I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY - John Lennon...

Asean wants role in solving global economic crisis   Kavi Chongkittavorn  Asia News Network Publication Date: 31-03-2009 Asean should be given more active role to coordinate regional strategies to resolve regional challenges amid the global economic crisis, Secretary General of Asean Surin Pitsuwan said yesterday.   Surin, who is attending the G-20 London Summit on Thursday, told ANN in an interview that it is a rare opportunity for the Asean chair to attend such a summit “when the global community is being faced with such formidable challenges as now.”   “It is rather encouraging to all of us in Asean to be given such an opportunity to participate in the highest level of the global community in search of the global solutions to all the global challenges,” Surin said. “I hope that this will be the beginning of a new era of regional organizations playing a global role.”   As the Asean chair, Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who arrived here Monday evening, will speak on behalf of Asean on Thursday. He has been coordinating with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono over the issues to be raised since February. They are scheduled to meet on Wednesday ahead of the summit. Asean and its dialogue partners China, Japan and Korea also will speak with one voices on the necessity to reform international financial systems to make them more equity.    Surin pointed out that Asean can offer a model of regional cooperation that has helped stabilize a diverse region, achieve a continued economic growth, integrate economies of various levels of development and enhance prosperity and security of the region for the past 4 decades.   “The grouping can take part in the efforts to redesign a new landscape for the global economic system post-crisis. It will be a multi polar growth,” he said adding that East Asia will be one such pillar and Asean can be the cornerstone of that regional growth pillar of East Asia.   But to achieve these objectives, he reiterated that Asean must be forceful to go against protectionism of all shades by lowering tariff and non-tariff barriers among its members.   “In fact, one reason why Asean was invite to London summit has been its track record of regional cooperation and sustained economic growth and prosperity and stability achieved through such cooperation. We can be an example to other regions,” he said.   Looking forward in the post G-20 summit, the Asean chief said that coordinated efforts based on the summit’s outcome must be fully carried out by all including the international community at large.   Resources must be mobilized for such international financial institutions like the World Bank, the IMF and regional development banks, according to Surin.   “And if regional mechanisms for financial cooperation and economic coordination could be created, it would be a healthy development, strengthening regional development cooperation and governance for the benefit of the regions.”   At the Asean summit in Cha-am/Hua Hin, the Asean leaders reaffirm their determinations to ensure free flows of goods and services. They also stood firm against the protectionism. Less rhetorics, how about doing more walk and less talk ? Singapore authorities warn of April 1 computer worm   Chua Hian Hou  The Straits Times Publication Date: 31-03-2009 A government information security watchdog here has issued a warning for people to take precautions against a fast-mutating malicious computer programme that is poised to strike tomorrow. In a bulletin sent out yesterday, the Singapore Computer Emergency Response Team (SingCert) warned that the latest variant of the Conficker worm, known as Conficker.C, may “become active on April 1.” SingCert, a unit of technology sector regulator Infocomm Development Authority, identifies information security threats and coordinates computer security responses to events like hacking attacks. Conficker targets computers running Microsoft Windows software, automatically jumping from one computer to another over a local network or by hitching a ride on portable storage devices like USB drives. Only computers that have not been updated with new security signatures are vulnerable. The worm is one of the more sophisticated programmes developed to date. Earlier versions of such programmes were easily found and removed, but Conficker’s creator regularly comes up with improved versions of the worm to foil efforts to remove it. The creator remains at large despite a US$250,000 bounty put up by Microsoft. The newest variant, Conficker.C, the fourth generation of the worm since it was first discovered late last year, disables security features like Microsoft Windows’ automatic update. One of Conficker’s key features is its ability to call up a “master computer” via the Internet for directions. This feature is present in an improved form in its latest variant. And Wednesday, Conficker.C infected computers will do just that, SingCert warned, although “the exact nature of the activity that will occur ... is not known at this time.” Paul Ducklin, security company Sophos’ Asia-Pacific head of technology, said that while it is possible “nothing will happen (tomorrow), it is also possible that something will happen and you’d wish you did something about it today.” And even if nothing happens tomorrow, he added, it does not mean that Conficker cannot strike on May 1 and is instructed to, say, erase your computer. Since its release, Conficker has claimed more than 10 million victims worldwide, includingcomputers used by the British Parliament. For instructions on how to check if your computer is infected and how to remove the worm, visit SingCert’s website at www.singcert.org.sg. It's April 1st and it's not cool to be fooled ! Be armed !! Singapore to Let Currency Ease, But Caution Needed By: Reuters | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:49 AM ET Singapore's central bank is likely to allow a modest currency depreciation in coming weeks to help the ailing economy, but has to tread carefully to avoid sparking a domino effect of falling currencies in Asia. The central bank, whose monetary policy targets the Singapore dollar within a crawling trade-weighted band, has various options to choose from: recentre the band downwards, widen the trading band to give the currency more room to move, or change the slope of the band to allow the unit to move one way or the other more quickly. Most analysts believe the central bank, which keeps the details of the band a secret, will lower the band's mid-point by at least 1 percent or 2 percent to guide the currency lower when it reviews policy, most likely in the next few weeks. That would signal a shift to an easing policy after the central bank adopted what it called a neutral bias on the currency at its last policy review in October. But a shift to an easing bias will have to avoid any