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What if Spain exits the euro? - elConfidencial.com

Wed, 23 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

en.elconfidencial.com - May. 23 (Opinion) -

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Advocates: '12 Budget Dance Has Heavier Beat

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

bkbureau.org - May. 21 (News) - After years of austerity, advocates say the annual ritual of protests against proposed cuts has taken on a more urgent tone.

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Improved but Not Always Safe: Despite Global Efforts, More Than 1 Billion People Likely at Risk for Lack of Clean Water

Mon, 21 May 2012 17:07:00 -0700

Scientific American - May. 21 - A clean drop to drink? Although hundreds of millions more people have access to "improved" water sources, not all of the water is free from contamination, according to new reports. Image: iStockphoto/vijaya_5712 The Best Science Writing Online 2012 Showc

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Spain's banks do not need bailout, says minister

Mon, 21 May 2012 08:05:06 -0700

The Independent - May. 21 - Spain's banks do not need to be bolstered with European money as suggested by France, the country's economy minister said today.

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G8 leaders end summit with pledge to keep Greece in eurozone

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Ewen MacAskill - May. 20 (News Report) - US and France succeed in putting promotion of growth at top of communique despite Germany's resistance to stimulus package Barack Obama and the other G8 leaders wrapped up their negotiations on the European crisis at Camp David on Saturday with a pledge to keep Greece in the eurozone and to promote growth. The communique, which had the growth promise at the top, represents a victory for Obama and the new French president, François Hollande, over German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who has resisted calls for a stimulus package. But it may be shortlived. The communique was short in detail and Merkel could re-establish her dominance next week at an informal European meeting. The eight leaders meeting at the US presidential retreat in Maryland issued a communique declaring in its opening paragraph: "Our imperative is to promote growth and jobs." It added: "The global economic recovery shows signs of promise, but significant headwinds persist. Against this background, we commit to take all ...

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How Crazy Is Wall Street, New York Times?

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Daily Beast - By Edward Jay Epstein - May. 20 (Opinion) - The New York Times published an opinion piece on May 12, 2012, concerning the question of whether the rich, from a moral standpoint, are good or bad. The story reported, “A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are ‘clinical psychopaths’ and that they exhibit an ‘unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation.’ ” The vivid term “clinical psychopath” brings to mind the berserk buzz-saw-wielding investment banker played by Christian Bale in the film American Psycho. Since some 3.9 million people work in the financial-services industry, a clinically diagnosed horde of lunatics numbering almost 400,000 people would certainly be a matter of public concern, though it might only confirm some journalists’ view of American capitalism.

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This week in the War on Women: Damn broads are greedy, lying whores

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Kos - By rss@dailykos.com (Kaili Joy Gray) - May. 20 (Opinion) - Praise great Gaia for the awesome perks of being a woman! Sure, we women may have once been second-class citizens, but ever since the radical feminists destroyed the patriarchal structure of our society and totally ended sexism forever, usurping all the levers of power in the public and private sector, it's been a non-stop gravy train of government handouts and free rides, as we enjoy our superior status in society by lording it over the oppressed menfolk. Am I right? No, of course not, but that's the mindset of the Republican Party, as it continues to wage war against women's rights and privileges. Damn broads have too many rights nowadays, and those excessive rights infringe on the more-important-rights of Catholic bishops who think women's health care restricts their religious liberty; the rights of men who abuse their wives and girlfriends because sometimes that's the only way to keep them in line; and the rights of Republican taxpayers to ensure that their money is not spent on ...

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Do You Want the Good News First?

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Thomas L. Friedman - May. 19 (Opinion) - I’ve spent the last week traveling to two of America’s greatest innovation hubs — Silicon Valley and Seattle — and the trip left me feeling a combination of exhilaration and dread. The excitement comes from not only seeing the stunning amount of innovation emerging from the ground up, but from seeing the new tools coming on stream that are, as Amazon.com’s founder, Jeff Bezos, put it to me, “eliminating all the gatekeepers” — making it easier and cheaper than ever to publish your own book, start your own company and chase your own dream. Never have individuals been more empowered, and we’re still just at the start of this trend.

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Romney Embraces Growth, Leaving Austerity To Europe

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jon Ward - May. 19 (Opinion) - Austerity is out. Growth is in. And Mitt Romney's campaign has taken notice. Politicians in Europe and in President Barack Obama's administration can't get enough of the G word these days. "Growth must be a priority, at the same time as we put in place some fiscal compact to improve our finances," said the new French President Francois Hollande, during a visit with Obama in the Oval Office on Friday.

