What’s better: a military-based economy or a peace-based economy?  Jason Sibert of the Peace Economy Project, says that cutting military spending and funding human needs would create a peace economy, which would work better and become more effective and prosperous.

Sibert, a Navy veteran and the recently hired executive director of the St. Louis Peace Economy Project, has an extensive background in journalism and reporting, from sports to news. Whether writing for the Java Journal or the Progressive Populist, he reported on topics and issues he is passionate about. He is the only paid employee of the Peace Economy Project.

Since its founding in 1977 by Sister Mary Ann McGivern, the Peace Economy Project has raised questions about how much money our country spends on the military and whether those funds could be better used to support middle- and lower-class people. Basically, what it comes down to is more spending on human needs and less on guns, nuclear weapons, and F-35s. A simple question this project asks is: What should we spend money on – guns or butter?

From the Cold War to the present, the Peace Economy Project has addressed many issues: It has criticized the military-industrial complex and advocated for for healthcare, education and infrastructure reform. Not affiliated with a political party, the organization will criticize any president of any party, says Sibert.

An unchecked military-industrial complex brings many hazards, says Sibert. Overspending on the military causes the rest of the economy to suffer. Other countries allocate more money to development, and that attracts high-tech companies. Overspending on the military has also resulted in cuts to education. In addition, noting that 40 percent of US workers earn less than $15 per hour, the Peace Economy Project has become involved in the Show-Me $15 initiative aimed at raising the minimum wage in St. Louis.

“We rot internally when we spend everything on the military,” says Sibert.

Legislative and policy changes are important in the quest for a peace economy, says Sibert. So, in addition to advocating for ideas, his organization is often out on the streets collecting signatures, and then visiting legislators to show them what their constituents want.

Critics of the Peace Economy Project contend that the military is the only decent thing about America. But Sibert argues that the United States can spend less money on military, while still having an effective and beneficial foreign policy. Sibert notes that Switzerland has a smaller military, which is cheaper, but is in need of natural resources, and that other countries depend on trade. Sibert’s idea of a better world economy would be to see more cooperation between power nations, such as Russia, China, the European Union, and the United States, as well as more cooperation in the United Nations.

“We all live in the same world,” says Sibert, “which explains why we need an economy that focuses on  human needs and peace for everyone.”

The Peace Economy Project collaborates with several other organizations, including the St. Louis Chapter of the United Nations Association, Veterans for Peace, and Jobs With Justice. Support for the Peace Economy Project comes from membership dues and individual donors.

Sibert hopes that more citizens will become aware of the need to change from a military-based economy to a more stable, peace-based economy. To do that, we need to become more educated, by reading and watching the news, paying attention to the world, and knowing the political pushes and pulls of it.

“The State Department and its diplomats are as important as the generals,” he says. “Problems need to be solved diplomatically instead of lethally.”

The post Guns or butter? Butter, says Peace Economy Project appeared first on Occasional Planet.

And now, a word about the brown marmorated stink bug. If you haven’t heard of it, count yourself lucky. This autumn the stink bug, or Halyomorpha halys, has rocketed to the top of the most-hated invasive list. The stink bug is an insect that makes the skin of even the most bug tolerant crawl. Here in the Northeast, this fall’s quasi-biblical invasion is in full swing. And we’re not alone. This noxious Asian native has migrated across the continent, and farmers, homeowners, and agricultural researchers are desperately searching for effective measures to eliminate this wily enemy.

Who and what is this prehistoric-appearing nemesis that spreads fear and loathing wherever it’s found? Out in the fields, stink bugs are causing millions of dollars of damage to a variety of crops. In homes, the stink bug clings to sun-drenched exterior walls and speckles the insides and outsides of window screens. Seeking shelter to hibernate for winter, the bug finds its way indoors through the tiniest of cracks. It clings to window shades. It hides in air-conditioning filters. It snuggles down in the folds of pillowcases, window blinds, and blankets. It drops from the ceiling onto unsuspecting sleepers, awakening them to paroxysms of fight-or-flight. Capture or squash them at the risk of having their stomach-churning coriander-like odor pervading fingers or rooms for days. And their sound in flight—a spine-chilling, buzz-saw sound that far outstrips what one might expect for their one-half-inch-size—is the stuff of insectophobes’ worst nightmares.

Connecting the dots

Is there a lesson in the destructive tale of the stink bug? Of course there is, and it’s important that we connect the dots and acknowledge the larger picture. Without much irony, you might declare that “stink bugs are us.”  That’s because the bug’s presence here in the U.S. is just one of many examples of the negative environmental impacts of a global market fed by our voracious appetite for low-cost consumer goods. In other words, the stink bug established a beachhead in our homes and on our farms as a direct result of our preference for low-cost t-shirts, pants, shoes, and small appliances produced in factories located in low-wage markets far from these shores.

So how did the stink bug, a native of China and Japan, establish a comfortable niche here on the American continent? Researchers believe that the bugs made their first inroads in Pennsylvania, where the first sightings occurred in Allentown in 1998. Speculation is that the stink bug stowed away in wooden shipping crates transporting either manufactured or agricultural goods from Asia. Over the next two decades, their territory spread to twenty-eight states. Today the number of states in which they’ve found a cozy haven stands at forty-one.

This is not a joke

Regardless of its humorous-sounding name, the stink bug is no joke. For home owners, the stink bug is a seasonal nuisance, but for farmers the impact is far more serious.

Just how dire is the stink-bug threat to agricultural production? Unfortunately, the average stink bug isn’t a fussy eater, feeding on both fruit and vegetable crops. The stink bug consumes peaches, apples, cherries, grapes, pears, tomatoes, peppers, corn, soybeans, and green beans, and more.