perception it is deliberately lowering the value of its currency to help the island's exporters, analysts said. "There are a lot of political considerations to be made because it may not be welcomed by regional peers if you have an outright statement saying you are targeting a weaker currency," said Magnus Prim, currency strategist at SEB in Singapore. Markets have speculated on the risk of competitive currency devaluations in Asia because of the region's export reliance on the United States and Europe, regions deep in recession. A weaker currency can do little to boost end demand that has been hammered by the global crisis, but it might improve price competitiveness and so give exporters an edge. Currency dealers say Thailand and Taiwan have intervened this month to reduce the value of their currencies to support exports, the only central banks suspected of having taking such action, although neither country has confirmed this. Indeed, traders said Taiwan's central bank intervened on Monday to buy the U.S. dollar, which at the time was rallying against most currencies including the Taiwan dollar. "The central bank was buying U.S. dollars and it bid at around the day's high today. I think what it's trying to do is, it wants to help exporters by ensuring the Taiwan dollar remains weak," said a dealer in Taipei, who declined to be identified because he was not permitted to talk on the record to the media.  Trade Reliant Singapore is the most trade reliant economy in Asia, a factor that has pushed it into its deepest recession on record. Exports revenues are equal to 200 percent of gross domestic product. Knowing that vulnerability, investors have pushed down the Singapore dollar against the U.S. dollar by close to 6 percent so far this year, making it the second-weakest emerging markets currency in Asia after the Korean won. But on a trade weighted basis, Emmanuel Ng, currency strategist at OCBC Bank estimated the Singapore dollar has fallen about 2.6 percent this year. The Singapore dollar was trading around 1.5200 per U.S. dollar on Tuesday, more than 2 percent above its two-year low hit in early March. A Reuters poll of economists this month forecast Singapore's economy would shrink 5 percent in 2009, although Lee Kuan Yew, a former long-term prime minister who now has the title of minister mentor, said earlier this month the contraction could be as deep as 10 percent if exports continue to slump. "While a weaker Singapore dollar would not be a panacea for the slowing economy in Singapore, it would be more reflective of the prevailing economic realities," said Ng. "We think that the global landscape has gotten significantly more dire since the last meeting in October," he said. While other Asian central banks have slashed interest rates to spur growth, the Monetary Authority of Singapore steers policy through the currency. The secretive currency band means financial analysts have to develop their own models to gauge policy. Wei Zheng Kit, analyst at Citigroup, suspected the central bank may have already pushed down the Singapore dollar to the bottom of the trading band to pave the way for a policy easing. More From CNBC.com Charting Asia: A Yen for the Dollar U.S. Dollar Advances Against Yen Asia Pacific Currencies More Asia Pacific News A central bank survey of 20 private economists published on March 16 showed the Singapore dollar was likely to slip to 1.56 per U.S. dollar by the end of 2009. Before adopting a neutral policy on the currency in October, the central bank had a tightening policy defined by what it called a gradual and modest appreciation in the currency. "There is an outside chance of change in the slope, but their policy approach looks too conservative for this," said Piron. Still, few analysts expect the MAS to openly advocate a weaker currency policy, which could risk more overt competitive currency depreciations in the region, analysts said. Weakening the Singapore dollar too aggressively may also trigger capital flight, analysts say. Woon Khien Chia, a strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland, said Singapore's policy easing would help fend off deflation and the fear of capital flight may be overdone. "Capital flight, if any, has nothing to do with currency policy but credit risk. Singapore's government, banks and corporations have no credit issue," she said. Very interesting development indeed, to weaken the SD to aid exports at a time when worldwide markets for goods and services had diminished for a country without natural resources that has to import even its water supply!  Are the Singaporeans that desperate or is there more than meets the eye to  MAS  decision ?   EU to Urge Ambitious Agenda at G20 Summit By: Reuters | 31 Mar 2009 | 08:13 AM ET The upcoming G20 summit should pledge an overhaul of financial institutions, map out an exit from governments' spending sprees and commit to a climate deal, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said. Speaking about the 27-nation European Union's priorities for the April 2 summit on the global financial crisis, Barroso said the bloc should allow countries such as China or India to have a bigger say in a reformed International Monetary Fund. "Emerging economies must have an equitable stake. EU member states will have to be flexible on how this is achieved," Barroso told a news conference on Tuesday. Armando Franca / AP The EU will opt for a massive increase of IMF resources, to which it will contribute 75 billion euros ($99.3 billion), he said. The G20 leading and emerging countries should also commit themselves on reforming capital requirements for banks, better oversee hedge funds, overhaul credit rating agencies, improve accounting standards and remuneration, he added. (If there is to be a singing lesson, where are the lyrics for the chorus to sing  along, Mr. President ? ) Netanyahu says peace possible with Palestinians 31/03 18:13 CET The incoming Israeli prime minister has promised to pursue peace with the Palestinians. Addressing parliament before it votes to endorse his right and left leaning coalition cabinet, Benjamin Netanyahu said he’ll “seek peace along three tracks – economic, security and political.” However the leader of the right-wing Likud party made no mention of establishing a Palestinian “state” – a key demand of the Palestinian Authority, that is supported by Washington. The cabinet is one of Israel’s largest, with hard-liner Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister and Labour veteran Ehud Barak as minister or defence. Some analysts say Iran’s nuclear programme will be its top security priority This will be Netanyahu’s second spell as prime minister. He last held office in 1999. It is apparent that the Israelis think that they already have the Palestinians right under their thumbs and that they are more fearful of Iran which explains Netanyahu's seeming arrogance as if peace with the Palestinians is just an option !!!

