L'economista ($)mascherato

Facebook, a Central Bank ?

2012-01-31T12:03:00.000-08:00

TECH

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1/20/2012 @ 9:42AM |20,387 views

Is Facebook a Central Bank, Too?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2012/01/20/is-facebook-a-central-bank-too/

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Facebook’s 27-year-old founder,Mark Zuckerberg, isn’t usually mentioned in the same breath asBen Bernanke, the 58-year-old head of the Federal Reserve. But Facebook’s early adventures in the money-creating business are going well enough that the central-bank comparison gets tempting.

Everything started quietly, in 2009, with the experimental launch ofFacebook Credits, billed as “the safe and easy way to buy things on Facebook.” Anyone who chipped in $5 from a Paypal account, Visa card or the like, could do the equivalent of changing money on an overseas trip. Voila! — $5 turned into 50 Facebook Credits.

Initially, the Credits-based economy was confined to the virtual world’s trifles. Credits could be spent to buy imaginary gold bars for aficionados of Mafia Wars, or bouquets of virtual flowers for birthday postings on friends’ Facebook accounts. This new form of digital money was cute but essentially useless for mainstream activities.

Lately Credits have become more intriguing. Warner Brothers this summer offered movie-goers a chance to watch “Harry Potter” and “The Dark Knight” for 30 Credits apiece. Miramax and Paramount countered with film-viewing offers, too. In a provocative post this week on Inside Facebook, guest blogger Peter Vogel argues that Credits in the next few years will become more of a true currency. Facebook’s 800 million worldwide users represent a lot of buying power. He figures Credits could evolve into commercial mainstays for digital movies and music.

Vogel has a personal interest in seeing Credits take off. He is co-founder of Plink, a customer-loyalty program in which people earn Facebook Credits by eating at participating restaurants. Plink is just getting started, and no one knows yet how much traction his company ultimately will enjoy. But such uncertainties can’t stifle Vogel’s ebullience. He predicts that the Facebook Credits economy could double every year for the next five years.

Already, Credits looks very rewarding for Facebook, thanks to built-in commissions or transactions fees. Merchants participating in the Credits economy receive 70 cents of every dollar spent on their wares; the other 30% goes to Facebook. That’s in line with the way that Apple Inc. runs its iTunes store. It’s far more lucrative than the 2% to 5% fees associated with credit cards or currency-exchange counters in the traditional economy.

Facebook won’t say how much it’s making from Credits, but the research firm of eMarketer offered up a widely quoted estimate in September. Its tally: $470 million of revenue in 2011, or about 11% of Facebook’s total business. Costs associated with the Credits program are likely to be trivial. So while advertising remains Facebook’s dominant source of revenue, banking looks like an alluring second way of making money — literally.

Edward Castronova, a telecommunications professor at Indiana University, is fascinated by the rise of what he calls “wildcat currencies,” such as Facebook Credits. He has been studying the economics of online games and virtual worlds for the better part of a decade. Right now, he calculates, the Facebook Credits ecosystem can’t be any bigger than Barbados’s economy and might be significantly smaller. If the definition of digital goods keeps widening, though, he says, “this could be the start of something big.”

In the short term, Facebook may choose to move cautiously with its Credits-based economy. Company executives are likely to have their hands full the next few months, trying to manage a successful initial public offering of stock. Moving too aggressively into banking could invite more government regulation than Facebook wants.

Still, Facebook’s buildup of Credits suggests more than just a minor dalliance. Facebook already takes payment for Credits in more than 40 currencies — ranging from the euro to the Vietnamese dong. Exchange rates are adjusted daily. It probably won’t be long until some economist tries to calculate the inflation rate, money-supply velocity or other traditional dimensions of the Facebook economy.

If Facebook at some point is willing to reduce its cut of each Credits transaction, this new form of online liquidity may catch the eye of many more merchants and customers. As Castronova observes: “there’s a dynamic here that the Federal Reserve ought to look at.”

Big Banks and Greedy Bastards

2012-01-31T06:44:00.000-08:00

Auction 2012: Banking

January 30, 2012

Auction 2012 is a weeklong series in partnership with The Huffington Post and United Republic. Here’s Dylan’s interview with Paul Blumenthal of The Huffington Post kicking off today’s Auction 2012 series.

http://www.dylanratigan.com/2012/01/30/auction-2012-and-bought-banking/

No money down. A sure thing. No risk loan. Free lunch. Easy money. Can’t lose.

If you’ve heard any of those expressions, a Greedy Bastard has tried to sell you something. Greedy Bastards, as I explain in my book, are the people that run our economy and politics. This week, the Huffington Post, the Dylan Ratigan Show, and United Republic are doing a series to explore corruption in our politics, looking at the various sectors of our economy to see how this impacts us. So this week, watch the Dylan Ratigan Show, read the Huffington Post, or check out CorruptionCostsYou.com to see how political corruption affects your life (for instance, why corruption leads to you paying higher ATM fees). The politicians may want us to obsess over the horse race, but we have a choice not to do so.

I use the term Greedy Bastards to describe the behavior of the corrupt elements in our culture. Greedy Bastards are spread across the economy in different industries and throughout government – in Banking, Oil, Universities, Government, Health, and Trade. While their behavior looks different depending on what industry they are in, the tactic they always use is what I call the “Very Bad Deal” hypothesis.

The essence of a Very Bad Deal is that it looks great on first glance. Someone offers us a low price on something we want or need – say housing – and we accept the deal. But there’s a catch. We have to accept a tiny chance that something terrible will happen. Even though on any given day there is only a tiny chance something very bad will happen, in the long run, that terrible thing is certain. The benefits come upfront and are obvious, while the much larger costs are deferred and hidden.

Click through to view slideshow

This framework explains the housing bubble and bust, who won and lost, and why.

From 2003-2007, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, Americans took out $4.5 trillion of additional mortgage debt, which is roughly $15,000 per person. You can’t go wrong, went the sales pitch, because housing can only go up in value. And so Americans bought more homes, for higher prices, and it seemed like it was working out. And it was! Debt was up, but housing values were up more. At the peak in late 2006, American residential real estate values were worth nearly $25 trillion, up from $16 trillion just four years earlier.

The big banks were the dealers in this game, extending as much credit as they could with capital requirements. They had used their political power to lift leverage restrictions and expand the derivatives market, which when put together is the equivalent of removing all the stop signs on the road. So onward we went, faster and faster.

And then came the crash. Asset values plunged by about $7 trillion, but debt levels stayed the same. The terrible thing had come to pass. Americans today have lost everything they gained in the bubble, and then some. They effectively gave up fourteen year’s worth of savings, without counting high unemployment and high public debt levels.

The banks who orchestrated this bubble transferred what’s known in technical terms as “tail risk” to the public. Tail risk, as my friend Nassim Taleb explains, is the chance that something extreme but unlikely happens. A chance of a hurricane that causes $100 billion of damage is low, but it’s not nothing. Banks, who are in the risk trading business, think very hard about how to price “tail risk” and who pays. In the case of the housing bubble, the banks transferred their “tail risk” to the public through derivatives. When the music stopped, the banks realized that they could get the government to cover their losses by using AIG as a funnel to suck up taxpayer money. Homeowners however were on their own, and have dealt with underwater mortgages and foreclosures. So now the homeownership rate, when you back out homes in default, is probably lower than it has been since 1962.

This tactic, of transferring tail risk to the public, is conceptually no different in banking than it is in any other arena. I’ll go into other areas in depth in my book and in future blog posts. Briefly, though, when BP cost us hundreds of billions of dollars in pollution costs by dumping oil into the Gulf of Mexico, that was transferring tail risk to the public. It’s all different types of Very Bad Deals, offered to us by Greedy Bastards.

Ultimately it comes down to the expression that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. For decades, since the early 1980s, our big banks offered us easy credit in increasingly large amounts. Buy now, pay later. Seemed like a great deal. But a funny thing happened since the time credit became “democratized” – we stopped getting raises. And after the housing bubble collapsed in 2008, we’ve lost our homes and our wealth.

What we’re finding out, now that the terms of the Very Bad Deals are becoming clear, is that an economy based on deals that sound too good to be true is a very unstable place to live.

Click through to view full Infographic

SOROS: OCCUPY TO TURN VIOLENT

2012-01-30T18:37:00.000-08:00

WND EXCLUSIVE

SOROS: OCCUPY TO TURN VIOLENT

Billionaire warns U.S. financial system faces collapse

Published: 01/23/2012 at 1:05 PMhttp://www.wnd.com/2012/01/soros-occupy-to-turn-violent/

by AARON KLEINEmail | Archive

Aaron Klein is WND's senior staff reporter and Jerusalem bureau chief. He also hosts "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on New York's WABC Radio. His latest book is the N.Y. Times best-selling, "The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists."More ↓

Billionaire George Soros is predicting protests by Occupy Wall Street will turn violent, while warning the U.S. financial system may collapse.

In an interview with Newsweek writer John Arlidge, Soros reportedly said riots on the streets of American cities are inevitable.

“‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he says, almost gleefully,” when asked about the prospect of Occupy turning violent, writes Arlidge.

Soros claimed the riots will “be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States.”

“At times like these, survival is the most important thing,” Soros continued.

“I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I’ve experienced in my career,” Soros said.

“We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse,” he said.

“The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.”

In the interview, Soros claimed the Occupy Wall Street movement “is an inchoate, leaderless manifestation of protest.”

However, WND has repeatedly documented the billionaire’s many ties to Occupy, including how the group’s reported nerve center is staffed by professional agitators deeply linked to organizations funded by Soros.

Those groups, most prominent among them being the Tides Center, have been involved with Occupy since the anti-Wall Street movement’s inception.

Tides functions as a money tunnel in which major leftist donors provide large sums that are channeled to hundreds of radical groups.

The Tides-funded Adbusters magazine is reported to have come up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. The Adbusters website serves as a central hub for Occupy’s planning.

The Tides-funded Ruckus Society has been providing direct-action training to Occupy protesters as well as official training resources, including manuals, to Occupy training groups. Ruckus, which helped spark the 1999 World Trade Organization riots in Seattle, was also listed as a “friend and partner” of the “Occupy Days of Action” in October.

Another grantee of Tides is MoveOn.org, which has joined Occupy.

The Pig in the XL Pipeline

2012-01-30T18:31:00.000-08:00

The Pig in the XL Pipeline
Insider reveals concealed “error”
in pipeline safety equipment that could blow away the GOP’s XL pipe dream

http://www.gregpalast.com/the-pig-in-the-xl-pipelineinsider-reveals-concealed-%e2%80%9cerror%e2%80%9din-pipeline-safety-equipment-that-could-blow-away-the-gop%e2%80%99s-xl-pipe-dream/
Sunday, January 22, 2012

For Firedoglake
by Greg Palast

“They threatened me. Last night I got a call and they threatened me. If I talked.”
“Pig Man #2,” a pipeline industry insider, had a good reason to be afraid.  He was about to blow the whistle on a fraud, information that could blow away the XL Keystone Pipeline project.
His information: The software for the crucial piece of pipeline safety equipment, the “Smart PIG,” has a flaw known to the industry but concealed from regulators.
The flaw allows cracks, leaks and corrosion to go undetected – and that saves the industry billions of dollars in pipe replacements.  But there’s a catch. Pipes with cracks and leaks can explode – and kill.
Federal law requires the oil and gas industry to run a PIG, a Pipeline Inspection Gauge, through big oil and gas pipelines.  The robot porker, tethered to a GPS, beeps and boops as it rolls through, electronically squealing when it finds dangers.
But whistleblowers told us at Channel 4 Dispatches (the “60 Minutes” of Britain) that the software is deliberately calibrated to ignore or minimize deadly problems.  They know because they themselves worked on the software design team.
This week, President Obama refused to issue a permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, but invited its owner, Trans-Canada, to re-apply.  The GOP has gone wild over Obama’s hesitation, screeching that slowing the Canada-to-Houston pipe for a full safety review is a jobs killer.
But it’s the Pipeline that’s the killer.  Here’s what Pig Man #2 told me, on camera, his face in shadow:
When his team found the life-threatening flaw in the program, they immediately created a software patch to fix it.  But then their supervisor ordered them to bury the fix and conceal the problem.
With the PIG calibrated to the danger sensitivity required by law, oil and gas companies would have to dig up, inspect and replace pipe at a cost of millions per mile.  That’s not what the oil companies wanted from their contractor that designed the PIG program.
The programmers’ bosses took no chances. “We had to sign nondisclosure agreements.” They were required to conceal “any problems of this sort or the nature of the software we worked.”  It could not “be made public at all. Under threat of lawsuit.” Nice.
With the error left in place, he said, “People die.”
Pig Man #2 was shaking a bit when he said it. On September 9, 2010, a gas pipeline exploded, incinerating 13-year-old Janessa Greig, her mom and six others.
A PIG – an honest PIG – would have caught the bad welds in the old pipe.
Trans-Canada says that Keystone XL won’t contaminate the Ogallala Aquifer, the Plains states’ crucial water source.  Keystone’s permit application boasts that we can rely on XL’s “full pigging capability.”
Sure.  Last summer, an ExxonMobil pipeline burst and poisoned parts of the Yellowstone River - only months after it had been “pigged.”
The danger of a muzzled PIG goes beyond Keystone XL.  New gas fields opened by hydraulic fracking will require over 100,000 miles of new transmission pipe.
This week, Newt Gingrich called Obama’s temporary block on the XL Pipeline, “stunningly stupid”; and Mitt Romney said Obama’s decision threatened America’s “energy independence.” (Mitt, the oil is from, uh, Canada.)
But the real question is, can we trust these pigs?  And not just the ones in the pipeline.
****
Greg Palast, whose reports can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight, is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy” and “Armed Madhouse.”  His latest book, Vultures’ Picnic, includes Palast’s investigation of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, vulture capitalism, and “the pig in the pipeline.”
You can read Vultures' Picnic, "Chapter 1: Goldfinger," or download it, at no charge: click here.
Support the Palast Investigative Fund and keep our work alive.
Subscribe to Palast's Newsletter and podcasts.
Follow Palast on Facebook and Twitter.
GregPalast.com

Wonderful News

2012-01-30T18:05:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends of the American Monetary Institute,

Two important announcements:
First:
The 29,000 member Chicago Teachers Union passed a resolution in strong support of Dennis Kucinich's HR 2990 NEED Act! (National Employment Emergency Defense)Please see the attachment for their thoughtful resolution.

