Tag: speculation

Accusations that disaster capitalists are piling the pressure on Johnson to pursue no-deal Brexit

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30 September 2019 — True Publica

By TruePublica Editor: “For the first time in 35 years, I am not packing my bag to travel to the Tory party conference tomorrow. The party I joined as a student and first campaigned for in the 1979 general election is suffering a convulsion that makes it — for now at least — unrecognisable to me. Gone is the relaxed, broad-church coalition, united by a belief in free-trade, open markets, fiscal discipline and a fear of the pernicious effects of socialism, but tolerant of a wide range of social and political opinion within its ranks. In its place is an ideological puritanism that brooks no dissent and is more and more strident in its tone.”

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The Malaysian Airlines MH17 Crash: Financial Warfare against Russia, Multibillion Dollar Bonanza for Wall Street By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

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22 July 2014 — Global Research

While the mainstream media casually accuses Moscow without evidence of having orchestrated the shoot down of Malaysian Airlines MH17 in liaison with the Donesk rebels, the backlash of the crisis on international financial markets and on Russia’s financial system has passed virtually unnoticed.

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Turkish police round up young protesters for use of social media By Bill Van Auken

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6 June 2013 — WSWS

Turkish police have rounded up dozens of young protesters in the western port city of Izmir on charges of “encouraging rebellion,” “inciting public hatred” and spreading “misleading and libelous information” for their use of Twitter and other social media during the mass demonstrations that have swept the country over the past week.

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Occupy Wall Street: Why Bother the Bankers? By John Weeks

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7 October 2011 — The Bullet • Socialist Project E-Bulletin No. 552

“Blood-suckers of Wall Street”

O No, wait! You’re supposed to arrest the bankers!

When he ran for president in 1948, Harry Truman complained of the “blood-suckers of Wall Street,” an unkind characterization of the upstanding bankers and financiers who manage America’s money so brilliantly. Over sixty years later we now find a large number of Americans out on the Streets of Finance repeating Harry’s commentary, rather less politely. Why choose the titans of finance on Wall Street to trash?

Might it be because in addition to committing the crime of the century by causing the Great Financial Crisis (we have almost ninety years to go, so they have ample opportunity to do even worse), they are, as Harry pointed out, social and economic vampires. A few simple and easily accessible, yet largely unnoticed, statistics demonstrate the blood-sucking. In 1950 the U.S. finance and insurance business generated (i.e., siphoned off) 2.4 per cent of national product, rather slim and meager pickings. After reaching three per cent in 1953, the titans of finance required fifteen years to achieve four per cent (1968), and another thirteen to hit five (1981).

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Speculation in Agricultural Commodities: Driving up the Price of Food Worldwide and plunging Millions into Hunger By Edward Miller

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5 October 2011 — Global Research

CFTC treads water on world hunger

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has again delayed the introduction of position limits required under the Dodd-Frank Act. These limits are intended to prevent speculation in (among other things) agricultural commodities, speculation which, many critics argue, have driven up the price of food worldwide and plunged millions into hunger.

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British Capitalism – the Worm Ouroboros By William Bowles

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22 January 2009

ouroboros-3The other day I happened to hear an interview on the BBC with a US investor who had some pretty awful things to say about the UK economy, and why he wouldn’t invest a red cent in this country.

To paraphrase, ‘you don’t manufacture anything, your banks, from which you make most of your wealth, are bankrupt, and all your North Sea Oil has gone, so what do you have to offer an investor?’

The BBC interviewer, in a futile attempt to head him off at the pass, accused him of creating a panic to which he replied, ‘I don’t have any investments in the UK so I have nothing to gain’, in other words it’s not his problem, nor his fault that the UK economy is broke. What it reveals to me is a decrepit and worn-out capitalism, one whose ruling class have lived off interest for far too long.

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Keynes with a neo-liberal twist? By William Bowles

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10 November 2008

dollars“Just imagine saying, “production for use leads to stagnation; production for death leads to exchange value and profits.” Now don’t jump on me! Wait, I have to go into capital expansion and its being “the breath of capitalism” and, as yet, no forseeable future opportunities for capital reproduction to the magnitude needed for its expansion.”

The above excerpt from a short note from my compadre Patricia in the am triggered a thought about how the state, at least in the UK and in much of the EU, has reacted to the latest, and undoubtedly the worst crisis capital has yet faced. For unlike earlier crises, especially those of the 1970s which presaged the so-called neo-liberal revolution, the nature of Britain’s working class has undergone a profound transformation (along with other ‘advanced’ economies). And, at the risk of repeating myself, or anyway repeating the quote I’ve used before, I think it speaks reams about the real fear the ruling political class feels about the current situation.

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Responses From The South To The Global Economic Crisis

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International Political Economy Conference Final Declaration
Caracas, October 11, 2008

Academics and researchers from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Ecuador, France, Mexico, Peru, Phillipines, South Korea, Spain, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay and Venezuela participated in The International Political Economy Conference: Responses from the South to the Global Economic Crisis, held in Caracas from the 8 to 11 October 2008. The conference stimulated a wide ranging debate on the current economic and financial health of the global economy, the new perspectives and the challenges to the governments and peoples of the South posed by the international financial crisis.

The meeting concluded that the situation has worsened in the last few weeks. It has progressed rapidly from being a series of crises in the financial markets of countries in the centre and has turned into an extremely serious international crisis. This meant that countries in the South are in a very difficult situation.

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Kapitalism101: The Falling Rate of Profit

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The financial world is a mysterious one. It appears that through trading stock, advancing credit, or swapping currencies profit can appear out of thin air- that is, money can be turned into more money just by clicking some buttons on a computer or placing a call to a stockbroker. Indeed much of the confusion and mystique we attach to the dizzying world of finance comes from this illusion of money growing from money.

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Are they REALLY Oil Wars? By ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH

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A most widely-cited factor behind the recent U.S. wars of choice is said to be oil. “No Blood for Oil” has been a rallying cry for most of the opponents of the war. While some of these opponents argue that the war is driven by the U.S. desire for cheap oil, others claim that it is prompted by big oil’s wish for high oil prices and profits. Interestingly, most antiwar forces use both claims interchangeably without paying attention to the fact that they are diametrically-opposed assertions.

Not only do the two arguments contradict each other, but each argument is also wanting and unconvincing on its own grounds; not because the U.S. does not wish for cheap oil, or because Big Oil does not desire higher oil prices, but because war is no longer the way to control or gain access to energy resources. Colonial-type occupation or direct control of energy resources is no longer efficient or economical and has, therefore, been abandoned for more than four decades.

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‘Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal’

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Source: Global Research

A Review of Danny Schechter’s book ‘Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal’ by Stephen Lendman

Global Research, September 18, 2008

Danny Schechter is a media activist, critic, independent filmmaker, TV producer as well as an author of 10 books and lecturer on media issues. Some call him ‘The News Dissector,’ and that’s the name of his popular blog on media issues. He’s also co-founder of Media Channel.org. It covers the ‘political, cultural and social impacts of the media,’ and provides information unavailable in the mainstream.

Schechter’s books include Media Wars; Embedded – weapons of Mass Deception; The Death of Media; The More You Watch The Less You Know; and his newest and subject of this review, Plunder. Subtitled: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, Schechter examines the fallout from the current economic and financial crisis. What the mainstream media (MSM) suppresses:

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