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Viewing Economics NEWS articles 301 through 375 of 414
- The spin and cover-up of the larger Peak Oil reality continues.
- Since 2000, America's billionaire club has gained 76 more members while the typical household has lost income and the poverty count has grown by more than 5 million people.
- Oil prices on the international markets would shoot up to $400 a barrel if an attack were to be carried out on Iran, a senior Revolutionary Guards commander warned, Persian-language websites reported on Thursday.
- "Peak Oil is the single most important issue of the 21st century...The hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, may well be remembered as the start of our great energy war, just as Fort Sumpter was the beginning of our Civil War."
- Hong Kong-based analyst Dr Marc Faber - better known as "Dr Doom" - says a tug of war over oil resources between the US and China could spark World War III. - "'We have lost control,' that was his expression," Breton told reporters after a bilateral meeting with Greenspan.
- They Fix Oil Prices, Don't They?
- To make this year's list of the top 400 fortunes in the US a minimum net worth of $900m was required - up from $750m last year. - by Michael C. Ruppert - While I had serious doubts about America’s ability to recover from Katrina, I am certain that – barring divine intervention – the United States is finished; not only as a superpower, but possibly even as a single, unified nation with the arrival of Hurricane Rita.
- Most Americans like to believe they live in the best country in the world. They don't. According to the United Nations Human Development Report for 2005, Norway is number one. Why? It's a welfare state.
- "Wanted: psychopaths to make a killing in the markets." Such an advert will not be appearing in the world's newspapers any time soon, but it may have a ring of truth after research revealed the best wheeler-dealers could well be "functional psychopaths."
- Republicans and the right-wing spin machine, which hate any social policy that aids working families, have fought increasing the minimum wage as long as it has existed.
- "Demand destruction" has become a priority not only to mitigate Peak Oil but also to mitigate global warming. How do you destroy demand? You collapse the economy. Homeless, unemployed "refugees" (what a cold, depersonalizing term) don’t buy gas, take trips, fly on airplanes or buy consumer goods (made with energy and requiring energy to operate). They don’t use air conditioning because they can’t afford it. They are the embodiment of Henry Kissinger’s infamous term "useless eaters," a phrase from the Nazi vocabulary.
- Almost half of the world's six billion people already live in cities. Of these, it is estimated that about a third live in slums
- For a rich country, the United States has a lot of abysmal jobs, so any list of this kind will necessarily omit some true horrors. Still, there's no doubt these are 10 of the very worst.
- The "laissez faire age" of classical liberalism created mammoth social crises. Void of any social protections, that earlier era of dog-eat-dog aggrandizement for wealth and privilege led to unprecedented upheaval, economic dislocation, and social violence. The situation became so bad that during the height of depression in the 1870s and 1890s, Federal troops had to be mobilized to crush strikes and "insurrection" in America's major cities.
- Parts of the United States are as poor as the Third World, according to a shocking United Nations report on global inequality. - Many of the world's poorest countries are doing worse in 2005 than they were 15 years ago, a major UN report says.
- A major Canadian financial management firm that a year ago published a compilation of evidence of central bank manipulation of the gold price has just done the same in regard to the U.S. stock market and has reached a similar conclusion. - I have you in my crosshairs. I’m your bodyguard, your cook, your barber. I’m the guy who cleans your pool, the woman who washes your clothes and takes care of your kids, the doorman who let’s you in your high rise tower while keeping out your undesirables. I’m the guy from across town that mows your lawn, the masses that allow you to feel superior, gifted and worthy. I’m the guy who fixes your car and drives you around, who calls you sir and treats you with respect. In short, I’m the one who knows where you sleep, what you eat, when you go to work and come home, whom it is you love and hang out with, and what you’re doing to the planet. In other words, I’ve got you more than you got me. I go places and do things you’re afraid of. Your money has made you a counterfeit man. You’re nothing without me, but without you, I’m free.
- In Los Angeles, as well as other cities across the country, a powerful new labor movement is emerging -- one that has already claimed a number of victories for working families.
- The estate tax affects only the richest 2 percent of Americans. But Congress wants to repeal it to make sure its "base" doesn't pay another penny.
- 1. Look, it doesn't matter if the fumes are making you sick. OSHA says everything is OK...2. I already told you that you can't have the morning off. Your Father's funeral can wait till the weekend...
- by Michael Ruppert- When we talk about collapse as a result of Peak Oil, New Orleans is an exemplary – if horrifying – glimpse of what it will look like for all of us. In the case of New Orleans, however, it’s happening about two or three times as fast as we will see it when Peak Oil becomes an unavoidable, ugly, global reality.
