Latvia’s Economic Disaster Heralded as a Neoliberal “Success Story”: A Model for Europe and the US?

By Jeffrey Sommers and Michael Hudson

Global Research

A generation ago the Chicago Boys and their financial supporters applauded General Pinochet’s anti-labor Chile as a success story, thanks mainly to its transformation of their Social Security into Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) that almost universally were looted by the employer grupos by the end of the 1970s. In the last decade, the Bush Administration, seeking a Trojan Horse to privatize Social Security in the United States, applauded Chile’s disastrous privatization of pension accounts (turning many over to US financial institutions) even as that nation’s voters rejected the Pinochetistas largely out of anger at the vast pension rip-off by high finance.

Today’s most highly celebrated anti-labor success story is Latvia. Latvia is portrayed as the country where labor did not fight back, but simply emigrated politely and quietly. No general strikes, nor destruction of private property or violence, Latvia is presented as a country where labor had the good sense to not make a fuss when faced with austerity. Latvians gave up protest and simply began voting with their backsides (emigration) as the economy shrank, wage levels were scaled down, and where tax burdens remained decidedly on the backs of labor, even though recent token efforts have been made to increase taxes on real estate. The World Bank applauds Latvia and its Baltic neighbors by placing them high on its list of “business friendly” economies, even though at times scolding their social regimes as even too harsh for the Victorian tastes of the international financial institutions.

Can this really be a model for the United States or Europe’s remaining social democracies? Or is it simply a cruel experiment that cannot readily be emulated in larger countries un-traumatized by Soviet era memories of occupation? One can only dream ...

The Journey to Jekyll Island

This is the first installment in a series of chapter summaries from G. Edward Griffin's must-read book The Creature From Jekyll Island.  This book may be the most important "red pill" available and we highly recommend that you buy and read the full book at RealityZone.

G. Edward Griffin

Buy Here

Activist Post

Chapter 1 Summary: The Journey to Jekyll Island

The basic plan for the Federal Reserve System was drafted at a secret meeting held in November of 1910 at the private resort of J.P. Morgan on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia.  Those who attended represented the great financial institutions of Wall Street and, indirectly, Europe as well. The reason for the secrecy was simple.  Had it been known that rival factions of the banking community had joined together, the public would have been alerted to the possibility that the bankers were plotting an agreement in restraint of trade -- which, of course, is exactly what they were doing.  What emerged was a cartel agreement with five objectives: stop the growing competition from the nation's newer banks; obtain a franchise to create money out of nothing for the purpose of lending; get control of the reserves of all banks so that the more reckless ones would not be exposed to currency drains and bank runs; get the taxpayer to pick up the cartel's inevitable losses; and convince Congress that the purpose was to protect the public.  It was realized that the bankers would have to become partners with the politicians and that the structure of the cartel would have to be a central bank.  The record shows that the Fed has failed to achieve its stated objectives.  That is because those were never its true goals.  As a banking cartel, and in terms of the five objectives stated above, it has been an unqualified success.

Get the book for yourself or for others you want to wake up.  Visit RealityZone for your copy today. Summary is re-printed with permission from G. Edward Griffin.


Enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter:


Delivered by FeedBurner

The Weekly News Wrap-up with Greg Hunter (Video)

Greg Hunter
USA Watchdog

There is a lot to cover in the Weekly Real News Wrap-up this week.  First off, Greek debt problems look like they are going to get ugly, and this could spell problems for Europe and the world.  Looks like Greece will default, we just don’t know how bad it will be.  Bill Gross says the U.S. is in worse shape!

There is a showdown between Congress and the White House over Libya.  Congress wants oversight and the President says it is not necessary.

There was a big defeat for the bankers in the foreclosure world.  It also looks like the mainstream media is finally catching on that the economy is really bad.  The cover of Time Magazine is the latest of the MSM to finally tell you there is NO RECOVERY.  The reason?  Nothing has been fixed!

Finally, Congressman Weiner has resigned–thank goodness it is finally over.  Please enjoy this week’s installment of the Weekly News Wrap-up!



