31 Articles

Friday, June 26, 2009
Threats to the American empire, from an engineered bankruptcy?
(13 comments) The current mass delusion that will go down in history as the "green shoots fugue" can't possibly bring the credit freak show back because the credit -- i.e. money borrowed from the American future -- was swindled away. Something like $14 trillion worth of nominal dollars is being sucked into a cosmic vortex never to be seen again. It was last seen in the spectral forms of so many collateralized debt obligations, etc.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Why the Coming Crash Will Be More Severe than the Great Crash of 1929
(9 comments) Since the "Reagan Revolution" of 1981 ("don't tax and spend, just borrow and spend"), our federal government has borrowed and spent way too much. Even worse, it borrowed most of it during so-called "good times," and did so on a scale once reserved for the rare Keynesian stimulus needed to combat serious recession. Now that we're in a deep recession, we can't really afford to borrow more -- not without grave consequences.

Sunday, June 14, 2009
Agenda for a New Economy: from Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth
There is growing evidence that our current economic system has failed us on every dimension: environmental, social, and financial. The fact that the Wall Street financial collapse has preceded the terminal collapse of our social and environmental systems is a blessing. Why? Because it demonstrates that our existing economic system has failed even on its own terms.

Thursday, May 28, 2009
Will widespread middle-class affluence ever return to the United States?
(4 comments) The US is the only industrialized country where young people are less likely than their parents to graduate high school. Since unemployment cannot begin to fall until payroll growth rises to at least 1% - and payroll growth will not hit 1% until GDP growth hits at least 2.5% - we may not see any substantive payroll growth until late 2010 or 2011. So, unemployment & foreclosures could very well rise until that time.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009
How to generate an additional $450 billion in annual tax revenue? -- tax the rich at the rates they were paying in 1955
(7 comments) Thirty years of "shrink, shift and shaft"! Right wing pols, and Dems who should have known better, shrunk the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest 1%, shifting the tax burden off of wealth, onto wages, off the federal tax system and onto the regressive tax systems of states and localities. Result: States and localities got the budget shaft: years of chronic underfunding for mass transit, education & public services.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The (coming) battery-swap (car) revolution. (Too bad Detroit will likely miss out.)
(6 comments) Engineers and entrepreneurs in Tel Aviv have developed a radical alternative to Detroit's business model. When this new battery-swap electric car system is completed, our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay, or pouring billions into the CD music business on the eve of the iPod.

Monday, December 1, 2008
How to end our addiction to Mideast oil, save the Big Three in Detroit and the economy too
(5 comments) The Danes get 18% of their electricity from wind turbines. Their only problem: What to do with the juice generated at night? How to store it? Their solution: start producing plug-in hybrid cars whose owners will nightly purchase juice from the wind turbines at 2 cents a KWhr. The next morning at work they will plug their car into the local grid, selling a programmed amount of the captured juice for 6 cents per KWhr.

Saturday, November 22, 2008
The cholesterol - heart disease scam: How the medical-industrial complex is raking in billions at our expense
(14 comments) Although a staggering amount of money has been spent on research to conclusively prove the link between saturated fat, cholesterol and Coronary Heart Disease (CHD), there exists a massive volume of scientific evidence published in peer-reviewed journals that completely absolves dietary cholesterol, saturated fat and elevated blood cholesterol of any harmful role in CHD. Why the continuance of this myth. Answer: Big profits.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008
To what extent are the markets being rigged?
(15 comments) Welcome to the behind-the-scenes world of The Plunge Protection Team, a largely secret group of bankers and government bigwigs that exert a surprising degree of control over the stock market. "The Dow is a dead banana republic dictator in full military uniform propped up in the castle window with a mechanical lever moving the cadaver's arm, waving to the Wall Street crowd."

Friday, October 31, 2008
Are US tax payers being scammed by Hank Paulson, the US Congress and America's biggest banks?
(12 comments) Surprise, surprise, big banks had not the slightest intention of increasing their lending after receiving the huge federal handout for that purpose. Tsar Paulson simply scammed the ever-gullible citizens of the US into handing the biggest and most avaricious institutions in the country $2,300 per every man, woman, child in the US, so that they could resume business as usual -- stuff like buying up other banks.

