John Carney explains MMT at CNBC

I didn't post this earlier because it appeared at Warren Mosler's here, where John Carney responded also in the comments.

However, I see from the comments here that not everyone who reads this blog picked it up over there.

Definitely a worthwhile read, especially if you are keeping track of how MMT is getting around.

Added  plus, Carney calls out Krugman on a freshman error.

Hats off to John Carney for doing his part in helping to save the world. We desperately need more people with megaphones and bully pulpits explaining this.

How High Should Taxes Get on the Wealthy?

CMI Report — The real story behind the disappointing numbers

In their second estimate of the third quarter 2011 GDP, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) revised the headline growth number downward by over a half percent to an annualized growth rate of 2.01%. The real story within the data, however, was that compared to last month's "Advance" estimate the new report showed substantially weaker commercial fixed investments while the draw-down of inventory levels was more intense -- putting the new numbers for third quarter aggregate commercial GDP into net contraction. In general consumer contributions were slightly weaker, while a substantial downward revision in imports somewhat softened the bad news in the headline number. Meanwhile, the public's per-capita disposable income continued to shrink -- but at a newly revised and sharply greater rate.

Read the rest at Consumer Metrics Institute
Third Quarter GDP Revised Downward

Again, it's the demand, stupid.

Et tu, Deutschland? Bund auction fail

Is the bond market figuring out that EZ sovereigns aren't actually sovereign, and the Germany's head is on the block too? German CDS rise as 35% of the offering of 10 year's go without a bid.

Bloomberg: German Auction "Disaster" Stirs Crisis Contagion Concern

Goldman recommended closing out a losing bet on EUR/USD with about a 2.3% loss.

Bloomberg: Goldman Closes Out Money-Losing Euro Bet On Stability

Where is that money seeking safety? Gold? Nah. Gold has broken 1700. USD and Treasuries up as the traditional risk off haven.

Looks like the MMT scenario is tracking correctly.

Koch Bros tipped off to MF Global problems, quietly pull accounts before anyone else could

Oil trader, Dan Dicker, writes on Huffpo that the Koch Brothers pulled money out of MF Global back in August, well before MF Global's problems were known. Dicker suggests the Koch's got tipped off.

Koch Bros and their "crony capitalist" empire continues to run wild!

An Open Letter to the Winter Patriot

Excellent post over at Neweconomicperspectives. Reposted below.

