Finance and the Economy

As Pressure Mounts, Europeans Rally In Streets For Greek Dignity

June 24, 2015 Lauren McCauley, www.commondreams.org Resist! Debt, Europe, Finance and the Economy, Greece

By Lauren McCauley in Common Dreams - As an emergency summit concluded in Brussels on Monday with no clear resolution for the spiraling Greek debt crisis, a call throughout the streets of Europe for lenders to ease their punishing "reforms" in Greece is reverberating. On Sunday, more than 5,000 protested in Brussels, Belgium—the site of the ongoing negotiations between the Greek government and officials with the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission—while hundreds more marched in Amsterdam. According to reports, protesters carried banners that read slogans such as, "Our lives do not belong to creditors," and "If Greece were a bank it would have been saved."

Greeks Will Default As Central Bank Turns On Government

June 19, 2015 Mehreen Khan, www.telegraph.co.uk Educate! Banking, Finance and the Economy, Greece

By Mehreen Khan in Telegraph - The Greek government has admitted it will become the first developed country in history to default on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) if its creditor powers fail to strike a deal with the Leftist government over its eurozone future in the coming days. With just 13 days before the country’s bail-out programme officially expires, finance ministers will gather in Luxembourg on Thursday to discuss whether to finally give their assent to release bail-out cash and stave off an unprecedented default. Before the 11th hour attempt to secure a deal, Athens’ chief negotiator said his government had run out of cash to make a €1.6bn payment to the IMF, also on June 30. "At the moment we haven’t got the money," said Oxford-educated minister Euclid Tsakalotos.

ISDS Provisions In TPP Violate U.S. Constitution

June 17, 2015 Gaius Publius, www.downwithtyranny.blogspot.com Educate! Finance and the Economy, Free Trade, TPP

By Gaius Publius in Down With Tyranny - None of these [previously discussed court] decisions resolves the constitutionality of the TPP ISDS arbitration procedures, but their collective reasoning falls heavily on the side of unconstitutionality, based on four factors that apply to the TPP tribunals: (1) they deal with questions of law, that judges normally decide, not questions of fact, that could go to juries or arbitrators; (2) the arbitrators are not federal officers, construing and applying federal law, but are private parties, none of whom has to be an American citizen; (3) the consent of the United States is general and not case specific and, where the challenge is to a state or local law, the state or locality never consents at all...

G7 Protesters Unite In Opposition To Transatlantic Trade Deal

June 11, 2015 Charlie Skelton, www.occupy.com Resist! Finance and the Economy, Free Trade, Germany, TPP

By Charlie Skelton in Occupy - “It’s the largest police operation in the history of Bavaria,” said Martin Jäschke, a journalist from Der Spiegel. “Such a huge display of power like this, I’m afraid people feel it’s a provocation.” At the very least, it feels a bit weird. There could not actually be any more police in Garmisch than there are right now. There wouldn’t be room. There are traffic jams of police vehicles. Every spare inch of tarmac has been commandeered for police coaches, riot vans and operations trucks. The only cars on the road that aren’t police cars are being driven by plainclothes policemen. This is the kind of response you might expect.

Leaked Text Shows Big Pharma Using TPP Against Global Health

June 11, 2015 Deirdre Fulton, www.commondreams.org Educate! Big Pharma, Finance and the Economy, Free Trade, Public Health, TPP

By Deirdre Fulton in Common Dreams - Bolstering long-held criticisms from public interest groups, newly leaked sections of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) show how Big Pharma is employing "an aggressive new form of transnational corporatism" to increase profits at the expense of global health. The TPP's "Healthcare Annex"—which seeks to regulate government policies around medicines and medical devices—would give big pharmaceutical companies more power over public access to medicine while crippling public healthcare programs around the world and "tying the hands" of the U.S. Congress in its ability to pursue Medicare reform and lower drug costs. President Barack Obama is trying to gain Fast Track approval from the U.S. House of Representatives as early as tomorrow, having already obtained it from the Senate, which would grant him increased power to push the TPP and other mammoth trade pacts through Congress.