For more analysis about global events and the U.S. Economy, please visit Greg Hunter atUSAWatchdog.com

Enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter:


Delivered by FeedBurner

IMF Financial Terrorism

Stephen Lendman, Contributing Writer

Activist Post

In July 1944, the IMF and Bank for Reconstruction and Development (now the World Bank) were established to integrate developing nations into the Global North-dominated world economy in ways other than initially mandated.

Under a new post-war monetary system, the IMF was created to stabilize exchange rates linked to the dollar and bridge temporary payment imbalances. The World Bank was to provide credit to war-torn developing countries. Both bodies, in fact, proved hugely exploitive, using debt entrapment to transfer public wealth to Western bankers and other corporate predators.

On a grander scale today, the scheme destructively obligates indebted nations to take new loans to service old ones, assuring rising indebtedness and structural adjustment harshness, including:

Global food inflation hits hemp seed, coconut oil and other superfoods: Here's why it's happening

Wiki Commons

Mike Adams
Natural News

Food inflation is hitting the superfood industry right where it hurts -- in the wallet. Thanks to several factors you'll read about here, prices on hemp seeds, hemp oils, coconut oil and other superfoods are set to skyrocket beginning in just a few days. One of the largest superfood suppliers in the USA, Nutiva, has announced an 11% price increase coming May 27th, and that may be just the beginning of an accelerating trend in steady increases.

In anticipation of this price increase, we've taken on a huge inventory of Nutiva's Certified Organic Hemp Seed and Hemp Oil at the old prices, and we have a generous supply available to NaturalNews readers who want to beat the price increase (see below).

Why hemp and coconut oil prices are heading into the stratosphere
In a letter sent to us by Nutiva, founder John Roulac explains that the price of coconut oil has doubled in the last six months. While coconut oil suppliers are able to absorb some of this cost in the short term, they cannot do so on a permanent basis. This means that the prices consumers pay for coconut oil are headed sharply higher.

Where is the Global Economy Headed? The Experts Speak

Dees Illustration

Roy Furr
Casey Research

To be forewarned is to be forearmed.

I'm writing today after spending the last three days in Boca Raton, Florida, attending The Next Few Years: A Casey Research Summit. If you're not already familiar, the purpose of this summit was to bring together many of the world's top economic and investing minds to share with us where they believe we're headed in the months and years ahead.

The cast of speakers was impressive, to say the least. They brought a variety of view points, an almost overwhelming amount of data and analysis, and a perspective on what the current world means for investors that would be hard to build on. Yet, with all this variety of thought and perspective, one central theme seemed to emerge.

If you're able to see the annihilation of your currency coming down the pike, and you take the right steps to protect your wealth, you can come out on the other side largely unscathed. Given the right investment strategy, you may even be able to grow your wealth significantly during this time.

IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end

Commentary: China’s economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016

Brett Arends
MarketWatch

BOSTON — The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.

For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.

And it’s a lot closer than you may think.

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.

Put that in your calendar.

It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington, D.C., right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.

Read Full Article


Enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter:


Delivered by FeedBurner

The Realization is Now

Seth Godin

New polling out this week shows that Americans are frustrated with the world and pessimistic about the future. They're losing patience with the economy, with their prospects, with their leaders (of both parties).

What's actually happening is this: we're realizing that the industrial revolution is fading. The 80 year long run that brought ever-increasing productivity (and along with it, well-paying jobs for an ever-expanding middle class) is ending.

It's one thing to read about the changes the internet brought, it's another to experience them. People who thought they had a valuable skill or degree have discovered that being an anonymous middleman doesn't guarantee job security. Individuals who were trained to comply and follow instructions have discovered that the deal is over... and it isn't their fault, because they've always done what they were told.

Bretton Woods II — The Final Enslavement of Mankind

“The rising powers must be present at the creation of this new system in order to ensure that they will be active supporters.” – George Soros

SARTRE, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Charges of a conspiracy theory are a convenient pretext to dismiss criticism when the global financial elites meet to shape the next evolution of centralized control of all economic activity. When Mayer Amschel Rothschild admitted,“Give me the power of the money and it will not matter anymore who is commanding”, he exposed the true nature of international finance. The new front man for the shadow masters of money is George Soros. His visibility is used to deflect attention away from the supra national circle of recluse manipulators, who set the agenda for globalism. The history of world politics is really the chronicle of money, debt and banking. Only by understanding this clash of titans, can one interpret the language of worldwide finance.

