Public Intelligence Blog

Tom Atlee

Wholesome capitalism?

What would wholesome capitalism look like?

“Wholesome” means healthy, in the sense of something that promotes physical and moral well-being. Wholesome capitalism would take into account the wholeness of people and the social and natural world we live in, and it would enhance that wholeness.

Some people think capitalism already does this. They note how good it has been at generating wealth. The word wealth, meaning abundance, derives from roots meaning well-being and wholeness. Many of capitalism’s advocates feel it should be freed from constraints so it can generate more wealth.

Others note that capitalism – while generating wealth for some – many or few, depending on its form in a particular time and place – nevertheless generates much suffering and destruction in the process. It reduces everything to money and maximizes financial return even if it has to degrade and destroy human and natural life to do it. Many of capitalism’s critics feel it should be undermined or overthrown.

Still others note both the blessings and problems with capitalism. They think we can have the wealth without so much suffering and destruction. Most of these people promote freeing capitalism’s creativity and productivity while restraining its rapaciousness in various ways – using everything from laws, regulations and taxes to moral suasion and consumer-shareholder activism.

In this article I advocate all three positions – odd as that may sound – but only after reframing “capital” and “wealth” to better reflect wholeness.

THE PRIMARY DYNAMIC OF CAPITALISM

The special gift of capitalism is its ability to create MORE – more products and services, more self-organized economic activity, more wealth. In systems science, this tendency to create more-ness is called a positive or reinforcing feedback dynamic.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chuck Spinney

One of core component’s of the neoliberal agenda is privatization of state assets.  Attached is one countries reaction to the inequalities and economic distortions privatization introduces. CS Afloat in the Mediterranean

Piracy as good policy

by Serge Halimi

Le Monde Diplomatique, 1 May, 2012

The head of state, confident after electoral victory, tells the governor of the central bank what to do, introduces forex controls and announces that a key sector of the economy, sold off to private investors 13 years ago, is to be nationalised. Two members of the government are appointed to head this enterprise, now in public hands again, and its private owners are told to go. The European Commission, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times are furious about this “shabby act of economic piracy”. The Economist suggests that the “pirate state” should be excluded from the G20, and that its citizens (who voted in the head of state) must get visas to travel abroad.

This is not Europe. It is Argentina. As President Cristina Kirchner explained on 16 April when most of the assets of the Spanish multinational Repsol, majority shareholder in the Argentinian oil company YPF, were about to be nationalised: “We are the only country in Latin America, and I would say in the world, that doesn’t control its natural resources.” Public ownership is not as prevalent as she suggests — Total, BP, ExxonMobil and others are private companies — but she is thinking of earlier battles to recover common sources of wealth: Mossadeq’s nationalisation of British Petroleum in Iran in 1951, Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal for Egypt in 1956, Boumedienne’s acquisition of Elf and Total assets for Algeria in 1971, Putin’s seizure of the Yukos company in Russia in 2003 and Hugo Chávez’s takeover of PDVSA (Petroleum of Venezuela).

Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Craig Roberts

Disinformation On Every Front

Some readers have come to the erroneous conclusion that the Matrix consists of Republican Party disinformation as if there is no disinformation from the left. Others think that propaganda is the business of Obama and the Democrats. In fact, propaganda from the right, the left and the middle are all part of the disinformation fed to americans.

If I may give some examples: The other day Chuck Colson, one of the Nixon officials imprisoned for Watergate crimes, died. This gave NPR the opportunity to relive the Nixon horror.

What precisely was the Nixon horror? Essentially, there was no such thing. Watergate was about President Nixon lying about when he learned about the Watergate burglary.
When Nixon learned about the burglary, he did not act on it prior to his reelection, because he reasoned, rightly, that the Washington Post would blame him for the burglary, although he had nothing to do with it, in the hopes of preventing his reelection.

By going along with a cover-up, Nixon enabled the Washington Post to make an issue of the precise date on which Nixon learned of the burglary. White House tapes indicated that Nixon had learned of the burglary before he said he learned of it. So Nixon had permitted a cover-up and had to go, but what was the real reason?

What was the Watergate burglary? We don’t really know. A group of men including former CIA operatives were hired by the Committee to Re-elect the President to break into a Democratic campaign office in the Watergate complex. We don’t know the purpose of the burglary. Some claim it was to wire-tap the telephones in the belief that the Democratic Party was getting re-election money from communists in Cuba or elsewhere. Others claim that the burglars were looking for a list of call girls, that compromised a White House official, as his fiancee was allegedly one of the call girls.

