$20-$30 trillion in offshore tax havens: a criminal conspiracy by the 1% to evade taxes? →

9 months ago  /  0 notes

Operation Twist Threatens Inflation In the Same Way as "Printing Money" | Dean Baker →

The Post told readers that with the Federal Reserve Board’s “Operation Twist”selling short-term debt to buy longer term debt:

“the Fed is able to bring down more stubborn long-term rates — from corporate loans to mortgages — without “printing more money” to do so. Increasing the money supply increases the chance of inflation, which invites political criticism.”

This is not true. Anything the Fed does to boost demand in the economy increases the risk of inflation. As a practical matter, the idea that there would be a problem of inflation in an economy with so much excess capacity is almost absurd on its face. But if printing money raises fears of inflation, then so should another round of operation twist.

It sounds like David McGraw needs to make a reappearance and fight the Fed! (included in the struggle to “fight the powers that be”). Ben Bernanke, a financial terrorist is really a war criminal commiting crimes of humanity on the American people and favoring the Big Banks. If you are oblvious this, please read David McGraw’s articles on the subject (he writes good investigative journalism).

11 months ago  /  7 notes  /  Source: theamericanbear

The Best Congress the Banks’ Money Can Buy →

kateoplis:

by Bill Moyers & Michael Winship

They spread money like manure on the campaign trails of key members of Congress. They unleash hordes of lobbyists on Capitol Hill, cozy up to columnists and editorial writers, spend millions on lawyers who relentlessly pick at the law, trying to rewrite or water down the regulations required for enforcement. Before you know it, what once was an attempt at genuine reform creeps back toward business as usual.

It’s happening right now with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act — passed two years ago in the wake of our disastrous financial meltdown. Just last week, for example, both parties in the House overwhelmingly approved two bills that already would change Dodd-Frank’s rules on derivatives — those convoluted trading deals recently described by the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as “the largest dark pool in our financial markets.”

Especially vulnerable is a key provision of Dodd-Frank known as the Volcker Rule, so named by President Obama after the former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. It’s an attempt to keep the banks in which you deposit your money from gambling your savings on the bank’s own, sometime risky investments. […]

A thick wallet helps, of course — lobbyists for the financial sector spent nearly half a billion dollars last year. And the congressional newspaper The Hill reports, “Members of Congress pressuring regulators to go easy on the ‘Volcker Rule’ received roughly four times as much on average in contributions from the financial industry than lawmakers pushing for a stronger rule since the 2010 election cycle, according to Public Citizen, a left-leaning group advocating for strict implementation.

“When it is all added up, opponents of a tough Volcker Rule received over 35 times as much from the financial industry — $66.7 million — than advocates for a strong stance, who received $1.9 million.” […]

All of which demonstrates, as per Bloomberg News, “that four years after Wall Street helped cause the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and prompted a $700 billion taxpayer bailout, its lobby is regaining its power to blunt or deflect efforts to rein in the banks.”

As many have said in the past, it seems that the banks rule the place…

(via theamericanbear)

1 year ago  /  53 notes  /  Source: kateoplis

Two years after the infamous ruling, support builds for a constitutional amendment →

1 year ago  /  0 notes

Why Is the ACLU Helping the Richest Americans Buy Our Elections? For decades, people inside and outside the ACLU have tried to get its board to moderate its campaign finance views, and new facts on the ground give them more ammunition. →

1 year ago  /  0 notes

HermannView: My views on Internet piracy →

uhitsjayvee:

hermannview:

hjalmart:

Concerning piracy/sharing info and open source: I sometimes wonder if it is possible (or inevitable?) that the role of money is going to diminish or even that in the end money will no longer exist because everybody will do the things they want to do. What do you think?

I think it is possible, but far off to the point of money not existing. On the other hand, I have been hoping for years that money did go away so people could download everything for free and you wouldn’t have to pay! The companies would get money by having ads. There would be more ads but you wouldn’t have to pay. An ever better approach would be to give money to an online site that would give it to the music artist. This money would fund the album and possibly the tour. Then if the music did well, you would get your money back plus more!

Money’s existence is inevitable. I think internet piracy is just an electronic shadow of the underground economies which undeniably offer cheaper and easier to process. These underground economies offer a possibly insurmountable horizon of products ranging from defective products to imitations to pirates. Furthermore, these economies offer a chance for the poor to utilize the resources otherwise only available to the rich, and I think that is why internet piracy is existent. As underground economies are coexistent with the facades of GDP and GNP, internet piracy is also coexistent with the digital economy.

It’s far-fetched to think that the money is going to end because of the need for people to supply themselves with free stuff, because everyone always wants something in return. Trade was always the most feasible way to get a product and it will still be for a few years.

I hope one day though we detach ourselves from the materialism of commodity and non-commodity trade: that one day we are able to exchange love and support for each other instead of plated coins that are only mere representations of our work and societal status. That one day, the world will be a better place to live in.

Money will exist no matter what, but I was trying to say that it will not exist in the form it is now. It is possible that money could become electronic and maybe just coins. I think the best way to reduce internet piracy is to make more things free. Once they are free then people won’t pirate them anymore. I think that there will still be some piracy for some products that are not offered, but it will be much less than it is now. I fear that if the music industry succeeds in their quest to destroy the file-sharing networks of the internet, that it will have an adverse effect on everyone. In October 2010, Limewire was destroyed by a U.S. district court and told to cease all operations. As a result, “the number of US music pirates decreased by 12 million [and] the number of people who downloaded music illicitly using P2P in the last quarter of 2010 has decreased by 43% compared to the year before.” (http://torrentfreak.com/us-music-piracy-plunges-after-limewire-shutdown-110324/) This is bad news for those who want to not pay for our products. If the big record labels win, then we will be paying exuberant prices and the prices will rise from what they are now. It will be horrible. There needs to be some sort of internet piracy out there to balance out the music industry. It is the check against the power of the music industry. Since it exists, the music industry lowers prices and releases at certain times to get people to buy the tracks provided. You say that “[internet piracy] offer[s] a chance for the poor to utilize the resources otherwise only available to the rich.” I think that is the reason that it must be kept intact, first by limiting the power of the music industry in some way.

2 years ago  /  6 notes  /  Source: hjalmart