Monday, November 7, 2011

@11:25, 11/06/11 8

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  • TimesPeople recommended a video:
    Nov 5, 2011
    The Lost Secret of Running
    Run on the balls of your feet and Breathe.
    It is the breathing that troubles me.
  • TimesPeople recommended a user:
    Nov 5, 2011
    George Bekatoros
  • TimesPeople recommended a user:
    Nov 5, 2011
    Prof.Jai Prakash Sharma,
    • Prof.Jai Prakash Sharma, commented on an article:
      May 4, 2010
      The Limits of Policy
      Since public policy in a democratic system is expected to reflect broad social consensus on vital issues of governance and development; and several social-psychological inputs, involving ethno-cultural beliefs, collective group aspirations, economic betterment demands and personal-social security perceptions of people go into making such a policy, it would be wrong to assume that public policy and political actions have just marginal impact on people's lives or their aspirations. Again, ethnicity, sect, class or some other social grouping could never be viewed as fixed or frozen identities, for not only do they constitute an interactive relationship with the broad social universe, but also exhibit strong change impulse while negotiating their way to modernity. Thus, asking for minimal policy intervention in public arena, and leaving different ethno-social groups intact with their cocooned social space would be a status-quoist view of social existence, going against the very notion of change, modernity and progress.

      David Brooks is lying his head off.  He compares apples with oranges, quotes statistics that are mislabeled and indulges in non sequitur.   This is not an argument.  It is a lie.
  • TimesPeople recommended a user:
    Nov 5, 2011
    uninsuredandsickofit
    • uninsuredandsickofit is following a user:
      12:47 pm
      akhilleus
      • akhilleus recommended an editorial:
        Aug 22, 2010
        Come Again, Republicans?
        Republicans, who claim to be worried about the deficit, are suddenly determined to overturn one of health care reform’s central cost-control mechanisms.
        The health care industry hates the whole idea of being regulated.  Their friends will try to help them.

  • TimesPeople recommended a blog post:
    Nov 5, 2011
    Tax Policy and Americans' 'Last-Place Aversion' - Room for Debate
    What explains the recurring tendency of lower-income Americans to vote against their own economic interests.
    Most Americans  believe that money is real.  
    Credit is just the other side of debt.
  • TimesPeople recommended a user:
    Nov 5, 2011
  • TimesPeople recommended a user:
    Nov 5, 2011
    Kurt Larsen
    • Kurt Larsen commented on an article:
      Jun 2, 2010
      Israel and the Blockade
      "THE IDEA IS TO PUT THE PALESTINIANS ON A DIET, but not to make them die of hunger,' stated the Israeli Prime Minister's Aide, as the Seige Began in 2006.* Wonderful, my brothers Isreal once again Engage In Illegal, Collective Punishiment of a Population in order to Protect Their Precarious Position in a Foreign, Occupied Land. Well, my cousins Isreal have now with their Iron Fists brought upon themselves the Contumely Of The World, but the Blockade Will Be Broken, for now, all the Globe proclaims with me, a Jew, We Are All Palestinians. The Detective In The Mirror *'Israel's policy was summed up by Dov Weisglass, an adviser to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, earlier this year [2006]... The hunger pangs are supposed to encourage the Palestinians to force Hamas to change its attitude towards Israel or force Hamas out of government.' *http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/apr/16/israel

      http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch?query=gaza&date_select=full&srchst=cse

      • Times Topics: Gaza Strip

        World news about the Gaza Strip, including breaking news and archival articles published in The New York Times.

        • Israel Intercepts Two Boats Bound for Gaza

          2 days ago ... The boats, one Canadian and the other Irish, were carrying 27 pro-Palestinian activists, journalists and crew members from nine countries.November 5, 2011 - By ISABEL KERSHNER - World / Middle East

      • Irish and Canadian Boats Head for Gaza

        3 days ago ... Two small boats filled with international activists intent on breaking Israel's naval blockade of Gaza reported on Thursday night that they ...November 3, 2011 - The Lede

      • Gaza - Israel Kills 2 Palestinians After Sniper Attack

        3 days ago ... Israeli forces killed two Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday shortly after two snipers on motorcycles fired at Israeli ...November 4, 2011 - By FARES AKRAM - World / Middle East

