You will recall that the conservatives who ruled Greece up to the crisis have been accused of lying to the EMU and “cooking their books” – that is, reducing the reported public debt levels.
In today’s Der Spiegel (German version) we learn that Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government in its “embellishments” via the use of “complex financial instruments” – cross-currency swaps. The swaps allowed the Greek government to report a lower Euro debt by exploiting cross-currency exchange rates. billyblog
Euro Falling, US Recovery Under Threat
The G7 achieved nothing over the weekend, the IMF is stuck on the sidelines, and the Europeans are sitting on their hands at least until a summit on Thursday. There is a lot of trading time between now and then – and most of it is likely to be spent weakening the euro further.
The UK also faces serious pressure, and there is no telling where this goes next around the world – or how it gets there.
There may be direct effects on the US, as our banking system remains undercapitalized. Or the effect may be through making it harder to export – one of the few bright spots for the American economy over the past 12 months has been trade. But this is unlikely to hold up as a driver of growth if the euro depreciation continues.
Some financial market participants cling to the hope that the stronger eurozone countries, particularly Germany, will soon help out the weaker countries in a generous manner. But this view completely misreads the situation.
THE world’s top central bankers began arriving in Australia yesterday as renewed fears about the strength of the global economic recovery gripped world share markets.
Representatives from 24 central banks and monetary authorities including the US Federal Reserve and European Central Bank landed in Sydney to meet tomorrow at a secret location, the Herald Sun reports.
Organised by the Bank for International Settlements last year, the two-day talks are shrouded in secrecy with high-level security believed to have been invoked by law enforcement agencies.
Speculation that the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Dr Ben Bernanke, would make an appearance could not be confirmed last night.
Suckers, suckers, all around.
And blood funnels.
Picked up a copy of this album a few days ago to replace one I had lost. Never really paid attention to the words before but while I was listening to it at my desk a line about having more than you really need caught my ear and made me look up the lyrics.
Cat’s foot, iron claw,
Neuro-surgeons scream for more,
At paranoia’s poison door
Twenty-first century schizoid man.Blood rack, barbed wire,
Politicians’ funeral pyre,
Innocents raped with napalm fire
Twenty-first century schizoid man.Death seed, blind man’s greed,
Poets’ starving children bleed,
Nothing he’s got he really needs
Twenty-first century schizoid man.
The song was written during a 20th century war but very little has changed in the ensuing 40 years. The politicians still demonstrate their fondness for incendiary devices although smart bombs rather than napalm have become the tool of choice to pacify the foreigners while the surgeon’s scalpel has been replaced by billions of useless pharmaceutical pills to pacify the natives.
Other than that not much has changed at all.
To hear the Powers That Be tell it, war is still peace, subjugation is still freedom, and having no real choice in the matter is still democracy.
It’s enough to make you want to scream.
In line with Obama’s clear rightward shift in rhetoric in his state of the union speech, this weekend Obama is showing us his stuff, his dick swinging foreign policy at the end of a rocket. He’s pulling it out, his patriot missiles, planting them around the Gulf, brushing aside all that diplomacy he previously so strongly championed. In so doing, America again wears the cowboy hat of Reagan-Bush foreign policy. Yee haw! He is also seriously pissing off China with weapons deals with Taiwan.
Oh, but 2010 is looking to be a real exciting year, boys and girls. Pull up a seat at yer teevee and maybe you’ll get to see agin the rockets red glare, bombs burstin in air, giv’n proof in the night shocknawe is still there, in greenscreen!
US boosts missile presence in Gulf as warning to Iran The Obama administration is intensifying pressure on Iran by increasing its missile defences in the Middle East to defend against potential missile strikes in the region by Tehran, it emerged today. The US military has boosted the capability of land-based Patriot defensive missiles in several Arab nations in the Gulf, and one official told the Associated Press the navy was also increasing the presence of ships capable of knocking out hostile missiles in flight.The move – reported in several US newspapers this morning – appears to be a deliberate attempt by the White House to ratchet up pressure on Iran ahead of attempts to increase sanctions against the country.
~snip~
The US is reappraising its Iran policy after months of unsuccessful diplomatic moves, and is attempting to win broad international consensus for sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, believed to control a covert nuclear arms programme, the New York Times reported.
Last week, in his state of the union speech, Barack Obama spoke of “consequences” if Iran failed to comply with UN demands to stop nuclear fuel production.
U.S. regrets China’s response to arms sales
China’s official Xinhua news agency said in an English-language commentary that the arms sales “will cause seriously negative effects on China-U.S. exchanges and cooperation in important areas, and ultimately will lead to consequences that neither side wishes to see.”
The sales in effect constitute the second half of a package that former President George W. Bush had approved as early as 2001. The notice of a potential sale is required by law and does not mean a deal has been concluded. Congress has 30 days to block such sales, though it has never done so.
