Picketty, Sachs & company letter to Merkel

It's called "Austerity has failed" and they plead with Merkel and the Troika to dump their inhumane program of punishment. They also reminded the Chancellor of how Germany's WWII debt was forgiven so that the country could recover. Will they listen? Maybe if enough of us pressure them.

Typical Republican Presidential candidate

Pick any of them and you'll get the same kind of corruption. Not Sanders though.

Greece fights the enclosure of the commons

Continuing from this post:

Greece actually had a public referendum on a major issue affecting the entire populace. That is huge in terms of being on the road to P2P governance. What other countries have done that. Plus we've seen articles after the new government took over that it was P2P oriented. This article discusses the capitalist enclosure of the commons and Greece's fight against it. And as I've noted elsewhere, capitalism and modern rationality go hand in metaphysical hand. Whereas a return to a Commons orientation mixed with P2P tech is an advance into an ecological pararationality.

Why the Justice Dept. had 0 criminal bank prosecutions

See this story where former Attorney General Holder returns to his Wall Street job. One thing of which I am almost certain: the US won't have the Wall Street revolving door in a Sanders Administration. Hence why we don't hear much about him in the major media outlets.

Is Greece leading the western world again?

See this FB IPS post for discussion on this opening statement:

Greece arguably led the western world into rationality and proto-capitalism. The case can now be made that they are once again leading the western world into pararationality and the P2P Commons.

Europe knew its Greek policy was flawed

And yet pursued it anyway. See this article. An excerpt:

"The IMF Debt Sustainability Analysis report on Greece that came out this week has caused a big stir. We now know that the Fund’s analysts confirm what Syriza has been saying ever since they came to power 5 months ago: Greece needs debt relief, lots of it, and fast.

We also know that Europe tried to silence the report. But what’s most interesting is that this has been going on for months, as per Reuters. Ergo, the IMF has known about the -preliminary- analysis for months, and kept silent, while at the same time ‘negotiating’ with Greece on austerity and bailouts.

And if you dig a bit deeper still, there’s no avoiding the fact that the IMF hasn’t merely known this for months, it’s known it for years. The Greek Parliamentary Debt Committee reported three weeks ago that it has in its possession an IMF document from 2010(!) that confirms the Fund knew even at that point in time.

The real story behind Greece

Great, accurate analysis here. See it for the details. It runs through the 4 stages of how this happened. 1) It began with the financial crisis of '08, where banks sold houses to people they knew could not afford them, and bet that they wouldn't; 2) Banks insured that they would get bailed out at the people's expense by buying politicians; 3) The banks downgrade Greece's bonds making interest rates so high as to induce debt; 4) the banks punish the Greeks for being in debt the banks intentionally created, thereby inflicting austerity that only makes the situation worse. The goal: "A world owned by a handful of corporations and banks; a world that is full of obedient, powerless debt serfs." Oligarchy has arrived.

Thomas Picketty on Germany's own debt history

See this story. An excerpt:

"After the war ended in 1945, Germany’s debt amounted to over 200% of its GDP. Ten years later, little of that remained: public debt was less than 20% of GDP. Around the same time, France managed a similarly artful turnaround. We never would have managed this unbelievably fast reduction in debt through the fiscal discipline that we today recommend to Greece. Instead, both of our states employed the second method with the three components that I mentioned, including debt relief. Think about the London Debt Agreement of 1953, where 60% of German foreign debt was cancelled and its internal debts were restructured...Europe was founded on debt forgiveness and investment in the future. Not on the idea of endless penance. We need to remember this."

Krugman on Greece's bloodletting

See this article. The referendum has at least stopped the bleeding of austerity for now. The troika were determined to punish the Greek people in an effort to bully out the leftist government and the people responded. So much for the EU's supposed democracy. Krugman sees their tactics as medieval in that it's like bloodletting; if it doesn't work then just bleed some more. Which of course is capitalism's feudal method of operation: suck the blood from everyone else and give it to the rich. As to what's next Krugman can only speculate.

Beyond bizarre belief