Financing the Empire

Does US Face G20 Mutiny?

Financing the Empire

By MICHAEL HUDSON

I am travelling in Europe for three weeks to discuss the global financial crisis with government officials, politicians and labor leaders. What is most remarkable is how differently the financial problem is perceived over here. It’s like being in another economic universe, not just another continent.

The U.S. media are silent about the most important topic policy makers are discussing here (and I suspect in Asia too): how to protect their countries from three inter-related dynamics:

(1) the surplus dollars pouring into the rest of the world for yet further financial speculation and corporate takeovers; 

(2) the fact that central banks are obliged to recycle these dollar inflows to buy U.S. Treasury bonds to finance the federal U.S. budget deficit; and most important (but most suppressed in the U.S. media, 

(3) the military character of the U.S. payments deficit and the domestic federal budget deficit.

Strange as it may seem – and irrational as it would be in a more logical system of world diplomacy – the “dollar glut” is what finances America’s global military build-up. It forces foreign central banks to bear the costs of America’s expanding military empire – effective “taxation without representation.” Keeping international reserves in “dollars” means recycling their dollar inflows to buy U.S. Treasury bills – U.S. government debt issued largely to finance the military.

To date, countries have been as powerless to defend themselves against the fact that this compulsory financing of U.S. military spending is built into the global financial system. Neoliberal economists applaud this as “equilibrium,” as if it is part of economic nature and “free markets” rather than bare-knuckle diplomacy wielded with increasing aggressiveness by U.S. officials. The mass media chime in, pretending that recycling the dollar glut to finance U.S. military spending is “showing their faith in U.S. economic strength” by sending “their” dollars here to “invest.” It is as if a choice is involved, not financial and diplomatic compulsion to choose merely between “Yes” (from China, reluctantly), “Yes, please” (from Japan and the European Union) and “Yes, thank you” (Britain, Georgia and Australia).

It is not “foreign faith in the U.S. economy” that leads foreigners to “put their money here.” That’s a silly cartoon of a more sinister dynamic. The “foreigners” in question are not consumers buying U.S. exports, nor are they private-sector “investors” buying U.S. stocks and bonds. The largest and most important foreign entities putting “their money” here are central banks, and it is not “their money” at all. They are sending back the dollars that foreign exporters and other recipients turn over to their central banks for domestic currency.

When the U.S. payments deficit pumps dollars into foreign economies, these banks are being given little option except to buy U.S. Treasury bills and bonds – which the Treasury spends on financing an enormous, hostile military build-up to encircle the major dollar-recyclers – China, Japan and Arab OPEC oil producers. Yet these governments are forced to recycle dollar inflows in a way that funds U.S. military policies in which they have no say in formulating, and which threaten them more and more belligerently. That is why China and Russia took the lead in forming the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) a few years ago.

Here in Europe there is a clear awareness that the U.S. payments deficit is much larger than just the trade deficit. One need merely look at Table 5 of the U.S. balance-of-payments data compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and published by the Dept. of Commerce in its Survey of Current Business to see that the deficit does not stem merely from consumers buying more imports than the United States exports as the financial sector de-industrializes its economy. U.S. imports are now plunging as the economy shrinks and consumers are now finding themselves obliged to pay down the debts they have taken on.

Congress has told foreign investors in the largest dollar holder, China, not to buy anything except perhaps used-car dealerships and maybe more packaged mortgages and Fannie Mae stock – the equivalent of Japanese investors being steered into spending $1 billion for Rockefeller Center, on which they subsequently took a 100 per cent loss, and Saudi investment in Citigroup. That’s the kind of “international equilibrium” that U.S. officials love to see. “CNOOK go home” is the motto when it comes to serious attempts by foreign governments and their sovereign wealth funds (central bank departments trying to figure out what to do with their dollar glut) to make direct investments in American industry.

So we are left with the extent to which the U.S. payments deficit stems from military spending. The problem is not only the war in Iraq, now being extended to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is the expensive build-up of U.S. military bases in Asian, European, post-Soviet and Third World countries. The Obama administration has promised to make the actual amount of this military spending more transparent. That presumably means publishing a revised set of balance of payments figures as well as domestic federal budget statistics.

The military overhead is much like a debt overhead, extracting revenue from the economy. In this case it is to pay the military-industrial complex, not merely Wall Street banks and other financial institutions. The domestic federal budget deficit does not stem only from “priming the pump” to give away enormous sums to create a new financial oligarchy. It contains an enormous and rapidly growing military component.

So Europeans and Asians see U.S. companies pumping more and more dollars into their economies. Not just to buy their exports in excess of providing them with goods and services in return; not just  to buy their companies and “commanding heights” of privatized public enterprises without giving them reciprocal rights to buy important U.S. companies (remember the U.S. turn-down of China’s attempt to buy into the U.S. oil distribution business);  not just to buy foreign stocks, bonds and real estate. The U.S. media somehow neglect to mention that the U.S. government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars abroad – not only in the Near East for direct combat, but to build enormous military bases to encircle the rest of the world, to install radar systems, guided missile systems and other forms of military coercion, including the “color revolutions” that have been funded – and are still being funded – all around the former Soviet Union.

 Pallets of shrink-wrapped $100 bills adding up to tens of millions of the dollars at a time have become familiar “visuals” on some TV broadcasts, but the link is not made with U.S. military and diplomatic spending and foreign central-bank dollar holdings, which are reported simply as “wonderful faith in the U.S. economic recovery” and presumably the “monetary magic” being worked by Wall Street’s Tim Geithner at Treasury and Helicopter Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve.