To understand the stink bugs’ spreading economic impact, consider the travails of two agricultural sectors: the apple and wine industries. In 2010, apple growers in the mid-Atlantic states reported losing 18% of their crop at a cost of $37 million due to stink-bug damage.  Think about the experience of wine producers in the Northwest. Stink bugs feed on the grapevines and then hitch a ride on the harvested grapes as they make their way through the wine-making process. During the process, the stink bug’s musty stink, or in more scientific terms, the stress compound identified as (E)-2-decenal, fouls the aroma of the fermented grapes. And unless wine drinkers’ olfactory expectations change dramatically, the dire economic consequences to the wine industry are obvious.

The stink bug problem is, in fact, so dire that the USDA’s Specialty Crop Research Initiative now has fifty researchers rushing to look into ways to combat this stinky destructor. Right now those researchers believe that weaponizing another Asian invasive pest, the tiny, parasitoid Trissolcus japonicus—or, as they are more affectionately known, the samurai wasp—will help control and decrease the population of stink bugs. How does the samurai wasp accomplish biologically what other measures do not? In one of the cruelties of nature, the samurai wasp lays its eggs inside the eggs of the brown marmorated stink bug, thereby destroying the stink bug’s brood.

Doing even a cursory search online about stick bugs reveals that researchers and agricultural agencies are so alarmed about the stink bug problem that the bug has the distinction of having has its own website dedicated to educating the public and reporting on advancements in management strategies. (www.stopbmsb) The stink bug also has its own online early-detection and distribution mapping system, hosted by the Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health, that encourages the public to report stink bug sitings.

The post Invasion of the stink bug: Icky and economically dangerous appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Now that it’s 2016, it’s time to fact-check some of the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it predictions that President Obama’s critics made before his 2012 re-election. In an article published today, Think Progress highlights four big things that were supposed to happen by 2016, if Obama were re-elected. [Spoiler alert: They didn’t.]

1. Gas was supposed to cost $6.05 per gallon.

In March 2012, on the floor of the United States Senate, Mike Lee (R-UT) predicted that if Obama was reelected gas would cost $6.05 per gallon by the start 2015. Lee said that gas prices would rise 5 cents for every month Obama was in office, ultimately reaching $6.60 per gallon.

Lee was not alone. Newt Gingrich, running for the GOP nomination, predicted that if Obama was reelected he would push gas to “$10 a gallon.” Gingrich said he would reduce gas prices dramatically by reversing Obama’s energy policies. Gingrich flanked himself with campaign signs promising $2.50 gas if he was elected.

Today, the nationwide average for a gallon of gas is $2.00.

Some of the reasons for the decline in gas prices were beyond Obama’s control — including weak international demand and OPEC’s failure to reduce supply. Also driving prices lower was increased gas production in the U.S., which has doubled over the last 6 years. The policies that Lee, Gingrich and others criticized — the rejection of Keystone XL pipeline, more EPA regulation and limiting drilling on public land — have not gotten in the way of historically low prices.

2. Unemployment was supposed to be stuck at over 8%

In September 2012, Mitt Romney predicted that if Obama is reelected “you’re going to see chronic high unemployment continue four years or longer.” At the time, the unemployment rate was 8.1% and had been between 8.1% and 8.3% for the entire year.

What would breaking out of “chronic high unemployment” look like in a Romney presidency? Romney pledged that, if elected, he could bring the unemployment rate down to 6% by January 2017.

The unemployment rate currently stands at 5.0% and has been under 6% since September 2014. Since January 2013, the economy has created over 7.8 million new jobs.

3. The stock market was supposed to crash

Immediately after Obama won reelection in November 2012, many commenters predicted that the stock market was toast.

Charles Bilderman, the author of the “Intelligent Investing” column at Forbes, wrote that the “market selloff after Obama’s re-election [was] no accident,” predicting “stocks are dropping with no bottom in sight.” Bilderman said that the policies the Obama administration would pursue in his second term would “crash stocks.”

On Bloomberg TV, investor Marc Faber predicted that, because of Obama’s reelection, the stock market would drop at least 20%. According to Faber, “Republicans understand the problem of excessive debt better than Mr. Obama who basically doesn’t care about piling up debt.” Faber joked that investors seeking to protect their assets should “buy themselves a machine gun.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average currently stands at 17,425.03 and, despite a downturn in 2015, is up over 27% since Obama was reelected.

4. The entire U.S. economy was supposed to collapse

Rush Limbaugh predicted that “the country’s economy is going to collapse if Obama is re-elected.” Limbaugh was confident in his prediction: “There’s no if about this. And it’s gonna be ugly. It’s gonna be gut wrenching, but it will happen.”

The economic free fall would begin, according to Limbaugh, because “California is going to declare bankruptcy” and Obama would force states like Texas to “bail them out.” California currently has a $4 billion budget surplus.

Limbaugh added, “I know mathematics, and I know economics. I know history. I know socialism, statism, Marxism, I know where it goes. I know what happens at the end of it.”

Limbaugh said the economic apocalypse could take “a year and a half, two years, three years.” It’s been three years and two months since Limbaugh’s prediction.

The U.S. economy grew at a respectable 2% in the 3rd quarter of 2014, following 3.9% growth in the second quarter.

Happily, for Americans of all political persuasions, predictions for Obama-geddon didn’t pan out. In fact, we’ve actually had a pretty decent run. I shudder to think how things might have been–especially for people without membership cards for the top 1 percent club–had we elected Mitt Romney in 2012. And with today’s Republican field of presidential candidates, we could be in even deeper doo-doo if one of them makes it all the way. Any Democrat would be better than any of these clowns. As a very smart person [my sister] said here on Occasional Planet yesterday, make it your most important New Year’s resolution to vote in 2016.  And for gawd sake, vote for the Democrat.