It is not often that you get to look into the window of the future before it takes place. The obsession with the political posturing of the torturous grinding process that produces a kosher sausage product causes acute indigestion. Banking is one such example and the INET, The Institute for New Economic Thinking, who sponsored the Bretton Woods II conference is the Neshama gourmet version of ground up animal flesh. Funneling the herd into the corral of a new world currency openly discussed, as the panacea for the coming collapse of international finance, is the height of totalitarian arrogance.

BRICS demand global monetary shake-up, greater influence

BRICS - Wiki Commons

Abhijit Neogy and Alexei Anishchuk
Reuters

SANYA, China  - The BRICS group of emerging-market powers kept up the pressure on Thursday for a revamped global monetary system that relies less on the dollar and for a louder voice in international financial institutions.

The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa also called for stronger regulation of commodity derivatives to dampen excessive volatility in food and energy prices, which they said posed new risks for the recovery of the world economy.

Meeting on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, they said the recent financial crisis had exposed the inadequacies of the current monetary order, which has the dollar as its linchpin.

What was needed, they said in a statement, was "a broad-based international reserve currency system providing stability and certainty" -- thinly veiled criticism of what the BRICS see as Washington's neglect of its global monetary responsibilities.

The BRICS are worried that America's large trade and budget deficits will eventually debase the dollar. They also begrudge the financial and political privileges that come with being the leading reserve currency.

Read Full Article 

Enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Unreported Soros Event Aims to Remake Entire Global Economy

WSJ-Two years ago, George Soros said he wanted to reorganize the entire global economic system. In two short weeks, he is going to start - and no one seems to have noticed.

On April 8, a group he's funded with $50 million is holding a major economic conference and Soros's goal for such an event is to "establish new international rules" and "reform the currency system." It's all according to a plan laid out in a Nov. 4, 2009, Soros op-ed calling for "a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order."

The event is bringing together "more than 200 academic, business and government policy thought leaders' to repeat the famed 1944 Bretton Woods gathering that helped create the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Soros wants a new 'multilateral system," or an economic system where America isn't so dominant.

More than two-thirds of the slated speakers have direct ties to Soros. The billionaire who thinks "the main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat" is taking no chances.

Thus far, this global gathering has generated less publicity than a spelling bee. And that's with at least four journalists on the speakers list, including a managing editor for the Financial Times and editors for both Reuters and The Times. Given Soros's warnings of what might happen without an agreement, this should be a big deal. But it's not.

What is a big deal is that Soros is doing exactly what he wanted to do. His 2009 commentary pushed for "a new Bretton Woods conference, like the one that established the post-WWII international financial architecture." And he had already set the wheels in motion.

Just a week before that op-ed was published, Soros had founded the New York City-based Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), the group hosting the conference set at the Mount Washington Resort, the very same hotel that hosted the first gathering. The most recent INET conference was held at Central European University, in Budapest. CEU received $206 million from Soros in 2005 and has $880 million in its endowment now, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

This, too, is a gathering of Soros supporters. INET is bringing together prominent people like former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and Soros, to produce "a lot of high-quality, breakthrough thinking."

While INET claims more than 200 will attend, only 79 speakers are listed on its site - and it already looks like a Soros convention. Twenty-two are on Soros-funded INET's board and three more are INET grantees. Nineteen are listed as contributors for another Soros operation - Project Syndicate, which calls itself "the world's pre-eminent source of original op-ed commentaries" reaching "456 leading newspapers in 150 countries." It's financed by Soros's Open Society Institute. That's just the beginning.

The speakers include:

•Volcker is chairman of President Obama's Economic Advisory Board. He wrote the forward for Soros's best-known book, 'The Alchemy of Finance' and praised Soros as "an enormously successful speculator" who wrote "with insight and passion" about the problems of globalization.