Here’s the problem: The Coca Cola company recently tried to buy China’s largest fruit-juice producer and distributor. China already holds nearly $2 trillion in U.S. securities – way more than it needs or can use, inasmuch as the United States government refuses to let it buy meaningful U.S. companies. If the U.S. buyout would have been permitted to go through, this would have confronted China with a dilemma: Choice #1 would be to let the sale go through and accept payment in dollars, reinvesting them in what the U.S. Treasury tells it to do – U.S. Treasury bonds yielding about 1 per cent. China would take a capital loss on these when U.S. interest rates rise or when the dollar declines as the United States alone is pursuing expansionary Keynesian policies in an attempt to enable the U.S. economy to carry its debt overhead.

Choice #2 is not to recycle the dollar inflows. This would lead the renminbi to rise against the dollar, thereby eroding China’s export competitiveness in world markets. So China chose a third way, which brought U.S. protests. It turned the sale of its tangible company for merely “paper” U.S. dollars – which went with the “choice” to fund further U.S. military encirclement of the Shanghai Cooperative Agreement.  The only people who seem not to be drawing this connection are the American mass media, and hence public. I can assure you from personal experience, it is being drawn here in Europe. (Here’s a good diplomatic question to discuss: Which will be the first European country besides Russia to join the S.C.O.?)

Academic textbooks have nothing to say about how “equilibrium” in foreign capital movements – speculative as well as for direct investment – is infinite as far as the U.S. economy is concerned. The U.S. economy can create dollars freely, now that they no longer are convertible into gold or even into purchases of U.S. companies, inasmuch as America remains the world’s most protected economy. It alone is permitted to protect its agriculture by import quotas, having “grandfathered” these into world trade rules half a century ago. Congress refuses to let “sovereign wealth” funds invest in important U.S. sectors.

So we are confronted with the fact that the U.S. Treasury prefers foreign central banks to keep on funding its domestic budget deficit, which means financing the cost of America’s war in the Near East and encirclement of foreign countries with rings of military bases. The more “capital outflows” U.S. investors spend to buy up foreign economies –the most profitable sectors, where the new U.S. owners can extract the highest monopoly rents – the more funds end up in foreign central banks to support America’s global military build-up. No textbook on political theory or international relations has suggested axioms to explain how nations act in a way so adverse to their own political, military and economic interests. Yet this is just what has been happening for the past generation.

So the ultimate question turns out to be what countries can do to counter this financial attack. A Basque labor union asked me whether I thought that controlling speculative capital movements would ensure that the financial system would act in the public interest. Or is outright nationalization necessary to better develop the real economy?

It is not simply a problem of “regulation” or “control of speculative capital movements.” The question is how nations can act as real nations, in their own interest rather than being roped into serving whatever the  American government  decides is in America’s interest.

Any country trying to do what the United States has done for the past 150 years is accused of being “socialist” – and this from the most anti-socialist economy in the world, except when it calls bailouts for its banks “socialism for the rich,” a.k.a. financial oligarchy. This rhetorical inflation almost leaves no alternative but outright nationalization of credit as a basic public utility.

Of course, the word “nationalization” has become a synonym for bailing out the largest and most reckless banks from their bad loans, and bailing out hedge funds and non-bank counterparties for losses on “casino capitalism,” gambling on derivatives that AIG and other insurers or players on the losing side of these gambles are unable to pay.  Bailout in this form is not nationalization in the traditional sense of the term – bringing credit creation and other basic financial functions back into the public domain. It is the opposite. It prints new government bonds to turn over – along with self-regulatory power – to the financial sector, blocking the citizenry from taking back these functions.

Framing the issue as a choice between democracy and oligarchy turns the question into one of who will control the government doing the regulation and “nationalizing.” If it is done by a government whose central bank and major congressional committees dealing with finance are run by Wall Street, this will not help steer credit into productive uses. It will merely continue the Greenspan-Paulson-Geithner era of more and larger free lunches for their financial constituencies.

The financial oligarchy’s idea of “regulation” is to make sure that deregulators are installed in the key positions and given only a minimal skeleton staff and little funding. Despite Alan Greenspan’s announcement that he has come to see the light and realizes that self-regulation doesn’t work, the Treasury is still run by a Wall Street official and the Fed is run by a lobbyist for Wall Street. To lobbyists the real concern isn’t ideology as such – it’s naked self-interest for their clients. They may seek out well-meaning fools, especially prestigious figures from academia. But these are only front men, headed as they are by the followers of Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago. Such individuals are put in place as “gate-keepers” of the major academic journals to keep out ideas that do not well serve the financial lobbyists.

This pretence for excluding government from meaningful regulation is that finance is so technical that only someone from the financial “industry” is capable of regulating it. To add insult to injury, the additional counter-intuitive claim is made that a hallmark of democracy is to make the central bank “independent” of elected government. In reality, of course, that is just the opposite of democracy. Finance is the crux of the economic system. If it is not regulated democratically in the public interest, then it is “free” to be captured by special interests. So this becomes the oligarchic definition of “market freedom.”

The danger is that governments will let the financial sector determine how “regulation” will be applied. Special interests seek to make moneyfrom the economy, and the financial sector does this in an extractive way. That is its marketing plan. Finance today is acting in a way that de-industrializes economies, not builds them up. The “plan” is austerity for labor, industry and all sectors outside of finance, as in the IMF programs imposed on hapless Third World debtor countries. The experience of Iceland, Latvia and other “financialized” economies should be examined as object lessons, if only because they top the World Bank’s ranking of countries in terms of the “ease of doing business.”