Monday, November 21, 2011An Open Letter to the Winter Patriot By Mitch Green The following letter reflects my view on the subject of civil disobedience and does not necessarily mirror the general opinion of New Economic Perspectives. I offer my opinion as an Army veteran, student of the economy, and critic of an ongoing effort to wage economic war on the vast majority the population. If these words move you, I urge you to consider honestly the consequences if you decide to act. As the occupy movement continues to grow in defiance of the heavy-handed police action determined to squelch it, a natural question emerges: What point will the military be summoned to contain the cascade of popular dissent? And if our nation’s finest are brought into this struggle to stand between the vested authority of the state and the ranks of those who petition them for a redress of grievance, what may we expect the outcome to be? If history is our guide then we know that story all too well. Behind a thin veil of red, white and blue stands a nation that has used its military might to respond forcefully to any public contempt for the very institutions which bind us in exclusion from the liberty those colors evoke. Just as a training collar keeps a dog in check, a highly militarized police force responds mercilessly, sharply, and without hesitation with an array of chemical warfare and thuggish brutality. And where they fail, divisions of soldiers stand ready to deliver a serious and painful lesson to all who demonstrate their unwillingness to wait for democracy. This has been the history of democracy in America. The ink on the pages that chronicle the use of state violence towards an unruly citizenry is dry. We cannot rewrite them. We read them in lament. But for each new day history waits; at the dawn of each morning we are presented with the gift of creation. The prevailing thought woven into the fabric of our society today, threaded through both patterns of conservative and liberal ideology, remains the recognition that something is very wrong with the world. Naturally, we form the question: Can we do things differently? Once we animate that thought and present it to society as a question demanding an answer, we begin to sketch out our draft of the world in the pages of history. I call upon my brothers and sisters in the armed forces to ink their pens and help us write these next few, and most important pages in the history of our social life. Soon, it is quite likely that you will be mobilized to aid the police in their effort to contain or disperse what their bosses see as an imminent threat to the sanctity of their authority. As that day draws near, I remind you of these familiar words: I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God. Those that take this oath seriously are faced with a terrible conflict. You must battle internally between the affirmation that you will place your body between the social contract embedded in the Constitution and those that seek its destruction, while maintaining your loyalty to the government you serve and the orders issued by its officers. Sadly, society has placed a twin tax upon you by asking that you sacrifice both your body and your morality. This tax has been levied solely upon you overseas, and soon they’ll come to collect domestically. Your government in its expression of corporate interests relies upon your tenacity to endure, and your relentless willingness to sacrifice. And so you do. Now, more than ever we need your sacrifice. But, I’m asking you to soldier in a different way. If called upon to deny the people of their first amendment right to peaceably assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievance, disregard the order. Abstain from service. Or if you are so bold, join us. Make no mistake: The consequences for such decisions are severe. You will be prosecuted under the full extent of the law. But sacrifice is your watch word. Thomas Paine wrote in 1776: "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." Today we are faced with a new revolution. This time we are fighting to preserve our democracy, rather than to establish a new one. And just as a grateful nation relied upon the Winter Soldier to deliver us from the colonial yoke of oppression, we ask that you aid us in our struggle to be free from the bonds of debt peonage and false representation. In return we will stand in your defense as the elite, who have gained so much from your service, attempt to strip you of your hard won honor.

"Use of Pepper Spray On Peaceful Protesters Is Illegal"

Washington's Blog parses the law

Read it all here

The Use of Pepper Spray On Peaceful Protesters Is Illegal … And Can Seriously Injure Or Kill

A juicy tidbit: "Non-violent protesters may sue police and the municipality of county that employs them under this Federal law, 42 United States Code Section 1983, if they have been pepper sprayed while peacefully protesting, whether or not the protesters were arrested."

Yield on the 5 year breaks 1% for first time

Read it at Zero Hedge

$35 Billion In 5 Year Bonds Price Below 1% For First Time Ever

Sure sign that hyperinflation is just around the corner, right?

"You Can Crush the Flowers, But You Can’t Stop the Spring "

This is a good article from many angles. It is important as a clarification of the implicit and largely unstated but very specific demands of the Occupy - 99% movement.

It is also important as an economic statement. It is written by a woman that puts it in the metaphor of divorce. She sees civil society divorcing itself from the corrupt collusion of oligarchs, corporatism, crony capitalism, and captured government and, like a now single woman, striking out on its own to create the world in which it wishes to live, no longer dragged down by a partnership that was undermining her.

It's a bit long, and if you take nothing else away from this other than, "You Can Crush the Flowers, But You Can’t Stop the Spring," that is enough.

Again, I think it captures the spirit that both Ravi Batra and Strauss & Howe described in their work on the coming re-awakening and revolution.

Read it at Tom Dispatch
Tomgram: Rebecca Solnit, Ms. Civil Society v. Mr. Unaccountable

Debts or rights?

Some things — education, health, housing — should be rights, not financed through taking on more and more debt.

...while the previous decade has been represented as a debt-financed spending binge when consumers lived well beyond their means, it turns a complex story into a morality play. A major part of the credit ‘binge’ was about necessities, not luxuries. Sub-prime mortgages (especially with the decline of affordable housing) were the only way for many to become homeowners. Similarly, student loans were the only way for many to gain access to higher education and thus participate as equals in the radically unequal distribution of opportunity in the United States. The total value of student loans has surpassed total credit card debt, and is projected to top $1 trillion later this year....

...Once again, indebtedness is the product of the 99% trying to meet the costs of a basic good — health care....

