Now the results are out and, in at least three areas, there's no question that growth is an sign of social failure. The first indicator, only because we've been aware of it the longest, is the growth of landfills. More and more of what we Americans produce and purchase ends up at the dump; some of it even before it's used. Indeed, much of our production is aimed to be disposed of--disposable. As if the mountains of waste weren't already high enough. And I won't even go into "storage facilities," replicating like mushrooms all over the countryside -- way stations to the dump for the stuff we think we might eventually actually want.

The nation is drowning in stuff. The question is why? Why have we been persuaded to accumulate more and more stuff we don't actually want, and certainly don't need? My ancient house guest tells me it's because stuff, unlike people, doesn't disappoint. Stuff doesn't run off with your best friend. Stuff isn't fickle. On the other hand, the old curmudgeon is even now discovering that when people have people, they don't need stuff. That's something the tea party people seem to be discovering, as well. While that does not bode well for the resurgence of our supposedly consumer-driven economy, consumption is not a healthy condition. So, the tea parties may actually be a sign of healing.

First Iceland, then the World

Written by Michael Collins

SOURCE: DailyCensored.com

Michael Collins
The public is angry. Why should the public pay for the bankers mistakes. Iceland blogger Halldor Sigurdsson

Who cleans up the mess when ignorant, greedy bankers rack up massive debt then go broke? The people of Iceland made a strong statement Saturday. The sins of big bankers and government regulators shouldn’t fall on the citizens. By a 93% to 2% margin, they voted down a proposal requiring them to cover bad debt incurred by one of the nation’s oldest and largest banks. Covering the debt would have cost Iceland’s 317,000 citizens around $17,000 each.

Iceland’s national referendum was the first opportunity for the people of any nation to vote directly on who pays when the financial elite fail.

As citizens voted, Iceland’s Prime Minister was dismissing the importance of the vote and promising to negotiate a payment scheme obligating citizen subsidies for bad debt created by Iceland’s beyond-bad bankers.

I don't, typically, hog the front page with blog posts. However, Gregg prompts me to make an exception and use the tools that will provide exposure of his posturing for the longest period of time.

Press Release:

February 24, 2010

(Washington, D.C.)-U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen today called on WellPoint CEO Angela Braly to explain the increase in New Hampshire health insurance rates despite the company's substantial profits. According to a report released today by the Center for American Progress, WellPoint, under the banner of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, intends to increase individual insurance rates in New Hampshire by 12 percent to 13 percent and has already increased premiums in the small group market by 17 percent. Meanwhile, the company posted a 700 percent increase in profits in the fourth quarter of 2009 compared to the same time period the previous year.

Wall Street's Bailout Hustle

Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren't just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy - they're re-creating the conditions for another crash

MATT TAIBBI

Posted Feb 17, 2010 5:57 AM

What's to be done? We the people have to take control of our money and cut out the middlemen.

If money doesn't change hands, an exchange doesn't count. Which, in economist speak, means that the economy of a particular region or population is "undeveloped." From which it seems fair to conclude that the primary objective of "economic development," at least from the economist's perspective, is to remedy a stumbling block and facilitate their ability to count and account for what's going on. Whether people are actually better off using money than when they're engaged in subsistence farming is beside the point. It does, perhaps, explain why the evidence suggests that they're not.

On second thought, there's probably too much verbiage to go above the fold, so let me just point out that my attention was first caught by the back cover of National Journal (Senator-elect Scott Brown is on the front) where some school teacher in Mecca, California is promoting "financial responsibility" by pointing to greenbacks pinned up on the wall. More apt than the engineers of this campaign probably intended.

What they intended seems pretty well encapsulated in the Introduction of the Currency of Progress Campaign:

Visa is celebrating how the power of digital currency is transforming lives with a new advertising campaign--Currency of Progress.

Top Republican blasts Bernanke foes for 'pandering populism'

By Michael O'Brien - 01/25/10 10:14 AM ET

Opponents of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's second term are guilty of "pandering populism," Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) argued Monday .

Gregg, the top Republican on the Budget Committee and a member of the Banking Committee, decried a growing tide of populism spurring senators to oppose Bernanke's nomination to a second term, and support stringent new rules on large financial institutions.

"That's pandering populism," Gregg said during an appearance on CNBC in response to some Democrats' and Republicans' criticisms of the Fed chairman. "There's a lot of populism going on in this country right now, and I'm tired of it."

SOURCE: Alternet.org

By Raj Patel, Picador Press
Posted on November 30, 2009, Printed on November 30, 2009

The following is an excerpt from Raj Patel's new book, The Value of Nothing (Picador, 2010).

If war is God’s way of teaching Americans geography, recession is His way of teaching everyone a little economics. The great unwinding of the financial sector showed that the smartest mathematical minds on the planet, backed by some of the deepest pockets, had not built a sleek engine of permanent prosperity but a clown car of trades, swaps and double dares that, inevitably, fell to bits. The recession has not come from a deficit of economic knowledge, but from too much of a particular kind, a surfeit of the spirit of capitalism. The dazzle of free markets has blinded us to other ways of seeing the world. As Oscar Wilde wrote over a century ago: "Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing." Prices have revealed themselves as fickle guides: The 2008 financial collapse came in the same year as crises in food and oil, and yet we seem unable to see or value our world except through the faulty prism of markets.

One thing is clear: The thinking that got us into this mess is unlikely to rescue us. It might come as some consolation to know that even some of the most respected minds have been forced to puzzle over their faulty assumptions. Perhaps the most pained admission of ignorance happened in a crowded room in front of the  House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform when, on October 23, 2008, Alan Greenspan described the failure of his worldview.

WTO STILL PARTIES LIKE IT'S 1999
on 10th Anniversary of the Battle in Seattle
Bankers' scheme to re-open finance casino worldwide

Monday, November 30, 2009
by Greg Palast for Ring of Fire

GENEVA — Apparently, one meltdown isn't enough for the World Trade Organization. They meet today in Geneva on the tenth anniversary of the "Battle in Seattle," when tens of thousands of people from around the world protested the organization's practices.

By MARK WHITEHOUSE

The pain of the financial crisis has economists striving to understand precisely why it happened and how to prevent a repeat. For that task, John Geanakoplos of Yale University takes inspiration from Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice."

The play's focus is collateral, with the money lender Shylock demanding a particularly onerous form of recompense if his loan wasn't repaid: a pound of flesh. Mr. Geanakoplos, too, finds danger lurking in the assets that back loans. For him, the risk is that investors who can borrow too freely against those assets drive their prices far too high, setting up a bust that reverberates through the economy.