The only meaningful regulation can come from outside the financial sector. Otherwise, countries will suffer what the Japanese call “descent from heaven”: regulators are selected from the ranks of bankers and their “useful idiots.” Upon retiring from government they return to the financial sector to receive lucrative jobs, “speaking engagements” and kindred paybacks. Knowing this, they regulate in favor of financial special interests, not that of the public at large.

The problem of speculative capital movements goes beyond drawing up a set of specific regulations. It concerns the scope of national government power. The International Monetary Fund’s Articles of Agreement prevent countries from restoring the “dual exchange rate” systems that many retained down through the 1950s and even into the ‘60s. It was widespread practice for countries to have one exchange rate for goods and services (sometimes various exchange rates for different import and export categories) and another for “capital movements.” Under American pressure, the IMF enforced the pretence that there is an “equilibrium” rate that just happens to be the same for goods and services as it is for capital movements. Governments that did not buy into this ideology were excluded from membership in the IMF and World Bank – or were overthrown.

The implication today is that the only way a nation can block capital movements is to withdraw from the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO). For the first time since the 1950s this looks like a real possibility, thanks to worldwide awareness of how the U.S. economy is glutting the global economy with surplus “paper” dollars – and U.S. intransigence at stopping its free ride. From the U.S. vantage point, this is nothing less than an attempt to curtail its international military program.

Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist. A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be at:mh@michael-hudson.com

Europe in Crisis

The Kraken Awakens

Europe in Crisis

By CONN HALLINAN

“Below the thunder of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea…
The Kraken Sleepeth”

--Alfred Tennyson

In Nordic mythology, the Kraken was a huge beast that lay in wait for ships that braved the restless North Atlantic, rising from the “abysmal” depths to wrap its great arms around the unwary or the over bold, pulling them down to its lair. As economies from the Baltic to Spain and from Ireland to Austria self-destruct, the Kraken metaphor may be an apt one for a crisis whose first victim was Iceland.

The saga of Iceland’s fall, from what Reuters called “One of the richest countries in the world per capita” to flat broke, is a tale that begins in the 1980s when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher dismantled governmental and financial checks and balances, privatized everything that wasn’t nailed down, and turned the world’s economy into an enormous Ponzi scheme with promises of wealth that would make Las Vegas blush.

Tapping into the sea of high risk credit scams that floated the housing bubble, tiny Iceland—whose major export was cod—turned itself into a financial giant whose banks were worth 900 times more than the island nation’s gross domestic product. Icelanders bought townhouses in New York, imported expensive cars and lured back ex-patriots to cash in at the casino.

Such hubris stirred the Kraken.

Last month Icelanders were defaulting on car loans, unemployment was surging, and the country was in hock to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose standard formula for accepting its loans is the systematic savaging of education, health care, and social welfare programs. Iceland’s richest man, Asgeir Johannesson—who made out like a bandit over the past five years—runs a supermarket chain whose symbol is a cross-eyed pig, which suggests that while the northern gods may be vengeful, they have a sense of humor.

Iceland was just the first victim, an hors d’oeuvre for the beast. There are lots of others. The first to fall were smaller countries on the periphery—Latvia, Estonia, and Ireland—but the leviathans too soon felt the Kraken’s tentacles.

Germany’s export industry, the heart of its powerful economy, is off by 21 percent. France’s growth rate is projected to be minus 2 percent. Spain’s unemployment rate is 14 percent, and 22 percent in the country’s hard-hit south. Sweden’s industrial output in down 22.9 percent. Ukraine, an industrial giant with 46 million people, will see its economy shrink 6 percent. A $16.5 billion loan from the IMF is temporarily keeping the country solvent, but its foreign debts alone are $105 billion.

 England—whose Thatcher and Tony Blair share the blame for waking the Kraken in the first place—is a basket case. Its economy is projected to shrink 3 percent, and over two million are out of work. And because the Tories and Labor alike cut social welfare programs over the past 25 years, the jobless only get about $85 a week. As a result, every seven minutes a person in Britain loses his or her home.

Virtually no country in Europe remains unscathed, although the worst hit are those like Hungry, Latvia, and Austria that bought into the myth that the economy was a never-ending cornucopia.

Austrian banks shoveled loans into Eastern Europe, up to 60 percent of them in foreign currency. When the crisis came, countries like Hungary and Latvia found themselves trying to pay back loans in expensive Euros, Swiss Francs, and dollars, while their own currencies were tanking. Austria now finds itself holding $371 billion in debts, almost equal to the country’s annual GDP. Unemployment has jumped 23.7 percent.

The newer members of the European Union (EU), including most of the countries that were formerly part of the Soviet bloc, soon found that, when the going got tough, it was every man for himself.  When Hungary recently asked its fellow EU members for a bailout, it got heaved overboard. Indeed, the EU’s 27-member crew seems less concerned with fighting off the Kraken than with each saving itself, ready to turn on one another at the drop of a currency.

Madrid has launched a “buy Spanish” campaign, London is touting “British jobs for British workers,” and the French President is urging French carmakers to invest at home, not elsewhere in the EU. When the water reaches the quarterdeck, free markets go a glimmering.

The Obama Administration is pushing the Europeans to ante up a lot more cash for a bailout, but EU members are balking. “We don’t think we need to draw up new stimulus packages, and I’m supported on that by German Industry,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the Financial Times.

 The Europeans, on the other hand, are demanding that the Americans accept global regulation of finance, because many in the EU blame the lack of such regulation for the current crisis. So far, however, Washington is resisting.

“The global economic crisis is relentlessly laying bare the EU’s flaws and limitations,” says former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. “Without common economic and financial policies…the cohesion of [the] European monetary union and the EU—indeed, their very existence—will be in unprecedented danger.”