Kucinich's HR 2990 dismantles the Federal Reserve System, ends "fractional reserve" banking, and provides for funding the $2.2 trillion, the engineers tell us is needed over the next 5 years to repair our infrastructure; which solves the unemployment problem. Read the 14 page Act at http://www.monetary.org . HR 2990 contains all the monetary reforms of our American Monetary Act, and HR 2990 creates 7 million jobs, for starters!

Congressman Kucinich presently represents Ohio's 10th district, but with redistricting is now running to represent the 9th district. Please seehttp://kucinich.house.gov/
Congressman John Conyers of Detroit co sponsors HR 2990.Second:The Eighth Annual AMI Monetary Reform Conference will be held at University Center in Chicago, September 20-23, 2012. If your registration is made by February 18th, the donation is $225, instead of $395. A savings of
$170!University Center's state of the art facility holds 80 people in a comfortable "schoolroom" type sitting, with narrow tables. We want our participants to enjoy a relaxed experience, so attendance will be limited to 80 participants. We'll again do our best to better prior conferences! If you have attended any one of our prior seven conferences, you know that's a real challenge! Here is the 2012 conference announcement sheethttp://www.monetary.org/2012-conference

and here are last year's speaker and talk descriptions:http://www.old.monetary.org/2011schedule.html Monetary reform is more and more on people's and organization's agenda's, as it should be. We are making a difference and I'm looking forward to seeing you in September.
Thank you all for your attention,Stephen Zarlenga
Director,
American Monetary Institute

-- 
"Over time, whoever controls the money system
controls the nation."
Stephen Zarlenga
Director
American Monetary Institute

To receive notices for free AMI materials,
sign up for our email list at www.monetary.org
(224) 805-2200

N.E.E.D. Resolution

Fed 'Activism' Harms U.S. Growth, Ex-Fed Governor

2012-01-30T17:36:00.000-08:00

Reuters picks up on Warsh's remarks at Stanford

Submitted by cpowell on Mon, 2012-01-30 15:53. Section: Daily Dispatches

Fed 'Activism' Harms U.S. Growth, Ex-Fed Governor Warsh Says

By Ann Saphir
Reuters
Friday, January 27, 2012

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/01/26/usa-fed-warsh-idINDEE80P0I12012...

The Federal Reserve's latest efforts to bolster the recovery with unprecedented policy tools will hurt the U.S. economy in the long run, a former member of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's inner circle suggested on Thursday.

In his first public comments since stepping down as a Fed governor last March, Kevin Warsh said there is a place for exceptionally accommodative monetary policy to provide "important transitional support for an economy."

"But recent policy activism -- measures that go beyond a central bank's capacity or traditional remit -- threatens to forestall recovery and harms long-term growth," Warsh said, according to excerpts of remarks prepared for delivery to the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

Warsh was the only member of Bernanke's inner circle with close ties to Republican lawmakers. An inflation hawk, Warsh nevertheless voted in favor of the Fed's groundbreaking moves to ease monetary policy after the financial crisis, including two bond-buying programs that swelled the Fed's balance sheet to unprecedented levels.

But Warsh apparently grew increasingly uncomfortable with the dovish stance of the central bank. Shortly after the Fed launched its second round of so-called quantitative easing, in November 2010, Warsh publicly expressed doubt over its effectiveness.

He announced his resignation the following February, and is currently a visiting fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.

Since Warsh's departure, the Fed has embarked on still more easing, signaling last August its intent to keep rates ultra-low through at least mid-2013. On Thursday it extended that low-rate vow through late 2014.

The Fed also began publishing policymakers' forecasts for short-term interest rates and adopted an explicit inflation target for the first time, setting the target at 2 percent. Bernanke said both moves would clarify the Fed's policy decisions, making them more effective.

Bernanke also opened the door wide to a third round of quantitative easing, saying continued low inflation and high unemployment would create a case for it.

On Thursday, Warsh took aim at Bernanke's latest communications push and his recent foray into housing policy.

"Central bank transparency is good, but transparency that delineates future policy breeds market complacency," Warsh said. "It threatens to undermine the wisdom of crowds and the essential interchange with financial markets."

Warsh also was critical of leaning on government-run mortgage finance firms to pull the country from its housing slump, a policy idea the Fed floated in early January in an unsolicited paper to top lawmakers outlining a number of ways to revive the sector.

The paper noted that exposing the firms to losses could be worthwhile if such actions could spur a vigorous recovery in housing, the bane of the current sluggish recovery.

Warsh disagreed.

"The government-sponsored housing entities remain sources of vulnerability to the U.S. economy, and repeated ad-hoc attempts to push Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to take greater risks at taxpayer expense is deeply counterproductive," Warsh said, according to the excerpts.

Anonymous: #OpESR EvictTheFed

2012-01-30T16:20:00.000-08:00

We are a decentralized non violent resistance movement, which seeks to restore the rule of law
and fight back against the organized criminal class.
The Federal Reserve System is the Private central banking system owned by foreign bankers.
They make up an international banking cartel of wealth beyond comparison.
On June 11th, 2011 we attempted to provoke the people of the U.S. to Occupy a public space
and demand Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke step down.
"We have all seen the world wide protests of occupy wall street and seen such great support worldwide.
A lot of people such as Ron Paul, Michael Ruppert, David DeGraw have talked about this issue,
but not enough action has been taken.People may think it's all Wall Street,
corporations and politicians. But they are all linked to the Federal Reserve.
We need to start on one realistic and solid goal.
The Fed is responsible for destroying the U.S. dollar, and impacting the global economy.
We may be in debt but the Fed makes the money we dont have and loans it out.
This effects the banks corporations and politicians,
this will show them we are not unorganized.
When the Fed is gone we will then proceed to clean up the rest of the filth.
Our demands:
1 Ben S. Bernanke steps down from all government positions indefinitaley and is tried in criminal court.
2 The Fed reserve is removed.
3 That all board members are investigated and tried in criminal court for crimes against humanity.

On June 17th we will gather at Zuccoti Park, the place it all began.
Come brothers and sisters we are no longer occupying we are evicting.

We are Anonymous
We are legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget
Operation ESR
Engaged.

Press Release: http://pastebin.com/4J12nSGS

AnonInfoWarfare Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnonInfoWarfare
AnonInfoWarfare Tumblr: http://anoninfowarfare.tumblr.com/

Zombie Debtors & Clown Bankers

2012-01-30T11:49:00.001-08:00

U.S. INVESTMENT TOWARD BANCOCRACIES

2012-01-30T10:49:00.000-08:00

U.S. INVESTMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST, AND MORE FROM CRS

http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2012/01/mena_invest.html

The possibility of increasing U.S. investment in the Middle East as a way to encourage democratic political transitions was examined in a new report from the Congressional Research Service. See U.S. Trade and Investment in the Middle East and North Africa: Overview and Issues, January 20, 2012.

Other new or updated CRS reports that have not been made readily available to the public include these:

European Union Enlargement, January 26, 2012

Australia: Background and U.S. Relations, January 13, 2012

Venezuela: “Irrevocable” Withdrawal from World Bank

2012-01-30T06:20:00.001-08:00

Venezuela Announces “Irrevocable” Withdrawal from World Bank’s Arbitration Body

By EWAN ROBERTSON - VENEZUELANALYSIS.COM

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6773

Occupy LA: Scenes from the New Revolution

2012-01-30T06:04:00.001-08:00

Scenes from the New Revolution is a five-part documentary series written and directed by journalist Sam Slovick, whose research into Occupy Wall Street led to his living in a tent at City Hall in Los Angeles alongside the 99% movement for the better part of two months.

Slovick accessed Occupy Los Angeles at ground level, illuminating stories and faces that were either overlooked or misrepresented by the mainstream media. Told from the center of the year's biggest story, Slovick articulates the global movement through interviews with its activists, footage from the inner sanctum, and stories from its foot soldiers, bringing the sometimes-chaotic picture of Occupy LA into focus.

Scenes from the New Revolution was produced with the help of Slake, a highly acclaimed literary journal based in Los Angeles. A companion piece to the series will appear in the journal's fourth issue.

How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the 1%

2012-01-29T11:39:00.001-08:00

How Swedes and Norwegians Broke the Power of the ‘1 Percent’

By George Lakey, Waging Nonviolence
Posted on January 29, 2012, Printed on January 29, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/153929/how_swedes_and_norwegians_broke_the_power_of_the_%E2%80%981_percent%E2%80%99

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of democracy and economic justice. Sweden and Norway, for example, both experienced a major power shift in the 1930s after prolonged nonviolent struggle. They “fired” the top 1 percent of people who set the direction for society and created the basis for something different.

Both countries had a history of horrendous poverty. When the 1 percent was in charge, hundreds of thousands of people emigrated to avoid starvation. Under the leadership of the working class, however, both countries built robust and successful economies that nearly eliminated poverty, expanded free university education, abolished slums, provided excellent health care available to all as a matter of right and created a system of full employment. Unlike the Norwegians, the Swedes didn’t find oil, but that didn’t stop them from building what the latest CIA World Factbook calls “an enviable standard of living.”

Neither country is a utopia, as readers of the crime novels by Stieg Larsson, Kurt Wallender and Jo Nesbro will know. Critical left-wing authors such as these try to push Sweden and Norway to continue on the path toward more fully just societies. However, as an American activist who first encountered Norway as a student in 1959 and learned some of its language and culture, the achievements I found amazed me. I remember, for example, bicycling for hours through a small industrial city, looking in vain for substandard housing. Sometimes resisting the evidence of my eyes, I made up stories that “accounted for” the differences I saw: “small country,” “homogeneous,” “a value consensus.” I finally gave up imposing my frameworks on these countries and learned the real reason: their own histories.

Then I began to learn that the Swedes and Norwegians paid a price for their standards of living through nonviolent struggle. There was a time when Scandinavian workers didn’t expect that the electoral arena could deliver the change they believed in. They realized that, with the 1 percent in charge, electoral “democracy” was stacked against them, so nonviolent direct action was needed to exert the power for change.

In both countries, the troops were called out to defend the 1 percent; people died. Award-winning Swedish filmmaker Bo Widerberg told the Swedish story vividly in Ådalen 31, which depicts the strikers killed in 1931 and the sparking of a nationwide general strike. (You can read more about this case in an entry by Max Rennebohm in the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)

The Norwegians had a harder time organizing a cohesive people’s movement because Norway’s small population—about three million—was spread out over a territory the size of Britain. People were divided by mountains and fjords, and they spoke regional dialects in isolated valleys. In the nineteenth century, Norway was ruled by Denmark and then by Sweden; in the context of Europe Norwegians were the “country rubes,” of little consequence. Not until 1905 did Norway finally become independent.

When workers formed unions in the early 1900s, they generally turned to Marxism, organizing for revolution as well as immediate gains. They were overjoyed by the overthrow of the czar in Russia, and the Norwegian Labor Party joined the Communist International organized by Lenin. Labor didn’t stay long, however. One way in which most Norwegians parted ways with Leninist strategy was on the role of violence: Norwegians wanted to win their revolution through collective nonviolent struggle, along with establishing co-ops and using the electoral arena.

In the 1920s strikes increased in intensity. The town of Hammerfest formed a commune in 1921, led by workers councils; the army intervened to crush it. The workers’ response verged toward a national general strike. The employers, backed by the state, beat back that strike, but workers erupted again in the ironworkers’ strike of 1923–24.

The Norwegian 1 percent decided not to rely simply on the army; in 1926 they formed a social movement called the Patriotic League, recruiting mainly from the middle class. By the 1930s, the League included as many as 100,000 people for armed protection of strike breakers—this in a country of only 3 million!

The Labor Party, in the meantime, opened its membership to anyone, whether or not in a unionized workplace. Middle-class Marxists and some reformers joined the party. Many rural farm workers joined the Labor Party, as well as some small landholders. Labor leadership understood that in a protracted struggle, constant outreach and organizing was needed to a nonviolent campaign. In the midst of the growing polarization, Norway’s workers launched another wave of strikes and boycotts in 1928.

The Depression hit bottom in 1931. More people were jobless there than in any other Nordic country. Unlike in the U.S., the Norwegian union movement kept the people thrown out of work as members, even though they couldn’t pay dues. This decision paid off in mass mobilizations. When the employers’ federation locked employees out of the factories to try to force a reduction of wages, the workers fought back with massive demonstrations.

Many people then found that their mortgages were in jeopardy. (Sound familiar?) The Depression continued, and farmers were unable to keep up payment on their debts. As turbulence hit the rural sector, crowds gathered nonviolently to prevent the eviction of families from their farms. The Agrarian Party, which included larger farmers and had previously been allied with the Conservative Party, began to distance itself from the 1 percent; some could see that the ability of the few to rule the many was in doubt.

By 1935, Norway was on the brink. The Conservative-led government was losing legitimacy daily; the 1 percent became increasingly desperate as militancy grew among workers and farmers. A complete overthrow might be just a couple years away, radical workers thought. However, the misery of the poor became more urgent daily, and the Labor Party felt increasing pressure from its members to alleviate their suffering, which it could do only if it took charge of the government in a compromise agreement with the other side.

This it did. In a compromise that allowed owners to retain the right to own and manage their firms, Labor in 1935 took the reins of government in coalition with the Agrarian Party. They expanded the economy and started public works projects to head toward a policy of full employment that became the keystone of Norwegian economic policy. Labor’s success and the continued militancy of workers enabled steady inroads against the privileges of the 1 percent, to the point that majority ownership of all large firms was taken by the public interest. (There is an entry on this case as well at the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)

The 1 percent thereby lost its historic power to dominate the economy and society. Not until three decades later could the Conservatives return to a governing coalition, having by then accepted the new rules of the game, including a high degree of public ownership of the means of production, extremely progressive taxation, strong business regulation for the public good and the virtual abolition of poverty. When Conservatives eventually tried a fling with neoliberal policies, the economy generated a bubble and headed for disaster. (Sound familiar?)

Labor stepped in, seized the three largest banks, fired the top management, left the stockholders without a dime and refused to bail out any of the smaller banks. The well-purged Norwegian financial sector was not one of those countries that lurched into crisis in 2008; carefully regulated and much of it publicly owned, the sector was solid.

Although Norwegians may not tell you about this the first time you meet them, the fact remains that their society’s high level of freedom and broadly-shared prosperity began when workers and farmers, along with middle class allies, waged a nonviolent struggle that empowered the people to govern for the common good.

