Capitalism: A Ghost Story
Rockefeller to Mandela, Vedanta to Anna Hazare…. How long can the cardinals of corporate gospel buy up our protests?
by Arundhati Roy
Happy Holidays? 28 Hard Questions It Would Be Great If We Could Get Some Real Answers To
Over the coming weeks, Americans will be wishing each other “happy holidays” millions upon millions of times. But are these really happy times? Record numbers of Americans are going to be going hungry and cold this winter. Millions upon millions of our fellow citizens would gladly give up all holiday celebrations in exchange for a decent job.
Is America In Decline? 24 Statistics About The United States Economy That Are Almost Too Embarrassing To Admit
Does anyone really want to hear that America is in decline? For decades, most of us have been raised to believe that the United States is “number one” and that anyone who doubts that fact is a “gloom and doomer” that should just pack up and move to “Russia” or “Iraq” or some other country where things are not nearly as good. But does it do us or future generations any good to ignore the very serious signs of trouble that are erupting all around us? The truth is that it is about time to wake up and admit how much trouble we are actually in. The U.S. government is absolutely drowning in debt. The entire society is absolutely drowning in debt. We are being slaughtered in the arena of world trade, and every single month tens of billions of dollars (along with large numbers of factories and jobs) leave our shores for good. Our infrastructure is failing, our kids are less educated and our incomes are going down. We have serious, serious problems. At one time, the U.S. economy was so dominant that it was not even worth talking about who was in second place. That is no longer the case in 2010. Our forefathers handed us the greatest economic machine in history and we have allowed it to fall apart right in front of our eyes. A national economic crisis of historic proportions is getting worse with each passing month, and yet most of our leaders seem to be asleep at the switch.
Turning Deflating Dollars Into Inflating Gold
Isaac Newton gave us a fundamental law of physics. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In the investment world, currency is the action. Since the US is still the biggest economic player, the US dollar moves everything. Some things have the same action as the dollar. Others are the opposite reaction of the change in the value of the dollar.
Like it or not, commodities like oil and sugar rise in price when the dollar drops in value versus other currencies. More precisely, commodities rise in price when the dollar drops in value versus gold. Commodities are the equal and opposite reaction of the currency trend action. We can make the same analogy with gold and silver. As the dollar falls, gold and silver rise. The chart this week (see below) shows the relationship of the intraday trading for this past week with the US dollar represented by the green line (the ETF UUP) and the gold ETF, GLD, represented with the candlestick line. They are opposite action and reaction. The only question of the day is whether or not gold is in a bubble.
Wall Street Sees World Economy Decoupling From U.S.
Wall Street economists are reviving a bet that the global economy will withstand the U.S. slowdown.
Just three years since America began dragging the world into its deepest recession in seven decades, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Credit Suisse Holdings USA Inc. and BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research are forecasting that this time will be different. Goldman Sachs predicts worldwide growth will slow 0.2 percentage point to 4.6 percent in 2011, even as expansion in the U.S. falls to 1.8 percent from 2.6 percent.
John Paulson’s Scary Speech: Double Digit Inflation By 2012, Gold At $4,000
John Paulson scared the pants off of a packed audience at New York’s University Club recently as he warned them of huge changes in the economic environment in the years to come.
Forbes’ Bob Lenzer reports Paulson’s saying:
“If you don’t own a home buy one.”
”If you own one home, buy another one, and if you own two homes buy a third and lend your relatives the money to buy a home.”
Activist: Gulf fishermen being held responsible for toxic seafood
Federal government admits not testing for arsenic, mercury or other toxic heavy metals in seafood
The US government, and even President Obama himself, have said that Gulf seafood is safe to eat in the wake of the massive BP oil spill.
But an admission from the federal government that it hasn’t been testing Gulf seafood for toxic heavy metals, and news that fishermen are being forced to sign waivers making them liable for toxins in their catch, suggest not everyone is convinced of the safety of Gulf seafood.
Louisiana fishermen’s activist Kindra Arnesen says dock owners are asking fishermen to sign waivers that put the full responsibility for toxins found in the catch on the fishermen themselves.
Combat brigades in Iraq under different name
As the final convoy of the Army’s 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., entered Kuwait early Thursday, a different Stryker brigade remained in Iraq.
Soldiers from the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division are deployed in Iraq as members of an Advise and Assist Brigade, the Army’s designation for brigades selected to conduct security force assistance.
So while the “last full U.S. combat brigade” have left Iraq, just under 50,000 soldiers from specially trained heavy, infantry and Stryker brigades will stay, as well as two combat aviation brigades.
Fox News co-owner funded ‘Ground Zero mosque’ imam: report
The second largest shareholder in News Corp. — the parent company of Fox News — has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes linked to the imam planning to build a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan, says a report from Yahoo!News.
According to the report from Yahoo!’s John Cook, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who owns seven percent of News Corp., “has directly funded [Imam Feisal Abdul] Rauf’s projects to the tune of more than $300,000.”
Cook reports that Prince Al-Waleed’s personal charity, the Kingdom Foundation, donated $305,000 to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, a project sponsored by two of Rauf’s initiatives, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative, which is building the Manhattan mosque.