~snip~
“The United States will shoulder responsibility for the serious repercussions if it does not immediately reverse the mistaken decision to sell weapons to Taiwan,” Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei told U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman …
In another Reuters article discussing How China’s anger could hurt ties with the U.S. there is discussion of sanctions on military industrial complex corporations directly involved. The article notes, “China is the single biggest holder of U.S. Treasuries, owning at least $776.4 billion of U.S. government debt at the end of June 2009, according to statistics from Washington. But there have been no signs Beijing will use broader trade penalties or its dollar holdings to punish Washington.”
Yet.
“Darn your big stick! Get a meat axe!!”
Oooh, a storm is threat’ning
My very life today
If I don’t get some shelter
Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade awayWar, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot awayOoh, see the fire is sweepin’
My very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its wayWar, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away~Stones
Duck and cover, a new storm comes this way
Well the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
But nothing really matters much it’s doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker he blows a futile horn
“Come in” she said
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm”.
I’ve heard newborn babies wailing like a mourning dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love
Do I understand your question man is it hopeless and forlorn
“Come in” she said
“I’ll give you shelter from the storm”.~ Bob
If things keep up, who knows, it could happen.
Meanwhile I woke up this morning and evidently it’s still January in the frozen North 2010.
Cabin fever season.
On this holiday in the era of “Hoping for Change”, Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream has not been realized and I’d venture that far fewer than half of changes King proposed for a more equitable society are even on the table for consideration. King did not just want a country where people of different ethic backgrounds would treat each other kindly, he wanted Justice. He knew that integration alone would not solve the gross inequalities he saw all around. He wanted a country where the playing field was truly level and the benefits of society could be enjoyed by all and not just a privileged few. He wanted a country where the poor were not used as fodder for the war machine which robs us all of our means of sustenance and our basic human decency. He wanted a country where the people didn’t simply defer to the leaders who sought to perpetuate inequalities, but stood up on their hind legs and challenged them through disobedience .
So while we may have elected – and I say “may” because who really knows who has won any election in recent years when the votes are cast on machines whose results can’t be verified – the first black president of this country, this president has used his great power to continue shoveling the wealth of a nation to the same wealthy, predominately white oligarchs who have enjoyed the fruits of others’ labor for generations.
End the wars in the Middle East? Still have more to start first Obama tells us.
Justice for those in the previous administration who left the Constitution in tatters? Better to move on Obama tells us.
A national health care plan that covers everybody equally? Just not possible in this country Obama tells us.
Aid to the poor and downtrodden? Not until we’ve taken care of the bankers first and that’s going to take some time Obama tells us.
If I have to hear this man on the TV later tonight invoking the name of Martin Luther King Jr. for any reason whatsoever I think I’m going to puke.
Mars is looking better every day. Back when all we had to go on were drawings from people like Percival Lowell, we used to think it looked like this:
Now we know it actually looks like this:
Pretty freaking amazing if you ask me.
You can find more new pictures of Mars by poking around the HiRISE website.
The vampire squid and the other assorted cephalopods that comprise the ruling class of greed are busy spinning tales of deception, their own pulpo fictions to cover up their misdeeds. If they can’t cover them up, they simply apply a new spin, a new so called frame, something I like to call absolute fantasy bullshit. And people actually believe it and believe them, or if they don’t then they are easily distracted by some other sparkly lure on some other rod that is coated with paper of iridescent stickiness.
Pulp fiction, it is the cheap literature and magazines for the masses. It began in the late 19th century, the Golden Age of Robber Barons, and flourished into the 1950’s when television began to take its place. It was the entertaining lure of distraction back in the day. It told tales of weirdness, of darkness and mystery, of tabu and monsters. It brought up authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft and Dashiell Hammett.
Pulp fiction was just as its descendant television soap operas, sit-coms and crime series. They take the mind of the working and middle classes and opiate them, replacing the real corporate monsters with fabricated ones, all the while brain washing with advertisements and product placements. It has made us all into such good little consumers and debt slaves, hasn’t it?
For more on the history of pulp fiction go here: History of Pulps
And for more pulpo fiction cover art, go here: Poulpe Pulps
Been thinking of my friend Don Wilsun lately. He’s dead now but he used to be larger than life. “Sunshine and blue skies” was what he used to say in his big, booming voice when friends would greet him at the bar as he put away a pitcher or two of Labbat’s after work which was kind of a funny thing to say since there was rarely sunshine or blue skies in Seattle where he lived. Maybe he was thinking of New Orleans where he grew up or maybe it was a wish more than a statement of fact but it always made us smile. During the day he was a demolition man and used brawn and sinew to rip apart buildings. He didn’t talk about himself much so it wasn’t until I’d known him a few years that I realized he also wrote poetry about the poor and downtrodden and forgotten among us and had had a few small books published. I will never forget the Tuesday night in September over 8 years ago now after a day of death and destruction and fear. Don took me aside that night and the two of us stepped outside the bar and I knew he had something important to say.
He said, “We had it coming”.
Things haven’t gotten much better since Don passed in 2003. But I’m sure he’s basking in the sunshine and blue skies somewhere now and wishing the same for the rest of us.
Jock-o-mo fee na nay Big Don, my wise friend.
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