The entire social model, then, was built on a lie. The separation of consumption (financed by future promises to pay) from production (based on limiting present ability to earn) was a mirage. The problem has been that the underlying right to maintain a certain standard of living, or even to access to certain basic social goods like housing, health, and education, was just that: implicit. Every so often, of course, it was made somewhat public — for instance when Clintonor Bush would say something about providing housing to the poor and minorities who could not otherwise afford it (mainly by changing market incentives and promoting sub-prime borrowing, as it turned out). But this promise was always implicit and had to stay that way because it was mediated through the credit system. Access to these basic social goods was never a fully public claim each individual had against society. Instead, access to these social goods was a matter of a complex series of private, individualized claims against other private institutions like banks and employers, with the public role submerged in the form of altered market incentives. That is the difference between debt and right, and it is clear that the debt-based social model has failed.

 Read the whole post at New Deal 2.0

A Failed Social Model: Providing Basic Goods Through Crushing Consumer Debt

by Alex Gourevitch

Juan Cole — How Students Landed on the Front Lines of Class War

The deliberate pepper-spraying by campus police of nonviolent protesters at UC Davis on Friday has provoked national outrage. But the horrific incident must not cloud the real question: What led comfortable, bright, middle-class students to join the Occupy protest movement against income inequality and big-money politics in the first place?

The University of California system raised tuition by 9 percent this year, and the California State University system upped tuition by 12 percent. The UC system is seriously contemplating a humongous 16 percent tuition increase for fall 2012. This year, for the first time, the amount families pay in UC tuition will exceed state contributions to the university system.

University students, who face tuition hikes and state cuts to public education, find themselves victimized by the same neoliberal agenda that has created the current economic crisis, and that profoundly endangers democratic values.The ideal that California embraced in its 1960 master plan for higher education, that it should be inexpensive and open to all Californians, is being jettisoned without much debate....

Read the rest at Truth Dig

How Students Landed on the Front Lines of Class War
 By Juan Cole

That pesky affordability things again, which MMT shows to be canard.

Media complain about freedom of press suppression by police

Media organizations sent letters on Monday to city officials complaining about the police handling of journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street protests and called for meetings to address their concerns.

They said New York police blocked journalists from seeing when authorities cleared out the Occupy camp in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park last week and said police officers used force and arrested some journalists as they were trying to do their jobs.

"The police actions of last week have been more hostile to the press than any other event in recent memory," a coalition of media organizations and journalist groups said in a letter to chief New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne.The New York Civil Liberties Union sent another letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, covering similar ground.

"The numerous reports we have received and have learned of make clear to us that the NYPD is aggressively blocking journalists from doing their constitutionally protected work and in some instances is even targeting journalists for mistreatment," that letter said.

Read the rest at the Associated Press via Google

Journalists protest Occupy Wall St police handling
By DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press

Jerry Brown in the hot seat

“We are sick and tired of UC Davis students being maced and sprayed,” said Kevin Carter of Occupy Sacramento. “We are sick and tired of UC Berkeley students engaged in nonviolent protest being pulverized and having batons shoved into their ribs by police. What gives the police the right to use this type of police brutality?”

Read the rest at AlterNet
Occupy Sacramento Marches on Jerry Brown’s Home
by: Dan Bacher, AlterNet | Op-Ed

President Obama next?

Cameron admits failure to slay the "debt demon"

The warning comes as the global economy stands on the brink of a “chronic” debt-driven recession.

The Prime Minister on Monday conceded that tackling Britain’s debts was “proving harder than anyone envisaged”, raising the prospect that the Coalition would be unable to close the deficit by 2014-15.

That would rule out any significant tax cuts before the next election. It also raises questions about the Coalition’s fundamental purpose.

Departing from the deficit-reduction timetable could raise fears that Britain will face rising borrowing costs as bond markets take fright.

Debt is “a drag on growth”, Mr Cameron told business leaders. “We are well behind where we need to be,” he said....

Read the rest at The Telegraph (UK)

David Cameron: our plan to cut debt is failing

by James Kirkup, and Robert Winnett

MMT to Cameron: "Told ya so."

