Crony Capitalism Crony capitalism is a term describing an economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, or other forms of state interventionism.[1][2] Crony capitalism is believed to arise when business cronyism and related self-serving behavior by businesses or businesspeople spills over into politics and government,[3] or when self-serving friendships and family ties between businessmen and the government influence the economy and society to the extent that it corrupts public-serving economic and political ideals. The term "crony capitalism" made a significant impact in the public arena as an explanation of the Asian financial crisis.[4] It is also used world wide to describe virtually any governmental decisions favoring "cronies" of governmental officials. Crony capitalism in practice[edit] Crony Capitalism Index[edit]
Christopher Donohue: How people treat other peo... Communitarianism First published Thu Oct 4, 2001; substantive revision Wed Jan 25, 2012 Modern-day communitarianism began in the upper reaches of Anglo-American academia in the form of a critical reaction to John Rawls' landmark 1971 book A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971). Drawing primarily upon the insights of Aristotle and Hegel, political philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor and Michael Walzer disputed Rawls' assumption that the principal task of government is to secure and distribute fairly the liberties and economic resources individuals need to lead freely chosen lives. These critics of liberal theory never did identify themselves with the communitarian movement (the communitarian label was pinned on them by others, usually critics),[1] much less offer a grand communitarian theory as a systematic alternative to liberalism. 1. Communitarians have sought to deflate the universal pretensions of liberal theory.
Land and Money, the Siamese Twins | The New Economics Party Land and Money, the Siamese Twins When there are two separate movements each claiming that they have the solutions to the world’s economic problems, we have an intellectual challenge. Rational beings might conclude each group of reformers has a key part of the truth. The monetary reformers come in several varieties, but in common they believe the creation of money should be without interest and should be a public function. So what do Georgists want? Both arguments seem reasonable. Some, like me, find themselves in both camps. Within the monetary reform movement there are two main camps. Let’s reflect for a moment on the historical connections between land and money and go back to the Italian goldsmiths. Now Jews couldn’t lend to Jews at interest, Gentiles were forbidden from lending out money at interest. In Fiji Indians can’t own land. Now let us go back to the type of monetary reform Type B. So both reforms must be undertaken together. A word about the current world situation
Plutocracy Plutocracy (from Greek πλοῦτος, ploutos, meaning "wealth", and κράτος, kratos, meaning "power, dominion, rule") or plutarchy, is a form of oligarchy and defines a society or a system ruled and dominated by the small minority of the wealthiest citizens. The first known use of the term was in 1652.[1] Unlike systems such as democracy, capitalism, socialism or anarchism, plutocracy is not rooted in an established political philosophy. The concept of plutocracy may be advocated by the wealthy classes of a society in an indirect or surreptitious fashion, though the term itself is almost always used in a pejorative sense.[2] Usage[edit] Examples[edit] Examples of plutocracies include the Roman Empire, some city-states in Ancient Greece, the civilization of Carthage, the Italian city-states/merchant republics of Venice, Florence, Genoa, and pre-World War II Empire of Japan (the zaibatsu). Modern politics[edit] United States[edit] Post World War II[edit] Russia[edit] As a propaganda term[edit]
FourBuckets : Fourbuckets creative workspace... Bli med på skattejakten! | Attac-lederens blogg Attac kjører i gang kampanje for skatteparadisfrie soner. Nå er jeg i Finnmark hvor jeg skal snakke med lokalpolitikere i Alta og Karasjok om hvordan de kan gjøre sine kommuner til skatteparadisfrie soner. Skatteparadis er blitt kalt verdensøkonomiens sorte hull. Et globalt problem – som det går an å jobbe mot lokalt! På vår temaside skatteparadis.attac.no kan du lese mer om skatteparadiser, og også se hvordan du kan delta i den store skattejakten!
How Banks Create Money The money that banks create isn’t the paper money that bears the logo of the government-owned Bank of England. It’s the electronic deposit money that flashes up on the screen when you check your balance at an ATM. Right now, this money (bank deposits) makes up over 97% of all the money in the economy. Banks can create money through the accounting they use when they make loans. In the video below Professor Dirk Bezemer at the University of Groningen and Michael Kumhof, an IMF Economist explain where money comes from in less than 2 minutes: Every new loan that a bank makes creates new money. “Commercial [i.e. high-street] banks create money, in the form of bank deposits, by making new loans. Sir Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England from 2003-2013, recently explained this point to a conference of businesspeople: “When banks extend loans to their customers, they create money by crediting their customers’ accounts.”