George Lakey is Visiting Professor at Swarthmore College and a Quaker. He has led 1,500 workshops on five continents and led activist projects on local, national, and international levels. Among many other books and articles, he is author of “Strategizing for a Living Revolution” in David Solnit’s book Globalize Liberation (City Lights, 2004). His first arrest was for a civil rights sit-in and most recent was with Earth Quaker Action Team while protesting mountain top removal coal mining.

Big Oil & Corporate Vultures - interview

2012-01-29T11:23:00.000-08:00

Coast to Coast AM
Big Oil & Corporate Vultures
Date: 01-22-12
Host: George Knapp
Guests: Greg Palast

Muckraker and investigative journalist Greg Palast joined George Knapp for inside details on stories that American media doesn't report, including revelations on Big Oil, and financial "vultures" who use shady practices for mega-profits. He uncovered that two years before the BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf, a similar incident happened to BP in the Caspian Sea off Azerbaijan, indicating that they were well aware of such drilling problems. BP covered up the incident by bribing Azerbaijani officials, and flying them to London for lap dances, he detailed.

Palast referred to a number of former Soviet republics as having become the "Islamic Republics of BP," where oil companies have come in and given ruling families enormous sums. "The oil companies know very well that the money just disappears into these holes, and that's part of the game-- that's how they get cheap oil contracts through winking and nodding at the looting of the oil money," he said, noting that the citizens of these countries don't see any of the money, and remain poor.

Interestingly, countries such as Brazil that didn't play along with the oil companies, are doing well economically, he pointed out.

In the Exxon Valdez incident of 1989, BP was actually in charge of emergency equipment and procedures in the event of a ship running aground in the Arctic, but they didn't spend the money following through on it, and then ended up lying about it, Palast charged. What BP learned in Alaska, is that they could get away with lying, and that's what they proceeded to do in the Gulf spill, he continued, adding that BP has only paid out 1/10th of the amount they promised for clean-up and settlements.

Generally, oil companies have found that it's easier to cover-up oil spills with cash, and PR campaigns than to actually clean up the spills once they happen, he observed.

Website(s): gregpalast.com

Book(s): Armed Madhouse Vultures' Picnic

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Banker pleads guilty

2012-01-29T04:20:00.000-08:00

January 28, 2012

Banker pleads guilty

http://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/sections/news/local-news/banker-pleads-guilty.html

Former Assistant Vice President Lani-Ann Miho pleaded guilt to embezzling almost $2.7 million from First Hawaiian Bank. Ã HOLLYN JOHNSON/Tribune-Herald

Hilo woman took nearly $2.7M from First Hawaiian Bank

By JOHN BURNETT

Tribune-Herald staff writer

A former assistant vice president of First Hawaiian Bank's Hilo branch pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in Honolulu to embezzling almost $2.7 million from the bank.

Lani-Ann M. Miho faces up to 30 years imprisonment and a fine of up to $1 million. Sentencing is set for June 4 before federal Judge J. Michael Seabright.

"There is a plea agreement which is not binding on the court," said William McCorriston, a Honolulu attorney representing Miho, and added the deal "doesn't include a specific agreement as to a (prison) term or monetary fine."

McCorriston said his 52-year-old client still lives in Hilo, but spends much of her time in Manoa taking care of her mother.

"She's no longer employed by First Hawaiian Bank and there was no adverse customer impact as a result of her employment here," said Brandt Farias, FHB's executive vice president of marketing and communications.

First Hawaiian Bank is insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), which insures each depositor to at least $250,000 per insured bank.

According to a written statement by the U.S. District Attorney's office, Miho, who worked for the bank for 29 years, set up fraudulent loans for about 56 nonexistent customers and opened bank accounts in their names, withdrawing money and using the proceeds from recently opened accounts to pay balances due on earlier loans. She illegally converted money for her own personal use between July 2000 and September 2010.

"The scheme went on for a decade between branches on Oahu and Hilo, where she was working," said FBI Special Agent Tom Simon. "The bank had to do a massive audit."

In a written statement, the District Attorney's office said that Miho obtained $2,683,494.13 from the bank, including fees and interest. Over the course of her embezzlement, Miho repaid $2,074,044.69, leaving what the District Attorney called "a net loss to First Hawaiian Bank of approximately $609,449.60."

"Although she stole over $2.6 million dollars over the decade of her scheme, at the end of the day, when First Hawaiian Bank discovered it, there was around $600,000 in loans outstanding to the bank that had gone into delinquency because the whole thing collapsed," Simon said. "... It's like a check-kiting scheme. To keep this going, you have to do it in perpetuity or win the lottery if you're going to make the bank whole.

"It should be noted, to her credit, that after the FBI confronted her and she told us her side of the story, she actually paid back the $600,000 that was lost to the bank. So the bank, right now, has already been paid its restitution by her."

McCorriston disputed Simon's timeline of Miho's restitution to the financial institution.

"The total amount of money was repaid to the bank before there was any FBI investigation, before there was any referral of this for criminal prosecution," McCorriston said. "Even before there was any discovery of wrongdoing by the bank of the problem, Lani had repatriated over $2 million of that sum to the bank, and the rest she paid to the bank after the bank began its investigation. ... She and her family made restitution on their own, without compulsion."

Asked if his client had repaid the bank before her termination in late 2010, McCorriston replied: "I can't answer that specifically. I believe not, but certainly the discussions to repay it occurred before her termination. That had nothing to do with the criminal prosecution. That all was resolved internally with First Hawaiian Bank."

McCorriston said Miho has been "diagnosed with a psychological disorder which played a prominent role in this problem" and that she has "taken full responsibility for what she did." He wouldn't specify the disorder, stating: "I think it will be illuminated more during sentencing."

"She's heartbroken that this all happened, and having had some medical (and) psychological counseling about this, she has a better understanding of what went wrong with her life," McCorriston said.

Simon said the honesty of bank employees is "critical to the successful operations of the business" and that Miho's actions are "a violation of the inherent trust that's placed into the hands of financial sector workers."

"The temptation is high for those working in the midst of so much money, but few bankers actually take advantage of their positions to enrich themselves illegally at the expense of the bank," he said.

Miho also served on the Hawaii Island United Way's finance committee, according to the charitable organization's 2010 annual report.

the end of money!

2012-01-28T18:17:00.000-08:00

here comes the end of money!

From Publishers Weekly
Money is a hot topic--Wired magazine contributing editor Wolman observes that it is paradoxically something we think about "always and never." Tangible cash, on the other hand, is something "we think we know." However, Wolman believes that physical cash will soon cease to be. He explores this compelling possibility by talking with a number of fascinating characters, such as Pastor Glenn Guest of Bowman, GA, who, citing the biblical book of Revelation, believes the end of cash is the beginning of the end of the world; convicted counterfeiter Bernard von NotHaus; and Delhiite Sonu Kumar, who uses his cell phone to remotely update his State Bank of India account, a technological advancement that Wolman notes could be "the angel of death" to the paper and coin system. Cash alternatives are already in place, whether we acknowledge or recognize them as such, and Wolman (A Left-Hand Turn Around the World) reviews a few, including Kilowatt Cards and Disney Dollars. Just as interesting is Wolman's discussion of money, culture, and poverty: is cash truly--as Ignacio Mas of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation claims--the "enemy of the poor"? If cash goes away, will that really lead to financial inclusion for the world's poor? Wolman's writing is clear and thoughtful, and his use of characters and places add color and personality to this excellent investigation of a timely topic.

From Amazon (Best Books of the Month)
Say good-bye to your beloved Benjamins, because the world is going cashless. So says David Wolman, and in The End of Money, he explores the drastic implications. How is it happening? What's at stake? Why does it matter? Each chapter of this timely and fascinating book focuses on a specific aspect of the coming cashlessness. Its cast of compelling characters includes an end-times fundamentalist who views the growing obsolescence of cash as a sign of the coming rapture; an Icelandic artist whose claim to fame illustrates the complicated relationship between cash and nationalism; an American libertarian and coin-maker convicted on federal charges for the distribution of "Liberty" coins and Ron Paul dollars; and an Indian software engineer (self-billed as "the assassin of cash") whose firm is enabling digital payment methods that are lifting the living standards of thousands of poor New Dehli residents via their cell phones. Raising the stakes with a personal experiment, Wolman goes (almost) a full year without using cash at all. All told, The End of Money offers everything there is to love about popular nonfiction, rendering a complex subject entertaining and easily approachable for a wide audience while proving the ultimate adventurousness inherent in a curiosity about the workings of the world. --Jason Kirk

The Law for Usury (Interest) Free Banking

2012-01-28T06:47:00.001-08:00

The Law for Usury (Interest) Free Banking

Romney Camp Dung-Founded: No Integrity

2012-01-27T15:17:00.000-08:00

January 26, 2012 - White Hats Report #35
Romney Camp Dung-Founded: No Integrity, No Ethics, No Honor.

This article is one of a series exposing theft, deceit, tax evasion, and bribery of public officials. It
questions a Presidential candidate who would associate with such people, much less take money from them. This money is then hidden offshore to evade taxes in a conspiracy with ruthless criminals, all knowing the true Beneficial Owner of the funds was being cheated of his income at every turn. These actions bring consequences. Knowledge is power.

We expose three key names of consequence today. Mitt Romney, Dr Michael Herzog and Paul Guenette are now challenged to publicly explain why they ruthlessly cheated an American national causing loss of important projects, tax revenue and the denial of hope and dignity to many Katrina victims.
These far flung results would have resulted from pre-approved projects which were to have been done if not for the deceit of the above mentioned three. The Falcone Group was planning high value work which were needlessly delayed with pain and suffering for many. Real consequences occasioned for real people, so many innocent citizens affected by the ruthless conspiring greed of others.
Mitt Romney is a Presidential candidate bidding for the honor of holding the highest office in the land.
And yet, behind the scenes, he associates and trades with two men whose criminal pasts merit public awareness and scrutiny. We will present a sectional exposure of each. Mr. Edward Falcone was asked to allocate part of his Bank Trading Program profits to help Romney during his previous campaign. It was there that he and Herzog became connected. This is how Romney repays his supporters.
Paul Guenette, a Canadian resident, has a small home in Ethelbert, Manitoba. He and Dr. Michael
Herzog have a combined history of global arrests, charges and venomous fraudulent activities. A discrete inquiry to Canadian authorities led to helpful guidance that he is both under heavy surveillance by the Canadian Police and under an airport watch, indicating he may have already fled and may in fact be hiding out with Herzog in Germany or possibly in Spain. He and Herzog were closed down in Switzerland by security authorities with a Bank they jointly owned (ICB Bank). Guenette and Herzog were also arrested in Germany for attempting to pass fake credit Letters for cash via Commerzbank in Frankfurt, Germany. The German Police are monitoring Herzog closely and will no doubt increase activity on receipt of this. There are outstanding warrants on Herzog in Israel, and by respecting Canadian investigations and law, it is pertinent not to declare more or hinder clear and serious investigations involving Guenette. Herzog has made allegations that he and Ackermann were assured of safety as a result of bribes made to a named Senior Interpol Officer, details of which Mr. Falcone is willing to submit to investigating officers.
This precisely is the dilemma. How much to release which does not harm international enforcement
agency diligence, or pending actions. Herzog and Guenette have a deep relationship with Romney and money transfers he received, some of which will be exampled meriting public challenge. The files held are extensive. This is a small overview of a vast library of investigative reports and accounts used.
Romney is declaring his personal wealth holdings which simply do not equate to money he has received from Herzog and Guenette . Records exist showing in excess of 900 million dollars taken offshore. This raises questions as to the validity and truthfulness of his IRS declarations, or perhaps in Mitt Romney’s mind, tax is only for the “little people.“ Does he merit the highest office in the land?
A vast amount of detailed, highly incriminating evidence is in our hands and has been lodged with
appropriate global authorities. In such, we have to ensure we do not compromise criminal investigations now proceeding. The case we raise releases facts never before published. Facts you deserve to know and question.
During the third week of October 2006, Michael Herzog, working against a bank trading platform
contract he had been allocated by senior US political parties, signed in conjunction with Edward Falcone, and for the benefit of Edward Falcone, drew down $500M from a further Falcone account for Trading by Herzog. That was over and above the account set up for the use of Josef Ackermann of Deutsche Bank which primarily funded CIA accounts, exiting via banks such as Barclays London. This had previously started with a first initial amount of $350M and been rapidly leveraged by Ackermann and fast tracktraded up in value. A credit line was arranged by Josef Ackermann of Deutsche Bank with the Bank of Austria. That was traded well into July 2008 by Ackermann. Vast profits were earned. On August 1, 2007, Ackermann and George Bush Sr, working in conjunction with Herzog, Romney and Greenspan, exchanged communications agreeing not to pay Falcone, and to trade it for yet another year. While Herzog had been ready to pay Mr Falcone, he and Ackermann allege the communication to block payment came from Bush Sr who wanted to continue trading it. Yet he continued receiving his own, with other participants and substantial CIA profits being accrued without Congressional or Senate awareness or oversight. The second year a second program was traded with Herzog and others fronting it, while substantial profits were continuously accrued. Vast hundreds of billions of dollars were earned through their greed. All of this was, of course, apart from the trusting true beneficiary, who got nothing!
A series of high value multi -billion dollar Bank CHIPS were created from profits both in Falcone’s name and for his beneficial interests. However, those were also mass used, fraudulently signed off for trading via other parties, and Falcone was again ruthlessly circumvented. A criminal pack extorted his funds. On September 26, 2005, Deutsche Bank Chairman and CEO Josef Ackermann admitted to his Deutsche Bank coordinator Juergen Schafer that trading had been engaged by his commitment holder without informing Mr. Falcone. Records linking Paul Fauque, Nathan the Trader, and a series of beneficiaries are all on file as the investigation proceeds.
These profits accrued by Herzog were personally shared by George Bush Sr, George Bush Jr., Romney, Greenspan, Paulson, Herzog, Ackermann and Guenette in conjunction with other political associates and Bank Traders. Some associates earned between 2% and 4% of the profits which were side-lined into a labyrinth of offshore pseudo Trusts. The actual list of all beneficiaries is known, with accounts recorded and ready for Global recovery action. It has been lodged already with the FBI, Homeland Security, The US Federal Reserve, NSA, and also with the CIA - the largest beneficiary of profit allocations from Ackermann’s operation. This is America’s dilemma. With key appointments accepting political patronage, those compromised parties are too often carefully placed in key agency or government roles to maintain the status quo and to protect and block corruption inquiries.
Major Banks they used for these trades included Credit Lines leveraged up by the Bank of England, Bank of Austria and trading via Barclays, HSBC, CSFB using their Spanish division, RBS London, Deutsche Bank, ABN Germany, Commerzbank, Frankfurt Germany, and a network of exit banks used by Bush, Romney, Herzog and Guenette moving profits into Caracas then on to the Caribbean and even into South Africa.
Herzog exited profits via San Marino for onward distribution. Large Profits were made and substantial taxes avoided, yet Mr. Falcone always expressed a commitment to pay his taxes due. On receipt of the huge debt long overdue to him, he will declare his income, fully discharge his taxes and move to fund US infrastructure projects.
Herzog operated initially behind a series of fronts including Alliance Stars in Israel. He also defaulted on others, and hid behind his wife Gudrun Funkenweh whose accounts are now frozen. He used Oxi Mining and Trade LLC in the Isle of Man to hide profits, and also Frank Furstenberg behind a Berlin attorney trust.
This raises the issue of Mitt Romney, a man purporting to be Presidential material. He and his
fundraiser in Florida were pre-advised months ago that they might be culpable to repay all funds raised given this serious screening issue. How can he become a Presidential nominee when the Falcone issue is not resolved? Will he and his fundraiser ethically return funds they have raised should he withdraw as this escalates?
Some 2 years ago the CIA, the Bushes and Falcone had negotiated a settlement deal. Yet again, that was reneged on. This is escalating into what could become a serious global embarrassment for the United States. The Falcone camp is focused and determined to get their money, whatever it takes. This is about justice. It’s about the projects, people and jobs needlessly lost.
There are other agendas also being seriously monitored. President Obama’s bank accounts are
constantly watched by the retained Falcone investigators who note two amounts having been recently moved. Jeb Bush appears as a signatory on numerous offshore accounts both singularly and linked with Bush Sr for substantial amounts having no IRS history or true source of funds able to withstand forensic investigation.
The issue is Mitt Romney, he who would be President, and the company he keeps. Specifically it is his sense of moral justice regarding his own tax integrity and regarding Ed Falcone.
Herzog has threatened to open his books on all deals done with Bush, exposing the entire history of
their activity together if he is forced to pay back the Falcone funds. Might Congress demand this?
During Mr. Falcone’s visit to London, he met with key, influential people. The Lords discussed with him the independent facilities of the World Court in The Hague and its ability to force through his case to achieve a vast settlement avoiding the corrupt US Judiciary. He was offered introductions to senior government officials able to appraise his case and, if approved, to treat all the trading as a contested issue with conspiracy and fraud overtones. That could, if successful, allow worldwide recovery of the entire amount as proceeds of crime. A large number of the people trading his funds have now been identified, as have their Trusts and Foundations. Each will face tax investigations with stringent penalties. Senior Ministers are now reviewing the Falcone case. Huge embarrassment and shame will follow with full media exposure for their crimes. Moves are now developing to freeze their worldwide accounts as part of a UK Task Force Tax Recovery operation, irrespective of their political standing.
A good General never leaves his men behind. In the same spirit of integrity and new stewardship at the Agency, a leader of such integrity would never leave his key Investor behind. It needs to be made RIGHT and NOW. This blemish has to be removed. Integrity and Trust must be restored.
We are at the conclusion of this report and we felt a recap in the form of questions for Mitt to
contemplate:

1. In the 2008 General Elections, you were the #1 candidate to run with John McCain for the top
spot in the United States. You found out hours before that Sarah Palin was going to be the running mate on the Republican ticket due to your inability to pass McCain’s vetting process. The reason was the money you stole with your associates Michael Herzog and Paul Guenette. So, let us ask the obvious questions.

a) Did you actually think that the American public has forgotten, much less the White Hats?

b) Do you think you will move forward with the Presidential race with the potential of a criminal
prosecution in the international arena as the President of the United States of America? Do you think that Presidential immunity from prosecution provide you cover?

c) Do you think you have the moral character that is required to be the President of the United
States of America?

d) With what the world currently knows, do you think the world will think anything different of
you, as opposed to any other Presidential candidate the Bush Cabal is attempting to place into that slot for their own greedy purposes.

e) When you became aware of our report, did you really think that by merely glazing over the fact
you participated in the theft of Falcones money and received One Billion Dollars as compensation for your involvement in the international bank fraud conspiracy, you would be able to hid the funds in an off shore account and not pay any taxes on it?

f) Do you think the problem is going away by claiming “the problem is being handled” and “You
might have to amend some income tax returns”? Really Mitt ... can you explain to us how a guy of your stature and financial intellect forgets about one billion, tax free dollars, in a brand spankin’ new off shore bank account in the Caymans? Do you do your own taxes or does an accounting firm? Might you have forgotten to disclose that info to them?

g) If you forget about the white elephant in your living room, how can we expect you to perform in
the position of President of the United States of America, representing us, the American people, here at home and representing us in the World View?

Mitt, the White Hats think the American people need someone better than you to represent us, to lead us and make decisions for us. Take the pay-off money from the Bushs and go away. Hide behind the other recipients of the stolen money ... the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.
America needs leadership, a small feeling of truth in it’s candidates and integrity. You maintain none of the qualities required to lead America!

“FOR THE REST OF THE CULPRITS”

It takes more than just a few to play the game in the international arena. Let’s examine a future article we are working on.
1) We will take a look at the Banks involved starting with Barclay’s, Deutche and the receiving banks responsible for the flow of the money and the trading.
2) We will take a deep look at the internal bank examiners and the external professional Accounting firms responsible for auditing the specific trades and the bank records.
3) We will look at the taxes that have not been paid to governments and other jurisdictions ... not that there will be much to look at above the excuse “Golly Gee, we just don’t know how we forgot to pay them ... we hate when that happens”.
4) We will look at the bank and independent traders that generated the profits and are responsible for the dissemination of the profits to the individual accounts.
5) Who we know took pay-offs, and who else took influencing money to look the other way including Senior Interpol Agents.
6) We will also connect the dots on who knew who when and how they accomplished this.

See you next time!

HSBC investigated for money laundering

2012-01-27T11:46:00.000-08:00

Exclusive: Senate investigating HSBC for money laundering

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 9:47 a.m. EST

http://whtc.com/news/articles/2012/jan/25/exclusive-senate-investigating-hsbc-for-money-laundering/

A view shows the entrance to a HSBC Bank branch in New York

By Carrick Mollenkamp, Brian Grow and Brett Wolf

(Reuters)- HSBC Holdings PLC is under investigation by a U.S. Senate panel in a money-laundering inquiry, the latest step in a long-running U.S. effort to halt shadowy money flows through global banks, according to people familiar with the situation and a company securities filing.

The inquiry being conducted by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations could yield a report and congressional hearing later this spring, these people said. The subcommittee has a history of conducting high-profile hearings that have proved embarrassing for the world's biggest banks.

The intensifying scrutiny of HSBC is the latest in a series of investigations by U.S. officials into how global banks have processed -- and in some cases, intentionally hidden -- financial transactions on behalf of countries which allegedly support terrorism, corrupt foreign officials, drug gangs and criminals. Since 2008, European and U.S. banks have signed deferred prosecution agreements and paid more than $1.2 billion in penalties for alleged violations of anti-money laundering regulations.

The specific focus of the Senate probe of HSBC isn't known. A Reuters review of legal documents and prior regulatory probes, though, points to a number of alleged breakdowns in HSBC's anti-money laundering systems.

HSBC spokesman Robert Sherman said in a statement, "We have ongoing discussions with officials" including the Senate panel "on a number of regulatory and compliance matters. The nature of these discussions is confidential; in all cases, we are cooperating."

A spokesperson for the Senate subcommittee declined comment.

Earlier this month, HSBC named former top U.S. Treasury Department official Stuart Levey as chief legal officer in a sign of how the bank is hiring outside experts in money laundering. Levey, who specialized in combating terrorism financing and left the Treasury Department last year, is based in London. An HSBC spokesman said Levey wasn't available for comment.

Stuart Gulliver, HSBC chief executive, said in a statement this month that Levey's experience "dealing with international financial and legal issues is highly relevant to a global bank such as HSBC."

EARLY WARNING SIGNS

For HSBC, which has operations in more than 80 countries and territories, the Senate probe is another sign that U.S. law enforcement officials are widening their inquiries into the London bank - one that for the past decade has repeatedly drawn scrutiny from U.S. financial regulators for weak money-laundering controls and allegedly enabling healthcare fraud and tax evasion.

In 2003 and 2010, two U.S. bank regulators raised serious concerns about the bank's anti-money laundering systems and staff and ordered the bank to improve anti-money laundering systems and personnel, according to enforcement actions by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Comptroller of the Currency, a Treasury Department unit.

In securities filings, the bank has disclosed increasing inquiries. In 2010, the bank disclosed that it had received grand jury subpoenas and was being investigated by the Justice Department in money-laundering inquiries. It subsequently said the district attorney's office in Manhattan was investigating.

Then in November, HSBC said additional inquiries were being pursued by the Senate panel and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to an SEC filing by HSBC USA Inc. The bank said the investigations focused on money laundering and the proper filing of U.S. taxes by customers. The unit is HSBC's main U.S. business, offering retail and corporate banking to some 4 million customers. HSBC's North American operations, which include HSBC Bank USA and a consumer-finance unit, account for about 5 percent of HSBC profits.

WEST VIRGINIA LINK

Investigations into how the bank allegedly was used to launder money extend to Vienna, W. Va. There, a pain-management doctor named Barton J. Adams was indicted in 2008 by the Justice Department on 169 counts of alleged healthcare fraud, tax evasion, money laundering and witness tampering. Adams allegedly moved hundreds of thousands of dollars in Medicare fraud proceeds between an HSBC Bank USA internet account and other HSBC accounts in Canada, Hong Kong and the Philippines, according to U.S. District Court filings in West Virginia. Dr. Adams has pleaded not guilty.

Stephen Herndon, an attorney for Adams, declined to comment citing the ongoing litigation. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in West Virginia declined comment.

To be sure, HSBC isn't the only major bank to face scrutiny from regulators over alleged money laundering. In 2009 and 2010, Barclays PLC, Lloyds Banking Group and Credit Suisse Group agreed to forfeitures totaling $1.2 billion with U.S. regulators that found the banks evaded U.S. law in aiding sanctioned countries. In 2010, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC agreed to forfeit $500 million to the U.S. to cover ABN Amro Holding NV's illegal U.S. dollar transactions tied to Iran, Libya, the Sudan and Cuba. RBS and a bank consortium acquired ABN, a Dutch bank, in 2007.

Law-enforcement scrutiny is increasingly focused on narcotics proceeds moving between the U.S. and Mexico. In 2010, for example, Wachovia Bank, acquired by Wells Fargo & Co. in 2008, agreed to a $160 million settlement with the Justice Department, which alleged that failure in controls at the bank allowed drug traffickers to launder drug money tied to Mexico.

A 2011 study by the Government Accountability Office said that money from illegal drug sales in the U.S. that flows back to Mexico -- often in the form of large currency shipments called "bulk cash smuggling" -- totals between $18 billion and $39 billion a year. John Cassara, an expert on money laundering and former Treasury agent, said U.S. authorities struggle to stop the money flowing from the U.S. into Mexico.

HSBC UNDER MICROSCOPE

HSBC has faced several orders to improve its anti-money laundering policies. In 2003, HSBC Bank USA, under an agreement with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and New York bank regulators, said a "common goal" with regulators was that the bank would "ensure that the bank fully addresses deficiencies in the bank's anti-money laundering policies and procedures."

At the time, the bank agreed to design a program to upgrade internal controls to ensure compliance with Bank Secrecy Act provisions to better monitor "suspicious or unusual activities."

In early 2010, HSBC again came under scrutiny. The Senate panel alleged in a report, titled "Keeping Foreign Corruption out of the United States," that HSBC, along with other banks, had allowed high-risk individuals, known as politically exposed persons, or PEPs, to route money through the U.S. financial system. Such persons are typically powerful foreign leaders, relatives and close associates from regimes prone to corruption.

The 2010 Senate report analyzed HSBC's ties to Angola, the oil-producing African country prone to graft and mismanaging oil revenues. The Senate report alleged that HSBC provided U.S. banking services to politically connected officials of Angola's national oil company through Banco Africano de Investimentos, or BAI, an Angolan private bank, without designating the transactions as potentially high risk. HSBC allowed those money movements "despite the presence of PEPs" in BAI's management and clientele.

At a Senate hearing, Wiecher Mandemaker, then a director of general compliance for HSBC Bank USA, said the bank believed that institutions such as BAI were important to helping move Africans "into the modern banking system." The HSBC official said the bank had thoroughly investigated BAI and that it was HSBC's policy to discourage banking relationships with PEPs unless the bank had a long-standing relationship with the client and the bank believed the client had a "legitimate source of funds."

Mandemaker has since left the bank and could not be reached for comment.

In late 2010, the bank was hit with another order from a U.S. bank regulator to clean up its anti-money laundering system after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, investigated several businesses that routed cash for clients and other banks. The probe and subsequent consent order "identified deficiencies" in the HSBC's anti-money laundering practices and among other requirements, ordered the bank to hire a permanent regional compliance officer and submit full compliance plans in policing improper money flows.

HSBC subsequently exited or curtailed those businesses. It separately has announced plans to exit numerous U.S. businesses, agreeing to sell both bank branches and a credit card business amid a shift to faster-growing economies.

The OCC found the bank's "compliance program and its implementation are ineffective" and that the bank faced the "significant potential for unreported money laundering or terrorist financing."

The OCC consent order said that between 2006 and 2009, HSBC had not properly monitored bulk cash transactions. The OCC order also said the bank did not "appropriately" designate customers as "high risk" even if the customer affiliation with a politically exposed person could hurt the bank's reputation. The report also criticized the bank for a backlog of unprocessed suspicious activity reports, known as SARs, that can tip off regulators to questionable money flows.

As part of the consent order, the bank said it had "committed to taking all necessary and appropriate steps to remedy the deficiencies."

Sherman, the HSBC spokesman, said, "We acknowledged we fell short of our own expectations and are working with our regulators to address and resolve the issues raised."

Sherman said the bank had taken steps such as investing in staff, a new anti-money laundering system, a new compliance helpline, and new training for all U.S. employees.