The post It’s 2016: What happened to all those dire, Obama-geddon predictions? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The most popular post, over the years, on Occasional Planet is: “Military Mystery: how many bases does the US have, anyway?”  American University anthropology professor, David Vine, spent six years trying to answer that question and to investigate the effect of U.S. military presence on foreign soil. In researching his subject, he traveled to U.S. military installations around the world, interviewing both the military and local residents. His findings are published in his new book, Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. (Henry Holt, 2015).

Some of David Vine’s main points:

The military admits we have an excess base capacity worldwide. It doesn’t have a clear idea, and/or doesn’t want to confirm how many bases we have. The official count is 686 but it excludes known bases in Kosovo, Kuwait, and Qatar, “secret” bases in Israel and Saudi Arabia, and who knows how many in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vine settles on 800 as a good estimate.

The sites vary from massive bases in Germany and Japan to smaller facilities in Peru and Puerto Rico, to off-the-record “black sites” run by the CIA and military intelligence. By comparison, Russia has bases in 10 countries, mostly in former Soviet states. India and China have none.

Maintaining installations and troops overseas cost at least $85 billion in 2014. Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq brings the total to $156 billion—money, Vine says, that could be better spent on education, infrastructure, housing and health care.

Our presence in other countries provokes hatred toward Americans. Our bases and troops in the Middle East have been major catalysts for anti-Americanism and radicalization.

Foreign bases heighten military tensions and discourage diplomatic solutions, while, at the same time, encourage excess military spending.

Imprisonment, torture, and abuse at bases from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib have generated worldwide disgust and damaged our reputation. Drone bases enable missile strikes that have killed hundreds of civilians, producing further outrage.

The official line is that these military bases are defensive and make us, and the host countries, safer. Yet they have functioned more as launching pads for interventionist wars that have resulted in repeated disasters costing trillions of dollars and millions of lives from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan.

David Vine: On the presence of U.S. foreign military bases as a catalyst for war:

Placing U.S. bases near the borders of countries such as China, Russia, and Iran, for example, increases threats to their security and encourages them to respond by boosting their own military spending. Again, imagine how U.S. leaders would respond if Iran were to build even a single small base in Mexico, Canada, or the Caribbean.

Notably, the most dangerous moment during the Cold War—the Cuban missile crisis—revolved around the creation of Soviet nuclear missile facilities roughly ninety miles from the U.S. border. Similarly, one of the most dangerous episodes in the post-Cold War era—Russia’s seizure of Crimea and its involvement in the war in Ukraine—has come after the United States encouraged the enlargement of NATO and built a growing number of bases closer and closer to Russian borders.

Indeed, a major motivation behind Russia’s actions has likely been its interest in maintaining perhaps the most important of its small collection of foreign bases, the naval base in the Crimean port Sevastopol. West-leaning Ukrainian leaders’ desire to join NATO posed a direct threat to the base, and thus to the power of the Russian navy.

Perhaps most troubling of all, the creation of new U.S. bases to protect against an alleged future Chinese or Russian threat runs the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. By provoking a Chinese and Russian military response, these bases may help create the very threat against which they are supposedly designed to protect. In other words, far from making the world a safer place, U.S. bases overseas can actually make war more likely and America less secure.

Questioning American military empire

At no time in history has a nation had such a vast international military presence as the United States does today. Our foreign bases serve US “interests” meaning the geopolitical/economic/financial interests of banks and corporations. The military and its war industries account for a large share of the budget while most Americans are experiencing declining incomes and quality of life.

The hubristic attitude, shared by Republicans, Democrats, and progressives alike, is that the United States is “exceptional,” and therefore has some sort of self-appointed moral right to militarily and economically dominate the world. We decide when a national leader “has to go” and initiate a covert or overt “regime change.” We assassinate identified “enemies” with drones along with innocent bystanders referred to not as “human beings” but as “collateral damage.” We ignore international law and the United Nations if they get in the way of our pursuing our “interests” in a country or region. We prefer destroyed, failed states that we can control to independent, functioning states that refuse to be US vassals (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine, Syria). Sadly, the American people are generally comfortable with all this, or indifferent.

Absent in the media, among elected officials, or in the general public, is a debate about whether we should continue this hubristic and destructive hegemonic agenda. The only voices raised against a US-dominated, unipolar world come from the Left, and a few on the Libertarian Right. Those voices are routinely slapped down and ridiculed as being overly critical, negative, ideological, unrealistic, disloyal, utopian, hyperbolic, naïve, conspiratorial, weak, unpatriotic, and, when critical of the role of Israel in the middle east, anti-Semitic. Rarely do Americans engage with the challenging issues raised by the Left.

The US public, perhaps the most uninformed in the developed world, may never question, or worse yet, even be aware of, the vast number of US military bases and operations around the globe. Our jingoistic media supports our corporate-backed military agenda by demonizing any country that refuses to align itself with our interests. Fear-based war mongering is routinely served up as “news” on CNN, FOX, and in the pages of the New York Times. Mainstream media-driven, official narratives abound, dissenting voices occasionally, but rarely appear, while everywhere serious analysis or dialog is discouraged.

The US debt is now at 101% of GDP, much of that from unpaid for wars and an unsustainable and bloated military/intelligence budget. By comparison, China’s debt is 64.37% of GDP, and Russia’s is 11.66% of GDP. (http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org) The powerful British Empire, once controlled 25% of the world. Eventually, it fell under the weight of its overextended global presence. Given the stagnation of our economy and the deterioration of our infrastructure, we are clearly headed down that road.