Obama May Privatize New Deal Gem, Tennessee Valley Authority

June 9, 2015 Joel Yudken, www.epi.org Educate! Electricity, Energy, Finance and the Economy, Obama, Tennessee

By Joel Yudken in The Economic Policy Institute - The Obama administration is considering whether to divest all or part of the federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) as a means to pay down the U.S. debt. The selling off of all or part of the TVA to private ownership would have far-reaching consequences, especially for the 9 million people in the 80,000-square-mile region—encompassing parts of Tennessee, northern Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia—to whom the TVA provides electricity and other services. The proposal has sparked a debate about the benefits and problems that divestiture might bring. Conservatives have long opposed the TVA on the grounds that it is an illegitimate government intrusion into the marketplace.

Basic Income: World’s Simplest Plan To End Poverty, Explained

June 9, 2015 Dylan Matthews, www.vox.com Educate! Finance and the Economy, Living Wage, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Dylan Matthews in Vox - "Basic income" is shorthand for a range of proposals that share the idea of giving everyone in a given polity a certain amount of money on a regular basis. A basic income comes with no categorical eligibility requirements; you don't have to be blind or disabled or unemployed to get it. Everyone gets the same amount by virtue of being a human with material needs that money can help address. There are a number of different names this idea has gone by over the years. "Universal basic income" and "basic income guarantee" are used frequently. "Guaranteed minimum income" and "negative income tax" are generally used to refer to versions of the plan that also impose a tax that gradually eats up the cash transfer, as a means of reducing the cost of the policy.

Greek Leader: Cannot Consent To ‘Irrational’ Proposals

June 6, 2015 Nicholas Paphitis and Elena Becatoros, www.news.yahoo.com Resist! Austerity, Finance and the Economy, Greece, Politics

Greece cannot accept the "irrational" proposal made this week by its bailout creditors, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told an emergency Parliament session Friday, adding that any deal must also include some lightening of the country's crushing debt load. "There is no question of our accepting an agreement that does not contain the prospect of debt restructuring" that would help Greece regain the market access lost five years ago, Tsipras said. Despite a significant writedown in 2012, Greece's debt remains huge, at nearly 180 percent of annual output. Bailout creditors had initially promised further respite, but details on their latest proposal leaked by Athens made no mention of debt lightening. Tsipras' speech came the morning after a surprise announcement that Greece would defer an IMF payment due Friday, and would instead bundle all four installments due in June — a total of 1.6 billion euros — into one payment at the end of the month.

UN Experts Warn Of Serious Threats From Secret Trade Deals

June 3, 2015 UN Commission on Human Rights, www.ohchr.org Educate! Finance and the Economy, Free Trade, TPP, United Nations

By UN Commission on Human Rights - While trade and investment agreements can create new economic opportunities, we draw attention to the potential detrimental impact these treaties and agreements may have on the enjoyment of human rights as enshrined in legally binding instruments, whether civil, cultural, economic, political or social. Our concerns relate to the rights to life, food, water and sanitation, health, housing, education, science and culture, improved labour standards, an independent judiciary, a clean environment and the right not to be subjected to forced resettlement. We believe the problem has been aggravated by the “chilling effect” that intrusive ISDS awards have had, when States have been penalized for adopting regulations, for example to protect the environment, food security, access to generic and essential medicines, and reduction of smoking, as required under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, or raising the minimum wage.

Fourteen Points On World Economy As US GDP Drops .7 Percent

May 30, 2015 Ian Welsh, www.ianwelsh.net Educate! Democracy, Finance and the Economy, wealth inequality

Let me put this another way: The developed world is in depression. It has been in depression since 2007. It never left depression. Within that depression, there is still a business cycle: There are expansions, and recessions, and so on. Better times and worse times. While cheap solar is a big deal, it is not yet deployed sufficiently to break the “widespread demand will crash the economy through oil price increases” problem, and this is exacerbated the by the deadlock rich elites have on most of the world’s politics and economic policies, since it is not in their interest to solve problems, but only to become more rich. Not that solving problems is something they mind, if it makes them richer and keeps everyone else poor.