Mr Cameron insisted that he would not deviate from the plan to cut spending, insisting that slowing growth “undermines further the case for adding to the national burden of debt with even more borrowing”.

Daft, as they say over there.

It's the sectoral balances, stupid.

James K. Galbraith sees failure of the debt-deal as positive

The probable failure of a U.S. congressional committee to reach agreement on at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reductions by this week’s deadline is the “best thing” that could have happened, said economist James K. Galbraith.

Failure for the committee to reach agreement will lead to across-the-board cuts to domestic and defense programs, starting in January 2013. The lack of a deal would deprive President Barack Obama of a vehicle extending a payroll tax cut and insurance benefits for unemployed Americans, which expire at the end of the year. Lack of agreement also means tax cuts for top earners enacted under President George W. Bush may also be allowed to expire at the end of 2012, Galbraith said.

As things stand, there will be an examination of the defense budget, and a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over that,” Galbraith, an economics professor at the University of Texas in Austin, said in a radio interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Ken Prewitt and Tom Keene. “And the Bush tax cuts expire,” he said. “If you are doing honest budget accounting, that gives you all of the deficit reduction you could possibly want.

Read the rest at Bloomberg

Galbraith Says U.S. Debt-Deal Flop ‘Best Thing’ to Cut Budget

by  Bob Willis and Tom Keene

(h/t money4nothingchicks4free in the comments)

"“If you are doing honest budget accounting, that gives you all of the deficit reduction you could possibly want," is out of paradigm wrt MMT though.

Video of UC Davis campus police pepper spraying students. Sickening to watch.

UC Davis police pepper spraying students who are just sitting there. This is sickening. Hard to watch.

Good News: US Debt Talks Collapse

Finally some good news is being reported out there, perhaps an early "thanksgiving" is in order. Story at Yahoo! here.

It continues to be amazing how the mainstream media reports this in the context of "bad news", while we in the MMT paradigm look at this as "good news".

Randy Wray lays it on

Strong stuff. Bravo, Randy.

And if Governor Brown does not dispatch the National Guard to Berkeley and Davis to protect the students that the Chancellors refuse to protect, then he must go. If President Obama does not send troops to Liberty park to protect OWS protestors, bringing tents and sleeping bags, and safe heaters and portable toilets, then he must go, too.

Read it at Economonitor
Occupy UC Davis: Chancellor asks Campus Cops to Fall on Swords

Right on.

Corporate charter school model rockets

The issue here seems to be successful outcomes based on selection (culling). The charge is that public education is the same for all and does not operate on selection in of the better student and selection out of the others.

This is an important consideration that is worthy of public debate. Should better student be given the advantage of a better education, or should all student go through the same process?

Presently, selection is based on money and class. People that can afford to send their children to private school often choose this option, and parents who went through private education are likely to send their children to the same schools. This creates a social divide that is not widely recognized in the US, but it is in the UK, where type of education is closely associate with class structure.

The corporate charter school model may bring selection based on merit (although proponents apparently deny this is happening). Culling this a step forward, or not?

Read the whole post at The Daily Censored
A Retro-Rocketship to the Future: Corporate Education Reform Blasts Off in Silicon Valley
by Adam Bessie

Liquidate, liquidate, liquidate

Here's a summary of this counter-MMT position on resolving the financial crisis in the EZ:

...Obviously there will never be a “good time” to purge the debt from the system, however, doing this at the top of a credit boom might actually not be a bad moment as it provides countries and households with a situation were they have more freedom to adjust to changes in the economy. For instance they can move closer to where there is work (because they can actually sell their house without being stuck with a huge amount of negative equity) or re-educate (because they are not burdened with student loans that prevent them from taking on new education), which should provide stimulus on its own to avoid a deflationary spiral. A study by the McKinsey Global Institute (Debt and deleveraging (2010)) shows that deleveraging through default is tough in the beginning, but that growth will quickly pick up at an increased rate and the subsequent 10 year GDP growth is the highest compared to all other solutions (and it will also yield the largest increase in GDP 15 years later, compared to when the deleveraging began). Worries about a deflationary spiral are mostly based on memories of the Great Depression, but the evidence of other default episodes shows that the outcome of the 1930’s is not the de facto result....