(Editing by Alwyn Scott and Edward Tobin)

Central bank policy is obscuring market values

2012-01-27T11:41:00.001-08:00

Central bank policy is obscuring market values, Warsh tells Stanford audience

Submitted by cpowell on Fri, 2012-01-27 02:53. Section: Daily Dispatches

10:04p ET Thursday, January 26, 2012

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Central banks are now so heavily influencing asset prices that investors are unable to ascertain market values, former Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Kevin M. Warsh told the Stanford University Institute for Economic Policy Research tonight.

This influence is especially evident, Warsh said, with the Fed's purchase of government bonds, which has made it impossible for investors to use bond prices to learn anything about markets.

Warsh, who disclosed during GATA's freedom-of-information litigation with the Fed in 2009 that the central bank has secret gold swap arrangements with foreign banks (http://www.gata.org/files/GATAFedResponse-09-17-2009.pdf), added that the Fed is trying to do too much and the rest of the government not enough to encourage economic growth.

While he said nothing explicitly about gold, Warsh seemed to come pretty close to your secretary/treasurer's observation almost four years ago that there are no markets anymore, just central bank interventions. (Seehttp://www.gata.org/node/6241.)

Warsh was especially critical of the federal government's efforts to stimulate the housing market. "The government-sponsored housing entities remain sources of vulnerability to the U.S. economy," he said, "and repeated ad-hoc attempts to push Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to take greater risks at taxpayer expense are deeply counterproductive." Such efforts have not succeeded, he added.

Warsh said higher real incomes are far more important to economic growth than recovery in the housing sector.

He said he opposed pursuing economic recovery through inflating debt away and devaluing the currency.

Warsh was the youngest person ever appointed to the Fed board, resigning eight months ago after five years in office, and is now a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a lecturer in the university's Graduate School of Business. He received his undergraduate degree at Stanford in 1992 and a law degree at Harvard three years later. He was special assistant for economic policy under President George W. Bush and executive secretary of the National Economic Council. He was also a member of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, commonly known as the Plunge Protection Team.

Warsh spoke tonight from an outline he provided to GATA and then answered questions from his audience, which included Stanford faculty and students. The outline is appended.

Warsh's talk was broadcast live at the Internet site of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research --

http://siepr.stanford.edu/

-- and video of it is expected to be posted there shortly.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

Fed disinformation hides greater inflation

2012-01-27T11:38:00.001-08:00

Fed disinformation hides greater inflation, Rickards tells King World News

Submitted by cpowell on Fri, 2012-01-27 18:09. Section: Daily Dispatches

1:07p ET Friday, January 27, 2012

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Geopolitical analyst James G. Rickards tells King World News today that the Federal Reserve is engaged in a massive disinformation campaign about its intentions, which are far more inflationary than believed. Rickards adds that the U.S. economic embargo of Iran may hasten the move of other countries away from the dollar as a trading currency. An excerpt from the interview is posted at the King World News blog here:

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/1/27_Ri...

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

Nigeria Thrown into Chaos: The Role of the IMF

2012-01-27T11:26:00.000-08:00

Nigeria: Thrown into Chaos and a State of Civil War: The Role of the IMF

by F. William Engdahl

Global Research, January 27, 2012

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and its largest oil producer, is from all evidence being systematically thrown into chaos and a state of civil war. The recent surprise decision by the government of Goodluck Jonathan to abruptly lift subsidies on imported gasoline and other fuel has a far more sinister background than mere corruption and the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) is playing a key role. China appears to be the likely loser along with Nigeria’s population.

The recent strikes protesting the government’s abrupt elimination of gasoline and other fuel subsidies, that brought Nigeria briefly to a standstill, came as a surprise to most in the country. Months earlier President Jonathan had promised the major trade union organizations that he would conduct a gradual four-stage lifting of the subsidy to ease the economic burden. Instead, without warning he announced an immediate full removal of subsidies effective January 1, 2012. It was “shock therapy” to put it mildly.

Nigeria today is one of the world’s most important producers of light, sweet crude oil—the same high quality crude oil that Libya and the British North Sea produce. The country is showing every indication of spiraling downward into deep disorder. Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States and twelfth largest oil producer in the world on a par with Kuwait and just behind Venezuela with production exceeding two million barrels a day. 1

The curious timing of IMF subsidy demand

Despite its oil riches, Nigeria remains one of Africa’s poorest countries. The known oilfields are concentrated around the vast Niger Delta roughly between Port Harcourt and extending in the direction of the capital Lagos, with large new finds being developed all along the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea. Nigeria’s oil is exploited and largely exported by the Anglo-American giants—Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco. Italy’s Agip also has a presence and most recently, to no one’s surprise, the Chinese state oil companies began seeking major exploration and oil infrastructure agreements with the Lagos government.

Ironically, despite the fact that Nigeria has abundant oil to earn dollar export revenue to build its domestic infrastructure, government policy has deliberately let its domestic oil refining capacity fall into ruin. The consequence has been that most of the gasoline and other refined petroleum products used to drive transportation and industry, has to be imported, despite the country’s abundant oil. In order to shield the population from the high import costs of gasoline and other refined fuels, the central government has subsidized prices.

Until January 1, 2012, that is. That was the day when, without advance warning President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan announced immediate removal of all fuel subsidies. Prices for gasoline shot up almost threefold in hours from 65 naira (35 cents of a dollar) a liter to 150 naira (93 cents). The impact rippled across the economy to everything including prices of grains and vegetables.2

In justifying the move, Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi insisted that “The monies will be used in provision of social amenities and infrastructural development that will benefit Nigerians more and save the country from economic rift.”3 President Goodluck Jonathan says he is phasing out the subsidy as a part of a move to “clean up the Nigerian government.” If so how he plans to proceed is anything but apparent.

The huge unexpected price hike for domestic fuel triggered nationwide protests that threatened to bring the economy to a halt by mid-January. The president deftly took the wind out of protester sails by announcing a partial rollback in prices, still leaving prices effectively double that of December. The trade union federation immediately called off the protests. Then, revealingly, Goodluck Jonathan’s government ordered the military to take to the streets to “keep order” and de facto prevent new protests. All that took place during one of the bloodiest waves of bombings and murder rampages by the terrorist Boko Haram sect creating a climate of extreme chaos.4

The smoking gun of the IMF

What has been buried from international accounts of the unrest is the explicit role the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) played in the situation. With suspicious timing IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde was in Nigeria days before the abrupt subsidy decision of President Jonathan.5 By all accounts, the IMF and the Nigerian government have been careful this time not to be blatant about openly announcing demands to ends subsidies as they were in Tunisia before food protests became the trigger for that country’s Twitter putsch in 2011.

During her visit to Nigeria Lagarde said President Jonathan's 'Transformation Agenda' for deregulation "is an agenda for Nigeria, driven by Nigerians. The IMF is here to support you and be a better partner for you." 6 Few Nigerians were convinced. On December 29 Reuters wrote, "The IMF has urged countries across West and Central Africa to cut fuel subsidies, which they say are not effective in directly aiding the poor, but do promote corruption and smuggling. The past months have seen governments in Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon and Chad moving to cut state subsidies on fuel." 7

Further confirming the role US and IMF pressure on the Nigerian government played, Jeffery Sachs, Special Adviser to the United Nations (UN) Secretary General, during a meeting with President Jonathan in Nigeria in early January days after the subsidy decision, Sachs declared Jonathan's decision to withdraw petroleum subsidy “a bold and correct policy.” 8

Sachs, a former Harvard economics professor became notorious during the early 1990’s for prescribing IMF “shock therapy” for Poland, Russia, Ukraine and other former communist states which opened invaluable state assets for de facto plundering by dollar-rich western multinationals. 9

Making the sudden decision to end the domestic fuel subsidy even more suspicious is the manner in which Washington and the IMF are putting pressure on only select countries to end subsidies. Nigeria, whose oil today sells for the equivalent of $1 a liter or roughly $3.78 a US gallon, is far from cheap. Brunei, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia all offer their petrol very cheap to their people. The Saudis sell their oil at 17 cents, Kuwait at 22 cents.10 In the US gasoline averages 89 cents a liter.11

That means the IMF and Washington have forced one of the poorest economies in Africa to impose a huge tax on its citizens on the implausible argument it will help eliminate corruption in the state petroleum sector. The IMF knows well that the elimination of subsidies will do nothing about corruption in high places.

Were the IMF and World Bank genuinely concerned with the health of the domestic Nigerian economy, they would have provided support for rebuilding and expanding a domestic oil refinery industry that has been let to rot so that the country need no longer import refined fuels using precious state budget resources to do so. The easiest way to do that would be to expedite a two-year-old deal between China and the Nigerian government to invest some $28 billion in massive expansion of the oil refinery sector to eliminate need for importing foreign gasoline and other refined products.

Quite the opposite—the criminal cabal inside NNPC and the Government making huge profits on the old subsidy system are suddenly making double and potentially triple more to maintain the old corrupt import system, and, of course, to sabotage Chinese refinery construction that could put an end to their gravy train.

Cutting their nose to spite the face…

Rather than benefit ordinary Nigerians as the IMF proclaims to want, the elimination of the subsidies has further pauperized the 90 per cent living on less than $2 a day, according to Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Nigerian Central Bank governor.12 An estimated 40 million Nigerians are unemployed in the country of 148 million.

Because transport costs are a significant factor in delivery of food to the cities, food price inflation has soared along with costs of public transportation for the majority of poorer Nigerians. According to the Nigerian Leadership Sunday, “prices of commodities which shot up as a fallout of the fuel pump price increase have refused to come down.” Everything from street vegetable sellers to carwashes to roadside photographers are feeling the shock of the rise in fuel prices. Unemployment is rising as small businesses fold. 13

The argument of the IMF and the Jonathan Administration is that by freeing fuel prices, funds would be available to more social services and rebuild Nigeria’s “infrastructure.” Both the IMF and the Government know it would have been far more economically viable to replace the current corrupt system of importing refined gasoline and fuels with investing in rebuilding Nigeria’s domestic refining capacity.

Son Gyoh of the Nigerian Awareness for Development organization stated, “Would it not be more expedient to pressure government to service the refineries to full production capacity given the implications on overhead and competitiveness for local industries?” 14

Gyoh pointed to the source of the problem: “Why have successive governments left the refineries in a state of disrepair while spending huge on subsidy? Is there any chance that the savings from subsidy withdrawal will go directly into rehabilitating the refineries? Does deregulation imply NNPC will no longer operate a monopoly in importation of refined petroleum product or is this lobby a self-serving lifeline to continue its monopoly? ” He concludes, “In any case, there is good reason to doubt subsidy removal will solve the fuel scarcity problem as the cabal will only regroup to change tactics, a fact Nigerians are only too aware of.” 15

After Nigeria partly nationalized its oil sector in the late 1970’s they also took control of Shell Oil’s Port Harcourt I refinery. In 1989 Port Harcourt II refinery was built. Both refineries fell into serious disrepair after 1994 when the Abacha military dictatorship cut the “take” of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) from domestic sale of refined oil products such as gasoline from 84% to 22%. That caused a cash crisis for NNPC and a halt to refinery maintenance. Today only one of four refineries operates at all.16

What developed since was a system of NNPC importing foreign gasoline and other refined products for Nigeria’s domestic needs, naturally at a far more expensive cost. The price subsidies were to relieve that higher import cost, hardly a sensible solution but a very lucrative one for those corrupt elements in the state and private sector making a killing, literally, off the import process.

NNPC criminal enterprise

The IMF is well aware of the real cause of Nigeria’s fuel industry problems. A Nigerian legislative committee examining the sources of the industry’s problems recently released a report documenting that at least $4 billion annually is taken from taxpayers in fuel industry corruption with the state Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) at the center. According to the commission, “every day, fuel importers drop off 59 million liters of fuel. The country consumes 35 million liters daily. That leaves 24 million liters of oil available for smugglers to export, paid for by government fuel subsidies. This costs the Nigerian people roughly $4 billion yearly, according to Reuters.” 17

The Nigerian government has said that the 7.5 billion dollars spent yearly on fuel subsidies could be used to provide desperately needed infrastructure. But they omit any mention of the rampant siphoning off of $4 billion of oil by black market smugglers, reportedly with connivance of high NNPC government officials, to sell to neighboring countries at a hefty profit. The refined imported fuel is reportedly smuggled into neighboring countries like Cameroon, Chad and Niger where petrol prices are far higher, according to Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, Deputy Governor of Kano State.18

China as IMF target?

One major geopolitical factor that is generally ignored in recent discussion of Nigerian oil politics is the growing role of China in the country. In May 2010 only days after President Jonathan was sworn in, China signed an impressive $28.5 billion deal with his government to build three new refineries, something that in no way fit into the plans of either the IMF or of Washington or of the Anglo-American oil majors.19

China State Construction Engineering Corporation Limited (CSCEC) signed the deal to build three oil refineries with Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), in the biggest deal China has made with Africa. Shehu Ladan, head of NNPC, said at the signing ceremony that the added refineries would reduce the $10 billion spent annually on imported refined products. As of January 2012 the three Chinese refnery projects were still in the planning stage, reportedly blocked by the powerful vested interests gaining from the existing corrupt import system.20

A report in China Daily last November quoted Nigeria’s Olusegun Olutoyin Aganga, the minister of trade and investment that Nigeria was seeking added Chinese investors for its energy, mining and agribusiness industries. Last September on a visit to Beijing, Nigeria central bank governor Lamido Sanusi announced his country planned to invest 5 percent to 10 percent of its foreign exchange reserves in China's currency, the renminbi (RMB) or yuan, noting that he sees the yuan becoming reserve currency. In 2010 China's loans and exports to Nigeria exceeded $7 billion, while Nigeria exported $1 billion of crude oil, Sanusi stated.21Until now Nigeria has held some 79% of her foreign currency reserves in dollars, the rest in Euro or Sterling, all of which look dicey given their financial and debt problems. The move of a major oil producer away from dollars, added to similar moves recently by India, Japan, Russia, Iran and others, augurs bad news for the continued role of the dollar as dominant world reserve currency. 22 Clearly some in Washington would not be happy with that.

The Chinese are also bidding to get a direct stake in Nigeria’s rich oil reserves, until now an Anglo-American domain. In July 2010, China's CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation) won four prospective oil blocks -two in the Niger Delta and two in the frontier Chad Basin, with plans to become core investor in the Kaduna refinery, and construction of a double track Lagos-Kano railway.23 As well China’s oil company, CNOOC Ltd has a major offshore production area in Nigeria.

