. :)

      1. LucyLulu

        Even if he followed the rules, his post was great. He has a style that can make mundane details sound entertaining. I loved it when he said he hadn’t planned to write about the meeting, but hadn’t made any agreements, that the Obama buttons didn’t seem to be selling, and how he was censored during ‘share time’. Hopefully you’ll write about your experience as well. It sounds like the content could be even more fun. Try not to be too obvious. You don’t want to be kicked out before you have anything to report about.

  7. Bill the Psychologist

    OK, I nominate this Antidote as Antidote of the Year !!

    I don’t think anybody’s gonna top that, particularly the part where the bulldog uses his hind feet to keep the skateboard up the speed.

  8. Tim Bassett

    “why are all the wankers bit players from the media?”

    Atrios is using the word wanker in the British context. When one insults someone as a wanker it implies they they are a no mark and undeserving of respect. Someone like Dick Cheney, for instance, would not get the sobriquet wanker but the far more serious C-word.

  9. Eureka Springs

    The Mother Jones article is fraught with so many errors it’s ridiculous to waste time adding them up.

    Stockholm Syndrome comes to mind. Occupy should just be Occupy. And anyone outside of Occupy who utilizes words like “We are the 99 percent” should instantly be considered as persona occu non grata as a corporation would be. One really need waste no more time that.

    It’s not just a matter of training folk in non violent forms of dissent (if that appeals to you), it’s a matter of training people to protest what they want you to protest. MoveOn and the Veal Penners all want to point you in misdirection. Aside from blindly following the D party there is NO MoveOn issue which they have which can’t be dropped or softened to the point of being meaningless. Why in the hell would anyone want to waste time co-opting MoveOn when we need to co-opt the systemic criminality instead? MoveOn is and always has been inherently anti-consensus… they are top down as it gets. There is no reason to expect that organization to fundamentally change in a manner which we could trust.

    Finally I would add that if Occupy is sincerely interested in consensus building then they must reject inclusion of MoveOn (and entities like MoveToAmend) as surely as they must reject the Koch Brothers and both major ongoing criminal parties.. Discuss and come together on some major specific issues and specific solutions among yourselves… it’s the only way to do it without alienating so many. Teabaggers are going to run from affiliation with MoveOn as much as Progressive Green types will run from Koch Brothers… both are correct.

  10. Ziggy

    “Greenwald and his vacation fill-ins are on fire.”

    I’m glad to see that some one else has noticed and is giving props. They’re kicking some major ass over there this week.

    1. EmilianoZ

      Yeah, but last year it was Yves who was subbing for him. This looks like he wasn’t satisfied with her performance. For this snubbing of our favorite blogger, I propose that we boycott Glenn Greenwald of the CATO Institute.

      1. Yves Smith

        I said no.

        He asked me at the last minute, and in case you missed it, I’ve had Lambert and Stoller covering the site this week because I’m out of the US at INET, which is brutal (12-14 hour days).

        And it was a ton of work, his readers like different stuff than NC readers do, and they wouldn’t let me cross post the stuff I did for him at NC. I can’t post to another blog without NC suffering.

        1. Aquifer

          Bless you, my dear! No cross posting? Can they cross post your stuff? Hmmm, do they frown on cross dressing, too? Seems a bit intolerant to me …

        2. aletheia33

          thank you for putting in those brutal hours and then bringing home to us what we most need to know. gratitude beyond words.

    1. Jim3981

      I have no idea what news channel this is from, or if it is a credible source. Probably need to verify on your own! :O)

      1. Aquifer

        It was Telesur (?sp) i am told and here is a couple of other more toned down assessments

        http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-20/icelandic-anger-brings-record-debt-relief-in-best-crisis-recovery-story.html

        http://wizbangblog.com/2012/04/14/did-iceland-forgive-the-majority-of-its-citizens-mortgage-debt/

        Still, it is nice to see a gov’t whose actions at least suggest that it is listening instead of one that sticks its fingers in its ears and its tongue out …

        1. LucyLulu

          I’m sorry, Aquifer. I linked to the same article that your second link had a link to. Somehow I missed your post until after I posted mine.

          I’ll let you keep the monetary rewards Lambert is giving out this weekend for posting links first.

      2. LucyLulu

        Didn’t quite check out, but Iceland HAS been instituting a principal writedown program for underwater mortgages. Found this article in the Irish RTE News from earlier last week, well worth a read:

        The IMF has said that targeted household debt reduction policies – including mortgage write-downs – can deliver significant economic benefits.

        The International Monetary Fund made the comments in its latest World Economic Outlook.

        The IMF said such policies can substantially mitigate the negative effect of household deleveraging on economic activity.

        The report noted the well established link between high levels of household debt run up during a housing boom, and the effect of a high debt overhang on economic recovery.

        It found that countries, like Ireland, that saw house prices and household borrowing skyrocket, saw a longer than average period of recession after the bursting of the housing bubble.

        A large part of this protracted recession it said is due to households trying to reduce their debt levels, which in turn leads to less spending in the economy, driving the recession deeper and further.