Market Fundamentalism Market fundamentalism (also known as free market fundamentalism) is a pejorative term applied to a strong belief in the ability of laissez-faire or free market policies to solve most economic and social problems.[1] Critics of laissez-faire policies have used the term to denote what they perceive as a misguided belief, or deliberate deception, that free markets provide the greatest possible equity and prosperity,[2] and that any interference with the market process decreases social well being. Users of the term include adherents of interventionist, mixed economy and protectionist positions,[3] as well as billionaires such as George Soros,[4] and economists such as Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz[5] and Paul Krugman. History of the term[edit] The expression "market fundamentalism" was popularized by business magnate and philanthropist George Soros in his book The Crisis of Global Capitalism (1998),[12] in which he writes "This idea was called laissez faire in the nineteenth century...
Et imponerende mot Melodi Grand Prix i Aserbajdsjan nærmer seg. Norske journalister som skal dit har valget: Håndlangere for et korrupt og brutalt regime, eller journalistikk? Det dreper ikke journalister eller menneskerettighetsaktivister i Norge. Opposisjonspolitikere og fagforeningsledere blir heller ikke arrestert eller trakassert. Men i mange andre land fører journalister, politiske aktivister og menneskerettighetsforkjempere en daglig kamp for å overleve i brutale regimer. Denne uken møtte jeg en slik sannhetssøkende og modig journalist, Khadija Ismayilova fra Aserbajdsjan. 29. juni i fjor offentliggjorde Khadija en artikkel der hun fortalte om hvordan presidentens døtre kontrollerte landets største teleselskap gjennom stråselskaper i flere skatteparadis som Panama og Nevis Island. Men Khadija valgte ikke tausheten. Da jeg spiste middag med Khadija i Oslo denne uken, spurte jeg henne hvorfor dette ikke skremte henne til taushet.
Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult | Truthout Barbara Stanwyck: "We're both rotten!" Fred MacMurray: "Yeah - only you're a little more rotten." -"Double Indemnity" (1944) Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. The debt ceiling extension is not the only example of this sort of political terrorism. John P. The media are also complicit in this phenomenon. 1.
- Aserbajdsjan gjør ESC til et politisk utstillingsvindu - I det gamle Sovjet ble alle kulturarrangementer grovt utnyttet til å slå politisk gevinst for en ide. I dagens Aserbajdsjan foregår denne utnyttelsen enda mer skamløst. Forskjellen er at man nå forsøker å fremme personer, sier Ismayilova. Hun viser til at presidentfamilien i Aserbajdsjan er svært tungt inne i det prestisjefylte arrangmentet av ESC-finalen: Førstedamen Mehriban Aliyeva leder den nasjonale ESC-komiteen i Baku. Og presidentens svigersønn, Emin Agalarov, har fått i oppgave å fremføre pauselåten under finalen. - Se forbi "Lykkebeltet" Sammen med lederen menneskerettighetshuset i Baku, Vugar Gojayev, rettet Ismayilova i dag følgende appell til norske jouralister som skal dekke finalen i den europeiske sangkonkurransen: - Vær klar over at Aserbajdsjan er et diktatur og gjennomkorrupt samfunn, der menneskerettigheter folk i Europa tar for gitt, er satt til side. - Skriv om menneskerettigheter og forsøk å intervjue noen av ofrene for det som skjer i landet vårt. Flyktet fra Baku
Finally, A Rich American Destroys The Fiction That Rich People Create The Jobs 60 Minutes America's real job-creators...who can't afford to create any jobs. In the war of rhetoric that has developed in Washington as both sides blame each other for our economic mess, one argument has been repeated so often that many people now regard it as fact: Rich people create the jobs. Specifically, entrepreneurs and investors, when incented by low taxes, build companies and create millions of jobs. And these entrepreneurs and investors, therefore, the argument goes, can solve our nation's huge unemployment problem — if only we cut taxes and regulations so they can be incented to build more companies and create more jobs. In other words, by even considering raising taxes on "the 1%," we are considering destroying the very mechanism that makes our economy the strongest and biggest in the world: The incentive for entrepreneurs nd investors to build companies in the hope of getting rich and, in the process, creating millions of jobs. She'd like to create jobs. And Hanauer explains why.
14 Propaganda Techniques Fox &News& Uses to Brainwash Americans There is nothing more sacred to the maintenance of democracy than a free press. Access to comprehensive, accurate and quality information is essential to the manifestation of Socratic citizenship - the society characterized by a civically engaged, well-informed and socially invested populace. Thus, to the degree that access to quality information is willfully or unintentionally obstructed, democracy itself is degraded. It is ironic that in the era of 24-hour cable news networks and "reality" programming, the news-to-fluff ratio and overall veracity of information has declined precipitously. Take the fact Americans now spend on average about 50 hours a week using various forms of media, while at the same time cultural literacy levels hover just above the gutter. My curiosity about this question compelled me to sit down and document the most oft-used methods by which willful ignorance has been turned into dogma by Fox News and other propagandists disguised as media. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.