The IMF and Washington pressure to lift subsidies on imported fuels is at this point in question as is the future of China in Nigeria’s energy industry. Clear is that lifting subsidies in no way will benefit Nigerians. More alarming in this context is the orchestration of a major new wave of terror killings and bombings by the mysterious and suspiciously well-armed Boko Haram. This we will look at next in the context of Nigeria’s recent transformation into a major narcotics hub.

F. William Engdahl, author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order

Notes:

1John Campbell, Nigeria’s Turmoil and the Outside World, January 12, 2012, accessed inhttp://blogs.cfr.org/campbell/2012/01/12/nigeria%E2%80%99s-turmoil-and-the-outside-world/#more-3994.

2 Chika Otuchikere and Chibunma Ukwu, Nigeria: Aftermath of Subsidy Crisis Food Prices Hitting Roof Tops, 22 January, 2012, accessed in http://allafrica.com/stories/201201231627.html.

3 Mustapha Muhammad, Nigeria: Billions Siphoned by Corruption Could Have Been Used to Maintain Fuel Subsidy, Inter Press Service, January 11, 2012, accessed in http://www.globalissues.org/news/2012/01/11/12407.

4 Mike Oboh, Boko Haram Islamist Insurgents Kill at Least 178 in Nigeria's Kano, January 22, 2012, International Business Times, accessed in http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/285620/20120122/boko-haram-islamist-insurgents-kill-178-nigeria.htm.

5 Christine Lagarde, Statement by IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde at the Conclusion of her Visit to Nigeria, IMF, Washington, Press Release No. 11/478, December 20, 2011, accessed inhttp://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2011/pr11478.htm.

6 Ibid.

7 Quoted in Idris Ahmed and Kate da Costa, Nigeria: IMF Pushing the Country to End Subsidy - - Report, 30 December 2011, accessed in http://allafrica.com/stories/201112300791.html.

8 Olutayo Olubi, Fuel subsidy: International conspiracy against Nigerians, National Daily, 15 January 2012, accessed inhttp://nationaldailyngr.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2825:fuel-subsidy-international-conspiracy-against-nigerians&catid=306:business-news&Itemid=561.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Chika Otuchikere and Chibunma Ukwu, Nigeria Aftermath of Subsidy Crisis: Food Prices Hitting Roof Tops, 22 January 2012, accessed in http://allafrica.com/stories/201201231627.html.

14 Son Gyoh, Nigeria: The case against removal of fuel subsidy and the argument for deregulated petroleum sub sector, accessed in http://awarenessfordevelopment.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=66:nigeria-fuel-subsidy.

15 Ibid.

16 MBendi, Oil Refining in Nigeria--An Overview, accessed in http://www.mbendi.com/indy/oilg/ogrf/af/ng/p0005.htm.

17 Heather Murdock, Nigeria finds 4 billion dollars in fuel corruption, January 20, 2012, accessed inhttp://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/nigeria/120119/nigeria-oil-fuel-corruption.

18 Mustapha Muhammad, Nigeria: Billions Siphoned by Corruption Could Have Been Used to Maintain Fuel Subsidy, Inter Press Service, January 11, 2012, accessed in http://www.globalissues.org/news/2012/01/11/12407.

19 Kerri Shannon, China Continues Its Run on African Commodities With $23 Billion Nigeria Oil Deal, Money Morning, May 15, 2010, accessed in http://moneymorning.com/2010/05/15/nigeria-oil-deal/.

20 Gavin du Venage, Everyone is a loser in Nigeria's fuel subsidy cut and partial restoration, The National, January 24, 2012, accessed in http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/industry-insights/energy/everyone-is-a-loser-in-nigerias-fuel-subsidy-cut-and-partial-restoration.

21 China Daily, Nigeria seeking Chinese capital, November 12, 2011, accessed inhttp://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-11/12/content_14082411.htm.

22 Xinhua, Nigeria bank chief sees yuan becoming reserve currency, September 6, 2011, accessed inhttp://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2011-09/06/content_13641562.htm.

23 Kayode Ekundayo, Nigeria: China, 2010 Budget and Oil Blocks, Daily Trust (Abuja), 12 July 2010, accessed inhttp://allafrica.com/stories/201007121319.html

Parasite Capitalism: Human Awakening

2012-01-27T11:10:00.001-08:00

Parasite Capitalism: Human Awakening Calling Time On the Beast

by Finian Cunningham

Global Research, January 27, 2012

Listen to this fable. A man was lying in bed, tired and tormented. Tired because it was the early hours and yet he could not sleep; tormented because the cause of his tiredness was a mosquito, lurking somewhere in the darkness that would sporadically make its presence known by homing in on the man’s head, its whining buzz ringing in his ear. Try as he might, the man could not find any rest. Covering his head with the bed sheet only made him hot and breathless, the clammy discomfort made all the worse because of the climate.

Furthermore there was the hateful, capricious presence of his tormentor. Just when tiredness was overcoming the man, luring him to sleep, his tormentor would descend with its wicked whining on the other side of the sheet. Jolted by the sound, the man’s irritation would surge again, knowing that another hour of sleeplessness would have to pass.

His mind began to wander into squeamish thoughts. If he submitted to his tormentor’s desires by throwing off the sheet from his head, gaining some air to breathe and some badly craved minutes of sleep, then the mosquito would as sure as hell take its toll. The man pictured the ruthless parasite gorging on his blood while sleeping. He was nauseated by the idea of an alien creature being able to violate his skin with impunity and dipping into the well of his lifeblood, sucking his body’s vital fluid until its spindly belly became grotesquely bloated. The horribleness of the process disgusted him, terrorized him.

But also the squalid, gratuitous relationship filled him with anger. All at once his anger redoubled because he then realized that he – a man – had wasted so much of his precious rest time cowering under a sheet intimidated by an inferior speck of an insect, which in daylight he recalled is actually a very ungainly, insipid kind of creature that can easily be captured and crushed.

The man wasn’t yet working to a premeditated plan. Angry and exasperated, now fully awake, he simply decided to throw off the sheet and enjoy the cooling air. Lying full-square on his back, at first he felt a certain amusement from his petty show of defiance. What he would do next, wasn’t quite in his consciousness. He was just for the moment merely taking in fresh air.

Then out of the blackness, it came again, the wicked whining. Louder than ever, it seemed, the tormentor was drilling towards his bare face. But this time the man did not shirk or take shelter under the sheet. It was probably a mixture of irritation and anger that made his hands snap together in reflex, not consciously. He was surprised by his own quick, powerful action. And what was even more surprising to him was the subsequent silence. At first hardly believing his luck at catching his tormentor in pitch darkness, he then became elated by the sustained silence that meant that the torment was over. He had at last acquired rest and he luxuriated in the satisfaction of earning it. To be sure, in the scheme of things it was only a small victory, but nevertheless the man allowed himself the pleasure of knowing that he had asserted his will deliberately, purposefully for the comfort and peace of his mind and body. No longer would he be subjugated by a fiend. Henceforth, or at least for the rest of the night, this man would be the subject of his own fate.

The parasitical nature of late capitalism in the early 21st century is beyond comparison to a pest such as the mosquito. The lifeblood sucked from the body of society by a tiny ruling elite is oceans in volume by comparison; the human misery and suffering magnitudes worse. Prolific journalist Stephen Lendman can provide the shocking data on the United States of America in particular and how that society has within the space of a lifetime been bled utterly dry by the Wall Street banks, corporate oligarchs and their servile political Igors in both mainstream parties, including the occupant of the White House [1]. The same torment of the large body of people by a parasitical elite is replicated in Europe and elsewhere.

That is the ineluctable fiendish nature of global capitalism, which over generations feeds on the lifeblood of workers, and emaciates them and their families, while the system’s executors become bloated to the point of bursting, with all the wastefulness and destructiveness, including wars, that that entails. There is no way of legislating against such parasitism because the legislators are, or will sooner or later become, part of the parasitism – as the rich get richer and power and wealth inevitably polarize under capitalism. It is like a centrifugal force; always taking, taking, taking until the majority are left looking like a spent liquid to be discarded. Look at every nation state under the diktat of capitalism at this time in history, and dare say that that isn’t so.

The only protection to be gained is from crushing the system and replacing it with a different paradigm of relationships (democratic socialism – an alternative that has scarcely ever been given the chance to develop under the tyranny of capitalist imperialism).

In truth, this is not an impossibly tall order. The tormentor is in actual fact puny in number and size when compared with the collective body and power of the people. In many ways, the tormentor is only able to continue his parasitical tyranny because the people have chosen thus far to cower and take relative disorganized shelter. Or worst, they have fallen asleep from weariness, assigning themselves completely to the mercy of an insatiable feeding frenzy.

But signs are that the great body of humanity is finally beginning to rouse in anger, precisely from a painful understanding of how it has been and is being tormented. The world is awakening – thanks to global communications – and no more so than in the United States, where it is arguably most needed. And like the man in the above fable, a moment of determined organization could be all it takes to suddenly overturn a state of fear and torment into one of joy and freedom.

Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent

cunninghamfinian@gmail.com

NOTES

[1] America’s Great Divide Between Rich and Poor by Stephen Lendman http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28812

Australian PM Julia Gillard forced to flee Aboriginals

2012-01-27T05:06:00.000-08:00

01/26/2012

Australian PM Julia Gillard forced to flee mob at Australia Day event

By Ian Saleh, Washington Post

Australia’s tenuous and complicated relationship with its indigenous population came to a head in Canberra on Thursday when Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard had to flee a mob of protesting aboriginal activists, the Associated Press reported.
Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard, second from left, is escorted by body guards and police through a crowd of rowdy protesters. (Lukas Coch/AP)

Gillard and Opposition leader Tony Abbott were forced to wait for riot police to escort them from an Australia Day event after hundreds of supporters of the city’s Aboriginal Tent Embassy began protesting outside.
Protesters banged on the windows of the restaurant, chanting “shame” and “racist,” before police reinforcements arrived and pushed them back.

Gillard and Abbott were attending an event celebrating the official national day and the commemoration of the arrival of the British to the island. For many of indigenous heritage, the day is a controversial holiday — some have even taken to calling it Invasion Day. The Tent Embassy organizes annual protests.

Protesters descended on the convoy as the pair were being escorted to their vehicles, the Associated Press reported. Gillard’s bodyguard can be seen in the below video hustling her from the scene and bundling her into a waiting car. Gillard lost a shoe in the process. The car sped away while protesters ran after it pounding the windows and hood.

Tensions were inflamed after Abbott suggested that the aboriginal activists “move on” on the eve of the Tent Embassy’s 40th anniversary celebration. Embassy co-founder Michael Anderson decried Abbott’s statements as racially insensitive and criticized police for overreacting, the Herald Sun reported.

Other activists condemned the protesters’ actions. Gillard later said she was made of “tough stuff” and lauded the police for their actions. She did not comment on Abbott’s statement or the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.

She may be saving her fire for one of the many political battles she and her party are facing. She recently lost her razor-thin Parliamentary majority over a broken promise to reform slot machines, and is facing an impending state election in Queensland where her Labor party is running far behind the opposition in polls. The Queensland election is seen by many as a preamble to big Labor losses in the federal elections next year, and both Gillard and former PM Kevin Rudd have already committed to campaigning for the incumbent Anna Bligh.

By Ian Saleh | 01:06 PM ET, 01/26/2012

7 tools to shut down corporatocracy

2012-01-27T05:03:00.000-08:00

Corporate Rule Is Not Inevitable

7 signs the corporatocracy is losing its legitimacy ... and 7 populist tools to help shut it down.

Document Actions

by Sarah van Gelder

YES!Magazine, Jan 20, 2012

: A parody of corporate personhood in D.C.
Photo by takomabibelot

You may remember that there was a time when apartheid in South Africa seemed unstoppable.

Sure, there were international boycotts of South African businesses, banks, and tourist attractions. There were heroic activists in South Africa, who were going to prison and even dying for freedom. But the conventional wisdom remained that these were principled gestures with little chance of upending the entrenched system of white rule.

“Be patient,” activists were told. “Don’t expect too much against powerful interests with a lot of money invested in the status quo.”

With hindsight, though, apartheid’s fall appears inevitable: the legitimacy of the system had already crumbled. It was harming too many for the benefit of too few. South Africa’s freedom fighters would not be silenced, and the global movement supporting them was likewise tenacious and principled.

In the same way, the legitimacy of rule by giant corporations and Wall Street banks is crumbling. This system of corporate rule also benefits few and harms many, affecting nearly every major issue in public life. Some examples:

Powerful corporations socialize their risks and costs, but privatize profits. That means we, the 99 percent, pick up the tab for environmental clean ups, for helping workers who aren’t paid enough to afford food or health care, for bailouts when risky speculation goes wrong. Meanwhile, profits go straight into the pockets of top executives and others in the 1 percent.
The financial collapse threw millions of Americans into poverty. 25 million are unemployed, under-employed, or have given up looking for work; four million have been unemployed for more than 12 months. Poverty increased 27 percent between 2006 and 2010. And students who graduated with student loans in 2010 had borrowed 5 percent more than the previous year’s graduating class—owing more than $25,000. Meanwhile, those who caused the collapse continue the same practices. And the unwillingness of the 1 percent to pay their fair share of taxes means the the public services we rely on are fraying.
Scientists say that we are on the brink of runaway climate change; we only have a few years to make the needed investments in clean power and energy efficiency. This transition could be a huge job creator—on the order of the investments made during World War II, which got us out of the Depression. But fossil fuel industries don’t want to see their investment in dirty energy undermined by the switch to clean energy and conservation. So far, by paying millions to climate deniers, lobbyists, and political campaigns, they’ve succeeded in stymieing change.
Agribusiness get taxpayer subsidies for foods that make us sick; for farming practices that destroy rivers, soils, the climate, and the oceans; and for trade practices that cause hunger at home and abroad.
Through ALEC, the private prison industry crafts state laws that boost the numbers behind bars, lengthen sentences, and privatize prisons.
Big Pharma jacks up prices; insurance companies raise premiums and delivers fewer benefits; the burden of inflated care drags down the economy and bankrupts families. But only a very few politicians stand up to the health care industry's war chests and advocate for Canadian-style single-payer health care, which would go a long way toward solving the cost problem.
Corporations and wealthy executives fund an army of lobbyists and election campaigns, spreading untruths and self-serving policy prescriptions.

It’s not that we, the people, haven’t noticed all this.