The combination of internal European squabbling—some of it fed by old fashioned panic—and differences with the Americans over regulation, means that besides pumping some money into the IMF, little is likely to come out of the upcoming Group of 20 meetings set for April 2 in London. The G20 is composed of developed and emerging countries.

As bad as things are in Europe, at least the region has some safety nets for its people, including mostly free medical care, low cost education, and social services that will blunt the worst aspects of the crisis. The same can’t be said for the United States.

The worst hit, of course, will be the world’s poor, the hundreds of millions of people in places like Africa and South Asia who currently eke out a marginal existence on a dollar or two a day, and who bear none of the blame for bringing on the world-wide economic crisis. The Kraken will make short work of them.

According to UNESCO’s Kevin Watkins, “With the slowdown in growth in 2009, we estimate that the average income of the 391 million Africans living on less than $1.25 a day will take a 20 percent hit. When you convert economic growth effect into human cost, the picture looks even grimmer. Best estimates point to an increasing infant mortality of somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 yearly.”

Not that the poor or the recently-made-poor are going quietly. A demonstration in Iceland drew 7,000 people, the equivalent of seven million in the U.S. A march and rally in Ireland drew 120,000—a little over three percent of the population—and Waterford Crystal workers took over their plant. Similar demonstrations have taken place in Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, France, and Greece. As the crisis deepens, so has the anger of those who will bear most its weight.

In John Wyndham’s 1950’s science fiction book, “The Kraken Wakes,” aliens, using the sea as their refuge, paralyze the world. But governments, caught up in the Cold War, are more interested in fighting one another than resisting the invasion. The “Kraken” is finally destroyed when the poor residents of a fishing village overcome their terror and assault the creatures with crowbars and axes. Their example spreads and the invasion is finally defeated.

Demonstrators alone will not overcome the current crisis, but they can demand that governments act in the interests of their people, not those of Goldman Sachs and AIG. Yes, the banks have to be saved, but the most effective way to do that is to nationalize them, and in a way that the people with the crowbars and axes have a say over how their money is spent.

According to the Asian Development Bank, the recession has cost the global economy $50 trillion. That is a figure straight out of the darkest nightmare one can imagine.

The G20—particularly the Germans and the Chinese—should bite the bullet and beef up the bailouts. They must also reinstate the checks and balances on credit, capital and banking that have been systematically dismantled over the years. And they must insure that the most vulnerable be protected.

If greed, selfishness, and timidity triumph, the Kraken waits.

Conn Hallinan can be reached at: ringoanne@sbcglobal.net

The Broken Stone of Corporatism

In the Economic Panopticon

The Broken Stone of Corporatism

By STEPHEN MARTIN

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

TS Eliot.

Somewhere between conception of ‘power of mind over mind’ as ‘Panopticon’, ‘Big Brother’ watching ‘wilful’ constraint of human potential subjugated by technological means to the objective  of ‘creation’, life ‘caste’ as no more than ‘unit’ productive of profit in the embodiment of ‘externalisation’ as politics, of man as ‘object’, not to say ‘plaything’ or as variety thereof to the top 2% as inner party of the ‘Stateless’ in global domination of the ‘full spectrum’ seen;  somewhere between such ‘paralysed force or gesture without motion’  prevailing towards humanity,  is where America is  ‘now’ in reality  as ‘Dystopian’  – this particular Economic Depression being  well entered into, as ‘shaft of truth by lie’ aka ‘illusion of recession’ being shattered.,  such  as where ‘ we’ lie ‘now’, amidst  broken glass as crystal to nightfall – in  ‘shock and awe’,  as embryo of potential so constrained by lack of oxygen.

Give or take a little, as in ‘percentage’ -  as  per creation of object from the humane?

As ‘Bachman Turner Overdrive’ sang all those years ago, (stutter omitted):  ‘Baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet’?

- Unlike those in Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan , Lebanon …  the list could go on. What Depleted Uranium can do to ‘gene pool’ not being part of ‘news’ in corporate ‘speak’?

This small article trying to interpret  ‘interpolation’ between  ‘the detailed’ and ‘the real’;  detailed as being by hack  under ‘self imposed censorship’ apropos of ‘corporate line’ guided by ‘Stateless Bastard’ following inevitable pathway in the realisation as abrogation; seeking by way of opposition to be ‘free’  in making minor adjustments of ‘calculation’ requisite to appreciate further such genius as Orwell, Huxley and Eliot in  their forbearance of vision, as eclectically synthesised -  and ‘synergistic’ as would be concerning the progress of human evolutionary trajectory as characterised in the ‘if…then’ - as  become ‘unpleasantly pragmatic’ … aka ‘ head ‘em off at the pass!’

Freedom is fun -  Life is joy!

But yet:

‘Unpleasantly pragmatic’ as euphemism; for ghetto, for ‘Supermax’ prison, for ‘trailer park’, for shredding of constitution, for the greater ease of dictatorship so ‘confessed’, for ‘sucker going down’, for the tolerated disparity of quality of life under ‘freedom of the market’  -  as spells out no more than ‘expropriation’ as creature formed of hatred as division ;  legs akimbo to the rape by greed unconstrained.? 
As is in process of ‘becoming’, or as would be to ‘plan’ or ‘scheme’?
Or;  as listened to by ‘little man’ concerning the invasion of compulsory sex morality as in being grabbed by ‘short and curlies’?
Never mind the Third Reich, Wilhelm – what about the Fourth?