        “Because debt is acting as a brake on economic growth, it is important to unstick the brake” said the report’s author Daniel Leigh. [snip]

        The report highlighted what it calls the “bold ” household debt reduction programmes implemented in the US in the 1930’s and in Iceland in this crisis, which it said can “significantly reduce the number of household defaults and foreclosures and substantially reduce debt repayment burdens”.

        It contrasted these examples with others that have not been successful, such as the current response to the crisis in the US and Hungary, and the policies pursued in Colombia and the Scandinavian countries in the 90’s.

        As well as the “bold” approach, it said that ensuring a strong banking sector is crucial during the period of household deleveraging. It stated that the policies in Colombia and Hungary were not a success as they placed too much burden on an already fragile banking sector. [snip]

        The IMF noted that government support for household debt restructuring programmes involves clear winners and losers. “The friction caused by such redistribution may be one reason why such policies have rarely been used in the past, except when the magnitude of the problem was substantial and the ensuing social and political pressures considerable”,’ it stated.

        It cited another study which found that political systems tend to become more polarised in the wake of financial crises, and raised the question of collective action problems – that distressed mortgage borrowers may be less politically organised than banks – and this can hamper efforts to implement household debt restructuring.[snip]

        In the case of Iceland the situation was more difficult, due in part to the much bigger proportion of the population that was affected, and to the wide presence of foreign currency mortgages.

        The government and the newly constructed Icelandic banks developed a template to be used in case by case restructuring discussions between borrowers and lenders. The templates facilitated substantial debt write-downs designed to align secured debt with the supporting collateral (i.e bring the loan into line with the value of the house) and align debt service with the ability to repay.

        Read the rest at
        http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0410/imf-says-targeted-debt-reduction-policies-can-work.html

    1. Aquifer

      Have you tried Firefox with Adbloc Plus? Man what a difference, I don’t think I would visit most sites without it. Now i only have to tear my hair out at the politicians, and some of the bloggers – saved a bunch of hair ….

  11. Ex-Csfb

    Umm did someone hire the interns at Salon to write comments on NC today? On Fire? Really? And what’s up with the Miami Herald story…mentally ill gunman killed by authorities responding to a 911 call. Hmmm, maybe this blog has been co-opted by Mother Jones! Retaliation or sumthin.

  12. EmilianoZ

    It’s great to see a link for Jill Stein. She’s the only reasonable choice for 2012.

    We need to have a (very) long-term view. She will not win this year but if she achieves a good score, people will wake up to the possibilities.

    I wish OWS would support the Green Party.

    1. Aquifer

      Amen! to the link! It;s neat that she agrees that a sense of humor as well as not having gobs of money are obstacles to success in this dumb world of politics – she might have added having a brain and common sense …

      But as for “she won’t win” – well, that will be up to us …

      She could, just as they all do – simply by getting enough votes …

      As for Ocupy – she has been to many gatherings, been invited to speak and has been well received – she respects their process. It must be a bit frustrating when you realize that the Green Platform, which has been around since before OWS was a gleam in its mother’s eye, looks an awfully lot like what an OWS “platform” would look like. OWS is understandably shy of the “political process” as currently constituted, but i think it needs to get over its generic fear of politics per se – it would have its power multiplied considerably with a political arm. But Greens, like Occupy are not into “co-opting” so one can only hope that Occupy opens its horizons a bit, and looks around. If they do methinks they will discover they and the Greens are a perfect fit – but that is up to them …

  13. craazyman

    so when do we get the INET report?

    I just watched a few videos from Berlin and it looks like the “Institute for Never-ending Theorizing” to me. I guess that’s what professors like to do. haha. It’s like at the dog run they’ve got an insttitute for never-ending ball chasing and nobody there seems unhappy about it.

    I admit my tolerance for sitting aroudn by myself watching economics lectures in the dark isn’t enough to watch all of them, but the ones I watched — not one person said the “F” word. Or even cursed. I mean Fraud, of course, because it seems like a polite crowd.

    But I see they’re opening up offices in China and Russia and other places and hadning out grant money, which caught my attention because my freind Profsser Delerious Tremens and his INstitute for Contemporary Analysis could use some cash. That sounds good and I would certainly take $1 million to come up with a theory of money and economic relationships without any complicated math, unless some phsyicist could help me with Shrodingers equation. Or even $500,000. Or even #250,000. But nothing less than 100G, unless they bargained me down.

    1. Aquifer

      Thanx, skippy! Great piece! Methinks Milne and Stein would get along just fine, indeed!

      I get updates from the local Green party and these have included a bit of what’s going on “down under”. Greens all over the planet seem to have a fairly similar agenda – living things first, people over profit and if more and more could win in more and more countries, we could get international cooperation on a host of issues – actually, that may be the only way we’ll get it …

      I will send this on …

  14. cwaltz

    It’s refreshing to see an article on Jill Stein. I am so over the Republican and Democratic party and deciding between the lesser of their evilness.

  15. BillG

    Spitzer’s not too bright. Next to slick willie, the community organizer in chief is the best friend the financial guys ever had. Obama opposes any meaningful reform, restraint, or reconciliation at every step. The only reform the govvies are into is reforming themselves from the poor friends of bankers to the rich friends of bankers.

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