The Banks Are Felons That The Government Refuses To Stop

May 29, 2015 Portie Crowe, www.businessinsider.com Educate! Banking, Criminal Justice, Finance and the Economy, Government, Law

This week, five Wall Street banks pleaded guilty to felony charges related to interest rate rigging and foreign exchange manipulation. The guilty pleas mean the banks are literally felons, and it's a distinct shift in the way law enforcement has dealt with Wall Street in the past. Lawsuits and legal fees are nothing new for the banks: since the financial crisis, they have essentially become the cost of doing business on Wall Street. Now, apparently, that cost includes both legal fees and criminal charges. The thing is, no one seems to be fazed. This case has nothing to do with the financial crisis. Rather, a couple years ago, traders from a handful of banks manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rate, an important interest rate used around the world as a benchmark for mortgages and other loans. Other traders manipulated the prices at which banks bought or sold currencies.

The Forgotten Origins Of Wall Street In Slave Auctions

May 20, 2015 Alan Gilbert, www.democratic-individuality.blogspot.com Educate! Economic Justice, Finance and the Economy, History, New York City (NYC), Racial Justice

One might think New York was a bastion of abolitionist sentiment before the Civil War. Hamilton's Federalists had led a move for gradual emancipation in 1799; the last black person was freed in 1842. They, too, needed John Brown and mass abolitionism from below. Wall Street had founded the slave trade in 1711. Fernando Wood, mayor in 1860, proposed joining the Confederacy because of the heavy influence of slave-produced cotton/textiles. Two years ago, construction workers on a new building hit a cemetery for slaves. Over 40% of the skeletons were from people under 15. Bondage murdered (resulted in the otherwise unnecessary deaths of) many, many people. Last week, the Times editorial page below called Wall Street - at last - to account. As in Denver with Silas Soule at 16th street, so in New York, a plaque will be put up, honoring those captured and murdered, among the glitter of those who traded in them to found their fortunes (see also Craig Slaughter's Ebony & Ivy on the founding of major universities).

Newsletter – Overcome Fear With Love

May 16, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org Newsletter BXE, Chile, Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Economic inequality, fast track, FERC, Finance and the Economy, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Greece, Homelessness, Human Rights, Inequality, Injustice, Living Wage, Obama, Police violence, Racism, TPP, United Kingdom (UK), Urban decay, Walmart, Water, World Economic Forum

Instead of taking action to prevent or mitigate the next crisis, politicians are causing more harm as they work hand in hand with the wealthy elites who are trying to grab even greater power and extract even greater riches. Maryland's governor was quick to bring in the National Guard and militarized police, but just cut Baltimore education funding by $11.6 million to fund pensions, while last week the state approved funding for a youth jail the people in Baltimore don't want. This article provides five key facts about Baltimore and a graphic that shows how the United States built its wealth on slavery, Jim Crow and racially-based economic injustice and kept African Americans from benefiting the economy. Also, as a special addition to recognize BB King, he sings "Why I Sing the Blues" describing the history of African Americans from slavery until today.

Dominion Confronted By Protests Outside Annual Meeting

May 7, 2015 Kelly Trout, www.chesapeakeclimate.org Resist! Dominion, Finance and the Economy

Over 150 protesters from across Virginia and Maryland greeted Dominion Resources executives and board members arriving for the company’s annual shareholder meeting this morning, in a sign of the growing citizen backlash over the company’s dirty energy investments and dirty politics. (Click here to view photos.) More than 50 landowners and concerned citizens from Buckingham, Nelson, and Augusta Counties—all in the path of the company’s controversial proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline—journeyed by bus. They were joined outside the entrance to Dominion’s training facility by citizens who had packed vans from Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads, and other communities fighting the company’s climate-threatening plans and its anti-democratic lock on Virginia politicians.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

assetto corsa mods

Daily movement news and resources