Economics
‘The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful.’ Wendell Berry, 1994, p.92. As Philip Pettit argues in his contribution to this series, republicans see the economy as a politically created arena of human activity, with an associated institutional infrastructure (such as the legal codes, tort, property rights, legal framework for economic enterprises, legal rules governing trade and exchange, etc.). It is neither ‘self-regulating’ or beyond legitimate political and democratic regulation and, where necessary, interference. Republicans do not see a difficulty with interfering with market relations for important non-economic, political reasons, such as to preserve civic freedoms, promote solidarity or shared common goods.
Post-growth: a green republican economy
Millions of internal records have leaked from Britain's offshore financial industry, exposing for the first time the identities of thousands of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world, from presidents to plutocrats, the daughter of a notorious dictator and a British millionaire accused of concealing assets from his ex-wife. The leak of 2m emails and other documents, mainly from the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide to the booming offshore trade, with a former chief economist at McKinsey estimating that wealthy individuals may have as much as $32tn (£21tn) stashed in overseas havens. In France, Jean-Jacques Augier, President François Hollande's campaign co-treasurer and close friend, has been forced to publicly identify his Chinese business partner. It emerges as Hollande is mired in financial scandal because his former budget minister concealed a Swiss bank account for 20 years and repeatedly lied about it.
Leaks reveal secrets of the rich who hide cash offshore | UK news
Bitcoin
A Third Industrial Revolution
TRUE ECONOMICS | The Buckminster Fuller Institute
Introduction. WE ARE MISSING THE POINT OF ECONOMICS & FINANCE Are we going to do the same tired routine of fixing and rebuilding a financial system that keeps going through endless cycles of growth, recession, depression, bubbles, crashes and frauds, etc.? There are proposals to bail out the banks, builders and homeowners, make loans to the car companies, create more jobs, cut taxes, raise taxes, rebuild infrastructure, re-regulate the financial companies and give another taxpayer rebate. AND, NO ONE can say for sure if or when any of it is going to work. We don’t know what will work because we don’t: recognize basic facts; understand basic definitions; know how to appropriately measure economic activity; stand and act from the highest ideals.
A steady state economy is an economy of relatively stable size. It features stable population and stable consumption that remain at or below carrying capacity . The term typically refers to a national economy, but it can also be applied to the economic system of a city, a region, or the entire planet. Note that Robert Solow and Trevor Swan applied the term steady state a bit differently in their economic growth model. Their steady state occurs when investment equals depreciation, and the economy reaches equilibrium, which may occur during a period of growth.
Steady state economy
Economists have warned that carbon pricing will damage South Africa's economic growth and global competitiveness. (M&G) South Africa's high dependency on fossil fuel-powered energy has earned it a place among the top 20 carbon emitting countries in the world. In this year's Budget Speech, Pravin Gordhan announced the implementation of a carbon tax for 2013-2014.
Economists sound warning over carbon tax
Commons refers to the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. These resources are held in common, not owned privately. [ 1 ] The resources held in common can include everything from natural resources and common land to software . [ 2 ] The commons contains public property and private property , over which people have certain traditional rights. When commonly held property is transformed into private property this process alternatively is termed " enclosure " or more commonly, "privatization."
Commons
Social production as a new source of economic value creation
Image by opensource.com In this short TED video clip, Yochai Benkler provides a useful framing of what he terms “social production.” In the past, Benkler argues, prominent transactional frameworks for exchange were largely categorized as follows: Price system: A decentralized, market-based exchange system Firm hierarchy: A centralized, market-based exchange system Government/non-profit: A centralized, non-market-based exchange system Before the cost of communication dropped precipitously, Benlker suggests that it was too expensive to have a decentralized social production exchange system. Today however, citing open source projects such as SETI@home and Apache, he makes the claim that social sharing and exchange is emerging as a significant and sustained factor of production.Entitled " The Chicago Plan Revisited ", it revives the scheme first put forward by professors Henry Simons and Irving Fisher in 1936 during the ferment of creative thinking in the late Depression. Irving Fisher thought credit cycles led to an unhealthy concentration of wealth. He saw it with his own eyes in the early 1930s as creditors foreclosed on destitute farmers, seizing their land or buying it for a pittance at the bottom of the cycle. The farmers found a way of defending themselves in the end.
IMF's epic plan to conjure away debt and dethrone bankers
NEW YORK, Oct. 25, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Spire Law Group, LLP's national home owners' lawsuit, pending in the venue where the "Banksters" control their $43 trillion racketeering scheme (New York) - known as the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History and identifying $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) of laundered money by the "Banksters" and their U.S. racketeering partners and joint venturers - now pinpoints the identities of the key racketeering partners of the "Banksters" located in the highest offices of government and acting for their own self-interests.
Major Banks, Governmental Officials and Their Comrade Capitalists Targets of Spire Law Group, LLP's Racketeering and Money Laundering Lawsuit Seeking Return of $43 Trillion to the United States Treasury
Shinzo Abe complained that the European Central Bank and the US Federal Reserve System continued to actively print money, which is causing damage to the Japanese economy. 2013 will be the year of currency wars, and the country having the weakest economy will be the winner. Most likely, this will be the USA. The US Federal Reserve System has launched 3 programmes aimed at quantitative easing of the national economy and again started money-printing. The reason is clear: the USA wants the dollar to remain the world reserve currency. The point is that the greater the amounts of a certain hard currency on the world market the more difficult it is for partner countries of such an emitter to operate.
World on threshold of currency wars
Susanne Posel Occupy Corporatism December 14, 2012 The European Central Bank (ECB) is setting the stage of a complete financial collapse of fiat currencies across the globe. Joining in the scheme are other technocratic institutions such as the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank.
Technocrats Continue Turning Fiat Into Property As Global Financial Crisis Continues
It’s the Military, Stupid!: Don't Blame America’s Debt Crisis on Social Security and Medicare (Especially on Memorial Day Weekend)
Amid all the nonsense and gobbledegook that has been written about banking industry and about the economic slump during the last four years of the global financial crisis, New York Times reporter Gretchen Morgenson has stood out both for the clarity of her analysis, and for her willingness to go after the guilty parties in the political and especially the banking system, naming names and calling it as she sees it. So it was kind of disappointing--even shocking--to read her latest article reporting on a new “study” by Peterson Institute for International Economics Senior Fellow Joseph Gagnon, warning about the nation’s growing debt crisis. The Peterson Institute, founded by Wall Street tycoon Peter Peterson, has long been gunning for the Social Security and Medicare systems, which he, and the rest of the Wall Street gang, see as unfairly competing with Wall Street for the assets of the public, and as destructive of the “free market.”America ’s biggest — and only major — jobs program is the U.S. military . Skip to next paragraph Robert Reich
America’s biggest jobs program: The US military
economics
Schussler said that, because South Africa's major trading partner, the EU, is under economic stress, some of its members have reduced their imports from this country. There was little doubt, he said, that the effects of the austerity measures Greece and Spain, among others, were enduring would soon be felt in South Africa. He said creating conditions conducive to entrepreneurship was something the government should do now. In the long term, it should remedy the ailing education system. Those who hope that new markets for their products will open up in China, India, Brazil and Russia should lower their expectations because the Brics members are also facing economic challenges, he said.
Growth outlook bleak for SA
Banksters