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1. A Growing Trend of Leaving America : Jay Tolson, US News

2. Can This Planet Be Saved? : Paul Krugman, NYT

3. Afghanistan: Shoals Ahead for President Obama : Immanuel Wallerstein, Agence Global

4. Wrong on Afghanistan : Patrick Seale, Agence Global

5. Beware: ‘Machine Zone’ Ahead : Natasha Dow Schüll, Washington Post

6. Ultimatum to the GOP : Robert D. Novak, Washington Post

7. Disaster Capitalism, State of Extortion : Naomi Klein, The Nation



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The prophet of boom and doom

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When this man said the world’s economy was heading for disaster, he was scorned. Now traders, economists, even Nasa, are clamouring to hear him speak

by Bryan Appleyard

black-swan.jpgA noisy cafe in Newport Beach, California. Nassim Nicholas Taleb is eating three successive salads, carefully picking out anything with a high carbohydrate content. He is telling me how to live. “The only way you can say ‘F*** you’ to fate is by saying it’s not going to affect how I live. So if somebody puts you to death, make sure you shave.” After lunch he takes me to Circuit City to buy two Olympus voice recorders, one for me and one for him. The one for him is to record his lectures - he charges about $60,000 for speaking engagements, so the $100 recorder is probably worth it. The one for me is because the day before he had drowned my Olympus with earl grey tea and, as he keeps saying, “I owe you.” It didn’t matter because I always use two recorders and, anyway, I had bought a replacement the next morning. But it’s important and it’s not, strictly speaking, a cost to him. Every year he puts a few thousand dollars aside for contingencies - parking tickets, tea spills - and at the end of the year he gives what’s left to charity. The money is gone from day one, so unexpected losses cause no pain. Now I have three Olympus recorders.

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Extraordinary Times, Intentional Collapse, & Takedown of The U.S.A.

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By Richard C. Cook

TS Admin : If there is one article that you are going to read on the web today, let it be this one.

bank1.jpgMuch has been written about whether a worldwide plan exists to control events and steer them in the direction profitable to an elite of the rich and powerful. Is this a “conspiracy theory”? While it is difficult to be specific about who exactly may be behind such a conspiracy, if it exists, it is at least clear that the privately- managed system of global financial capitalism gives ample opportunity for the world’s richest people to combine for their mutual benefit. Further, global financial capitalism itself is based on the monopolization of money-creation by a world banking system that is largely privately owned, even while working through the central banks of the largest and most prosperous nations. This article postulates the existence of a coordinated and longstanding matrix set up by the controllers of money to dominate the movements of history. The article focuses particularly on what seems to have been an attack that has been going on for over a century against the independence of the nations of Russia and the U.S. The article also suggests a series of monetary reforms whereby the U.S. , or any other nation, can regain its economic identity and preserve its political freedom. The article was written a short distance from the reconstructed colonial capitol building in Williamsburg , VA. On this site on May 15, 1776, the Fifth Virginia Convention voted unanimously to instruct its delegation at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia to enter a motion for independence. It may be time to do that again.

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The Fall of the American Consumer

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by Barbara Ehrenreich
TS Admin : This is hilarious. And so true.

debt-big.gifHow much lower can consumer spending go? The malls are like mausoleums, retail clerks are getting laid off and AOL recently featured on its welcome page the story of a man so cheap that he recycles his dental floss — hanging it from a nail in his garage until it dries out.

It could go a lot lower of course. This guy could start saving the little morsels he flosses out and boil them up to augment the children’s breakfast gruel. Already, as the recession — or whatever it is — closes in, people have stopped buying homes and cars, and cut way back on restaurant meals. They don’t have the money; they don’t have the credit; and increasingly, they’re finding that no one wants their money anyway. NPR reported on February 28, that more and more Manhattan stores are accepting Euros and at least one has gone Euros-only.

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The Three Trillion Dollar War

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The cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have grown to staggering proportions

By Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes

onedaycost.jpgThe Bush Administration was wrong about the benefits of the war and it was wrong about the costs of the war. The president and his advisers expected a quick, inexpensive conflict. Instead, we have a war that is costing more than anyone could have imagined.