Read Full Article

Enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Overwhelmed

USA Watchdog Image

Greg Hunter
USA Watchdog

As I look over the news and try to find the one story that I need to comment on, I am overwhelmed.  I see the nuclear meltdown story in Japan and wonder how it will all turn out.  It is nowhere near under control.  We still do not know the full extent of the damage, but there are traces of radiation showing up in things like milk here in the U.S.  Yes, I know experts say the amount is tiny and causes no health threat, but then again, this thing is not over by a long shot.  Brave workers there are sacrificing themselves to try and stop a total meltdown and save a large part of Japan from becoming a dead zone.  Fox News reported yesterday, “The so-called Fukushima 50, the team of brave plant workers struggling to prevent a meltdown to four reactors critically damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, are being repeatedly exposed to dangerously high radioactive levels as they attempt to bring vital cooling systems back online.”  (Click here to read the complete FOX News Story.)

Next, there is the third war front in Libya.  Defense Secretary Robert Gates was grilled in Congress yesterday and reassured lawmakers that there would be no U.S. troops used in that North African country.  However, he would not address reports that the CIA was already there.  ABC News reported yesterday, “The confusion prompted one US congressman to dub Libya probably the ‘most muddled definition of a military operation in US history.’ News of a secret order signed by the US president authorizing covert American support for the rebels has been received as paving the way for a possible arming of the opposition.”  (Click here to read the complete ABC News story.)  Let’s hope the mess in Libya is cleaned up before Japan, but I fear both problems will be with us for a long time.

Read Full Article 


Enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter:


Delivered by FeedBurner

MADNESS: Supporting Al-Qaeda in Libya (Video)

Editor's Note: Al Qaeda is on the payroll, naturally. 

YouTube -- crabbydogtrix

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8407047/...
http://www.cnbc.com/id/42268981
http://bipartisanrules.blogspot.com/2011/03/john-boltons-incoherent-case-for-...

Enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Special Trend Alert: The 1st Great War of 21st Century Has Begun!

Dees Illustration

Gerald Celente
Trends Research 

KINGSTON, NY 21 March 2011 — It is a bad science fiction movie written by mad political scientists.

Exactly eight years to the day that President George W. Bush took America and his “Coalition of the Willing” to war with Iraq, President Barack Obama has taken America and his “Broad Coalition” to war with Libya.

And just as the world was sold a “coalition of the willing” that was predominantly a fleeting alliance of the cajoled and the arm-twisted, the putatively “broad” Obama coalition consists primarily of America’s two cronies-in-war, the UK and France.

Only in a mad political science fiction movie could a President engaged in perpetuating two unjust, immoral, interminable and expensive wars begun by his predecessor, take his nation into yet another unjust, immoral, expensive and, in all likelihood, interminable war … and expect a happy ending!

PIMCO Buys Government Debt Outside the U.S., Siting Inflation

AFP image

Activist Post

PIMCO, the world's biggest bond fund, who recently announced it was dumping theirU.S. Treasury holdings, now says it is buying foreign debt in 'Rising Star' nations.  Stating that the "pipeline of inflation is starting to hit globally," PIMCO said emerging markets can best weather the inflation storm.

Bloomberg reports:

Pacific Investment Management Co. says investors should buy company debt in Russia, Brazil and other emerging markets where rising wages and relatively low public and private debt will help borrowers weather accelerating inflation. 

The manager of the world’s biggest bond fund is buying debt of “rising stars” linked to nations with expanding wealth because they will more easily be able to pass on higher materials costs, Mark Kiesel, Pimco’s global head of corporate bond portfolio management, wrote in a report today on the firm’s website. At the same time, he’s avoiding companies dependent on growth in Europe, the U.S. and Japan that will struggle amid stagnant wages and debt-laden governments and consumers. 

“Companies which are tied most directly into the strong economic growth engine in the emerging markets should have the most pricing power and ability to either pass through rising costs or absorb them without a significant margin hit,” Kiesel wrote. Those more tied to growth in developed nations, he said, “will likely have less pricing power and be more negatively affected by rising prices for both food and energy.” (Read full Bloomberg article)

Enter your email address to subscribe to our newsletter:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Why is Greenland so rich these days? It said goodbye to the EU

Photo: PA

Alex Singleton
The Telegraph

If you think that leaving the EU would be catastrophic, take a look at Greenland. By rights its people ought to be poor. Their island is isolated, suffers from freezing weather, has a workforce of only 28,000 and relies on fish for 82 per cent of its exports. But it turns out that since leaving the EU, Greenland has been so freed of EU red tape and of the destruction of the Common Fisheries Policy, that the average income of the islanders today is higher than those living in Britain, Germany and France.

