“Corporatist System
But BP’s defenders and statist critics both have it wrong. This is not the story of a well-meaning or negligent firm operating in the free market. Negligent or not, BP is a player in a corporatist system that for generations has featured a close relationship between government and major business firms. (It wouldn’t have surprised Adam Smith.) Prominent companies have always been influential at all levels of government — and no industry more so than oil, which has long been a top concern of the national policy elite, most particularly the foreign-policy establishment. Continue reading
Category Archives: Economy
We’re Too Broke To Be This Stupid
“The Spanish government pays over $800,000 for every “green job” on a solar-panel assembly line. This money is taken from real workers with real jobs at real businesses whose growth is being squashed to divert funds to endeavours that have no rationale other than their government subsidies—and which would collapse as soon as the subsidies end. Yet Tim Flannery, the Aussie climate-alarmist who chaired the Copenhagen racket, says we need to redouble our efforts. “We’re trying to act as a species,” he says, “to regulate the atmosphere.” Continue reading
Why Not Build Barrier Reefs To Protect Coast From Oil Spill?
AP reported on May 17 that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and others want to build barrier reefs to protect the coast from the BP oil spill. Sounds like a good idea at this point, now that pumping the well with mud hasn’t worked:
“Gov. Bobby Jindal and leaders from several coastal parishes are pushing a $350 million barrier island repair plan as a way to protect Louisiana’s coast from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and reduce the ultimate cleanup and its costs.
Sand dredged from the gulf’s floor would be built up in 86 miles of the gaps between islands, returning land eaten away by decades of storms and slower erosion.
Jindal said Monday that the project could start within days after the Army Corps of Engineers approves it. He is asking for quick approval, and says he has been told that a decision could come in days.
Jindal says the price tag is much less than it would cost to try to remove oil from marshlands.
Monsanto Claims Patents On Bacon, Steak, and Fish
From GM Watch:
Meat claimed as invention by Monsanto
Wednesday, 28 April 2010 11:22Meat claimed as invention by multinational company of Monsanto
No Patents on Seeds, Press release, 27 April 2010
http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=3&Itemid=28*Stop patenting the food chain!
Multinational seed corporations are following a consequent strategy to gain control over basic resources for food production. As recent research shows not only genetically engineered plants, but more and more the conventional breeding of plants gets into the focus of patent monopolies: International patent applications in this sector are skyrocking, having doubled since 2007 till end of 2009. Continue reading
BP Oil Spill: Ten Horrifying Facts
Gulf Oil Spill: 10 Horrifying Facts You Never Wanted To Know
1. New estimates show the undersea well has spilled between 17 and 39 million gallons. These estimates dwarf those of BP, who claimed the spill had only released 11 million gallons to date, and mean that the Gulf leak is far bigger than Exxon Valdez, making it the worst spill in American history.
2. The National Wildlife Federation reports that already more than 150 threatened or endangered sea turtles are dead. And 316 sea birds, mostly brown pelicans and northern gannets, have been found dead along the Gulf Coast as a result of the spreading oil.
3. The Minerals Management Service, directly under the supervision of the Interior Department failed to impose a full review of potential environmental impacts of the BP drilling operation because preliminary reviews of the area concluded that a massive oil spill was “unlikely.”
Rule Of The Transnationals
Along Came the Transnationals, by Daniel Brandt, Name Base Newsline, July-Sept 1996
“Those who escape thought-reform at the end of history may trace our decline back to 1886, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that corporations are legal persons whose life, liberty and property are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Ratified to protect freed slaves, it took railroad-company lawyers less than two decades to turn this amendment into a loophole. By 1904, corporations controlled four-fifths of the nation’s industrial production. Today transnationals control the world’s cultural and economic production as well, and generate most of its pollution. Continue reading
Feds: No Right To Drink Raw Milk
The Feds now claim the right to tell you what kind of food you can put in your mouth.
From World Net Daily:
“Attorneys for the federal government have argued in a lawsuit pending in federal court in Iowa that individuals have no “fundamental right” to obtain what food they choose.