The cost of direct US military operations - not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans - already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.

And, even in the best case scenario, these costs are projected to be almost ten times the cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War, and twice that of the First World War. The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion (that’s $5 million million, or £2.5 million million). With virtually the entire armed forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the cost per troop (in today’s dollars) was less than $100,000 in 2007 dollars. By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of $400,000 per troop.

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Is the sun setting on the West?

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By Gordon Rayner

french_connection_1.jpgEven before the news broke on Thursday of Jérôme Kerviel’s £3.7 billion losses as a “rogue trader”, this week had already gone down in the financial world as the most turbulent in decades. Not since the dark days of the early 1970s had panic and fear gripped the markets with such monumental effect - a £77 billion slump in the value of the stock market on Monday, an unprecedented 0.75 per cent interest rate cut by the US Federal Reserve on Tuesday, followed by the blessed relief of a rally in prices on Wednesday.
 
Intriguingly, senior City figures are now raising the question of whether the chaotic trading of Monday and Tuesday was directly linked to Kerviel’s actions. The crisis was fuelled, in part, by the sale of billions of pounds worth of futures on the European market, driving prices down and making traders deeply suspicious that “something was up”. What none of them knew at the time, because the identity of sellers is never revealed, was that around 10 per cent of all trading on the futures market was originating from the French bank Société Générale, which was desperately closing down fraudulent accounts allegedly set up by Kerviel. Not only did Kerviel’s losses contribute to the mayhem in the markets, it seems, but there is even talk of whether the fire sale of the accounts he set up may have “panicked” the Federal Reserve into making its huge interest rate cut. “There is a question mark over whether the Fed was duped or pushed into making the emergency rate cut because of what was happening in Europe,” says Danny Gabay, director of Fathom Financial Consulting. “The Fed has issued a statement saying it didn’t know about the SocGen losses when it made the decision, which does call into question whether it would still have made the cut if it had been told about SocGen.”

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The Monkey Trap

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This article appeared in the January 18, 2008 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

by John Hoefle

stupidmonkey.gifFor anyone who follows the financial media these days, it is clear that the situation with the global financial system continues to deteriorate. Giant financial institutions are writing off unprecedented amounts, and desperately seeking new sources of capital to plug the growing holes in their balance sheets. Central banks are injecting funds into the banking system in record amounts, consumer debt and personal bankruptcies are soaring, the whole system seems to be falling apart. Appearances, in this case, are not deceiving.

What we are witnessing are not events which could lead to a financial collapse, but events which represent the disintegration of a system which has already died. This point is crucial to understanding all the maneuvering taking place as various financial groupings fight for their survival as their world crashes down around them. Ultimately this is a political fight rather than a financial one, since the real battle is over the nature of the system which will be established to replace the one which has failed. It is not a money matter to be decided by financial technocrats, but a philosophical and political battle over whether the republic created by our Founding Fathers will survive, or be absorbed back into the imperial system from which it broke free more than two centuries ago.

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The Establishment

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By Ted Lang

bankers.jpgAlready and early on in the soon to occur 2008 presidential elections, “The Establishment” has reared its ugly head and has begun to mobilize its vast resources against Congressman Ron Paul, the only honest, truthful and pro-American candidate of the lot.  What is it, and who is it, that makes up The Establishment?  

Here is a likely summation: the international banking House of Rothschild and Rockefeller are the drivers of the “New World Order.” It has always been the House of Rothschild that has, since its inception, played opposites against one another in order to enjoy huge and astronomical profits that proportionately towered over their donated “investments” backed by their alleged gold reserves used to fund government-desired wars. Their extremely profitable modus operandi has always been the funding of both sides of governments at war with each other. The Rothschild Bank of England obviously funded the British, and the Rothschild Bank of France funded Napoleon.

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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
DAVOS, Switzerland, 2008
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ON MARCH 2008
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