In 2004, the late Chalmers Johnson, “cold-warrior,” Korean War veteran, CIA consultant, and university professor, wrote the following prescient analysis:

Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can’t begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations, or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order. Militarism and imperialism are Siamese twins joined at the hip; each thrives off the other. Already highly advanced in our country, they are both on the verge of a quantum leap that will almost surely stretch our military beyond its capabilities, bringing about fiscal insolvency and very possibly doing mortal damage to our republican institutions.

The post The case for closing our overseas military bases appeared first on Occasional Planet.

On May 12, Joseph Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institute published a new report titled “Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity.” You can download the report and watch a two-hour presentation and panel discussion on it here.

Guest speakers at the report launch were Senator Elizabeth Warren and Mayor of New York city, Bill DeBlasio, along with a slew of really interesting panelists. I started watching the event over breakfast, thinking I would turn it off after I finished off my smoothie, but I kept watching—all two hours of it! Stiglitz offered one of the best explanations of what went wrong with the economy I have heard to date. And he offers a clear path for making it work for the majority of Americans.

Bernie Sanders entering the race for president and Joe Stiglitz launching this report on how to fix the economy are truly hopeful events. I’m talking real hope here, something I have not felt in a long time. There’s been no shortage of ideas on how to fix the economy—break up the big banks, raise the minimum wage, raise the cap on Social Security taxes, raise taxes on companies that offshore jobs. But this slingshot approach is inadequate to what is really a systemic and structural problem. Stiglitz offers a fresh look at the causes of our economic downturn, and puts forward a comprehensive list of solutions, all of which have to be addressed, if the economy is to work for everyone.

Stiglitz’s list of the causes of growing income inequality:

• More market power, less competition
• The growth of the financial sector
• The ‘shareholder revolution,’ the rise of CEO pay, and the squeezing of workers
• Lower taxes for the wealthy
• The end of full-employment monetary policy
• The stifling of worker voice
• The sinking floor of labor standards
• Racial discrimination

Stiglitz’s solutions for rebalancing the economy:

• Make markets competitive
• Fix the financial sector
• Incentivize long-term business growth
• Rebalance the tax and transfer system
• Make full employment the goal
• Empower workers
• Expand access to labor markets and opportunities for advancement
• Expand economic security and opportunity

The report, clearly written and easy to read, goes in-depth on each topic. It refutes the idea that there is a mysterious market force, or “invisible hand” or “natural” business cycle, or changes in the global economy that is causing unemployment and stagnant wages. The economy is in shambles, Stiglitz says, because, for the last thirty years, the rich and powerful have written the rules that govern the economy. Both Republicans and Democrats have participated in this orgy of “rule making for the rich,” which has resulted in the systematic destruction of the middle class, and the increasing impoverishment of the working poor.

Inequality has been a choice, he says, made by the few and foisted on the majority who were sold a bill of goods. It is within our power to reverse those rules. Here’s an excerpt from the report, my emphasis:

Rules are the regulatory and legal frameworks that make up the economy, like those affecting property ownership, corporate formation, labor law, copyright, antitrust, monetary, tax, and expenditure policy, and other economic structures. They also include the institutions that perpetuate discrimination, including structural discrimination—an entire system of rules, regulations, expenditure policies, and normative practices that exclude populations from the economy and economic opportunity. Unequal socio-economic outcomes for women and people of color are rooted in this kind of structural discrimination, in addition to other forms of bias. . . .

Our challenge, then, is to rewrite the rules to work for everyone. To do so, we must re-learn what we thought we knew about how modern economies work. We must also devise new policies to eliminate the distortions that pervade our financial sector, our corporate rules, our macroeconomic, monetary, tax, expenditure, and competition policies, our labor relations, and our political structures. It is important to engage all of these challenges simultaneously, since our economy is a system and these elements interact. This will not be easy; we must push to achieve these fundamental changes at a time when the American people have lost faith in their government’s ability to act in service of the common good.

The problems we face today are in large part the result of economic decisions we made—or failed to make—beginning in the late 1970s.

The changes occurring in our economy, politics, and society have been dramatic, and there is a corresponding sense of urgency in this report. We cannot afford to go forward with minor tweaks and hope that they do the trick. We know the answer: they will not, and the suffering that will occur in the meantime is unconscionable. And, as we explain, this is not just about the present, but the future. The policies of today are “baking in” the America of 2050: unless we change course, we will be a country with slower growth, ever more inequality, and ever less equality of opportunity. Inequality has been a choice, and it is within our power to reverse it.

The good news is that Stiglitz’s report is not just an intellectual exercise. Along with the Roosevelt Institute, he will be releasing a series of specific proposals to help rewrite the rules of the economy in favor of ordinary Americans. As the presidential campaign heats up, I have no doubt that Bernie will be onboard, but will Hillary or Jeb Bush? Joe Stiglitz is one of many official advisors to the Clinton campaign, but I’m not holding my breath that she will embrace the kind of changes he envisions.

We are entering an interesting time in history, when the majority of voters are aware that, despite cheery statements from the Obama administration to the contrary, there has been no economic recovery for ordinary Americans. Also, the majority of voters know that banks and corporations will be spending obscene amounts of money to elect Hilary Clinton, or the GOP candidate, who will continue to write rules that favor the elite.

The time is ripe for genuine progressive ideas to take hold because, for once, they have a chance to resonate with people across the political spectrum. Bernie Sanders and Joe Stiglitz, together, offer real solutions to an economy, and a country, gone off the rails.