What is needed, in combination with the debt relief we talked earlier about, are structural reforms. The austerity or structural reforms should have the goal of preventing that countries will in the future end up in the same situation as they are now, but should not try to solve the current debt problem. Strong changes to entitlement programs are needed, as well as health care and housing overhauls, but these structural changes should be gradually implemented alongside a long term plan to reform. This gives society time to adjust, employees to re-school, homeowners and house prices to adjust and families time to switch to a more debit financed system of health care and education instead of one based on credit and student loans....

A technocratic government could be very well suited to implement these structural reforms. However, technocratic can have different meanings, from the one-party China model to the technocratic-military hybrid-model in Egypt where strong military power is coupled with civilian expertise with respect to social and economic issues (The Economist, 19/11/11). These models are far from desirable in Europe of course, citizens simply would not accept them. Technocratic governments could however be successful for short periods of time and the situation as described in the previous section might be one: technocratic governments might be the tool to overcome the difficulties of implementing structural reforms and give countries a good fresh-start and long-term vision for the coming decade. This would be a very noble cause for any technocratic government, but as ever things are not so simple, since even technocratic governments have an "agenda".

The current governments in place in Italy and Greece are puppets of the banking system, making sure that countries do not default and pay as much interest for as long as possible by implementing short term austerity measures. This is not the type of technocratic government these countries need. They need a technocratic government that sees that the current debt burden is unsustainable and cannot be serviced, acknowledging that defaults are necessary. They should seize this opportunity to change the financial system and implement structural reforms, while exercising their powers to facilitate orderly defaults for both governments and household debt. This way countries will be able to start from a situation where there is breathing room to implement much needed structural reforms throughout society.

Read the full post al Zero Hedge
Europe Needs Debt Relief And Structural Reforms, Not Hyperinflation

by Philip Stive and Dennis Buitendijk

MMT would agree that there needs to be debt restructuring but it would disagree about the rest of the proposal involving austerity and so-called "temporary" technocracy.

War clouds?

The “time has come” to deal with Iran, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday, refusing to rule out military action to curb the Islamic republic’s nuclear ambitions.

Barak, speaking on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS program, indicated that Israel’s patience was wearing thin — and provided an ominous response when asked about the growing speculation of an Israeli military strike.

“I don’t think that that is a subject for public discussion,” he said. “But I can tell you that the IAEA report has a sobering impact on many in the world, leaders as well as the publics, and people understand that the time has come.”

Read the whole post at Raw Story

‘Time has come’ to act on Iran, Israel says

by Agence France-Presse

The price of oil will be a prime indicator of how the market assesses the probablity of war in the Middle East.

Just what the doctor ordered for Spain?

Further hardship lies ahead, with PP leader Mariano Rajoy committed to bringing in even harsher austerity measures to appease financial markets....

Spaniards are now resigned to further cuts, including in health and education, in the midst of the wider European crisis that has pushed Spain’s borrowing costs to critical levels....

“From a market standpoint, an absolute majority for the PP is just what the doctor ordered. Mr. Rajoy will have a freer hand than his predecessor in that he will no longer be dependent on the support of the Catalans and the Basques to govern,” said Nicholas Spiro, managing director of Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London. (emphasis added)

Read the whole post at Raw Story

Spanish conservatives win in landslide, promise more austerity

Another EZ basket case. Down for the count.

Meanwhile in Egypt:


Extreme violence as Egypt cracks down on protests

by Muriel Kane

Did Paul Krugman just start something?

Jeff Sachs calls out Newt over his remarks characterizing the protests as DHF's.

Check it out at Raw Story

Professor: Gingrich is ‘a disgusting person’

Maybe the mainstream economics profession is growing a spine?

Maybe someone needs to say something about this guy, too.