- Campaigners say that the scrapping of textile trade rules eight months ago has the potential to destroy the economies of tsunami-hit countries such as Bangladesh, while the EU quotas are only designed to protect rich countries such as France and Italy, rather than help those worst hit by the situation. - Tuition at these public institutions has been going up quickly in the past decade, reversing the long-held public policy that tax monies should pay for most of the tuition and the rest of the expenses of public higher education. Quietly year by year, privatization of a public good has been growing. - ...the Saudis are about to hit their peak production, if they haven't already
- The estate tax represents a profoundly American idea: Although parents should be able to pass on wealth to their children, great concentrations of personal wealth should not grow unchecked from generation to generation. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt put it, "Inherited economic power is as inconsistent with the ideals of this generation as inherited political power was inconsistent with the ideals of the generation which established our government."
- A UN report has found that the world is more unequal today than it was 10 years ago, despite considerable economic growth in many regions.
- Black and poor Americans receive less life-saving medical treatment than their white and well-off compatriots, health researchers said in separate studies suggesting that inequality is worsening.
- Rushing to beat an October deadline, when the biggest overhaul of the bankruptcy law in 25 years goes into effect, rising numbers of Americans seeking to have their debts erased have filed for protection.
- With corporations sitting on more than a trillion dollars in idle cash, with tax breaks helping create astonishing increases in wealth at the top, the people who make this economy work deserve some cash of their own. They also need it.
- The rising price of gasoline troubles Americans, because it threatens our sustaining, cultural illusion of our freedom of mobility -- a commercial con job that, over time, has served to transform us from the citizens of a sprawling republic into de facto slaves of the corporate classes. Our masters have the mobility -- we have a long commute.
- If the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped steadily for twenty years it would be front page and leading broadcast news day after day until government took action. That 32 million of our population have their housing, food, and clothing "index" drop steadily for more than 30 years is worth only an occasional feature story about an individual or statistical fragments in back pages of our most influential news organizations. An unnecessary poverty class is shameful in "the leader of the free world" and the richest one at that. - An oil expert and author who correctly forecast $3 per gallon gasoline in the United States this year says the price will reach $5 next year.
- The world could run out of time to develop cleaner alternatives to oil and other fossil fuels before depletion drives prices through the roof, a leading Dutch energy researcher said on Thursday.
- In a newly released book, investment banker Matthew R Simmons convincingly demonstrates that, far from being capable of increasing its output, Saudi Arabia is about to face the exhaustion of its giant fields and, in the relatively near future, will probably experience a sharp decline in output.
- President George Bush, a man who has never soiled his hands with a hard day’s work for a day’s pay in his life, promotes illegal alien migration by saying, "They do work that Americans won’t do." What he really means is--corporations welcome illegal aliens so they can work for slave wages which aids his corporate friends to help buy more Lear Jets and drive Rolls Royces along with a third home in Aspen, Colorado.
- The majority of people who place bets on gasoline expect prices to keep surging this year.
- In South Florida, housing analyst Jack McCabe said the housing market has reached its pinnacle and as interest rates increase over the next year, prices will begin to decline. The hardest-hit market will be new condominiums, McCabe said.
- High gas prices may not only pinch your wallet at the pump but also at the supermarket - Everybody has started to pick on the poor Americans:
- The US continues its descent into the Third World, but you would never know it from news reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July payroll jobs release.
- by Michael Ruppert Big Oil tells us that actual peak is further away than we know it to be. And the fact that in some cases they are even acknowledging a possible peak in three to five years means that it’s probably here right now. Remember Karen Silkwood? - International oil companies have advertising campaigns warning that the world is running out of oil and calling on the public to help the industry do something about it.
- CAFTA and NAFTA are not simply agreements; rather, they set up authorities that trump federal, state, and local laws and constitutions. When our elected officials signed CAFTA into law, they signed over a piece of our sovereignty. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress and only Congress the power to regulate trade. NAFTA, on the other hand, sets up a tribunal to rule on all maters of trade
- If one puts all this together, it is hard to escape the conclusion we just may be very close to Hubbert's peak right now and, some day, 2005 will be declared the year of peak oil.
- Bush has thrown the U.S. government deeply into the red by combining a massive trillion dollar tax cut for the rich with stupendous imperial "defense" expenditures sold to the populace on a shifting set of false pretenses that merged the imperial occupation of Iraq (a key Bush II project from day one) with something called "a war on terrorism." Boldly linking his twin imperatives of Empire and Inequality, Bush has used fear and deception to cover the gaping disconnect between (a) his claim that we are all united in a war for our shared survival and (b) his stupendous giveaways to the privileged few.
- Washington has reportedly expressed ‘serious concerns’ over India’s plan to buy natural gas from Iran.
- Shaky lending, interest-only loans, no down payments, a US government that is $8 trillion in debt due to Washington’s profligate spending, and a “ticking-time bomb” of adjustable-rate mortgages that will reset within three years -- the table is set for a disaster of Biblical proportions. If we hit a bump in the economic road ahead (rising gas prices? recession?) the “Land of the free” will be knee deep in bankruptcies and foreclosures. We’ll all be fighting for a soft spot under the freeway onramp.