The post Joe Stiglitz wants to rewrite the rules of the American economy appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are putting a new focus on the Glass-Steagall Act, which was, unfortunately, repealed in 1999 and led directly to the financial crises we have faced ever since. Here’s a bit of history of this legislative debacle from an older post on Occasional Planet published several years ago :

On November 4, 1999, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) took to the floor of the senate to make an impassioned speech against the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, (alternately known as Gramm Leach Biley, or the “Financial Modernization Act”) Repeal of Glass-Steagall would  allow banks to merge with insurance companies and investments houses. He said “I want to sound a warning call today about this legislation, I think this legislation is just fundamentally terrible.”

According to Sam Stein, writing in 2009 in the Huffington Post, only eight senators voted against the repeal. Senior staff in the Clinton administration and many now in the Obama administration praised the repeal as the “most important breakthrough in the world of finance and politics in decades”

According to Stein, Dorgan warned that banks would become “too big to fail” and claimed that Congress would “look back in a decade and say we should not have done this.” The repeal of Glass Steagall, of course, was one of several bad policies that helped lead to the current economic crisis we are in now.

Dorgan wasn’t entirely alone. Sens. Barbara Boxer, Barbara Mikulski, Richard Shelby, Tom Harkin, Richard Bryan, Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders also cast nay votes. The late Sen. Paul Wellstone opposed the bill, and warned at the time that Congress was “about to repeal the economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.”

Democratic Senators had sufficient knowledge about the dangers of the repeal of Glass Steagall, but chose to ignore it.  Plenty of experts warned that it would be impossible to “discipline” banks once the legislation was passed, and that they would get too big and complex to regulate. Editorials against repeal appeared in the New York Times and other mainstream venues, suggesting that if the new megabanks were to falter, they could take down the entire global economy, which is exactly what happened. Stein quotes Ralph Nader who said at the time, “We will look back at this and wonder how the country was so asleep. It’s just a nightmare.”

According to Stein:

“The Senate voted to pass Gramm-Leach-Bliley by a vote of 90-8 and reversed what was, for more than six decades, a framework that had governed the functions and reach of the nation’s largest banks. No longer limited by laws and regulations commercial and investment banks could now merge. Many had already begun the process, including, among others, J.P. Morgan and Citicorp. The new law allowed it to be permanent. The updated ground rules were low on oversight and heavy on risky ventures. Historically in the business of mortgages and credit cards, banks now would sell insurance and stock.

Nevertheless, the bill did not lack champions, many of whom declared that the original legislation — forged during the Great Depression — was both antiquated and cumbersome for the banking industry. Congress had tried 11 times to repeal Glass-Steagall. The twelfth was the charm.

“Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,” said then-Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. “This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.”

“I welcome this day as a day of success and triumph,” said Sen. Christopher Dodd, (D-Conn.).

“The concerns that we will have a meltdown like 1929 are dramatically overblown,” said Sen. Bob Kerrey, (D-Neb.).

“If we don’t pass this bill, we could find London or Frankfurt or years down the road Shanghai becoming the financial capital of the world,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “There are many reasons for this bill, but first and foremost is to ensure that U.S. financial firms remain competitive.”

Unfortunately, the statement by Chuck Schumer sounds very much like it was prepared by a lobbyist. This vote underscores the way in which our elected officials are so heavily swayed by corporate and banking money that our voices and needs become irrelevant. It is why we need publicly funded elections. Democratic senators, the so-called representatives of the people, fell over themselves to please their Wall Street donors knowing full well there were dangers for the country at large, for ordinary Americans, in repealing Glass-Steagall.

It is important to hold Democratic senators (along with current members of the Obama administration) accountable for the significant role they have played in the current economic crisis that has caused so much suffering for ordinary Americans. In case you were wondering, the current Democratic Senators who voted yes to repeal the Glass-Steagall act are the following:

Daniel Akaka – Max Baucus – Evan Bayh – Jeff Bingaman – Kent Conrad – Chris Dodd – Dick Durbin – Dianne Feinstein – Daniel Inouye – Tim Johnson – John Kerry – Herb Kohl – Mary Landrieu – Frank Lautenberg – Patrick Leahy – Carl Levin – Joseph Lieberman – Blanche Lincoln – Patty Murray – Jack Reed – Harry Reid – Jay Rockefeller – Chuck Schumer – Ron Wyden

Former House members who voted for repeal who are current Senators.

Mark Udall [as of 2010] – Debbie Stabenow – Bob Menendez – Tom Udall -Sherrod Brown

No longer in the Senate, or passed away, but who voted for repeal:

Joe Biden -Ted Kennedy -Robert Byrd

These Democratic senators would like to forget or make excuses for their enthusiastic vote on the repeal of Glass Steagall, but it is important to hold them accountable for helping their bank donors realize obscene profits while their constituents lost jobs, savings and homes. And it is important to demand that they serve the interests of the American people.

The post Glass-Steagall: Warren and Sanders bring it back into focus appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Since 2009, the Obama administration has been negotiating the Trans-Pacific Parnership (TPP) trade agreement in secret. Only lawyers and advisors representing banks and corporations, and trade representatives from other nations are allowed to participate. Until recently, senators and congressmen had been left in the dark. Under protest, Obama gave them very limited access to the document. He told them they are forbidden, under threat of government prosecution, from discussing the trade deal with the public.

Rep. Alan Grayson said “Having seen what I’ve seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty. And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that’s fair to say from what I’ve seen so far. But I’m not allowed to tell you why!”