Rep. Joe Walsh: Veterans at ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protests are anti-American

Note: The mother of Walsh's children alleges that he owes $117, 000 in child support — at the same time he was lending himself $35, 000 for his campaign.

It's the institutions, stupid

And while it's his finger pulling the trigger, the police system is what put him in the position to be standing in front of those students. I am sure that he is a man like me, and he didn't become a cop to shoot history majors with pepper spray. But the current policing paradigm requires that students get shot in the eyes with a chemical weapon if they resist, however peaceably. Someone has to do it.

And while the kids may cough up blood and writhe in pain, what happens to the man who does it is in some ways much, much worse.

Read the whole article at The Atlantic

Why I Feel Bad for the Pepper-Spraying Policeman, Lt. John Pike

by Alexis Madrigal, a senior editor at The Atlantic

(h/t Mario in the comments)

We ask now how the holocaust could ever have happened. Those who study the history realize full well how the German people could allow such a thing to be perpetrated in their name. First, Nazi propaganda pictured the Jews as vermin. The obvious next step was to exterminate them.

This iconic picture of non-violent students — in police lingo when protestors sit it is a signal that they are non-violent — being prayed with pepper gas like bugs is only too reminiscent of humanity's dark past being replayed in the present. 

Pepper gas and tear gas are outlawed for use in war under Article 1.5 of the Chemical Weapons Convention, but apparently use of them to control citizens of one's own country is OK. In fact, the police official in charge justified its use as "standard procedure."

Something is deeply wrong with our institutions. Our intelligence services and military tortures, our financial industry commits massive fraud, and our domestic security forces violates the Chemical Weapons Convention, all with impunity.

America's moral authority in the world is being trashed, and American "democracy" is made mockery of by officials sworn to uphold it.

Occupy the police state

Maybe it’s time to Occupy more than Wall Street. I mean, I see that it’s all wound together. I really do appreciate the focus on crony capitalism and the revolving door between Washington D.C. and Wall Street. But the increasingly scary portrait of an ever more powerful, unhampered system of law enforcement really does worry me. These incidents illustrate why it should worry everyone, regardless of your class or political stripe.

Read the whole post at Forbes
Maybe It's Time to Occupy the Police State

by E.D. Kain

Egyptian military using American police to justify its own killing

Egyptian Military Points to American Police Brutality in Justifying Murder of Tahrir Square Protesters

And America’s response towards the peaceful Occupy protesters has been so brutal that now the Egyptian military is justifying its murder of protesters in Tahrir Square by saying they are just following the American example. As Gawker notes:

Two people were killed in Cairo and Alexandria this weekend as Egyptian activists took the streets to protest the military’s attempts to maintain its grip on power. And guess how the state is justifying its deadly crackdown. “We saw the firm stance the US took against OWS people & the German govt against green protesters to secure the state,” an Egyptian state television anchor said yesterday (as translated by the indispensable Sultan Sooud al Qassemi; bold ours).

Extra! Extra! Read all about it at Washington's Blog

American Police Are So Brutal that the Egyptian Military Is Justifying Its Murder of Tahrir Square Protesters By Pointing to the Crackdown on Occupy Wall Street

There goes the moral authority of the US. Now it the poster child of tyranny.

See also at Washington's Blog

In a Police State Like Modern America, Even Peaceful Resistance Is Considered Violence and Cause for Even More Brutality

Police State Watch: Curling Up In a Ball to Avoid Police Violence May Be Considered “Active Resistance” … Justifying the Use of MORE FORCE, Including Baton Strikes

OWS Demand — Regime Change

Occupy was born because we the people feel that our country and our economy are moving precipitously in the wrong direction; that America has evolved into a kind of corporate oligarchic state, a “corporatocracy”; and yes, that what is needed is a regime change ...

Read the rest at The Washington Post

Why Occupy Wall Street will keep up the fight

by Kalle Lasn and Micah White, editor in chief and senior editor, respectively, of Adbusters magazine

Kalle Lasn is the man that started it all.