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The Wright stuff: President Obama and the Ricketts smear

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Ana Marie Cox - May. 19 (Opinion) - Republicans are rightly shamed by a Super Pac ad plan to tag Obama as a black radical. The irony is his very lack of radicalism Nebraska has already supplied the right with a billionaire boogeyman: Warren Buffet, hero of the secretarial pool and worldly philanthropist. Now, the left has a Husker to hate: Joe Ricketts, the man for whom a group of Republican troublemakers dreamed up the perhaps-intentionally hilarious, to-be-sure-intentionally shocking "Plan to Defeat Barack Hussein Obama" . The document's deadpan staccato phrasing has the punctuation-agnostic urgency and livid prose of a "Mission: Impossible" assignment memo (or an Austin Powers trailer). "The Plan. An Overview," reads the titular section: "A five-minute unusually unique" – sic! – "film bringing his tutorship beneath Reverend Wright and others to the forefront of popular discourse … We start by raising an eyebrow. Teasers, hints of dark clouds to come. Buying print space, newspaper ads, kiosks at the airport, around the ...

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What the Chinese Want

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Tom Doctoroff - May. 19 (Opinion) - Consumers in China are increasingly modern in their tastes, but they are not becoming 'Western.' How the selling of coffee, cars and pizza sheds light on a nation racing toward superpower status.

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Mitt Romney's flip-flops

Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Bill Adair , Louis Jacobson - May. 18 (Fact Check) - For the 2012 presidential campaign, we're using the Flip O-Meter to assess the statements of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. This article includes links to the Flip-O-Meter items we've published on Romney. We'll update it as we publish more in the future.

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The Pacific Ocean Is Dying

Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

nationofchange.org - May. 18 (Special Report) - Just prior to the Supermoon of March 18th, 2011, the world witnessed a natural and manmade disaster of epic proportions. What transpired off the coast of Honshu Island, Japan on March 11 has forever altered the planet and irremediably affected the global environment.

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Paul Krugman on Eurozone: "The Whole Thing Could Fall Apart in a Matter of Months"

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Paul Krugman, Amy Goodman - May. 17 (Interview) - The European economic crisis is expected to top the agenda at the G8 meeting tomorrow at Camp David. In Greece, voters will soon head to the polls for another round of elections which will be viewed by many as a referendum on the Euro. Our guest today, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, warns the current bank run in Greece could spiral into the end of the Eurozone. "It is really quite shocking,” Krugman says. “I hate to sound apocalyptic.” Meanwhile, France's new finance minister has reiterated that the country's new socialist government will not ratify the European Union's fiscal pact calling for greater austerity. [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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"End This Depression Now"

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Paul Krugman, Amy Goodman - May. 17 (Interview) - Right now, there just is not enough spending, and we need the government, which can do it, to step in and provide the demand we need. ... We’ve had austerity in the face of a recession, in a way that we have never had before since the 1930s. ... And the results are clear: it’s disastrous."

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Jamie Dimon Should Resign Over JPMorgan's $3B Lost Bet and Campaign Against Financial Regs

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Paul Krugman: Amy Goodman - May. 17 (Interview) - As the financial giant JPMorgan Chase continues to suffer major losses on its risky derivatives trades, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says bank chief Jamie Dimon should resign “precisely because he has been using his supposed wisdom as a way to campaign against reform and now it turns out he wasn't that wise after all. In fact, his bank was doing seriously bad stuff." Krugman says, "I think it would be better for everybody if he went." The Justice Department is now probing JPMorgan amid new calls for tougher regulation of Wall Street. "They are making these bets with your money because these are banks that are guaranteed. They have guaranteed deposits," Krugman says. "We are supposed to have a rule going into effect -- the Volcker Rule -- that says they can't do this kind of stuff, but they are continuing to do it. ... We can not trust the bankers to use this money safely." [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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What You've Heard About Greece Is Not True

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Richard Parker: - May. 17 (Comment) - You've probably come across reports that the Greeks are feckless tax evading...

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Russia says action on Syria, Iran may go nuclear

Thu, 17 May 2012 19:57:20 -0700

Reuters - May. 17 - MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned on Thursday that military action against sovereign states could lead to a regional nuclear war, starkly voicing Moscow's opposition to Western

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Austerity is Sinking Economies from Europe to U.S.

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, William Black - May. 15 (Interview) - White-collar criminologist and former senior financial regulator William Black addresses the grassroots reaction to austerity measures in Europe -- from the "Indignados" movement in Spain to the anti-bailout elections in France and Greece -- as well as in the United States, where the Occupy movement is re-emerging as the presidential campaign gets into full gear. "Finance is supposed to simply be a middleman to help the real economy," Black says. "It in fact now completely dominates and is a parasite on the real economy. German austerity has pushed the entire eurozone into recession and the periphery into Great Depression-level unemployment. And the same arguments are being made in the United States and are used as a pretext to try to destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. It is economically illiterate, but politically attractive." [includes rush transcript]

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Technical concerns: Why Russia worries about NATO's missile defense

Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - By Ivanka Barzashka - May. 14 (Special Report) - The Russians’ main technical concerns included fast interceptor missiles that might be fielded in northern Europe near Russia’s borders, making them possible threats to Moscow’s strategic deterrent.