Obama, trying his best to sell a pig in a poke, is pushing the TPP as promoting “free trade,” which he equates with creating more jobs and prosperity for the American people. He claims it will be “good for the middle class.” This. of course, is exactly what Bill Clinton said about NAFTA in 1993.

A report published by Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch in 2014 reviews the promises and failures of NAFTA:

Like the TPP, NAFTA was sold to the U.S. public in 1993 with grand promises. The deal would create hundreds of thousands of good jobs here–170,000 jobs within the pact’s first two years, according the Peterson Institute for International Economics. U.S. farmers would export their way to wealth. NAFTA would bring Mexico to a first-world level of economic prosperity and stability, providing new economic opportunities that would reduce immigration to the United States. Environmental standards would improve.

Twenty years later, the grand projections and promises made by NAFTA’s proponents remain unfulfilled.

The report details how destructive NAFTA has been for the citizens of the United States and Mexico:

The data show that NAFTA proponents’ projections of broad economic benefits from the deal have failed to materialize. Instead, millions have suffered job loss, wage stagnation, and economic instability from NAFTA. Scores of environmental, health and other public interest policies have been challenged. Consumer safeguards, including key food safety protections, have been rolled back. And NAFTA supporters’ warnings about the chaos that would engulf Mexico, and a new wave of migration from Mexico, if NAFTA was not implemented have indeed come to pass, but ironically because of the devastation of many Mexicans’ livelihoods occurring, in part, because NAFTA was implemented.

What exactly is “free trade?”

Independent political writer, “Gaius Publius,” explains the meaning of the term “free trade” in the context of the TPP.

[I]n essence “free trade” means one thing to most of us and another thing to people with money. For us, “free trade” is about exchange of goods. Not for those with almost all the money in the world. For them, “free trade” is and always has been this:

“Free trade” means “unrestricted capital flow.” It’s the right of money to flow anywhere it wants, seeking any profit it can, unrestricted by any government, and then flow back out again on a whim.

Before FDR, this is what “liberalism” meant; it’s why people like the infamous free-market economist Friedrich Hayek are considered “classic liberal economists.” FDR so changed the definition of “liberal,” in fact—by allowing a place for government in the management of the economy—that it led people like Hayek to object that the name had been misappropriated:

In 1977, Hayek was critical of the Lib-Lab pact, in which the British Liberal Party agreed to keep the British Labour government in office. Writing to The Times, Hayek said, “May one who has devoted a large part of his life to the study of the history and the principles of liberalism point out that a party that keeps a socialist government in power has lost all title to the name ‘Liberal’. Certainly no liberal can in future vote ‘Liberal'”.

This “free market” stuff has been with us for centuries in the West, and it’s always about capital and the rights of capital to be free of government. Guess who that benefits? If you said “capitalists and the politicians who serve them,” you’d be right. You can’t have a predatory Industrial Revolution without that kind of “philosophy” in place as a cover story.

Needless to say, the cover story is still in place. Welcome to the world of TPP.

The TPP “free trade” deal, up close and personal

Besides losing your job to someone in one of the TPP countries, there are other ways the TPP could directly impact your life. For example, the TPP will free banks and corporations from the constraints of government laws and regulations—both here and in other signatory countries—by setting up a corporate-run legal tribunal that would supersede all government jurisprudence. What exactly does that mean?

Lambert Strether, writing at Naked Capitalism, gives us examples of how this form of absolute rule by corporations enshrined in the TPP could play out in your state or your neighborhood.

So, if you were a corporate lawyer, sitting in judgement on a TPP tribunal, totting up the damages some hapless government had wreaked against a corporation by, oh, providing its citizens with single payer health care, or preventing an oil company from poisoning their groundwater through “excessive regulation,”—or halting development to protect a historic site under local zoning ordinances, or halting the East-West Corridor to protect the Penobscot—what would you consider “distinct, reasonable, investment-backed expectations”? I’d guess it would be the Net Present Value (capitalization) calculations done by the wounded corporation itself, eh? Like on an Excel spreadsheet. What could be more credible? Or more just?

In other words, TPP elevates capitalization—the expectation of profit—as a principle to the level of, say, the Bill of Rights, or the Declaration of the Rights of Man. And then, government, when it provides concrete material benefits to its citizens, must “compensate” capitalists whenever their calculated, immaterial expectations—capitalization—have been “expropriated.” What a racket! TPP is the biggest enclosure in the history of the world!

“Arbitrary control”—absolutism—in service of capital as a global change in the constitutional order, and all done in secret. What could go wrong?

It’s no wonder Obama wants to keep this deal secret from the American people. It is written by and for corporations, it undermines national sovereignty and nullifies your voice as a citizen.

Elizabeth Warren, who has been highly critical of Obama negotiating the TPP in secret, had this to say on her blog:

Have you seen what’s in the new TPP trade deal?

Most likely, you haven’t – and don’t bother trying to Google it. The government doesn’t want you to read this massive new trade agreement. It’s top secret.

Why? Here’s the real answer people have given me: “We can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.”

If the American people would be opposed to a trade agreement if they saw it, then that agreement should not become the law of the United States.

Well said, Senator Warren! And shame on you President Obama.

The post TPP: What Obama’s secret trade deal means for you appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Going into midterms, Obama took credit for the 5.9% unemployment rate achieved by his administration.

“The United States has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and every other advanced economy combined.” Obama said. That progress, he added, has been “a direct result of the American people’s drive and determination, and the decisions made by my administration.”

Indeed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported the 5.9% figure for October of this year, but what does it mean?