Saturday, September 20, 2008
The American road to socialism (for the rich)
(3 comments) The rich and powerful spend years making foolish deals in a market they rigged with the connivance of utterly corrupted politicians on both sides the aisle; their fraudulent scheme finally collapses, exposing them to some of the most horrific financial losses in history....and YOU will have to pay for it. For generations. Not only directly, with the tax money straight from your pocket.

Sunday, September 14, 2008
Wake-up time. Chris Floyd on creeping fascism in the U.S.
(8 comments) The Nazis launched unprovoked wars of aggression and despoiled whole nations. So do we now; who cares? The Gestapo and the KGB snatched people from the street and held them without charges in secret prisons, tortured them with brute force and with exquisitely calibrated techniques approved by the highest authorities. So do we now; who cares?

Sunday, August 31, 2008
Former McCain Insider Charges Election Fraud. Implicates McCain, Bush, Cheney and Rove
(4 comments) A lifelong Republican, erstwhile member of McCain's campaign, and a prominent expert on computer fraud, Stephen Spoonamore has copious hard evidence revealing that Bush/Cheney stole a number of key races, starting with Florida eight years ago. He has named names, and has the goods to back up every claim. Plus, he knows quite a lot about the plans to use illegal methods to make McCain America's next president.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008
How America's Middle Class Was Eviscerated by Bushco, the CIA, and the Republican Overclass
More than 100% of the growth in Gross Domestic Product over the past five years is attributable to the expansion of debt. GDP is up $2.8 trillion since 2001. But government debt alone is up over $3 trillion for the same period. Add in the explosion of home mortgage debt at over $5 trillion, and a cumulative $3.5 trillion in trade deficit, and you get a Real Economy that is literally going backwards.

Thursday, May 22, 2008
What links did Mohammed Atta have to Cheney & the Pentagon?
(2 comments) New evidence that Mohammed Atta was connected to the Pentagon's Special Operations Command (SOCOM). In addition, more evidence that a top-secret Pentagon project code-named "Able Danger" identified Atta as a member of an al-Qaeda cell more than a year before the 9/11 attacks. So why did the Pentagon prevent his arrest? And why was the FBI so reluctant to inspect Zacarais Moussaoui's laptop computer until after 9/11?

Saturday, March 29, 2008
Saudi Newspaper: Prepare for radioactive fallout from US nuclear attack on Iran
(47 comments) Bush sends nuclear sub to Gulf. Cheney then visits Saudis, who in turn prepare plans to deal with "any sudden radioactive hazards" that may arise from a US attack on Iran's nuclear reactors. This was reported by a top Saudi newspaper, Okaz, and relayed by a leading German news service, DPA. (Nothing in Saudi Arabia becomes the top news story without government approval.) Experts say a US nuclear attack is very likely.

Monday, March 17, 2008
Was Eliot Spitzer targeted?
(10 comments) If you look at the long list of cases in which accusations of highly irregular financial conduct were lodged against Republican elected officials, you will see that in each case the Bush Justice Department reacted by doing nothing. No review of payments and bank records. No questions. No investigators. No warrants for wiretaps. Bush's "Justice" Department always concluded that there was insufficient grounds to proceed.

Sunday, February 24, 2008
Our Senate has betrayed us
(5 comments) Our Senate, led by Jay Rockefeller, enabled by Harry Reid, and with the active support of at least 12 Democrats and the as-always lockstep GOP caucus -- voted to legalize warrantless spying on the telephone calls and emails of Americans. It also provided full retroactive amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms, thus forever putting an end to any efforts to investigate the telecoms and the associated crimes of the Bush administration.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Our corporate-controlled (Orwellian) mass media
(16 comments) In a world of objective reality, a reporter would simply say that the U.S. launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq on March of 2003 under the false pretense that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction -- and did this even after UN inspectors, completely unopposed by Saddam, had failed to find any WMD. However, the Orwellian 'reality' sold to us by our corporate-controlled mass media was and is quite different.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008
If productivity has tripled, why are we working ever longer hours?
(4 comments) Even though worker productivity has tripled in the last 50 years, most American workers are working ever longer hours just to acquire basics like housing, health care and college education. The biggest reason they have to work so much is the ever growing amounts of superfluous products that are produced and consumed. That keeps folks on a kind of treadmill -- which in turn causes enormous amounts of pollution & global warming

Monday, December 24, 2007
Hyperconsumption, global warming, and the fall of basic-goods buying power among the middle class
(8 comments) American workers are slowly becoming enslaved to the superrich, the rich, & even to our own consumer addictions. The more we work, the more we feel compelled to buy. The more we buy, the more we're compelled to work. Meanwhile our environment suffers the ever worsening consequences. Solution: Allow those who want to, to work, efficiently & cooperatively, only on the production of the basics, which they can then share.