The brief was filed April 26 in support of a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund over the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s ban on the interstate sale of raw milk. Continue reading
The Entrepreneurs Of Dharavi
Financial commentator Joel Bowman looks at the Dharavi slum in Mumbai from a different angle:
“In an editorial pre-incarnation, your wayfaring author once found himself roaming the hot, sweaty crucible of economic chaos on the Indian Subcontinent in search of story and adventure. Mumbai squirms and pulses under the weight of three times the population density of New York City. It is both the commercial and entertainment centre of India, generating 5% of the country’s GDP and accounting for 25% of industrial output, 40% of maritime trade, and 70% of the nation’s capital transactions. Mumbai, sometimes still referred to as “Bombay,” is also a land of arresting dichotomy. For one, it is home to the world’s largest movie production industry…but just a short, bumpy ride from the glitz of Bollywood lays Dharavi, the largest slum in all of Asia. The latter area is a heaving mass of one million souls crammed into less than one square mile of unimaginable filth and grinding poverty. Needless to say, our visit to Mumbai’s underbelly was one of the most inspiring days of the whole trip.
The slum actually boasts an annual GDP of $660 million,” we wrote, awestruck after our short visit there, in The Rude Awakening. “The area, nestled between two railroad tracks, is bisected by an open-air sewage drain; commercial district on one side; residential on the other.
“On the commercial side, factories buzz around the clock, recycling the mass of waste spewed forth from around greater Mumbai. By day, ‘rag-pickers’ from the slum troll the city, collecting plastics, metals, bottles and all manner of other reusable matter. These materials are then melted down or repurposed in Dharavi before being sold back to metropolises all over India and, in some cases, across the region. Incredibly, all the machines are made on site. The men and women work 12 hours per day and each shift cooks a welcome meal for the incoming workers.
“Bound by the common oppression of multi-generational poverty, the people of Dharavi live and toil side by side, breaking their backs in the slum’s commercial district. Muslim people carve household Hindu temples, which then sell in the city’s markets, while the religious rift between the two groups rages on in the ‘outside world.’ Christian women watch over Muslim children, youngsters from different castes play together in the yards and Indian boys and girls learn in the slum’s schools alongside their classmates from all over Asia.”
Airline Prices Could Go Up 25% Says Industry Spokesman
Airline prices are set to rise this summer, says an industry spokesman:
“Airline capacity and routes flown are still down compared to recent years,” said Mark Koehler, Priceline’s senior vice president, Air. in a statement.
“We haven’t experienced the widespread, aggressive airfare sales seen a year ago. In general, travelers will find that summer airfares could be as much as 25% more expensive than last year, on average, and that’s before factoring in extra fees for baggage, pillows, food and such. Travelers who want to save on air travel will need to plan ahead, be flexible and try different approaches to booking their trips,” he said.
Airlines have started to see increased traffic as travelers returned after cutting back during the recession. The International Air Transport Association recently cut its full-year loss forecast for the airline industry by half to $2.8 billion.
Shares of airlines stocks jumped this morning.”
So, for anyone planning to become a stateless globe-trotter – and we’re all for it if your wallet can take it – here’s another monkey-wrench tossed into your plans.
Not only are fees and security at airports increasing, as I’ve blogged before, but prices and services on airlines are going up too. They even have a lavatory fee coming up at budget airline Ryanair. And they’re thinking of reducing the number of lavatories to make room for more seats.
Personally, I don’t think budget airlines – unless you fly often – are much of a saver. I’d rather pay $100 more and feel free to carry as much luggage as I want, get fed regularly with something other than $5 bags of pretzels, and have wait-staff paid enough not to glower at you.
Not long before you’ll be asked to bring your own seats or stand all the way….
Et Tu, Ron Paul?
Victor Aguilar at Axiomatic Theory of Economics voices a silent worry I’ve been having recently (apologies if this upsets libertarians and Paul fans, among whom I still count myself):
Note: I don’t know who Aguilar is, have never heard of him, don’t endorse any of his views, since I don’t know them, and only post this because he seems to echo a recent fear of mine about the promotion of Zarlenga and Zarlenga-esque ideas in all sorts of venues, including what I always thought of as the libertarian Daily Bell.