If you have a part time minimum wage job that you can’t possibly live on (and many of the jobs created during the Obama administration are that) you are considered employed. If you have a low-paying, full time job beneath your skills and education, you may be employed, but you are under-employed. If you gave up finding a job, you aren’t counted because you dropped off the unemployment rolls. The 5.9% unemployment figure may sound good, but when you take it apart, it becomes a meaningless measure of economic health.

Senator Bernie Sanders put it this way:

Real unemployment today is not 5.8 percent, it is 11.5 percent if we include those who have given up looking for work or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is 18.6 percent and African-American youth unemployment is 32.6 percent.

Today, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the median male worker earned $783 less last year than he made 41 years ago. The median woman worker made $1,337 less last year than she earned in 2007. Since 1999, the median middle-class family has seen its income go down by almost $5,000 after adjusting for inflation, now earning less than it did 25 years ago.

The truth is that for the majority of Americans the economy is not getting better, and for many it feels like it’s going downhill. The outsourcing of jobs continues, wages are stagnated, and technology has made many jobs obsolete. Although gas prices have fallen, prices at the grocery store are rising. Kids are going to college, racking up debt, with a slim chance of getting a good paying job in their chosen field.

Elected officials and corporate owned media report that the economy is on the upswing, pointing to the booming stock market as proof we are in recovery. Yet stocks being in nosebleed territory have nothing to do with the real economy where people continue to struggle everyday.

The BLS Civilian Employment Population Ratio—what’s that?

The Civilian Employment Population Ratio is another more accurate measurement of what is going on in the economy. The BLS defines the civilian non-institutional population as persons 16 years of age and older who are not inmates of institutions (penal or mental facilities and homes for the aged) and who are not on active duty in the Armed Forces.

By this measure, you are considered employed if you (a) did any work at all in a week (at least 1 hour) as a paid employee, worked in your own business or profession or on your own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as an unpaid worker in an enterprise operated by a member of the family, or (b) didn’t work but had a job or business from which you were temporarily absent because of vacation, illness, bad weather, childcare problems, maternity or paternity leave, labor-management dispute, job training, or other family or personal reasons, whether or not you were paid for the time off or were seeking another job.

Even with the bar for what constitutes employment set quite low, according to this measure, 41 percent of all civilian, working-age Americans are without a job. Even though this index includes people all the way up to over age 75, and may include retirees, it paints a pretty grim picture. The University of California Santa Barbara interprets the chart as follows:

The employment population ratio fell during the Great Recession and has stalled at a low level since then. Combined with the stagnation in the real wage, this has meant that labor’s share of national income has fallen as the economy grew, as measured by per capita real national income. Of course, as labor’s share fell capital’s share has risen. As capital’s share has grown, inequity has worsened and the share of income going to the top 1 % is approaching 1/5 of US income excluding capital gains. If capital gains are included, the top 1% received 22.5% of income in 2012.

Perhaps the most damning comment on the Obama Administration failures comes from the Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Ron Wyden (D), Chairman. The following is a press release from October 8, 2014:

Fact Sheet: Obama Economy Boosts Wall Street, Not Main Street

When President Obama came into office, the national unemployment rate was 7.8 percent and rose to as high as 10 percent in October 2009. Today it is 5.9 percent, however:

• The number of people who are not in the labor force has grown, despite a growing working-age population, by 12.1 million.
• The number of people who are not in the labor force who want a job has grown by more than 640,000 during the Obama Administration. Many simply gave up on trying to find a job in the Obama economy.
• The employment-to-population ratio has remained consistently below 60 percent during Obama’s tenure and has barely budged and has been at 59.0 percent since June of 2014; in contrast, the ratio averaged 62.9 percent between the beginning of the year 2000 through when Obama assumed office.
• The labor force participation rate has continued to trend downward during Obama’s tenure, from 65.7 percent when he took office to its current low of 62.7 percent.
• Payroll job growth has been tepid over Obama’s tenure: it has averaged only 135,000 per month since the end of the recession.
• While over 7.4 million payroll jobs were lost during the recession, there has only been a net 4.7 million jobs created over Obama’s tenure.

All this data combined points to a nation in trouble. If Democrats want to remain relevant, they can start by being honest about the state of the economy, end their addiction to Wall Street influence and money, and begin to serve the people they were elected to represent.

The post A closer look at the 5.9% unemployment rate appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The short answer is the Fed has been propping up the stock market. And, high stock prices are not always tethered to traditional methods of stock valuation, like productivity, price, earnings, growth—all those “fundamentals” you learn about in the “Investing for Dummies” book. The market has become a highly manipulated gambling casino for the elite, where bank and hedge fund investors, high frequency traders, and the Fed’s massive injection of liquidity into the system have fueled a record-breaking, inflated, and unsustainable market.

Of course, if you are invested in this market—and a lot of working stiffs are—you have done well, but it’s a market without a foundation, a house built on sand. Unlike the wealthy, you probably can’t afford to lose your money when the market “corrects”—and it will.

These record-breaking Dow averages are not the result of the “invisible hand of the free market,” because there’s no such thing as a “free market.” Central banks around the world are injecting $200 billion into the system, per quarter, to avoid a market crash.

Tyler Durgen, at Zero Hedge, says that, “without the Fed’s (and all other central bank’s) liquidity pump, the S&P would be about 70% lower than where it is now.

Mike Whitney at Counterpunch writes: “. . . in the last five years, stocks have tripled because the Fed, has added a “hefty $4 trillion in red ink to its balance sheet. Naturally, when someone buys $4 trillion in financial assets, the price of financial assets goes up.”