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Noam Chomsky: Palestinian Hunger Strike A Protest Against "Violations of Elementary Human Rights"

Mon, 14 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky - May. 14 (Interview) - A tentative deal has reportedly been reached to end a landmark action that's seen an estimated 2,000 jailed Palestinians go without food to pressure Israeli prison authorities to end the use of solitary confinement and ease a wide range of restrictions. "The hunger strikes are a protest against violations of the elementary human rights," Chomsky says.

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How to Use the Internet Wisely, for Your Health and Your Country's

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Howard Rheingold - May. 13 (Opinion) - Use the following methods and tools to protect yourself from toxic bad info. Use them and then pass them along to others. Promote the notion that more info literacy is a practical answer to the growing info pollution. Be the change you want to see. Although the Web undermines authority (by enabling anybody to publish), authority is still useful as one clue to credibility in a detective hunt that accounts for many other clues. Claims to authority, however, need to be questioned. I might add credibility to my assessment if a source is a verified professor at a known institution of higher learning, an authentic MD or PhD, but I would not subtract it from people without credentials whose expertise seems authentic. If you are going to grant credibility to people whose expertise is based on being a professor of something, make sure that assertion is accurate. Don't stop at simply verifying that the claim to be a professor is valid if you are looking for scientific credibility. The next step is to use the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index that derives a score from the scholar's publications, citations by other scholars, grants, honors, and awards. If you want to get even more serious, download a free copy of Publish or Perish software, which analyzes scientific citations from Google Scholar according to multiple criteria. Or use the h-index to calculate how many times other scientists have cited a particular source. Again, don't trust just one source; triangulate.

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Obama says Romney would cut his own taxes while raising others’

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Molly Moorhead - May. 13 (Fact Check) - President Barack Obama says Mitt Romney is the anti-Robin Hood. In a campaign speech in Columbus, Ohio, on May 5, 2012, Obama said the Romney's economic plan would raise taxes for millions of low-income Americans while cutting them for the wealthy.

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At JPMorgan, the Ghost of Dinner Parties Past

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Gretchen Morgenson - May. 13 (News Analysis) - The $2 billion trading loss disclosed last week by JPMorgan Chase shows how the tables have turned on the bank and its chief executive, an industry point man against tighter regulation. What goes around comes around. Sometimes it happens sooner than you’d think. That round wheel turned on JPMorgan Chase last week, which disclosed that it had suffered a $2 billion trading loss in credit derivatives. That such a hit had befallen the mightiest of banks was perhaps more stunning than the size of the loss. So where does the karma come in? The loss, and the embarrassment it held for Jamie Dimon, the bank’s imperious chief executive, came just one month after a private dinner party in Dallas at which he assailed two respected public figures who have pushed for policies that would make banks like JPMorgan smaller and less risky.

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Role Reversal: Why TV Is Replacing Movies As Elite Entertainment

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Hollywood Economist - By Edward Jay Epstein - May. 13 (News Analysis) - Once upon a time, over a generation ago, The television set was commonly called the “boob tube” and looked down on by elites as a purveyors of mind-numbing entertainment. Movie theaters, on the other hand, were considered a venue for, if not art, more sophisticated dramas and comedies. Not any more. The multiplexes are now primarily a venue for comic-book inspired action and fantasy movies, whereas television, especially the pay and cable channels, is increasingly becoming a venue for character-driven adult programs, such as The Wire, Mad Men, and Boardwalk Empire. This role reversal, rather than a momentary fluke, proceeds directly from the new economic realities of the entertainment business. Consider what happened to Pay-TV. Back in the 1970s, HBO provided something home viewers could not get elsewhere: movies uninterrupted by commercials. It was, as a HBO executive put it, “the only game in town,” so its subscribers paid a monthly fee, no matter how little or often they watch it, to their local cable provider who in turn forked over a share to HBO. As the cable systems grew, so did HBO. By 2010, it had (including its Cinemax unit) over 40 million subscribers, and just the monthly fees produced cash flow of over $1.5 billion a year. Getting new movies was no problem. HBO simply licensed them from a few major studios for an exclusive period (which began a few months after they were released on video and DVD) in so-called “output deals.” To continue to harvest this immense bounty, HBO had merely to stop subscribers from ending their service.

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