“Stephen Zarlenga writes:
Infrastructure repair would provide quality employment throughout the nation. There is a pretense that government must either borrow or tax to get the money for such projects. But it is a well enough known, that the government can directly create the money needed and spend it into circulation for such projects, without inflationary results.
First, incorporate the Federal Reserve System into the U.S. Treasury.
Second, halt the banks privilege to create money by ending the fractional reserve system.
Third, spend new money into circulation on infrastructure, including education and healthcare.
Ron Paul (2009, pp. 204-205) writes:
While a gold standard would be a wonderful thing, we shouldn’t wait for one before we end the Fed… An end to the money-creating power and a transfer of remaining oversight authority from the Fed to the Treasury would be marvelous steps in the right direction.
Aguilar:
So we see that Ron Paul’s proposal is essentially the same as that of Stephen Zarlenga and his man in Congress, Dennis Kucinich. Like Paul, Zarlenga also believes that a gold standard is a wonderful thing, provided that it does not have to actually be implemented. Since Paul has no concrete plans for implementing a gold standard, he and Zarlenga are united in their desire to incorporate the Federal Reserve System into the U.S. Treasury as quickly as possible.
The only difference is that, once the Federal Reserve System is incorporated into the U.S. Treasury, Paul vaguely hopes that Timothy Geithner will freeze the money stock while Zarlenga hopes that Geithner will spend new money into circulation on infrastructure. If I had to guess, I would say that Geithner, once given this enormous power, is more likely to spend the money, though not necessarily on infrastructure, than to freeze the money stock.
Ron Paul (2009, 203) writes,
“In an ideal world, the Fed would be abolished forthwith and the money stock frozen in place.”
Aguilar:
Idyllic is the right word. There is no reason for Paul to think that Geithner will do this for him. The Secretary of the Treasury is appointed by the President and the President panders to the voters. And they certainly do not want the stock of money frozen. If infrastructure is the new word for pork, then they want nothing more than to get some.
“If there’s anything worse than a secret Federal Reserve, it’s Congress controlling it,” says Sen. Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina. I agree. I dislike the United States having a central bank (I advocate free banking) but, given the existence of the Fed, I certainly would not put it in the hands of a bunch of squirrelly politicians.
Richard C. Cook writes:
I worked with Steve [Zarlenga] on his first draft of the American Monetary Act. The time came when Steve and I began to meet with Congressman Dennis Kucinich, briefing him and others in Washington on monetary ideas.
So much has happened since then. So many more people have become aware of the evils of the debt-based monetary system. We have seen Congressman Ron Paul ignite a national wave of revulsion against the Federal Reserve System. There is now even hope that the American Monetary Act might be introduced on the floor of Congress.”
Aguilar:
As for eliminating the Fed and giving the Treasury Department free rein to print money, I have already examined Zarlenga’s proposal in my 2008 paper and I specifically spoke of Cook here. There is no need to duplicate that material here just because Ron Paul has joined them….”
My Comment:
What this tells me is that there can be collaborations with the left on civil liberties and foreign policy, but not on economic freedom, which, for me, actually precedes political freedom.
My money represents my work and my time…and my work and my time represent my life. Through them my engagement in the world unfolds. They are how I come to understand the world in the most real way.
Not in the superficial and arrogant way that one “understands” the world only to meddle in it, as someone from the political class would. To them, the world is a black-box they engineer.
Hands off my world. Hand off my money. Hands off my work. Hands off my life.
I support Ron Paul, because I believe him to stand for these things and to fight for these things. If, ultimately ,for some reason can’t…. then for me at least there is no need to endorse any one else’s platform. It would be better to forget politics, since obviously there’s no one else who’s even broaching these issues. It’s that simple.
If Aguilar turns out to be right about this, then, regretfully, I’ll have to become a “mere” libertarian. With a small ‘l’. I’d sooner look to an alliance of counter-parties to the US government to teach the banking mafia the hard lesson they need in economics and justice than follow even libertarians blindly down a dead-end.