Besides, the Fed doesn’t give a rip about the real economy. If it did, it would have loaded up on infrastructure bonds instead of funky mortgage backed securities (MBS). The difference between the two is pretty stark: Infrastructure bonds put people to work, circulate money, boost economic activity, and strengthen growth. In contrast, MBS purchases help to fatten the bank accounts of the fraudsters who created the financial crisis while doing bupkis for the economy. Guess whom the Fed chose to help out?

Whitney is talking about the Fed’s practice of Quantitative Easing (QE)— buying toxic assets from banks—and then lending money back at zero percent interest. This gives banks and hedge funds tons of free money with which to speculate. This same policy that enriches the already wealthy takes money out of the pockets of ordinary people who can’t earn any interest on their meager savings accounts.

The Fed announced on Wednesday, October 29, that it would end QE3, effectively removing one of the helium tanks from this inflated stock market. It remains to be seen how the markets will react.

While too big to fail banks are speculating like crazy, corporations are busy pumping stock prices. Instead of doing something constructive with the billions in cash they are sitting on, say, creating jobs here at home, executives are increasing share value (and the value of their stock options) by buying back company stock.

Back in the real world we are left with higher food prices and lower wages. The sticker shock you’ve been experiencing at the grocery store is not just because you shop at Whole Foods. In September, the BLS reported that the price of ground beef increased 17 percent since September of 2013.

The Obama administration claims credit for a lower unemployment rate, but it fails to mention that the jobs it helped create are mostly low paying, part time, or both. If you take a part-time, low-paying job, you are considered “employed,” so you fall off the rolls even though you can’t live on what you make. And, if you give up looking, as many have, you are no longer counted. The so-called lower unemployment rate in no way reflects the reality of the job market.

In April of this year, the New York Times reported the following:

The deep recession wiped out primarily high-wage and middle-wage jobs. Yet the strongest employment growth during the sluggish recovery has been in low-wage work, at places like strip malls and fast-food restaurants.

In essence, the poor economy has replaced good jobs with bad ones. That is the conclusion of a new report from the National Employment Law Project, a research and advocacy group, analyzing employment trends four years into the recovery.

What this reality check tells you about our economy, our markets, and our banking system, is that they are rigged to benefit the elite. They are unstable, unsustainable, and do not serve the majority of working people. Fed policy is to give banks hundreds of billions in gambling money which does nothing for the real economy and further enriches the already rich. Meanwhile, 16 million American children live in poverty, and 1.3 million school children are homeless.

The next global “crash” will happen when international central bank manipulation of all varieties ceases to work. The phony economy, this “house of cards,” will fall, and bank balance sheets will go up in flames. Because banks are interconnected, when liquidity locks up, they will all go down together, and the markets and what’s left of the economy will go down with them. Some say the coming crash will make 2008 seem like a dress rehearsal. The wealthy, of course, will be fine, but ordinary people around the world will suffer.

Mike Whitney blames the surge in wealth at the top and the growing gap between the rich and poor on the Fed’s zero interest rate and QE policies put into place in 2008—policies deliberately designed to transfer money from the poor to the rich. In other words, the crushing of the working and the middle classes isn’t an accident; it’s a feature of an economy run by and for bankers and billionaires.

The post Why is the stock market soaring when the real economy is on its knees? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

At the close of 2013, WIN/Gallup published the results of a massive world opinion poll in which they asked over 66,000 people from 65 countries which country is the greatest threat to world peace.

The replies were as follows:

• United States 24%
• Pakistan 8%
• China 6%
• Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, North Korea, each 5%
• India, Iraq, Japan, each 4%
• Syria 3%
• Russia 2%

Australia, Germany, Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Korea, UK, each 1%

Americans, heavily influenced by DOD/CIA/White House/State Department misinformation and propaganda delivered via corporate-owned media outlets, named Iran the top threat. Afghanistan came in second, but, most interestingly, Americans voted the U.S. among the most threatening nations, in a tie for third place with North Korea.

The rest of the world, being at the effect of it, has good reason to fear US militarism. But, Americans are beginning to wake up to how the military/corporate/intelligence/NATO complex, and the violence and chaos it spreads around the world, is a major cause of our economic and social problems at home. A bloated military budget, is only the tip of the iceberg, the equally large “black budget” is below the surface, hidden from view, without Congressional oversight. Both budgets serve the elite, while education, housing, health care, infrastructure and transportation—the things we desperately need at home—suffer.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers at popularresistance.org cataloged the following statistics from William Blum’s website. Blum, a historian who specializes in tracking U.S. Empire follows these interventions closely and has reported on them going back to the end of World War II. Since then, the United States has:

* Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically elected.

* Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.

* Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.

* Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.

* Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries, according to Chapter 18 of his book Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower.

Please click on the links if you want more detailed information.

Much of Obama’s world-destabilizing activities in service of geopolitical dominance, are carried out through the CIA, black budgets, proxy wars, drones, and mercenaries—effectively bypassing a clueless and apathetic Congress. We are told that the secret activities involving drones and mercenaries are necessary to “KEEP US SAFE^TM”. In reality the U.S. government kills, maims and destabilizes for geopolitical reasons—to allow banks and corporations to grab off as much as they can.

A complacent and complicit media rarely questions the lies spread at official press conferences—for fear of being prosecuted under the Espionage Act if they probe further and reveal whistleblower-leaked classified material, or because they are content to advance their career by maintaining a sycophantic relationship to power. Overall, the American mainstream media has failed the American people by failing to practice journalism.

The world is not wrong when it judges us the greatest threat to world peace. So, how long are we going to let our elected and appointed officials spread violence and chaos in our name?

The post Which country is the greatest threat to world peace? appeared first on Occasional Planet.