For we live on a ‘tide’ of Empiricism qua Science, do we not, on the brink of  digital stream of zero and one as can facilitate ‘Panopticon’ as subjugation of consciousness, as expression of power of mind over mind; washing over brain after the Chinese fashion of ‘Hsi Nao’  by virtue of imperative;  as detailed by Thoreau?: ‘Technology’ so developed as by disciplined application of pragmatic rationale as to be resultant within insight of particular genius American:‘Lo! We have become the tool of our tools’

Walden, or Life in the Woods in being as ‘outside’ externalisation – or indeed a ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ as Lou Reed could put.  ‘Walden’  being some kind of parallel of forty days and nights? Beyond  political control? As  revised by B.F. Skinner form of   ‘operant conditioning’?
‘Psychologist American’ indeed?  Advance upon Pavlov, as dictatorship abolished - with purpose of establishing another? Never mind ‘man as dog’ – what about ‘man as pigeon;? ‘Meet the new boss not quite the same as the old’ - to collective howl of salivating dog of Capitalism?

Not to say jackal.

Boss copulating?

Such ‘Dire Straits’ as to lead towards cry : ‘I want my MTV’!?

‘Booming, buzzing confusion’ of neonate clear? Such be the phrase of William James, though his namesake, Henry, also has a point in ‘The Turn of the  Screw’ ?

The ‘watching’, in being as fear, the categorisation, in being as imperative, the constraint of potential in ‘control’ :of  ‘gain’. 

What it all be for?

It has been said that when we lie down to sleep at night - those of us as yet can midst all ‘the howling’ under the moonlight - we do so alongside horse and a reptile.

Study of neurophysiology and psychobiology revealing the ‘graduality’ of evolution, the building upon as assimilation of ‘conscious’ realisation - in Freudian terms:  ‘das id’ underlying survival which evolution in expression has seen fit to ‘sublimate’?

Say nought of Marcuse, as introducing ‘counter concept’; in the repression seen as wilful as broadcasting from spinmeister playbook?. 
‘De-sublimation’ writ  large and Poltitical as ‘Fascism’?

There being also the ‘bicameral’ nature of brain to consider, and the ‘corpus callosum’ or bridge over troubled axons as Heraclitean concept of ‘flux’? Say nought of Simon or Garfunkel; way of water (of life) flowing troubled? The trouble with the times become as so much as must be not of spoken of?

Night becomes day and day becomes night, as rational, logical left fades into irrational, intuitive right?

Or as put in film ‘The Godfather’: ‘Just when I thought I was out - they pull me back in!’

Above all to ‘survive’ in Panopticon as expression of full spectrum dominance supreme - we must become ‘predictable’?

Must not cross the line concerning individuality of expression, must be subjugate as act of prostitution intellectual to ideology comprehensible; must be ‘formulaic’ in the calculation in absence of originality, as of will idiosyncratic being surgically removed.

As is vestigial given the  ‘orthodoxy’ which must be?

Must become accustomed to being used by language rather than having the joy of using; pretension so being as to ‘deployment’.

Must be as ‘lock’ to hypothesis, as salivating enzyme to the breakdown of freedom as being key? ‘It’s Fascism, Emile; as in ‘Fischer’ of men?
Must be as restricted code to the elaborate of Bernstein?

The ‘stamp’ as of boot of destruction creating ‘acceptable face’ must be on as ‘product’ or ‘bum steer branded’ and not of as by definition on ‘maverick’ as would  run free, wild as to destiny of birth, or intent benign?

 ‘Language’ must become science rather than art; reading between the lines must be constrained as ‘margins must become acceptable’;  must be a pale to avoid being ‘beyond’…..

Acceptability so defined tight whence there is totalitarianism; form of ‘Corporatism’; insight as per Benito.. Whence the singularity of ‘spectrum as can be dominated’; so reduced. Must be as reality is so become; yoke of totalitarianism so beckoning?

Under such cultural milieu of repression it is perfectly acceptable to ‘hate’ so long as  is ‘directed’ as Orwell delineated clear,  the energy being ‘contained’ by third party as rape of mind as psycho politics; as Huxley so detailed in the division of foetal ‘constraint’ of oxygen starvation leading to caste as ‘ontogenetic’ - indeed as Eliot expanded upon through concept of ‘hollowness’ – for as love can make one full and ‘resonant’ with joy so can hate make one  empty and ‘dissonant’  - with what amounts to the song , sung off key by  willing executioner, of the body electric as ’life’?

All Dystopian vision carrying as  ‘quintessential’ the death of joy as implicit variant as to ‘denouement’   seen   - and as recognises the ‘fluence thereby?

For Orwell it was psycho political; the language – the ‘shock and awe’ of mental constraint brought about by combination of form and structure based upon perverse desire primarily of political nature. For Huxley it was bio political, the ‘scientific’; not so much the ‘product’ of the machinery of the brain as the machinery of the brain itself as underlied by foetus in the formation, and as could be controlled by factors ‘Scientific’; after the fashion of Shelley as  conceived in ‘Frankenstein’ - or ‘Monsanto’  as corporation -  way of genetically engineered agricultural product?

For Eliot, it was imagery in conjunction poetic which served to delineate tragedy of the descent or degeneration of potential as can be ‘circumscribed political’?

Listening to Barack Obama  becomes:   ‘the sound of rats feet over broken glass in dry cellar’? ‘Ours’ -  as so become?

Hollowed out by Wall St. – take the money and ‘run’ –  for no one will have the ‘cajones’  as in  parallel realised to the fairy tale of ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’:  to cry such as ‘Uncle Tom!’ – and  thus is ‘racist’ apperceived -  as card of spinmeister  played? ‘Please Sir, can I have some more?’ – as in ‘’What the Dickens’? Child so neutered as to be  ‘headed off at pass’?