      • Video of Israeli Navy Intercepting Boats Bound for Gaza

        2 days ago ... After the Israeli navy intercepted two small boats bound for Gaza on Friday, the country's military released video of what it said was a ...November 4, 2011 - The Lede

      2011 Clashes with Israel
      On Aug. 19, 2011 new hostilities broke out in Gaza after armed attackers, described by the authorities as Gazans who had crossed into Israel from Egypt, carried out multiple deadly attacks near the popular Red Sea resort of Eilat. Israel blamed The Popular Resistance Committees for the attack and killed its top commanders in an airstrike, igniting cross-border exchanges after months of relative quiet under an informal cease-fire with Hamas.
      Tensions escalated further after Egyptian security officials said Israeli forces attacking suspected terrorists in the border area inadvertently killed two officers of the Egyptian security police and a third officer in the Egyptian Army, all on the Egyptian side of the border. The deaths caused a diplomatic embroilment and a wave of Egyptian anger towards Israel.
      Three days later, a fragile cease-fire had taken hold. But it didn't last. By Aug. 24, nine Gazans had been killed in Israeli strikes, with Israel’s southern communities withstanding 20 rockets from Gaza over the same 24-hour period.
      Business as usual.


  • TimesPeople recommended a user:
    Nov 5, 2011
    akhilleus
    • akhilleus recommended an editorial:
      Aug 22, 2010
      Come Again, Republicans?
      Republicans, who claim to be worried about the deficit, are suddenly determined to overturn one of health care reform’s central cost-control mechanisms.

      The health care industry hates the whole idea of being regulated.  Their friends will try to help them.


  • TimesPeople recommended a user:
    Nov 5, 2011
    Sarah
    • Henry recommended a blog post:
      Mar 7, 2011
      Does IMF Stand for Impressive Macroeconomic Flexibility?
      So the IMF is holding a meeting on rethinking macroeconomic policy (I was invited but couldn’t make the timing work.) And the Fund’s chief economist has already made it clear that he’s open to some serious revision of the prevailing paradigm.

      Europe seems to think it is all over.  They are wrong.
      The coalition government will take the hit for exiting the euro.
      George A. Papandreou  will form the next government after the election. 
      Cyprus will not find oil. The copper deposits that give it its name
      formed as black smokers, sea bottom hydrothermal vents, the geology should  be igneous, mostly basalt, with a thin skin of marine sediments.  No shale, limestone or sandstone. The copper shows again in Jordan.

      http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/07/opinion/krugman-here-comes-solar-energy.html?ref=opinion
  • TimesPeople recommended a user:
    Nov 5, 2011
    Shuhua Zhang
    • Henry recommended a blog post:
      Mar 7, 2011
      Does IMF Stand for Impressive Macroeconomic Flexibility?
      So the IMF is holding a meeting on rethinking macroeconomic policy (I was invited but couldn’t make the timing work.) And the Fund’s chief economist has already made it clear that he’s open to some serious revision of the prevailing paradigm.

"November 5, 2011, 1:05 pm

Roubini On Internal Devaluation

Nouriel Roubini has a very good, very grim new paper on European prospects (no link). I particularly liked this passage:
The international experience of “internal devaluations” is mostly one of failure. Argentina tried the deflation route to a real depreciation and, after three years of an ever-deepening recession/depression, it defaulted and exited its currency board peg. The case of Latvia’s “successful” internal devaluation is not a model for the EZ periphery: Output fell by 20% and unemployment surged to 20%; the public debt was—unlike in the EZ periphery—negligible as a percentage of GDP and thus a small amount of official finance—a few billion euros—was enough to backstop the country without the massive balance-sheet effects of deflation; and the willingness of the policy makers to sweat blood and tears to avoid falling into the arms of the “Russian bear” was, for a while, unlimited (as opposed to the EZ periphery’s unwillingness to give up altogether its fiscal independence to Germany); and even after devaluation and default was avoided, the current backlash against such draconian adjustment is now very serious and risks undermining such efforts (while, equivalently, the social and political backlash against recessionary austerity is coming to a boil in the EZ periphery).
When all is said and done (and in the European case, that means a lot said but not much done), the euro will stand or fall on the ability of those countries that had rapidly rising costs and prices between 2000 and 2007 to get those costs and prices back in line. At this point the de facto strategy of European leaders is to require that they do this via deflation. And that will not work."

