This week marks the first anniversary of the 2015 Greek debt crisis, the third in that country’s recent history since 2010. Last Aug. 20-21, 2015, the ‘Troika’—i.e., the pan-European institutions of the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB), plus the IMF-imposed a third debt deal on Greece. Greece was given US$98 billion in loans from the Troika. A …
China Blowing Even Bigger Credit Bubble Puts World at Greater Risk, Says Global Strategist
China is blowing an even bigger industrial-growth bubble, central banks are attempting to prevent a global shock, and, meanwhile, all eyes are on the US dollar for clues as to which way things will go. So says Worth Wray, Global Macro Strategist at STA Wealth Management, in a recent interview with Financial Sense, who also notes that we may just …
Nathan Halverson – The world already would be out of water if everyone ate like Americans
If the rest of the world ate like Americans, the planet would have run out of freshwater 15 years ago, according to the world’s largest food company. In private, Nestle executives told U.S. officials that the world is on a collision course with doom because Americans eat too much meat, and now, other countries are following suit, according to a secret …
Trends This Week – Market correction or Market Crash? – 01.20.16
Gerald Celente breaks down how the talking airheads on business broadcast media keep missing the larger picture of crumbling worldwide economies and the undeniable underlying factors that ultimately will determine economic fate and your bottom line. While future quantitative easing measures or other central bank interventions may temporarily pause the sharp declines in markets worldwide, Global recession and even depression in some countries are unavoidable. Celente tells you what you need to know now.
Nafeez Ahmed – ISIS Wants to Destroy the ‘Grey Zone’. Here’s How We Defend It
After the Paris attacks, it is imperative that we safeguard this arena of co-existence, where people of all faith and none remain unified on the principles of common humanity. All this calls for a complete re-think of our approach to terrorism,” Ahmed writes. “We require, urgently, an international public inquiry into the colossal failure of the strategies deployed in the …
Alternative Visions – US GDP Revisions + A Tale of Two Debt Deals-Greece & Ukraine – 08.28.15
Jack examines the big swing in the revised GDP figures for the 2nd quarter, and raises questions about the US Government’s ability to adjust for seasonality in the figures. How is it that every year for the past four years, the US economy (and GDP numbers) collapse to near zero or less in the winter and then surge above average in the spring-summer? Can it be just coincidence, occurring now four times? How reliable are GDP numbers, in the US and globally (China, India, Europe?). Jack then looks at the details of the recent revision, concluding that business inventories, net exports, and commercial building number swings have good reason to doubt the veracity or continuity of the numbers. In the second half of the show, the recent debt restructuring deals just concluded in Greece and Ukraine in recent weeks indicate a new kind of colonialism may be emerging in the periphery of Europe, where debt is used as the ‘product’ by the colonizers to extract wealth and an income stream from the ‘colony’ by means of financial asset transfer instead of direct low wage and low cost production of goods—as in the case of past forms of colonialism. Jack reviews in detail the recent Memorandum signed by Greece and the Troika, which not only reveals even more austerity but now a direct management of the Greek colony economy to ensure payments on the $400 billion plus debt continue to be made. Direct management is a new feature of the new ‘inside’ colonialism. Direct management is even more blatant in the case of the Ukraine deal, Jack explains, where former US and EU shadow bankers now run Ukraine’s economy on a day to day basis. Depressions will get worse in both countries and more debt restructurings are inevitable.
Charles Eisenstein – “Don’t Owe. Won’t Pay.” Everything You’ve Been Told About Debt Is Wrong
The legitimacy of a given social order rests on the legitimacy of its debts. Even in ancient times this was so. In traditional cultures, debt in a broad sense—gifts to be reciprocated, memories of help rendered, obligations not yet fulfilled—was a glue that held society together. Everybody at one time or another owed something to someone else. Repayment of debt …
Lauren McCauley – Greece for Sale: First Wave of Privatization Begins with Airport Buyout
Germany’s approval of Greece’s third bailout of €86 billion on Wednesday marked what critics of austerity warn is a new phase in the ongoing economic crisis: the privatization of the country’s most valuable assets. Under the terms of this latest agreement, Greece’s Syriza government—backtracking on some of its key campaign promises—agreed to sell-off €50 billion in state property. In a …
The ways in which the economy never recovered from 2008
The headline economic numbers are far better now than in 2008-2009. The unemployment rate, the GDP, the national deficit, the stock market, etc. have all improved. Yet many of us can’t shake the feeling that things are still stuck in 2008. Well, you aren’t crazy. Many areas of the economy have never recovered from the 2008, and some are even …
Blaming the Victim: How Greece Became a Nation Under Occupation By Andrew Gavin Marshall
In the early hours of Thursday morning, July 16, the Greek Parliament passed a host of austerity measures in order to begin talks on a potential third bailout of 86 billion euros. The austerity measures were pushed onto the Parliament by Greece’s six-month-old leftist government of Syriza, elected in late January with a single mandate to oppose austerity. So what exactly happened …
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