Now I remember the actual significance - the 60 or so Democrats who tried to get some kind of public option (supported by Howard Dean, M.D.) into the healthcare bill. Weiner was rallying them at one point, then they capitulated ... leaving Dennis Kucinich to stand alone, a role to which he is too often consigned. Ultimately, President Obama flew from Washington to Cleveland with Kucinich riding along in US 1, and shortly thereafter Dennis bowed to the inevitable and announced he would vote for a compromise bill.
Kucinich had earlier introduced six (I think it was) amendments that were passed out of committee (about April 2009) by a substantial majority of Judiciary Committee (I think it was), including Republicans. Then the insurance company lobbyists reorganized and counter-attacked, co-opting the original (protectionist) Tea Party populist movement and merging it into the obstructionist (and anti-protectionist) anti-Obama movement (anti-Obama except with-Obama when it comes to endorsing 'free' trade). CONTENT OF ALL KUCINICH AMENDMENTS WERE PROBABLY VIEWED FAVORABLY BY THE PUBLIC BUT NOT ONE SURVIVED INTO THE LEGISLATION ENACTED EARLY IN 2010.
Bottom line: another victory for the Money Party (not Michael Collins' The Money Party blog!)
Myself, I follow MSM hardly at all, and I still don't know - don't care to know - the nature of whatever the alleged scandalous behavior of Weiner may have been. The point is that this Weinergate news story seems to be receiving far more and in-depth coverage than did the Kucinich amendments that were, I believe, systematically ignored by most of MSM.
I guess the moral of the story is that MSM news sources, and those who pay attention to them, are and will always be surrounded by self-imposed darkness. They are like the legend of Diogenes, who supposedly wandered around Athens with a lantern in broad day light looking for an honest man. (MSM television is the unnecessary energy-wasting lantern!)
There is an Edit link when I first post, and that Edit link remains BUT ONLY UNTIL SOMEONE POSTS A REPLY TO MY POST.
For example, I can still edit my reply titled "Yes, but how?", and I will be able to edit this reply titled "Edit link?" but only UNTIL SOMEONE POSTS A REPLY UNDER THIS.
I don't know about permissions, but the system as it works for me makes sense in that it's kinda unfair if I post a reply and then my reply makes no sense after the comment has been redacted.
I thought probably you could click a button and maybe open my post up to edit or, more likely, vanish it. Then I could repost my redaction wherever it would end up - which still would be a little confusing in that people would not have context for your remark (paraphrased) "Folks, I do not know where this 'gender test' is coming from." (Context was my quote from the Christian Science Monitor opinion page that suggests, not a statutory gender test, but a gender test that voters may apply as a result of this brouhaha of media misdirection and actual or alleged sexual indiscretions ... or worse.)
Michael Collins has made valid points about political campaign law, drawing important distinctions that are ignored by mainstream media and probably not understood by most EP followers. Also, EP does from time to time touch on campaign finance reform as essential to necessary reform of economic policies ... but I don't think that EP is going to descend to the level of gossip or 'liberal versus 'conservative' sound-and-fury-signifying-nothing or the other media crapola that we are all happy to avoid but cannot completely ignore.
BTW: Banning of trolls is appreciated! Also appreciated is that I have not been banned for some unfortunate approaches I have taken in my comments.
They are all mixed together. I can take the part time job creation numbers from the establishment survey and give a rough estimate. You're right, the report mixes anything even remotely called a job opening.
I know for a fact in tech, they put out phony job openings all of the time, they import foreign workers instead of even considering an American. Or, they are resume harvesting, also not actual intention to hire.
Consider registering for we go over these reports with a comb and especially all of the labor related ones.
Great report. I'm glad to see that someone besides myself is using the underemployment rate regarding JOLTS. "If one takes the official broader definition of unemployment, or U6, currently at 15.8%, the ratio becomes even worse, 8.2 unemployed people per each job opening."
Another issue is that the number of part-time jobs in the JOLTS report. I have not seen the full-time/part-time jobs breakdown. Of those 3 million jobs, a large percentage could be part-time positions. In fact, the unemployment rate for those seeking full-time work is 9.7%, while for those seeking part-time work the unemployment rate is much less at 6.3% http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t10.htm.
Keep up the great work. No one in the MSM is accurately presenting unemployment. The 9.1% spiel is simply the best case scenario.
I don't seem to be able to redact my comment at this point, and I don't want to withdraw the main thrust of it - which wasn't about gender politics or sexual behavior!
PLEASE ALLOW ME TO CHANGE THE TITLE TO "Economic as well as political consequences: Strauss-Kahn", DELETE INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH, AND, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR QUOTE.
(Or, delete my entire comment, and I'll post it in redacted form.)
Actually, although I have seen the name Weiner lately in the ubiquitous media background, it hasn't interested me enough to look into it. I don't watch TV news and I have no idea who Anthony Weiner is or the nature of allegations against him. THAT'S how little I care about that lumpen junk!