Krugman — Fools and clowns

“I have a structural hypothesis here,” Krugman told ABC’s Christiane Amanpour Sunday. “You have a Republican ideology, which Mitt Romney obviously doesn’t believe in. He just oozes insincerity, that’s just so obvious. But all of the others are fools and clowns. And there is a question here, my hypothesis is that maybe this is an ideology that only fools and clowns can believe in. And that’s the Republican problem.”

Read the rest at Raw Story (short and funny)
Krugman: ‘Only fools and clowns’ believe Republican ideology

by David Edwards

Get out the popcorn. This is really getting good.

Here's the rub. Disagree at the expense of coming across as a fool or clown.

China gets it?

A long-term global recession is certain to happen and China must focus on domestic problems, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan has said.

"The one thing that we can be certain of, among all the uncertainties, is that the global economic recession caused by the international financial crisis will be chronic," Wang was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying at the weekend.

Read the rest at Reuters

China vice premier sees chronic global recession

The real costs

The NYPD, ostensibly tasked with maintaining public order, has proven that it cannot handle political dissent without exerting anything less than military-style force. For two months, it has continuously abridged the rights of citizens to peaceably assemble, and of journalists to document these assemblies. It has lost its claim to legitimacy.

Read the whole post at Salon
The NYPD has discredited itself: Tough tactics and intolerance favor the rich and flout the rule of law
by Michael Tracy

See also, MF GLOBAL FALLOUT: I Will Never Do Business In The United States Of America Again

Is this the global trashing of America while its leaders tout "American exceptionalism"?

Major institutions losing their legitimacy should be an alarming wake-up call.

The man you never heard of who started it all

It's a little over a month until Christmas and next weekend is traditionally when the annual shopping frenzy kicks off. But not everyone will be hot-footing it to their nearest mega-mall, because next Saturday also marks the annual Buy Nothing Day. Launched in the mid-1990s by the Canada-based anti-capitalist publication Adbusters, it's an idea in which people are encouraged to stay out of the shops for 24 hours to make a small stand against rampant consumerism. And this year they are thinking bigger than ever.

The plan, says Adbusters co-founder Kalle Lasn, is to stretch it out and turn it into a Buy Nothing Christmas. He wants us to bypass the tinsel, the tree and the tat and go cold turkey on consumerism for the whole festive period. "We are," he says, "going to try and take back our Christmas season from the commercial forces that have hijacked it."

If you think this sounds like the rantings of a deluded Bolshevik, it's worth noting a few things about Lasn and his cohorts at Adbusters, who have been producing the bi-monthly magazine from their Vancouver office since 1989. Lasn, an Estonia-born, former high-flyer in the advertising industry, now pushing 70, started Adbusters as an antidote to corporate greed, and what he saw as an aggressive pro-consumerist message that was being rammed down our throats. "We felt back then that there was a dark side to consumerism but no one ever talked about it," he says.

Lasn's background in advertising shows. Rather than being a ranting left-wing rag, Adbusters is slick and full of smart graphics and insightful critique. His ideas, so pertinent now in the global financial chaos of today, have always been ahead of their time. And it was he who, in last July's issue of Adbusters, ran a one-page poster which simply read "Occupy Wall Street, September 17th, bring tent".

What happened next sparked one of the most successful protest movements of recent times, one that has gone on to dominate the global news agenda for weeks. That one small page was responsible for hordes of disgruntled people congregating at Wall Street's Zuccotti Park and London's St Paul's Cathedral to express their fury at the world's extreme economic inequality, and many of them are still camping there to this day. And it was responsible for a further thousand or so other Occupy protests that sprung up in solidarity the world over. Lasn, it seems, has chanced upon a formula to harness global support. (emphasis added)

Read the rest at The Independent (UK)
Buy Nothing Day: Adbusters' role in the global Occupy movement
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

Here's a link to Adbusters site. If you haven't seen Adbusters mag, it is worth a look. Very avant-garde. I discovered that our local library subscribes and got a chance to examine it up close. (Iowa City is a hip, liberal town, sort of a bit of San Francisco in the Midwest.)