Looking back from our time during which Bush and Obama have deep-sixed the US Constitution, violated numerous US and international laws, and behaved as if they were caesars unconstrained by any law or any morality, Nixon’s “crimes” appear so trivial as to be unremarkable. Yet, Nixon was driven from office and is regarded as a criminal.

What was Watergate really about?

Read the rest of this entry »

Tom Atlee

A New Co-Intelligence Initiative: Let’s Talk: Our New Economy

Click on Image to Enlarge

Fukushima Primed For Worldwide Disaster

The radioactive Fukushima Genie is out of the bottle and is primed to accomplish a worldwide disaster. If the roof of Reactor building #4 collapses, a building that is now seismically rated at zero, a pool of 1563 spent fuel rods perched 100 feet above the ground would also collapse ~ resulting in a gusher of global radiation that would put most of the world’s human and biological populations at severe risk.

by Allen L Roland

The greatest and most dangerous on going cover up in the world today is not the official 9/11 cover up (now into its 11th year); it is not the supposed assassination of Bin Laden by Navy Seals last year (an operation with no confirmed body, no video and completely staged as a re-election gimmick as we are now witnessing); but instead, it is the unspoken on going conspiracy of silence regarding the spreading worldwide nuclear radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011.

. . . . . .

Just recently, authorities in Japan confessed that the amount of cesium-137 released by Fukushima is equivalent to 168 of the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A brief confirmation came from a recent article in the Telegraph ~ “Japan’s government estimates the amount of radioactive caesium-137 released by the Fukushima nuclear disaster so far is equal to that of 168 Hiroshima bombs.”

Read full article with photos, videos, and links.

See Also:

Berto Jongman: Japan Planning Forced Evacuation of 40 Million

Sixteen years ago, Pingtan Island, just north west of Taiwan, was the center of Chinese military energies to intimidate Taiwanese voters against electing a pro-independence president. Major amphibious operations were staged, some with catastrophic loss of life by military personnel because of bad weather. This also was the first time China attempted to maintain continuous air operations over the Taiwan Strait. That also proved beyond Chinese capabilities.

These complemented the dramatic and sensational Chinese short range ballistic missile shots into Taiwan’s two main ports. The missile launches might be compared to the US launching missiles into Pearl Harbor to prevent Hawaii from seceding from the US.

A key difference was that the Chinese missiles were so inaccurate, that no one knew whether they would launch much less whether they would stay on target. The danger was that a ballistic missile might veer off course and strike Taiwan, rather than the ocean. The missiles were so unreliable that the risk of a stray missile was very real. With only luck, they did not hit land or ships in the harbor which would have sparked general war in 1996.

The US sent two aircraft carrier task groups to defend Taiwan in 1996, forcing the Chinese to back down and inflicting a humiliating political defeat on the communist mandarins in Beijing. At one point, during turnover, three carriers were present to defend Taiwan. The Chinese intimidation effort failed on every level. Even the weather was hostile to the Chinese.

This week China published details of its plans for the Pingtan Comprehensive Economic Zone (CEZ) through the approval and promulgation of the General Development Plan for the Pingtan CEZ. Mainland China officials have emphasized the “importance” of the plan and the CEZ.

The Chinese military fiasco during the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis ensured that the communist party leaders would never again allow the People’s Liberation Army leaders to have their way in solving any national security problems.

Read the rest of this entry »

Josh Kilbourn

US Leads Developed Nations In Percent of People In ‘Low Wage Work’

Research shows the US is a low wage country
By Mark Thoma
April 23, 2012

(MoneyWatch) - Recent research from John Schmitt of the Center for Economic Policy Research shows that the US leads developed countries in the share of workers earning low wages. The research also shows that increased wage polarization over the last several decades is one of the reasons for the large share of low wage-work in the US. The bars in this graph represent the share of workers in low wage work, where low wage work is defined as employees earning less than 2/3 of the median wage (approximately $10 per hour or $20,000 per year). In this category, the US leads among developed nations…

Research Shows that US is a ‘low wage’ country

Click on Image to Enlarge

Gary North

Ben Bernanke’s Judy Garland Impersonation

by Gary North

“Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high.”

Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke delivered a speech on April 13 on “Rethinking Finance.” It certainly needs to be rethought at the highest levels. Unfortunately, Dr. Bernanke has not yet begun the process. Thinking, yes. Not rethinking.

He ended his speech with this:

The financial crisis of 2007-09 was difficult to anticipate for two reasons: First, financial panics, being to a significant extent self-fulfilling crises of confidence, are inherently difficult to foresee.

This is wrong on two counts. First, in a free market, there are no self-fulfilling prophecies. That is because of the widespread distribution of knowledge. A self-fulfilling prophecy is said to take place because lots of people expect it to happen. But why would lots of people expect it to happen? Because (1) there is something fundamental taking place and (2) people share the same economic theory.

Then why is there ever a panic? The free market pits buyers against buyers and sellers against sellers. Why wouldn’t those with the best information sell the assets over time, as accurate information spreads? Why is there a panic? Why don’t prices come down in a more steady, orderly way? If someone issues a prophecy, it is not widely believed at first. It takes time for people to believe.

They believe it because it explains events in terms of a framework. They draw conclusions. They slowly come to the same conclusions. A panic takes place when the vast majority of investors put their money in the wrong investments. Overnight, the investments turn out to be ill-conceived. The economist should ask this: Why did almost everyone make the same bad investments? The normal process of competition precludes such widespread, simultaneous errors.

Bernanke asked this. His answer self-fulfilling prophesies. He did not ask the more fundamental question: How is it that these self-fulfilling negative prophesies work their black magic against the interests of the vast number of market participants?

FIAT MONEY PRODUCES BAD INFORMATION

Read the rest of this entry »

William Greider

The Federal Reserve Turns Left

by William Greider

Published on Saturday, April 14, 2012 by The Nation

Washington is lost in a snarl of confusion, cowardice and wrongheaded ideological assumptions that threaten to keep the economy in a ditch for a long time. That prospect is not much discussed in the halls of Congress or the White House. It’s as though the crisis has been put on hold until after the presidential election.

As almost everyone understands, nothing substantial will be accomplished this year. President Obama is campaigning on warmed-over optimism and paper-thin policy proposals. Republicans propose to make things worse by drastically shrinking government spending, when the opposite is needed to foster a real recovery. The president, like the GOP, embraces large-scale deficit reduction. In these circumstances, it’s just as well that the two parties cannot reach agreement. After the election they may make a deal that splits the difference between bad and worse. In the worst case, they might inadvertently tip the economy back into recession.

In this sorry situation, there is really only one governing institution with the courage to dissent from the conventional wisdom—the Federal Reserve. The central bank declines to participate in the happy talk about recovery or in the righteous sermons attacking the deficit. In its muted manner, the Fed keeps explaining why the house is still on fire, why more aggressive action is needed, and is gently nudging the politicians who decide fiscal policy to step up. But its message is ignored by Congress and the president and viciously attacked by right-wing Republicans who say, Butt out.

The stakes in this elite dialogue are enormous. The outcome will be more meaningful for ordinary citizens than any other issue at play in this year’s campaign. If the Fed is right and politicians refuse to act, Americans may be condemned to a bitter slog through many years of stagnation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Marcus Aurelius

Starting to see initial indications that at least one part of DoD is gearing up to cut anywhere from 6% to 50% of its workforce within the fairly near term, perhaps beginning as soon as 01 Oct.  Drivers could be generic deficit reduction, sequestration, and historic limitations on strength levels in certain types of organizations.  Expect it to be ugly — sprung at last minute, execute without finesse.)

Government Workers Are Unfairly Assailed

By Ted Kaufman, US Senator (DE)

Wilmington (DE) News Journal
April 8, 2012

We’ve heard a lot in the past couple of years, pro and con, about escalating CEO compensation, but it seems to me at least one argument in their defense has merit. It is important to pay enough to recruit and retain the best talent available in the highly competitive global marketplace.

What seems strange to me is that those who believe this is true, that you have to pay well to attract the best talent, usually don’t accept the same argument when it comes to government employees.

One of the more dangerous consequences of the financial crisis is how governments at all levels are, in effect, cutting off their noses to spite
their faces. In the rush to balance their budgets, some are indiscriminately firing, freezing and cutting pay, and cutting pensions — too often impacting the people who actually make government work.

Read the rest of this entry »