I quoted John Klotsche to introduce - NOT the Strauss-Kahn case but - ECONOMIC and POLICY issues arising from consideration of Strauss-Kahn, how the media may be manipulated to create profiteering opportunities in trading, and, issues related to destabilizing effects of such profiteering.
Primarily, I am discussing the consequences of the blend of prurient interest and celebrity cultism of the public, sensationalism and distractionism of mainstream media, and, opportunities that those create for profiteering manipulation of markets in paper of all kinds. These have consequences for consideration of policy issues and also for investment decisions of individuals.
No one has commented on the primary subject matter of my comment, so I guess I should not have used the quote that I did. I used that quote because it seemed to tie my thoughts into the related discussion of the John Edwards case. (Both about politico-economic consequences associated with phenomena cited.)
My intent was to draw discussion toward topics of economic policy.
Of course, rape is about psychopathology relating to power relationships and should not be confused with healthy sexual activity.
It is astounding the spin I see in the financial press over these economic report releases. This is why I write them up. First, the government has their own websites and it's their data, their release so how someone can spin these to the extent they do is beyond me....
shows just how much spin goes into something more complex, such as a bill in Congress...
Esp. explaining movement in the stock market when 70% of all trades are robo trades in the first place.
This is not a benign report. Anything about 400k is absolutely not benign.
MSNBC is reporting that today's increase in the stock market index is in part the result of “benign unemployment numbers”.
They actually used the word "Benign" - are they on another planet, or just a different planetary economic class?
Even NDD over at Bonddad is concerned about unemployment not boding well for the economy.
I am so much trying to avoid Weinergate and it's just saturating the news. I just do not care about some sexting, sexual predatory asshat.
Folks, I have no idea where this gender test is coming from. These behaviors have much more to do with power, which goes along with sociopathic behaviors of CEOs, politicians and such, than actual sex.
Women can get off on power just as much as a male can. You just haven't seen it because women are denied power.
Strauss-Kahn is charged with attempted rape. This is a violent crime and all about power. Think about it. He could have ordered up any kind of strange and have it delivered to his hotel door in 5 minutes in NYC. They specialize in strange of all kinds, 24/7, free delivery.
Nope, that was about power. Same with Weiner at this point, or some sort of self-destruct weirdness button or whatever..
but our site is an economics site, please, let's stick to the topics at hand..
Let's focus in on policies. I just don't give a rats ass about anyone photographing their woodie beyond criminal charges for flashing or whatever.
Christine Lagarde is the right choice to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn as head of the IMF, and not just because of her experience. Women are more effective communicators and aren't libido-led leaders, like Anthony Weiner.
What is troublesome in the Strauss-Kahn case, and perhaps in many others, is this: suppose that a person would happen somehow to know just one day in advance that the incident would take place. That person with accounts, leverage (margin or connections) and access to exchanges could likely have parlayed a $100,000 play in Greek government bonds into something like perhaps $300,000 or more within 48 hours! This is an oversimplified account, and a much more detailed analysis by Forest Cookson is available at
"... making hundreds of millions of dollars or losing a similar amount. I can afford a bribe of one million dollars for the maid to make up this story."
Of course, this is 'conspiracy theory', but -- again quoting Mr. Cookson:
"[N]othing is simple and ... all events have at least one underlying conspiracy."
IMO, something like the Strauss-Kahn scenario could be done by people who are organized to do such things for surely not more than $100,000. Are there people in this world, in New York City, who do things like this, perhaps even specialize in things like this? Hmmm ... what do you think?
What about the ephemeral news item about some guy (connected into 'Wall Street') who allegedly bragged to a woman (with whom he was allegedly intimately involved outside of any marriage) that he knew the day before the Deepwater Horizon explosion that he was about to make a fortune playing BP short, and was certain enough of his insider information that he was already celebrating his big win at the tables of Casino Financial Capitalism?
For example, back in the Kennedy administration, knowing in advance about a government news release about anti-trust actions in communications cases, allegedly allowed some people to make a fortune overnight playing AT&T short.
I believe that ALL derivatives in paper, that is paper built on paper (as opposed to commodities) -- even such simple derivatives as ordinary futures -- are essentially forms of gambling prone to 'THE FIX'. To some extent, this is true even in the case of commodities, as shown in the notorious De Angelis vegetable oil case (1963), that destroyed the hoary reputation of, and forced reorganization of American Express. Is there gold in Fort Knox?
People worry about paper money - even though money is less paper and more digital these days - but they should IMO worry more about all the other forms of paper (digital) commodities. Trading in paper is inherently risky and always subject to 'THE FIX'. That's why there are great profits to be made! That's why it can't happen without considerable governmental regulation. That's why it's imperative to aggressively pursue corruption in high places (and low) and not get side-tracked into People-Magazine-type stuff about politicos (not that politicos should be above the law but we should observe the law, including the part about innocent until proven guilty and the part about not speculating on a pending case).
