Simon Black – War on Cash intensifies: Citibank to stop accepting cash at some branches

Less than a week after India’s surprise move to scrap its highest denomination cash notes, another front in the War on Cash has intensified down under in Australia. Yesterday, banking giant UBS proposed that eliminating Australia’s $100 and $50 bills would be “good for the economy and good for the banks.” (How convenient that a bank would propose something that’s …

Wenonah Hauter – Three Massive Mergers—Millions for One Bank and a Disaster for Food, Water and Climate

You probably learned in high school that monopolies are bad for consumers; they eliminate the field of competition in the marketplace, leaving people with fewer options and higher prices. Mega-mergers in the food and energy markets are allowing a handful of corporations to dominate market sectors. Their market dominance means that when it comes to influencing public policy, politically powerful …

PEPE ESCOBAR – The Empire of Chaos Strikes Back

Soon after the impeachment motion against President Dilma Rousseff was approved in the Brazilian Congress by what I chose to call Hybrid War hyenas, President-in-Waiting Michel «Brutus» Temer, one of the coup’s articulators, dispatched a senator to Washington as special paperboy to deliver the news on the coup in progress. The senator in question was not on an official mission for …

Joseph Jankowski – Scientists and Political Leaders Warn “It May Be Too Late” To Save Humanity From Killer Robots

Scientists, arms experts and political leaders warned at an elite gathering in the Swiss Alps that it may be too late for humanity to advert the dangers that will come along with the development of lethal autonomous technology. Rules must be agreed upon to prevent the development of such weapons, they said at a January 19-23 meeting of scientists, billionaires, …

Vijay Prashad – The Davos Club: Meet the People Who Gave Us a World in Which 62 People Own as Much as 3.6 Billion

Global elites meet in the remote Swiss town of Davos each year for the World Economic Forum. The conclave began in 1971, but it became an essential destination in the 1990s. When globalization became the buzzword, Davos became its headquarters. Big business, politics and the media meet, exchange business cards and go away better connected to each other. Deals are …

The Greek Debt Crisis and Crashing Markets by MICHAEL HUDSON

Back in January upon coming into office, Syriza probably could not have won a referendum on whether to pay or not to pay. It didn’t have a full parliamentary majority, and had to rely on a nationalist party for Tsipras to become prime minister. (That party balked at cutting back Greek military spending, which was 3% of GDP, and which …