In a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, 77 percent of Americans said too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations. In a poll by Time Magazine, 86 percent of Americans said Wall Street and its lobbyists have too much influence in Washington.

And 80 percent of Americans oppose Citizens United, the pro-corporate Supreme Court ruling that turns two years old today. Eighty percent—that’s among Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.

Some say corporations have such a strong grip on politicians and big media that it is impossible to challenge them, no matter how many of us there are.

But I believe we can do it. In the past few months, YES! Magazine has been researching ways that ordinary people can challenge corporate power (look for strategies in our spring issue, out in February). And we found that there are actually a lot of tools at our disposal:

Corporations were created by public law to provide a public benefit. If we the people no longer feel that a corporation is providing a benefit—or if we feel that it is operating in a lawless and destructive manner—we can revoke their charter. That’s what Free Speech for People has asked the attorney general of Delaware to do to Massey Energy, which has been one of the worst culprits in mountaintop removal and which has operated its mines in a lawless and negligent manner, resulting in 29 deaths at the Upper Big Branch Mine.
We can insist that, in exchange for use of our public airwaves, broadcasters provide free airtime to candidates for public office. If they don’t need to raise millions for media buys, they don’t need to be as beholden to the 1 percent.
We can get our governments to quit banking with Bank of America and Chase, and start our own state banks—14 states, including California and Washington, are considering such a move. And while we're at it, we can localizefood, energy, and other aspects of our economy so local, independent businesses and cooperatives can thrive.
We can stand up to specific parts of the corporate agenda by engaging in the sort of direct action that halted the KXL Pipeline.
We can call for a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United, corporate personhood, and the ridiculous notion that money is the same thing as speech. So far, Los Angeles, New York City, and about 50 other towns and cities have done so far.
We can use mechanisms like clean elections, electoral transparency, citizen review of legislation, and recalls to keep corporate control of our democracy in check.
Finally, the reason I am most hopeful today: We can take a cue from Occupy Wall Street and continue to name the source of political corruption—something the political establishment and mainstream media have refused to do. We can occupy homes that are slated for foreclosure, as people have been doing all over the country. We can mic check places like Walmarts that intimidate and fire workers who want to unionize. We can set up tents in public places and in other ways join with the Occupy movement to take a stand for a world that works for the 100 percent—a world where we all benefit.

None of these actions will be easy. It will take time—potentially years of work—to make big change. But just as the legitimacy of apartheid crumbled well before the institutions of apartheid went down, the legitimacy of corporate rule is crumbling. So I’m convinced that, with you and me and all the others out there creating alternatives and taking a stand, we will see change.

Sarah van Gelder will deliver these comments at Seattle's rally on the second anniversary of the Citizens United ruling. Sarah is YES! Magazine's co-founder and executive editor, and editor of the new book: "This Changes Everything: Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement."

Interested?

The 12 Most Hopeful Trends to Build On in 2012
2011 was full of surprises, many of them the good kind. But which ones will matter in the coming year? Here's our pick of trends to watch.
How Cities and States are Sticking It to Citizens United
From courthouses to statehouses, the pro-corporate ruling is under pressure.
How to Liberate America
How is it that our nation is awash in money, but too broke to provide jobs and services? David Korten introduces a landmark new report, “How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule.”

Recent literature on complementary currencies

2012-01-26T09:39:00.001-08:00

Recent literature on complementary currencies
Posted by: "Gill Seyfang (ENV)" g.seyfang@uea.ac.uk gillseyfang
Thu Jan 26, 2012 4:47 am (PST)

I'm pleased to forward this email from Rolf Schroeder, who compiles a wonderful database of CC literature. This is his list of most recent additions to the database. Please explore the database yourselves to find new research papers, and contribute anything else you know about,

www.cc-literature.org <http://www.cc-literature.org/>

thanks, Gill

International Journal of Community Currency Research
www.ijccr.net

Hello,

please find below a list with new publications and unpublished works. 66 contributions of the year 2011 and 2 of the year 2012 have, so far, been entered into the databank of the "Bibliography" (www.cc-literature.org <http://www.cc-literature.org/>). Not yet included are the Lyon conference papers. Below, I did not include the IJCCR publications readily available under www.ijccr.net . As usual, annotations i. r. o. many titles can be found in the databank. With regard to lit. in Japanese and French - work is in progress. I would be grateful for hints about other sources, of course also from earlier years.

Somebody in Lyon suggested to include some essential information about key authors. Here you are - a start has been made with Colin C. Williams a) in the "Focus" section and b) as pdf attachment to each and every entry. Other authors will follow.

Best regards,
Rolf

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Adams, C., & Mouatt, S. (2012). Alternatives to the global financial sector: Local complementary currencies, LETS, and time backed currencies. In Z. Luo (Ed.), Advanced analytics for green and sustainable economic development: Supply chain models and financial technologies (pp. 64-78). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/978-1-61350-156-6.ch005

Associazione Nazionale Banche del Tempo (Ed.). (2011). Banca del Tempo: L'Esperienza e il Valore sociale di una grande Rete di Relazioni e Saperi tra Cittadini. Milano: Altra Economia.

Barnes, G. (2011). Liquidity networks: Local trading systems using a debt-free electronic currency. In R. Douthwaite, & G. Fallon (Eds.), Fleeing vesuvius: Overcoming the risks of economic and environmental collapse (pp. 80-85). Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers.

Blanc, J., & Fare, M. (2011). Le rôle des pouvoirs publics dans le déploiement de monnaies sociales. Territoires, (515), 24-29.

Breitstein, L., & Dini, P. (2012). A social constructivist analysis of the 2007 banking crisis: Building trust and transparency through community currencies. Journal of Banking Regulation, 13(1), 36-62. doi:http://dx.doi. org/10.1057/ jbr.2011. 16 Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/jbr.2011.16

Caminha, U., & Figueiredo, M. (2011). Atividade financeira e moeda: Análise da experiência do conjunto palmeiras em fortaleza-CE. [Financial activity and currency: analisys of the experience of “conjunto palmeiras” in Fortaleza-CE (translation as provided in the journal)] Revista Direito GV, 7(1), 99-130. doi:http://dx.doi. org/10.1590/ S1808-2432201100 0100006 Retrieved from
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1808-24322011000100006&script=sci_arttext

Cochrane, A. (2011). Alternative approaches to local and regional development. In A. Pike, A. Rodríguez-Pose & J. Tomaney (Eds.), Handbook of local and regional development (pp. 97-105). Abingdon; New York: Routledge.

Collom, E. (2011, Motivations and differential participation in a community currency system:
the dynamics within a local social movement organization. Sociological Forum, 26, 144-168. doi:http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/ j.1573-7861. 2010.01228. x Retrieved from
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1573-7861.2010.01228.x/abstract

Darlaston-Jones, W. J. (2011). Endless possibilities: Achieving transformative change on poverty using community currencies. The Australian Community Psychologist, 23(1), 46-58. Retrieved from http://www.groups. psychology. org.au/Assets/ Files/ACP- 23-1-Darlaston- Jones.pdf;
http://www.groups.psychology.org.au/Assets/Files/ACP-23-1-2011.pdf

de Freitas, C. (2011). La Banque Palmas : une expérience phare de banque communautaire. Territoires, (515), 30-32.

Deconinck, G., Joachain, H., Klopfert, F., Holzemer, L., De Craemer, K., Qiu, Z., et al. (2011). An approach towards socially acceptable energy saving policies via monetary instruments on the smart meter infrastructure. Paper presented at the Leuven. 1-6. Retrieved from
https://lirias.kuleuven.be/handle/123456789/297783

Douthwaite, R. (2011). Degrowth and the supply of money in an energy-scarce world. Ecological Economics, , 1-7. doi:http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/ j.ecolecon. 2011.03.020 Retri eved from
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800911001297

Douthwaite, R. (2011). The supply of money in an energy-scarce world. In R. Douthwaite, & G. Fallon (Eds.), Fleeing vesuvius: Overcoming the risks of economic and environmental collapse (pp. 52-79). Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers.

Dunne, J. (2011). Complementary currency systems. In P. U. Petit (Ed.), Earth capitalism: Creating a new civilization through a responsible market economy (pp. 137-152). Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, Rutgers.

Ensenbach, K. (2011). Strafrechtsschutz von Komplementärwä hrungen. Juristische Arbeitsblätter, 43(5), 341-345.

Galler, F., & Rost, N. (2011). Solidarökonomischer Aufbruch der Region Berchtesgadener Land: Ein alternatives kleinräumiges Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftsmodell stellt sich vor. In S. Elsen (Ed.), Ökosoziale Transformation: Solidarische Ökonomie und die Gestaltung des Gemeinwesens. Perspektiven und Ansätze von unten (pp. 415-433). Neu-Ulm: AG Spak Bücher.

Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2011). A feminist project of belonging for the anthropocene. Gender, Place and Culture, 18(1), 1-21. doi:http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/ 0966369X. 2011.535295 Retrieved from
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2011.535295

Hart, K. (2011). The financial crisis and the end of all-purpose money. Economic sociology_the European Electronic Newsletter, 12(2), 4-10. Retrieved from
http://econsoc.mpifg.de/archive/econ_soc_12-2.pdf#page=4

Helmeczi, I. N., & Kóczán, G. (2011). A "helyi pénznek" nevezett utalványokról. [There is an English version of this article available. Title: On trade vouchers called "Local money"] MNB-SZEMLE, , 30-43. Retrieved from http://www.mnb.hu/Root/Dokumentumtar/MNB/Kiadvanyok/mnbhu_mnbszemle/mnbhu_msz_201104/helmeczi-koczan.pdf

Helmeczi, I. N., & Kóczán, G. (2011). On trade vouchers called "local money". [A "helyi pénznek" nevezett utalványokról] MNB Bulletin, , 30-43. Retrieved from
http://english.mnb.hu/Root/Dokumentumtar/ENMNB/Kiadvanyok/mnben_mnbszemle/mnben_mnb_bulletin_april_2011/helmeczi-koczan_ENG.pdf

Khromov, D. (2011, Wednesday, April 13, 2011). Ithaca hours revival would require community support. Ithaca Times, Retrieved from
http://www.ithaca.com/news/article_175100c4-65d6-11e0-bd73-001cc4c002e0.html

Lang, E., & Wintergerst, T. (2011). Am Puls des langen Lebens: Soziale Innovationen für die alternde Gesellschaft. München: oekom.

Lasker, J., Collom, E., Bealer, T., Niclaus, E., Young, J., Kratzer, Z., et al. (2011). Time banking and health: The role of a community currency organization in enhancing well-being. Health Promotion Practice, 12(1), 102-115. doi:http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/ 1524839909353022 Retrieved from
http://hpp.sagepub.com/content/12/1/102.abstract

Leblanc, N. (2011). La monnaie, nouvel espace de démocratie ? Territoires, (515), 22-23.

Lietaer, B. (2011). Complementary currencies at work. In S. Mouatt, & C. Adams (Eds.), Corporate and social transformation of money and banking: Breaking the serfdom(pp. 160-178). Houndsmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lietaer, B., & Hallsmith, G. (2011). Creating wealth: Growing local economies with local currencies. Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers.

Luscombe, J. (2011). Alternative development in Ecuador: Prospects for Equitable Growth. Unpublished manuscript. Retrieved 24.1.2012, from
http://repositorio.uasb.edu.ec/handle/10644/2145

Martignoni, J. (2011). Typologie von Komplementärwä hrungen und Erfolgsfaktoren von Komplementärwä hrungsorganisati onen. Unpublished MBA, Institut für Verbands- Stiftungs- und Genossenschaftsmana gement (VMI), Universität Freiburg/Schweiz, Freiburg, Schweiz. Retrieved from
http://www.flexibles.ch/Projekte/Masterarbeit_Komplementaerwaehrungen-J_Martignoni.pdf

Mehew, E., & Galuppo, G. (2011). In The Western Union Company (Ed.), Alternative value exchange systems and methods (705/26.1; 705/37 ed.). USA: G06Q 30/00; G06Q 40/00. Retrieved from
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2011/0016009.html

Mouatt, S., & Adams, C. (2011). Introduction. In S. Mouatt, & C. Adams (Eds.), Corporate and social transformation of money and banking: Breaking the serfdom (pp. 1-21). Houndsmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pacione, M. (2011). Local money - A response to the globalisation of capital?
. Quaestiones Geographicae, 30(4), 9-19. doi:http://dx.doi. org/10.2478/ v10117-011- 0033-x Retrieved from
http://versita.metapress.com/content/486t0311851uj117/

Parádi-Dolgos, A., Gál, V., & Kovács, T. (2011). The penetration of local currencies, a possible solution to the financial challenges of globalization. Regional and Business Studies, 3(1), 421-427. Retrieved from
http://journal.ke.hu/rbs/index.php/rbs/article/view/60

Pfajfar, D., Sgro, G., & Wagner, W. (2011). Are alternative currencies a substitute or a complement to fiat money? evidence from cross-country data. Unpublished manuscript. Retrieved 3.10.2011, from
http://lyrawww.uvt.nl/~wagner/Acc.pdf

Phillips-Nania, E. (2010/2011). Local food currency: An economic tool for community health. Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, 12, 400-412. Retrieved from
http://www.vjel.org/journal/pdf/VJEL10148.pdf

Santana E., M. E. (2011). Los mercados alternativos y la Economía solidaria. CAOS - Revista Eletrônica de Ciências Sociais, 16, 136-146. Retrieved from
http://www.cchla.ufpb.br/caos/n17/10.SANTANA%20MAYU%20Los%20mercados%20alternativos%20y%20la%20Economa%20solidaria%20UACHIAPASMX%20136-146.pdf

Santana Echeagaray, M. E. (2011). Recrear el dinero en una economía solidaria. Polis, Revista de la Universidad Bolivariana, 10(29), 261-280. Retrieved from
http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0718-65682011000200012&script=sci_arttext&tlng=e

Schmid, L. (2011). Seniorengenossensch aften als Plattform partizipativer Selbsthilfe - Nutzen für Mitglieder und die Gesellschaft. Zeitschrift für das gesamte Genossenschaftswese n, 61(1), 19-33.

Schuster, L. (2011). Emissionsrechte als Carbon Currency: Gedanken zu den Währungsaspekten des CO2-Handels. In K. Dosch (Ed.), Mehr Mut beim Klimaschutz: Plädoyer für einen persönlichen Emissionshandel (pp. 189-231). Aachen: Aachener Stiftung Kathy Beys.