Friday, December 21, 2007
How a state governor was imprisoned with help from Karl Rove
(8 comments) The GOP spent millions of dollars-- state and federal dollars--to remove Gov. Don Siegelman from Alabama politics, and did it with the help of Karl Rove. They wanted Siegelman out of politics because he is honest, can't be bought, won't be part of corrupt government, and is popular with blacks and whites alike. From the courtroom they took him away in shackles, to jail, without even a chance to say goodbye to his family.

Sunday, December 9, 2007
Mortgage Industry Insider Says the Mortgage Mess is Far Far Worse than You Suppose
(23 comments) Now, it takes a $175K annual income to buy a million dollar house, which, before, a $90K income could afford, down from average household income to 10% of households. And inventories are up 500%-- that leaves 90% fewer buyers for five times the number of homes. To get housing moving again rates must drop, which won't happen, or home prices must fall 50%. Things WILL be getting worse.

Thursday, December 6, 2007
The Vile Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush
Repercussions from Bush will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page. Our tax code has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; our national debt will probably have grown 70% by the time Bush leaves office; we have a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults and a record near-$850 billion trade deficit, and oil prices higher than ever. We must kick our addiction to oil but are becoming ever more dependent.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007
The Mounting Dangers of America's Burgeoning Debt
How did America, collectively and as individuals, become a nation addicted to debt -- pushed to, and often over, the edge of bankruptcy? The savings rate in America hangs below zero. Personal bankruptcies are reaching record numbers. America's total debt averages more than $160,000 for every man, woman, and child. China holds nearly $1 trillion in US debt. Japan and other countries hold most of the rest.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007
In Preparation for Prosecution and/or Armageddon, Bush Buys 99,000-Acre Ranch in Paraguay
(9 comments) The Bush clan knows that things might go real bad real soon -- both for Georgie, for America, and for the Mideast. Therefore the Bushes are making plans for escape. American men no longer want to serve in Iraq; ever more are deserting and none are enlisting. Result: the Pentagon is desperately trying to recruit Latin Americans to fight this war for us. Meanwhile massive recession looms, largely as a result of oil scarcity.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007
How we could have saved billions with a gasoline tax
(7 comments) If only we could have slapped a "patriot tax" of $1 or more on every gallon of gasoline sold, this would have greatly diminished the transfers of wealth we were making to the very countries who are indirectly financing the ideologies of intolerance that are killing American soldiers. In addition, such a move would have spurred innovation in energy efficiency by U.S. manufacturers.

Saturday, November 3, 2007
Former high-level officials challenge the conventional explanation of how and why the Twin Towers came down
(39 comments) Former high-level CIA officials and military officers now suspect that three World Trade Center buildings came down with the help of powerful explosives and radio-controlled incendiary devices. There is hard new evidence to support this belief presented in this article. Much of it has been documented by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and can be seen at their web site, www.ae911truth.org.

Saturday, October 27, 2007
BushCo's Covert Attempt to Force Iraq Into Giving Up 87% of Its Oil
Plenty of evidence, from a variety of sources, that the Bush administration, with the help of the mainstream media, is covertly trying to force Iraq's parliament to sign an oil law that will grant the vast majority of Iraq's oil profits to multinational oil companies.

Saturday, October 20, 2007
Just How Much Trouble is the US Economy In?
Japan and China Lead the Flight from the Dollar. Fears of a Dollar Collapse. Saudis Take Flight. China Threatens "Nuclear Option" of Dollar Sales. Foreign investors flee US securities. Housing slump could trigger recession. Housing starts fall 40% and home foreclosures double. Re: the regulations that will be needed in future, Republicans start talking like Democrats.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The FBI knew that the 911 attack was being planned
Evidence that the FBI knew well in advance that the 9/11 attack was being planned. The Philippine National Police found evidence of this planning on the laptop of a Muslim terrorist and forwarded this information to the US Justice Dept.