- Nearly 4 million children live with parents who had no jobs in the previous year, an increase of 1 million since the beginning of the decade, a national charity says. That's 5 percent of all 72.5 million children living in the United States.
- Immigrants are not swamping the U.S. health care system and use it far less than native-born Americans, according to a study released on Monday.
- Solidarity officially fell apart at the AFL-CIO Monday as the service employees and Teamsters unions -- two of the biggest in the federation -- pulled out of the national labor body, an expected move that could hit the bottom line of labor organizations here.
- As oil prices remain volatile the markets do their best to forecast future prices. Unfortunately this is not an easy task. While it may appear extraordinary to outsiders one of the main problems in the oil market is the reliability of basic statistics.
- The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost taxpayers $314 billion, and the Congressional Budget Office projects additional expenses of perhaps $450 billion over the next 10 years.
- The powers that be absolutely rely on our lethargy, our rampant doubts, the attitude that says that it's just too difficult or too impracticable to break away. After all, to quit a bland but stable job, to follow your own path implies breaking the rules and asking hard questions and dissing the status quo. And they absolutely cannot have that.
- In a startling turn of events, a new commodity has surpassed jobs as the number one US export. Starting with Iraq, President Bush has dedicated himself to exporting economic injustice, which Americans possess in such abundance that it has become our top export. Here in America, we are living one of the biggest lies perpetrated in human history, and if our ruling plutocracy has its way, the rest of the world will one day enjoy the pleasant fiction that they live in a nation of justice and economic opportunity. Sadly, the notion of "of the people, by the people, and for the people" is in its final throes.
- What Kind of Country Destroys the Job Market for Its Own Citizens? - Selina, her husband, and four children are among the 1.2 billion people in the world living on less than a dollar a day -- what the United Nations calls 'extreme poverty.' - Pay attention, damnit: More than 6,000 Americans are killed on the job every year. More than three million are injured, at least half of them seriously. Another 60,000 die from cancer, lung and heart ailments and other diseases caused by exposure to toxic substances on the job.
- "Many of the overheated real estate markets throughout the country have become unaffordable for the majority of the population," said Jack McCabe, a housing industry analyst in Deerfield Beach. "Many people are paying well over 50 percent of their income for shelter. It leaves no money for savings or sometimes even for recreation." - The Bush Cheney Regime, as well as Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, are deliberately doing nothing about the speculative real estate market bubble in the United States, writes economic analyst Al Martin. Why? So that the "stupid money, being sucked in, will finance the exit of smart Republican money."
- These findings come as the Senate is poised to vote this month on repeal of the estate tax
- The only hope for meeting growing world demand for oil is to tap Saudi Arabia's reserves. A Bush advisor on energy says those reserves don't exist.
- Bush and his special interest allies trust politicians to make a one-size-fits-all decision about all cases, regardless of the facts. They don't trust juries made up of people like you, your friends and your neighbors to decide based on the facts and evidence in each individual case. - The US and Britain are putting the multinational corporations that created poverty in charge of its relief
- Food is energy. And it takes energy to get food. These two facts, taken together, have always established the biological limits to the human population and always will
- To anyone who has slogged through a wage-slave job or had a domineering boss, a collectively run cooperative sounds like a workers' paradise. It has no hierarchy and no supervisors because everyone is an owner. Everyone makes the same amount of money and everyone is responsible for making the business work. Everyone does all the jobs. No one gets summarily fired. Decisions are made by consensus. At the end of the year, some money goes to charity and some is invested back into the business. The rest of the profits, instead of enriching one or two individuals, are returned to all the worker-owners -- a rising tide lifting many boats
- Worst-ever crisis looms, says analyst · Surging demand to keep prices high
- The chances of having a large income but not paying taxes on any of it are growing, according to the data, issued in the Internal Revenue Service's annual report to Congress on well-to-do Americans who live tax free. About one in every 436 high-income Americans paid no taxes in 2002, up from one in 531 in 2001 and one in 1,010 in 2000.
- Cristofaro related a series of actions by local government officials and their hired New London Development Corporation thugs that amount to nothing less than outright intimidation, harassment and extortion.
- If the idea of declaring bankruptcy has been on your mind recently, the time to act is now. The new bankruptcy law, signed by President Bush in April, is set to take effect in October of this year. The law makes it much more difficult, if not impossible, for people with unmanageable debts to get a fresh financial start in life.
- Geldof and Bono's campaign for philanthropy portrays the enemies of the poor as their saviours.
- Until about seven or eight years ago, in return for loyal service, retirees from big American firms could look forward to having their health care coverage and that of their spouse paid for by their company until death. Then the accountants and Ivy League business graduates started showing the boss how many millions could be saved by simply eliminating that perk. - Right-wingers tell you why it can't work. We tell you why they're wrong.
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