December 2011
21 posts
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Spain's deficit means more austerity (poverty) on... →
The news out of Spain is that their budget deficit was surprisingly bigger than anticipated after they implemented more austerity this year: massive social spending cuts and higher taxes in the context of over 20% unemployment and rising.
Economist Mike Norman says the new government announced that even more austerity is coming in order to cut the deficit. See the pattern?
Austerity only...
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Chomsky to Occupy: move to the next stage →
Noam Chomsky has advice for the Occupy movement, whose encampments all over the country are being swept away by police. The occupations were a “brilliant” idea, he says, but now it’s time to “move on to the next stage” in tactics. He suggests political organizing in the neighborhoods.
The Occupy camps have shown people how “to break out of this conception that we’re isolated.” But “just...
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Eurozone Take Notice: Post-Default Argentina is a... →
In 2001, Argentina’s government made the courageous decision to default on its foreign debt, and end its peg to the US Dollar, against the demands of the IMF and other political and financial elites. The facts show that after a brief recession, the Argentinian economy, freed from unsustainable and unrealistic debt obligations, focused on growth, unemployment, and social equality, and...
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“it’s criminal that so little is asked of people who are getting so much. I...”
– Matt Damon on taxes and education spending cuts.
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"The Corporations that Occupy Congress" →
For the amount spent lobbying, the companies could have hired 3,100 people at $50,000 for wages and benefits to do productive work.
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Robert Reich: The Defining Issue: Not Government's... →
So that people don’t get the wrong idea, I don’t reblog Robert Reich because I agree with his solutions, he is just an example of the “mainstream” or “establishment” Democrats who want to still appear like they stand for the working class so they talk about inequality and injustice, but like all establishment Democrats, he won’t rock the boat and say what...
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“We have an atomic bomb that we can use in the face of the Germans and the...”
– Pedro Nuno Santos, vice-president of the Socialist Party in the Portuguese Parliament, UK Telegraph
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starlit-s0ul asked: Can I ask you one more thing, from a Canadian to an American?? The reason I feel like no one around me cares could be because I live in Canada, where not much has happened yet on the political front, what with new laws/bills, etc. But in America, or at least where you are, are people outraged?? Does the majority understand what is really going on, and are they waking up to the media and...
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“The US ruling class loves Obama; they couldn’t ask for a better salesman...”
– Jeremy @BaySocialist:
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Truth Comes out: Federal Reserve Bailout to Banks... →
The Federal Reserve’s “emergency loans” and “asset purchases” during the financial crisis actually amounted to $29 trillion. That’s $29,000,000,000,000 that Bernanke lent to the biggest Wall Street and foreign banks because it was “an emergency”. But of course, we can’t afford any more fiscal stimulus, we can’t afford to pay for a modern...
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“The Occupy movement arose precisely because mainstream politics failed the...”
– Mike Tudoreanu, “Occupy Wall St, Not the Ballot Box”
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Obama gives speech in Kansas decrying inequality
President Obama’s speech yesterday in Kansas, in which he said many nice things about the need to fight income inequality and work together for a shared prosperity for all Americans, would be uplifting if we didn’t see this all before.
As someone who voted for him in 2008 under the mistaken impression that he would fight for progressive change, count me now as someone who’s...
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Talking Hungary: "The Economist" Apparently...
Not paid in full
A new mortgage law annoys the banks, but will do little for the economy
…goes the title for a piece from The Economist back on October 1.
I’ll be focusing a big on Hungary’s economic situation this month and from now on in general.
So, a major development in early October was the decision by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government to allow...