Greenland’s politicians realised that the fisheries policy was ruining their fishing industry. They had the guts to stand up against the all the prophets of doom and let their people vote in a referendum on leaving the European Community, as the EU was then called. On January 1, 1985, it became independent of Brussels – the only country ever to do so.

Read Full Article 

RELATED ARTICLE:
Citizens of Europe Rage Against The Machine 

RELATED VIDEO:
Who The Hell Do You Think You Are? - Nigel Farage

Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)

Live Superfoods It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!

Print this page

Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world

Global warming is now such a serious threat to mankind that climate change experts are calling for Second World War-style rationing in rich countries to bring down carbon emissions. 

Louise Gray  -- The Telegraph

In a series of papers published by the Royal Society, physicists and chemists from some of world’s most respected scientific institutions, including Oxford University and the Met Office, agreed that current plans to tackle global warming are not enough.

Unless emissions are reduced dramatically in the next ten years the world is set to see temperatures rise by more than 4C (7.2F) by as early as the 2060s, causing floods, droughts and mass migration.

As the world meets in Cancun, Mexico for the latest round of United Nations talks on climate change, the influential academics called for much tougher measures to cut carbon emissions.

In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years. 

Read Full Article

RELATED ARTICLE:
Global Warming Has Slowed Down Over The Past 10 Years, Say Scientists

Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)

Live Superfoods It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!

Print this page

Euro under siege as now Portugal hits panic button

Bruno Waterfield and Robert Winnett
The Gazette

The euro is facing an unprecedented crisis after another country indicated on Monday night that it was at a "high risk" of requiring an international bail-out.

Portugal became the latest European nation to admit it was on the brink of seeking help from Brussels after Ireland confirmed it had begun preliminary talks over its debt problems.

Greece also disclosed that its economic problems are even worse than previously thought.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, raised the spectre of the euro collapsing as she warned: "If the euro fails, then Europe fails."

Read Full Story 

RELATED ARTICLE:
Will the Dollar Rebound Before Being Dissolved Into Global Currency?

Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)

Live Superfoods It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!

Print this page

Barack Obama: We Must Embrace Globalism And The Emerging One World Economy

The Economic Collapse

Although it received very little coverage in the mainstream media, Barack Obama made some comments about globalism during his speech in Mumbai, India that were very eye-opening.  As he was discussing the new realities of world trade in 2010, Obama warned against “those who see globalization as a threat” and he spoke of the “integrated world” in which we all now live.  But is merging the entire globe into a one world economy, a one world financial system and a one world labor market really the best thing for the American people?

For the past two decades, all U.S. presidents have been heralding the benefits of merging the American economy with the rest of the globe.  George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all steadfastly supported the emerging one world economy.  These presidents have each used different terms to describe this process such as “globalism”, “globalization”, “an integrated world”, “the global economy” and even “a New World Order”, but they have all meant the same thing.  All of these presidents have sought to integrate the United States even more deeply into the developing one world economic system.


Barack Obama showed very clearly how he feels about globalism when he made the following statement during his speech in Mumbai….

“This will keep America on its toes. America is going to have to compete. There is going to be a tug-of-war within the US between those who see globalization as a threat and those who accept we live in a open integrated world, which has challenges and opportunities.”

This is something that Barack Obama has obviously thought quite a bit about. In fact, during the same speech he warned that those supporting globalization will need to “guard against” those who would seek to put up barriers to the full integration of the economies of the world….

“If the American people feel that trade is just a one-way street where everybody is selling to the enormous US market but we can never sell what we make anywhere else, then the people of the US will start thinking that this is a bad deal for us and it could end up leading to a more protectionist instinct in both parties, not just among Democrats but also Republicans. So, that we have to guard against.”

But in this new “global economy”, aren’t jobs leaving the United States and heading to developing nations at a blinding pace?  Of course, but apparently we are just supposed to shut up and accept this new reality.  In fact, Obama says that persistently high unemployment is “a new normal” that we are all just going to have to get used to.

Read Full Article

RELATED ARTICLE:
Globalism, Think Tanks, and The New World Order


Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)

Live Superfoods It is time to Wake Up! You too, can join the "Global Political Awakening"!

Print this page