Unique among the countries on earth, the US government insists that its laws and dictates take precedence over the sovereignty of nations. Washington asserts the power of US courts over foreign nationals and claims extra-territorial jurisdiction of US courts over foreign activities of which Washington or American interest groups disapprove.
If anything happens in the banking sector – Britain will be one of the first to feel its effects and your hard-earned, tax paid savings will be used to save them this time.
The Washington Post‘s Catherine Rampell devoted a column to a popular Washington pastime: trying to get young people angry at their parents and grandparents so that they are not bothered by the enormous upward redistribution of income taking place in this country.
The IMF is the leading international monetary agency whose public purpose is to maintain the stability of the global financial system through loans linked to proposals designed to enhance economic recovery and growth. In fact, the IMF has been under the control of the US and Western European states and its policies have been designed to further the expansion, domination and profits […]
Lagarde hinted that the crisis could spread more broadly across the financial system, suggesting that emerging market and energy sector companies defaulting on their payments could “infect” banks and state treasuries.
For some inexplicable reason, the hard-earned money you deposit in the bank is not considered “security” or “collateral.” It is just a loan to the bank, and you must stand in line along with the other creditors in hopes of getting it back. State and local governments must also stand in line, although their deposits are considered “secured,” since they remain junior to the derivative claims with “super-priority.”
In the abstract, capitalism and slavery are fundamentally counterposed systems. One is based on free labor, and the other, on forced labor. However, in practice, Capitalism itself would have been impossible without slavery.
In the United States, scholars have demonstrated that profit wasn’t made just from Southerners selling the cotton that slaves picked or the cane they cut. Slavery was central to the establishment of the industries that today dominate the U.S. economy: real estate, insurance and finance.
In this U.S.-centered worldview, China and Russia loom as the great potential adversaries – defined as independent power centers from the United States as they create the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as an alternative to NATO, and the AIIB as an alternative to the IMF and World Bank tandem. The very name, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, implies that transportation systems and other infrastructure will be financed by governments, not relinquished into private hands to become rent-extracting opportunities financed by U.S.-centered bank credit to turn the rent into a flow of interest payments.
British state pensions are among the lowest in the world, paying out a mere 38 percent of what the recipient earned when working, according to the Organisation for Development and Cooperation (OECD).
The OECD report, Pensions at a Glance, makes a comparative study of pensions in 34 countries. Only in Chile and Mexico was the replacement income as a proportion of average earnings lower than in the UK. The figure of 38 percent compares with 90 percent in the Netherlands and 80 percent in Spain and Italy.
Financial capitalism is photophobic; it doesn’t like the light and thrives on opacity”, says Gerardo Pisarello. He is deputy Mayor of Barcelona, where the panel he speaks on takes place. This late November event is the culmination of several days of convergences between NGOs and social movements to formulate a ‘Common Project on Debt for Europe’. Shedding light on the […]
The catastrophic failures of the Western banking system mandate a new vision. These transformations, current and proposed, are constructive steps toward streamlining the banking system, eliminating the risks that have devastated individuals and governments, democratizing money, and promoting sustainable and prosperous economies.
In the U.S., same question arises. Trump, another fascist thug, tramples truth, dignity, and reason, openly spouts racist drivel and blatantly fabricates nonsense, and we blame him and along with him everyone who buys his shenanigans. But do we ask how circumstances have gotten to the point where this is possible – and, even more important, what we could have been doing differently over the years, so there wouldn’t have been an audience for Trump-ish sentiments?