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2011/11/20111174507725457.html
"
The French government is expected to announce up to $11bn in spending cuts and tax increases, to boost its credit rating and rein in its deficit.
"The 2012 budget will be one of the most rigorous budgets that France has seen since 1945 ... hour of truth has arrived"
- Francois Fillon,
French prime minister
The move is being seen as major gamble for President Nicolas Sarkozy, six months before an election.
His government says extra savings are urgently needed to keep France's finances under control, since it cut its growth forecast for next year to one per cent from 1.75 per cent last week.
The cuts, which Francois Fillon, the French prime minister, is expected to announce at 11:00 GMT on Monday, come on top of $16bn in savings the government announced just three months ago.
Like other European countries struggling with public finances, France has experienced demonstrations and strikes from a public angry at the imposition of spending cuts during hard times.
Ratings agencies have been hinting they could cut France's prized top credit rating because of its slowing growth and its potential liability for the cost of bailouts in the European debt crisis."


This is really not good.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/9934195

Euro has new politburo but no solution yet

  • Reuters,
    • By Paul Taylor
    PARIS, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Europe has a new informal leadership directorate intent on finding a solution to the euro zone's debt crisis, but it has yet to prove its ability to come up with a lasting formula.
    Forged in the fire of a bond market inferno, the shadowy so-called Frankfurt Group has grabbed the helm of the 17-nation currency area in a few short weeks.
    The inner circle comprises the leaders of Germany and France, the presidents of the executive European Commission and of the European Council of EU leaders, the heads of the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the chairman of euro zone finance ministers, and the European Commissioner for economic and financial affairs.
    Europe's new politburo met four times on the sidelines of last week's Group of 20 summit in Cannes, issuing an ultimatum to Greece that it would not get a cent more aid until it met its European commitments, and arm-twisting Italy to carry out long delayed economic reforms and let the IMF monitor them.
    In a tell-tale recognition of the new ad hoc power centre, members wore lapel badges marked "Groupe de Francfort".
    U.S. President Barack Obama attended one of the meetings, getting what he joked was a "crash course" in the complexity of Europe's laborious decision-making processes and institutions.
    "He proved to be a quick learner," one participant said.
    Two people familiar with the discussion said he argued for the euro zone to make its financial backstop more credible by harnessing the resources of the ECB, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel and ECB President Mario Draghi resisted.
    Obama also supported a proposal to pool euro zone countries' rights to borrow from the IMF to help bolster a firewall against contagion from the Greek debt crisis, but Germany's central bank opposed this too, the sources said." 
     
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15616265

    Greeks await new PM announcementNewspaper headlines on the Greek crisis New

    Greek leaders are to announce the leader of a new unity government to tackle the euro debt crisis, after PM George Papandreou agreed to resign. 29  


http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/

#OccupyOakland and the Power of the Black Bloc


". . . But we have a governance issue. Just as Washington is run by a political class, we may have a political class emerging at the Oakland GA that is not representing the interests of the broader movement. Yet thy are sufficiently influential as to prevent the Occupy Oakland GA from renouncing violence/vandalism as a tactic (it actually distanced itself from a media committee statement taking an anti-violence position).
More troubling, Affinis describes how they were successful in effectively recruiting other demonstrators to participate in an attack on Whole Foods, which was erroneously depicted as directing employees not to participate in the march after Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen was critically injured. Note how this works: a few violent people, operating in isolation, are much easier to identify and be subdued. If they are in the front or midst of a large crowd, which by virtue of its size may not even know what they are doing, it becomes much harder for anyone other than the other demonstrators to stop them. That did happen at Whole Foods: some of the marchers did try to restrain the vandals, but the store was still damaged. And of course, the instigators hope to get others to join in their attacks.
This is obviously far more pernicious that outside infiltrators, who are allegedly a common feature of anti-globalism demonstrations, and are paid to pretend to be members of the movement and engage in destruction in order to discredit it. The reason the Occupations have captured the public imagination is in no small measure due to using non-violent strategies that have again and again proven to be effective, with Tahir Square and the indignacios in Spain the models for many of the Occupy practices. But Affinis tells us how one set of Occupy precepts, of inclusiveness, is being used to undermine what many would see as higher order principles."










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1 comment:

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