‘Truth’ cast in the shadow of spin, as pragmatic as game of chess, rules being made by ‘spinmeister’ representing the absence of ‘grey’ as acceptable pale.

‘You are either with us, or against us’, indeed.

Scars too deep, pain too much for to be picked upon, such ‘cabin’ to be lived within ‘voluntary’?

For ‘spinmeisters’   have their own ‘race card’ to play such game?

‘We’ (not as of Zamyatin) must return to the origins of our thought, as a process political, being always of ‘moral economics’?
Yet to try to do so is inherently   ‘revolutionary’; in so far as there must be collective summation of the abrogation of potentiality to so do as part of   ‘Social Contract’?

It: a necessary sacrifice, as we gather ‘neath flag as ‘fortunate son’ and ‘daughter’ -  to sing ‘our’ anthem?

‘Hail to the Thief – ‘Prince’ among being the ‘Chief’’?’

The perverse beauty of the American system of ‘Democracy’;   that it trumpets loud the notion of ‘individuality’ – while ‘selectively’ trampling upon the very seeds of  same?

Ask questions, reject platitudes, query accepted definitions; realise individuality?

While the State: Shouts loud about freedom while imprisoning so many; shouts of quality of life while having ghettoes which would shame ‘Third World’ in terms of average life expectancy, lectures other countries about rights and responsibilities -while running Gulags ‘fed’ by extraordinary rendition?

Phraseology of ‘sex and travel’ coming to mind?

Overthrow closer approach to ‘Democracy’ while upholding same? 
Queries Geneva Convention while refusing to conform to definition of law as at Nuremberg Trials by way of exception?

‘Water my board’ boys – I’m ‘coming up for air’?

Not ‘torture’ in the new reality as would be made; way of American Century?

Thy  protest too loud?

The remnants of American Constitution, as in First Amendment allowing freedom of speech, become as ‘irony’ given the marginalisation of such exercise away from the line expressive of ‘corporate control’ as in the concept of the death of Democracy by ‘a thousand memos’?

‘Never a trace of red’,  indeed.

Way of ‘cut!’ – as cry of  Producer such as Leni Riefenstahl.

Or ‘State’ - as ‘Shark’ in ‘Moritaten’?

Having many teeth, and showing them ‘pearly white’?
Sometime all too soon all those lies to collapse into old ugly mess; the inevitable hubris of pretension form of ‘Empire’,  ‘New American Century’ going the way of  ‘Thousand Year Reich’?

A song called ‘Angry American’ is playing this juncture my small world; spirit enjoined in so far as my origins are as of ‘51st  State’ or ‘Airstrip One’ as Orwell so put.

Such be the ‘full spectrum dominance’ as ‘ all Americans now’? As have the ‘Mossad disease’  –  ‘ by way of deception thou shalt do war?’

There being thereby some story of flea as come to ride elephant, let alone tail as wags  dog?

If you want to understand what prevails in America; why things are as they are, by all means read Orwell. By all means read Huxley. By all means read Eliot.

But for ‘now’ comprehended, by an American of the 11th State;  the recommended  read of this small article is  ‘The Librarian’ by Larry Beinhart.

There’s an American with his finger on the pulse, form of prescience.
Work so cleverly disguised, giving new understanding as to why things as they are?

Belief being that ‘true Americans’ as are as ‘innocent’, are ‘unwilling executioners’, and as that liars are ‘made’ – and not born?

Such belief being an admirable grasp of reality in spite of illusion, in times of ‘eleventh hour’, and as even at noon, darkness as would fall?
Under such sword, the conviction being that Humanity is as ‘Damocles’?

Or as Eliot could put: ‘Must’ it be that lips as would kiss form prayers to broken stone?

Stephen Martin can be reached at: stephenmarti@yahoo.com

G20 MELTDOWN IN THE CITY

 

ON APRIL 1ST, THE G20 ARE COMING TO LONDON TO FACE UP TO ECONOMIC CRISIS AND POLITICAL MELTDOWN

 

Lost your home? Lost your job? Lost your savings or your pension? This party is for you!

Capitalism has been heating up our world for years, melting the icecaps, burning up the rainforests, pushing the planet to tipping point. Now we're going to put the heat on them. At the London Summit , the G20 ministers are trying to get away with the biggest April Fools trick of all time. Their tax-dodging, bonus-guzzling, pension-pinching, unregulated free market world's in meltdown, and those fools think we're going to bail them out. They've gotta be joking!

We can't pay, we won't pay and we are taking to the streets

Many, many imaginative actions will be taking place across London on April 1st. One major focus will be four separate carnival parades culminating in direct action against the financial follies in the City of London among them carbon trading.

Full circle back to 1649? 'A very English revolution!'

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will lead themed processions starting at 11 a.m. from the following rail stations:

• Moorgate 
  Red horse against War;
• Liverpool St 
  Green horse against Climate chaos
• London Bridge 
  Silver horse against Financial crimes
• Cannon Street 
  Black horse against land enclosures and borders in honour of the 360th full circle anniversary of the Diggers

At 12 noon, April 1st, we're going to reclaim the City, thrusting into the very belly of the beast: the Bank of England. Click here (or above right) for one of the many posters sent to this website.

Early a.m. April 2nd, we're going to bang on their hotel doors, @ the Excel Centre, Canning town to deliver our message of a world beyond capitalism.

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[05.03.2009]
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