Catching Up

Some things we might have missed over the last couple weeks...


All is not lost, cuz there's a new breed of billionaires! But none of them are from the US, where:

On average, incomes for the top 1 percent of households rose by $465,700 each, or 42.6 percent after adjusting for inflation. The incomes of the poorest fifth rose by $200, or 1.3 percent, and the middle fifth increased by $2,400 or 4.3 percent.

Coke's always in style, even as the army's gateway drug:

In 2003, cannabis accounted for half of all positive drugs tests, with cocaine accounting for 22%. But by 2006, about 50% of all positive tests registered cocaine use, with cannabis found in about 30%, the research revealed.

Why the US government is afraid to actually charge enemy combatants: guilt needs to be proven, not merely assumed because some one was held in Guantanamo.

Of business, for business, and by business

We can't learn our kids enough Jesus.

It's a sin to discontinue abusing and paining the dying.

The gift that keeps on giving.

Some citizen's are taking war funding into their own hands - it's our tax money after all.

Corporations continue to absolve themselves of responsibility to pay pensions. Luckily, at least one government is stepping in to clean up the mess.

Punctuation is so key - Use it wisely; read it carefully.

Drug War

AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squib have been ordered by a U.S. District Court in Massachusetts court to pay $13.6 million for inflating the wholesale prices. Both companies will fight the case - which benefits Medicare, private insurers, and patients who were overcharged for 37 different drugs - alleging they are "not responsible for the average wholesale price reimbursement benchmark used by private insurers and Medicare and that its own pricing, sales and marketing practices were fair and reasonable" according to a BMS spokesman.

Well thanks for clarifying - I had no idea both companies billions in yearly profits were completely out of corporate hands. I blame the sick people: they've been known to overcharge themselves on life-saving interventions

Killing is My Business

And business is good.

At least, according to the UN it is

Once the guards are in areas of armed conflict, immunity granted under national laws to private security personnel can easily lead to uncontrolled behavior, the report said, with "these private soldiers appearing only to be accountable to the company which employs them."

Yeah for corporate responsibility!

Market Responds to Money, Not Hunger

Today we (theoretically) celebrate World Food Day and its theme, The Right to Food. Unfortunately, it passes without fanfare and with the same notice paid to the 854 million hungry for whom it was established. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed almost 60 years ago, and yet we still have so far to go to ensure people's basic rights and needs (like food and health).

So, how do we guarantee food and other basic rights for all? It's the market stupid!

But the magic benevolent hand of the market hasn't fulfilled this duty we assigned it. Some of us have a hunch as to why, though. The hungry, and more generally, "the poor can't exert 'market demand,'" because the market responds to money, not to hunger.

Because You Can't Have Too Much Naomi Klein

The Shock Doctrine 2

More from John Cusack's informative interview with author Naomi Klein.

Divine Intervention

The next time God talks to you and tells you to raise $8 million or you'll die, think hard about how that money is gonna be spent. Jets, Mercedes, Lexus, and tens of thousands in clothing purchases may fly in God's tax free house, but not in America. Some one is bound to find out when you spend donated money that way.

Especially when you subsequently fire them and they sue you.

Standard Shmandard

You'd have to be crazy to believe we have the best way of doing capitalism. See the Greenspan post for some of the reasons why the value of the dollar seems to be dropping. Perhaps the Dow reaching 14,000 really wasn't the triumph of our economy Americans thought it was.

The Shock Doctrine

Naomi Klein, author of the great No Logo, has done it again with her newest book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.





For an intro to the No Logo movement,



PLEASE do yourself a favor and check out her very informative interview with John Cusack, and get a better idea what she really means, click here

The Age of Turrabull-ence

Tuesday night on the Daily Show, Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve (1987-2006) was asked a fundamental question about the rewards of capitalism and how they're affected by the federal interest rate.




The US switched from a gold standard to the federal interest rate system we have today. For the sake of argument, let's say that $1 holds the value of one gram of gold. When the feds lower the interest rates by 0.5%, during an economic recession, after 9/11 for example, the actual value of $1 depreciates to 0.995 grams of gold. It may not seem like much, but this artificial inflation is able to stabilize the stock markets by increasing the dollar costs of stocks, even though the value has not changed.
While this is supposedly beneficial for the market in the short run, it has the opposite effect on salaried and wage workers. They are paid the same dollar amount, but the value of those dollars, thus the value of the work - goods or services they provide - has diminished. It's almost like getting a 0.5% pay cut.
Additionally, the interest rates of bank accounts - workers' savings - are correspondingly reduced. So the dollar amount one saves in a bank has less value, and there is less return for account holders.
But at least the Dow Jones is back over 13,000, right? The perception that the US economy (embodied by the stock market) is doing alright distracts workers (other than investors) from the reality of the depreciation of the value of their work as well as their savings.

It's also worth examining the US Treasury's change from the gold standard, especially in relation to developmental economics. When top American economists and organizations like the IMF or World Bank attempt to pull struggling economies out of "dark ages" and into a US-modeled free market economy, they strongly encourage the use of the gold standard. However, as Greenspan notes, "the gold standard was strangling the economy" and in its place, "you need somebody to determine, or some mechanism of how much money is out there." So in countries like Bolivia and Poland in the 1980s, the gold standard was introduced to control inflation and make their economies more like the American "free market" model, which doesn't even use the gold standard, employing this other mechanism of inflation control.

Stewart: So we're not a free market then, there is an invisible, a benevolent hand that touches us.
Greenspan: Absolutely, you're quite correct, to the extent that there is a central bank governing the amount of money in the system. That is not a free market...
Stewart: It seems to me that we favor investment, but we don't favor work. The vast majority of people work and they pay payroll taxes and they use banks. And then there's this whole other world of hedge funds and short betting and...it seems like craps. And they keep saying, "No, no, no, don't worry about it! It's free market! That's why we live in much bigger houses." But it really isn't [a free market] it's the fed, or some other thing, no?

Greenspan goes on to give his spin on the regulation required of a free market and the stabilization it necessitates. Government regulation reduces the uncertainty of the market, without which "economic activity, which is really dealing with people, just goes straight down."
Apparently a successful "free" market relies on fear, euphoria, and strict regulation.

More of this to be elaborated on later, including the laws of surplus value and necessary value...

Republican: Capitalist or Christian?