by Stephen Lendman
Heery Kravis, head of KKR, an “equity acquisition firm,” and king of the LBO game. Few represent the capitalist disease as well as Kravis.
On June 5, the London Evening Standard headlined “No minutes, no press conferences – just the world’s power brokers chewing the fat on the issues of the day. It’s the Bilderberg conference – and it’s coming to a suburb near you.” Continue reading »
A new report from the International Labour Organization shows that across G20 countries corporate profits are up, up, up. Since the year 2000 corporate profits as a proportion of total national incomes have risen by 2.2% in major high-income countries and by 3.4% in major middle income countries. Continue reading »
by Stephen Lendman
Capitalism has succeeded in capturing governments around the world.
German DAX stock exchange board. The stuff that dreams are made of.
Forget everything you learned about markets, economics and finance. Perhaps Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and other noted figures were wrong. Central banks run today’s world. Major ones matter most. Money printing madness controls everything. Love doesn’t make the world go round. Liquidity-driven markets reflect the power of bankers to do it. Continue reading »
By Andre Damon, wsws.org
In the midst of the social ruins caused by the dynamic of capitalism, a sizable segment of America still sees Obama, a capitalist shill of the first order, as a communist. That kind of ignorance and imbecility guarantee a worsening of the crisis.
US stock markets surged Friday to new record highs as Wall Street traders seized on a tepid jobs report to engage in a fresh orgy of speculation.
The official line promoted by the Obama administration is that the United States is in the midst of an accelerating economic recovery. For the corporate and financial elite that runs America, and the section of the upper-middle class that hangs on its coattails, a soaring stock market is indeed what defines economic health. For the vast majority of the population, however, life five years after the Wall Street crash of 2008 is dominated by the daily struggle to make ends meet.
Official statistics—of poverty, unemployment, indebtedness, declining wages—give a glimpse of this social reality, which the mass media does its best to obscure.
One sobering statistic that emerged on Thursday points to the social reality that underlies the euphoria on Wall Street. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the past decade has seen a sharp increase in the US suicide rate.
The political significance of Beppe Grillo’s Five-Star Movement
The success of Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement in the recent Italian election is a development requiring attentive examination.
The MoVimento 5 Stelle (M5S), founded in 2009, won a quarter of the popular vote in its first ever participation in a federal election and is the biggest single party in the House of Representatives.
Beppe Grillo—former comedian, now supposedly a new tribune of the people. Is he a rightwing populist with sinister overtones, or a Huey Long type with genuine feelings for the masses? His program leaves few doubts as to his true allegiance. —Eds
Layers of the working and middle classes voted for M5S to express their opposition to austerity measures imposed by the European Union (EU) and the government of Prime Minister Mario Monti. However, Grillo’s program stands in stark contrast with the class interests of those who fell victim to his populist appeals. They will soon confront the reality of his reactionary, right-wing program.
To understand Grillo’s rise, one must take account of two things: the deep crisis of Italian and European capitalism and the complete bankruptcy of the traditional “left” parties. Continue reading »
by Stephen Lendman
Decades of class war leaves most Americans nearing retirement woefully unprepared. Since the mid-1970s, real wages haven’t kept pace with inflation. Benefits steadily eroded. High-paying jobs disappeared. Improved technology forces wage earners to work harder for less. Continue reading »
by Stephen Lendman
An apt commentary on the abject duplicity of liberals that Rand Paul should be the man making a last stand against runaway criminality in the halls of power.
Chalmers Johnson called the CIA the president’s private army. Imperial Rome had its praetorian guard. It served and protected emperors. CIA rogues work the same way. They do lots more than that. Extrajudicial killing is prioritized. Much that goes on is secret. Unaccountability keeps Congress and ordinary people uninformed. Continue reading »
“…the US government, with the sequester cuts as the down payment, is preparing to dismantle the core social programs remaining from the reforms of the 1930s and 1960s—Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”
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By Barry Grey
Jubilant Wall Streeter. But who does he really represent? We are not really told. (ABC World News)
Tuesday, four days after President Barack Obama signed the budget sequestration order unleashing brutal cuts in social programs, there was general jubilation in the media as the Dow Jones Industrial Average crashed through its previous high, dating from 2007. Continue reading »
Editors’ Note: Let’s face it: Power suits are career enemies of the public interest. We are using the word “career” here and that’s no hyperbole. A power shift toward democracy is not only just, it is indispensable at this point if democracy is to have the slightest chance of surviving in America. Evidence? Just consider this: The CEOs behind the “Fix the Debt” campaign are doubling down, Fortune reports, on their drive to convince Congress to cut spending for Social Security and Medicare. Need we say more?
This Week
Who better deserves to be richly rewarded for the risks they take on the job, the corporate and banking execs who gaze out the windows of comfortable suites high up in Manhattan’s skyscraper towers or the veteran window washers who dangle outside those windows in the bitter cold and searing heat?
Those window washers, we know from a just-published New Yorker profile, face all sorts of dangers. The wind “blows capriciously” around tall buildings. Updrafts and cross-drafts can drive rain torrents every which way. The window washer survival rule of thumb: four stories. If you fall more, you die. Continue reading »
Robert W. McChesney, Monthly Review
On the brink of the 2012 presidential election, and without considering that electoral contest itself, it is useful to comment on the state of U.S. democracy. The most striking lesson from contemporary U.S. election campaigns is how vast and growing the distance is between the rhetoric and pronouncements of the politicians and pundits and the actual deepening, immense, and largely ignored problems that afflict the people of the United States. The trillion dollars spent annually on militarism and war is off-limits to public review and debate.1 Likewise the corporate control of the economy, and the government itself, gets barely a nod. Stagnation, the class structure, growing poverty, and collapsing social services are mostly a given, except for the usual meaningless drivel candidates say to get votes. The billions spent (often by billionaires) on dubious and manipulative advertisements—rivaled for idiocy only by what remains of “news” media campaign coverage—serve primarily to insult the intelligence of sentient beings. Mainstream politics seem increasingly irrelevant to the real problems the nation faces; or, perhaps more accurately, mainstream politics is a major contributing factor to the real problems the nation faces. Continue reading »