Thiel, C. (2011). Das "bessere" Geld: Eine ethnographische Studie zur sozialen Konstruktion von Geld am Beispiel von Regionalwährungen. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschafte n.

Tóth, I. B. (2011). The function of local currencies in local economic development: The bavarian ‘Chiemgauer regiogeld’ and the ‘Kékfrank’ in sopron. Public Finance Quarterly, (1), 67-78. Retrieved from
http://www.asz.hu/en/public-finance-quarterly-articles/2011/the-function-of-local-currencies-in-local-economic-development

Tóth, I. B. (2011). A helyi valuta szerepe a lokális gazdaságfejleszté sben: A bajor chimsee regiogeld és a soproni kékfrank-utalvá ny kezdeményezés. Pénzügyi Szemle (Public Finance Quarterly), (1), 66-77. Retrieved from
http://www.asz.hu/penzugyi-szemle-cikkek/2011/a-helyi-valuta-szerepe-a-lokalis-gazdasagfejlesztesben

Whitaker, C. (2011). L'ébullition des monnaies complémentaires françaises. Territoires, (515), 33-35.

Williams, C. C. (2011). Geographical variations in the nature of community engagement: A total social organization of labour approach. Community Development Journal,46(2) , 213-228. doi:http:/dx.doi. org/10.1093/cdj/bsp063 Retrieved from
http://cdj.oxfordjournals.org/content/46/2/213

Wulf, B. (2011). Tauschringe gründen und gestalten: Bernd Wulf im Gespräch mit Michael Maass. Norderstedt: Books on Demand.

Zelizer, V. A. (2011). Economic lives: How culture shapes the economy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

------------ --------- ---------
Dr Gill Seyfang
RCUK Academic Fellow in Sustainable Consumption
Science, Society and Sustainability (3S) Research Group
School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia
Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK

tel: +44(0)1603 592956

3S: www.3s.uea.ac.uk<http://www.3s.uea.ac.uk>
Personal: www.uea.ac.uk/ ~e175/<http://www.uea.ac.uk/~e175/>
Research: www.grassrootsinnovations.org/ <http://www.grassrootsinnovations.org/>

Rescates financieros en Europa permiten privatizaciones

2012-01-26T04:13:00.000-08:00

INTERNACIONAL

Rescates financieros en Europa permiten privatizaciones de bienes y riquezas estatales

por Leandro Albani

http://www.avn.info.ve/contenido/rescates-financieros-europa-permiten-privatizaciones-bienes-y-riquezas-estatales

Caracas, 24 Ene. AVN.- Los rescates financieros que en la actualidad se aplican en Europa tienen el objetivo de aumentar las deudas públicas de los países y, ante la imposibilidad de pagar esos compromisos, despojarlos de sus empresas públicas y sus riquezas.

Así lo afirmó el el politólogo italiano, Attillio Folliero, en una entrevista con la Agencia Venezolana de Noticias (AVN).

"El rescate tiene un objetivo preciso y es aumentar la deuda pública, llevándola a un nivel impagable para después poder despojar a los países desarrollados de sus mejoras empresas estatales y sus riquezas", expresó el también profesor universitario.

Folliero señaló que en estos momentos, los países europeos tienen una deuda alta y, cuanto más se acreciente a través de préstamos de organismos internacionales, "menor será el precio para los 'interesados' en adquirir las riquezas de un país y sus grandes empresas estatales".

Grecia, Portugal, Italia y España son las naciones del viejo continente que más han avanzado en esta dirección, liberalizando sus economías, aplicando medidas de ajuste y dictando leyes que permiten las privatizaciones y los despidos masivos, requisitos impuestos por el FMI y la Unión Europea (UE) a cambio de ayudas financieras.

Estas políticas son denunciadas de forma permanente en las protestas de sindicatos y movimientos de indigandos en Europa.

Para Folliero, la actual crisis en el continente "no se va a resolver en tiempos rápidos", porque está relacionada con "la aceleración del ocaso del Occidente".

El politólogo italiano vaticinó que en un futuro se podrán presenciar "manifestaciones impactantes", porque comenzarán a repercutir problemas estructurales como el hambre.

"Europa no tiene futuro porque además hay que añadir que no tiene ningún tipo de recursos naturales. Por supuesto tiene grandes riquezas, grandes empresas tecnológicas o grandes reservas de oro", pero "serán despojadas, robadas por las grandes transnacionales".

Folliero aseveró que "la crisis no ha llegado a su punto más crítico y aun cuando llegara y pasara el punto más crítico, Europa seguirá en crisis, en el sentido que nunca más alcanzara el poder y la riqueza a la cual había llegado".

Leandro Albani AVN 24/01/2012 10:07

Shining a Light on Shadow Banking

2012-01-25T17:34:00.000-08:00

Why All the Robo-Signing? Shining a

Light on the Shadow Banking System

Wednesday 25 January 2012

by: Ellen Brown, Truthout | News Analysis

http://www.truth-out.org/why-all-robo-signing-shining-light-shadow-banking-system/1327502824

(Image: JR / TO; Adapted: epicharmus,_rockinfree)

The Wall Street Journal reported on January 19 that the Obama administration was pushing heavily to get the 50 state attorneys general to agree to a settlement with five major banks in the "robo-signing" scandal. The scandal involves employees signing names not their own, under titles they did not really have, attesting to the veracity of documents they had not really reviewed. Investigation is revealing that it did not just happen occasionally, but was an industry-wide practice, dating back to the late 1990s; and that it may have clouded the titles of millions of homes. If the settlement is agreed to, it will let Wall Street bankers off the hook for crimes that would land the rest of us in jail - fraud, forgery, securities violations and tax evasion.

To the president's credit, however, he seems to have shifted his position on the settlement in response to protests before his State of the Union address. In his speech on January 24, President Obama did not mention the settlement, but announced instead that he would be creating a mortgage crisis unit to investigate wrongdoing related to real estate lending. "This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans," he said.

The Deeper Question Is, Why?

Whether massive robo-signing occurred is no longer in issue. The question that needs to be investigated is why it was being done. The alleged justification - that the bankers were so busy that they cut corners - hardly seems credible given the extent of the practice.

The robo-signing largely involved assignments of mortgage notes to mortgage servicers or trusts representing the investors who put up the loan money. Assignment was necessary to give the trusts legal title to the loans. But assignment was delayed until it was necessary to foreclose on the homes, when it had to be done through the forgery and fraud of robo-signing. Why had it been delayed? Why did the banks not assign the mortgages to the trusts when and as required by law?

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Here is a working hypothesis, suggested by Martin Andelman: securitized mortgages are the "pawns" used in the pawn shop known as the "repo market." "Repos" are overnight sales and repurchases of collateral. Yale economist Gary Gorton explains that repos are the "deposit insurance" for the shadow banking system, which is now larger than the conventional banking system and is necessary for the conventional system to operate. The problem is that repos require "sales," which means the mortgage notes have to remain free to be bought and sold. The mortgages are left unendorsed so they can be used in this repo market.

The Evolution of the Shadow Banking System

Gorton observes that there is a massive and growing demand for banking by large institutional investors - pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds - which have millions of dollars to park somewhere between investments. But FDIC insurance covers only up to $250,000. FDIC insurance was resisted in the 1930s by bankers and government officials and was pushed through as a populist movement: the people demanded it. What they got was enough insurance to cover the deposits of individuals and no more. Today, the large institutional investors want similar coverage. They want an investment that is secure, that provides them with a little interest and that is liquid like a traditional deposit account, allowing quick withdrawal.

The shadow banking system evolved in response to this need, operating largely through the repo market. "Repos" are sales and repurchases of highly liquid collateral, typically Treasury debt or mortgage-backed securities - the securitized units into which American real estate has been ground up and packaged, sausage-fashion. The collateral is bought by a "special purpose vehicle" (SPV), which acts as the shadow bank. The investors put their money in the SPV and keep the securities, which substitute for FDIC insurance in a traditional bank. (If the SPV fails to pay up, the investors can foreclose on the securities.) To satisfy the demand for liquidity, the repos are one-day or short-term deals, continually rolled over until the money is withdrawn. This money is used by the banks for other lending, investing or speculating. Gorton writes:

This banking system (the "shadow" or "parallel" banking system) - repo based on securitization - is a genuine banking system, as large as the traditional, regulated banking system. It is of critical importance to the economy because it is the funding basis for the traditional banking system. Without it, traditional banks will not lend and credit, which is essential for job creation, will not be created.

All Behind the Curtain of MERS

The housing shell game was made possible because it was all concealed behind an electronic smokescreen called MERS (an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.). MERS allowed houses to be shuffled around among multiple, rapidly changing owners while circumventing local recording laws. Title would be recorded in the name of MERS as a placeholder for the investors and MERS would foreclose on behalf of the investors. Payments would be received by the mortgage servicer, which was typically the bank that signed the mortgage with the homeowner. The homeowner usually thinks the servicer is the lender, but in fact it is an amorphous group of investors.

This all worked until courts started questioning whether MERS, which admitted that it was a mere conduit without title, had standing to foreclose. Courts have increasingly held that it does not.

Making matters worse for the servicing banks, Fannie Mae sent out a memo telling servicers that in order to be reimbursed under HAMP - a government loan modification program designed to help at-risk homeowners meet their mortgage payments - the servicers would have to produce the paperwork showing the loan had been assigned to the trust.

The hasty solution was a rash of assignments signed by an army of "robo-signers," to be filed in the public records. But the documents are patent forgeries, making a shambles of county title records.

Complicating all this are tax issues. Since 1986, mortgage-backed securities have been issued to investors through SPVs called REMICs (Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits). REMICs are designed as tax shelters; but to qualify for that status, they must be "static." Mortgages can't be transferred in and out once the closing date has occurred. The REMIC Pooling and Servicing Agreement typically states that any transfer significantly after the closing date is invalid. Yet, the newly robo-signed documents, which are required to begin foreclosure proceedings, are almost always executed long after the trust's closing date. The whole business is quite complicated, but the bottom line is that title has been clouded not only by MERS, but because the trusts purporting to foreclose do not own the properties by the terms of their own documents.

John O'Brien, register of deeds for the Southern Essex District of Massachusetts, calls it a "criminal enterprise." On January 18, he called for a full-scale criminal investigation, including a grand jury, to look into the evidence. He sent to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, US Attorney General Eric Holder and US Attorney Carmen Ortiz over 30,000 documents recorded in the Salem Registry that he says are fraudulent.

From Lending Machines to Borrowing Machines

The bankers have engaged in what amounts to a massive fraud, not necessarily because they started out with criminal intent, but because they have been required to in order to come up with the collateral (in this case real estate) to back their loans. It is the way our system is set up: the banks are not really creating credit and advancing it to us, counting on our future productivity to pay it off, the way they once did under the deceptive but functional façade of fractional reserve lending. Instead, they are vacuuming up our money and lending it back to us at higher rates.

"Instead of lending into the economy," says British money reformer Ann Pettifor, "bankers are borrowing from the real economy." She wrote in The Huffington Post in October 2010:

[T]he crazy facts are these: bankers now borrow from their customers and from taxpayers. They are effectively draining funds from household bank accounts, small businesses, corporations, government Treasuries and from e.g. the Federal Reserve. They do so by charging high rates of interest and fees; by demanding early repayment of loans; by illegally foreclosing on homeowners and by appropriating and then speculating with trillions of dollars of taxpayer-backed resources.

Not only has the system destroyed county title records, but it is highly vulnerable to bank runs and systemic collapse. In the shadow banking system, as in the old, fractional reserve banking system, the collateral is being double counted: it is owed to the borrowers and the depositors at the same time. This allows for expansion of the money supply, but bank runs can occur when the borrowers and the depositors demand their money at the same time. And unlike the conventional banking system, the shadow banking system is largely unregulated. It doesn't have the backup of FDIC insurance to prevent bank runs.

That is what happened in September 2008 following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, a major investment bank. Gorton explains that it was a run on the shadow banking system that caused the credit collapse that followed. Investors rushed to pull their money out overnight. LIBOR - the London interbank lending rate for short-term loans - shot up to around 5 percent. Since the cost of borrowing the money to cover loans was too high for banks to turn a profit, lending abruptly came to a halt.

Fixing the System

The question is how to eliminate this systemic risk. As noted by The Business Insider:

Regulate shadow banking more tightly and you probably have to also provide government backstops. Shudder. Try to shut the thing down or restrict it and you suck credit out of the system, credit which much of the non-financial "'real" economy uses and needs.

Interestingly, countries with strong public-sector banking systems largely escaped the 2008 credit crisis. These include the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - which contain 40 percent of the global population and are today's fastest growing economies. They escaped because their public-sector banks do not need to rely on repos and securitizations to back their loans. The banks are owned and operated by the ultimate guarantor - the government itself. The public-sector banking model deserves further study.

Whatever the solution, a system that requires the slicing and dicing of mortgages behind an electronic smokescreen so they can be bought and sold as collateral for the pawn shop of the repo market is obviously fraught with perils and is unsustainable. Please contact your state attorney general and urge him or her not to go through with the robo-signing settlement, which will be granting immunity for crimes that are not yet fully known. Phone numbers are here. The surface of this great shadowy second banking system has barely been scratched. It needs a very thorough investigation.

Italian Trucker Blockades Cost EUR200 Million A Day

2012-01-25T12:49:00.001-08:00

Italian Trucker Blockades Cost EUR200 Million A Day - Report

Published January 25, 2012

Dow Jones Newswires

ROME – A nationwide blockade by Italian truckers is costing the country's economy at least EUR200 million a day, Italian business daily Il Sole 24 Ore reported Wednesday.

The paper said at least EUR50 million in fresh product is being lost to sales each day and noted that carmaker Fiat SpA (F.MI) has had to shut down some shifts due to the fact that supplies are not being delivered.

Appliance-makers Indesit Co. SpA (IND.MI), Whirlpool Corp. (WHR) and Electrolux AB (ELUXY) are also cutting back on shifts due to supply problems, while Italy's many shoe-making enterprises are also running out of material.

Italian truckers are protesting the high cost of fuel, which the government's latest austerity measures increased by adding a new excise tax, as well as high road tolls, which the government did not cut in its liberalization decree. Episodes of violence have occurred during the protest.

The disruption has led to shortages of gasoline and food. Markets in the city of Rome are receiving 70% less fruit and vegetables than usual, which has triggered an equal jump in prices for some items, pushing the humble zucchini or courgette to command as much as EUR6.50 a kilogram, daily Il Messaggero reported.

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