I don't know anything about the facts of the Strauss-Kahn case, although I have formed an impression that, as it stands now, it's she-said-he-did. So, it's a pending case and should not be discussed. I only discuss it here as an example of how confused matters can become in a corrupted world system of finance-capitalism and how problematic it therefore is to accept numbers (averages over time) as the basis for economic decisions.
Rampant huge speculation in currency markets may constitute just the tip of the iceberg. No wonder people like to have actual gold, silver and platinum buried in a safe buried under the basement!
Requirements for a healthy free economy: (1) effective aggressive regulatory activities by stable government trusted by the people; and, (2) transparency in and systematic controls over possible corruption undermining the activities and the government.
Really, what's essential is integrity and trust - not the same as the appearance of integrity or as blind trust in government.
Commerce is impossible without an environment of mutual trust.
Seriously. Report them and made a big deal out of this. We've seen multiple reports on this crap and it is, in my view, pure discrimination. Corporations lay people off like Schnidler's list and usually has nothing to do with that person being a great employee or not.
But these bastards are trying to use someone's need for a job as a reason to reject them for a job, which is pure B.S.
You might mention another thing, how about a PA state funded venture capital to put these people to work forming startups, new businesses, with funding. One would have to go through the same dog and pony show all startups go through to get funding, but make it a top priority to start organizing the unemployed to do this.
Nothing would be better than to form corporations to compete these S.O.B.s right out of business.
I was at a job fair in Pittsburgh this week where a representative of the event specifically told us before entering the convention hall, that the unemployed or self-employed would NOT be considered for a job!!
I had heard of this happening before, but seeing it happen right in front of me was eye opening.
Boycott Cisco routers. Money is the only thing they understand. I just wish we could boycott our government too for aiding and abetting the Cisco investigation.
Cisco + Government power = scary
It was Mussolini who said fascism is the combining of corporate and government powers.
This case is a good example of fascism.
The US government prosecutes nobody on Wall St. for our economic collapse, yet when Cisco decides they want to have someone arrested, the US government jumps into action. Just who is running this country?
I was volunteering to teach a free ESL group, and I met a student who had come from Mexico to work at construction labor (probably paid under the table). A serious working man, his thing was to try to send as much money to his extended family back home to be able to pay for as many kids to go to school as possible.
He explained it this way: it wasn't that he really preferred to be in the U.S. or that he could not survive in Mexico. It was just that the tuition for even one kid in Mexico was greater than what a man could conceivably earn there. He himself could barely read Spanish, let alone English. All he had ever done was hard work.
I don't know if he was legal or not. Never asked.
We could probably try to give enough money to Mexico that at least their K-6 or K-8 would be free ... but would that money ever filter down to the ground where people live? Anyway, what that would cost the taxpayer would probably be less than the costs associated with illegal immigration.
We don't really need a metal standard at all, certainly not a gold standard. The truth is that we must have some medium of exchange, but the key to that is confidence pure and simple.
People tend to fear 'fiat' currency, but isn't all currency 'fiat'? Bottom line is it doesn't matter what kind of money the tax collectors demand, they have more guns and ammo than you do. Like in the Bible, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" - referring perhaps to the image of Caesar Augustus on Roman coins.
It isn't the 'fiat' nature of some money more than others that really matters. It's really all about who is the boss of 'fiat' - an emperor, a central banker, or the people through their trust-worthy elected representatives
Look at how today we actually use digital signals recorded on servers in the ubiquitous 'cloud' as the primary medium of exchange. If confidence in electronic money is lost, the whole system will collapse.
But then some other system would soon take it's place, because there is always a need for some medium of exchange.
So, of course, the basis of any medium of exchange is psychological, along with governmental restraint and governmental enforcement
Seems likely that, at some point, some kind of gimmick will be necessary to restore or bolster confidence. Maybe that's inevitable - not a gold standard though. Why would you want to limit it to gold? Or even a bimetallic mix of gold and silver? There's no particular reason for that, except that some interested parties would become even more rich and powerful than they already are.
BUT a commodity basket standard of maybe 30 raw metals (or maybe even some alloys or amalgams) - now that's an idea. And, by all means, let's include aluminum, which has the great value that it requires a lot of electrical juice to create it - so that ties it to all the energy-related commodities.
A commodity basket approach, I recall, was seriously proposed to President Kennedy back around 1961, but it lasted as a headline in the NYT for about a day and then disappeared. Kennedy, of course, was a big fan of gold, as was his father before him. Probably, Kennedy briefly considered the commodity basket idea, but discarded it as politically unrealistic.
F. A. Hayek is identified with the idea of "free banking" - not a bad idea - and the central concept was any number of commodity basket-based currencies, none subject to the greedy whims of nations and their corrupt leaders. Sometimes Hayek makes a lot of sense. (Of course, it still all relies on trust, unless you're going to carry your commodity basket around with you in a pretty big wallet, and then you would probably need to also pack your guns and ammo!)
Recently, there's been discussion of a more-or-less official commodity-backed reserve currency. See how it all comes down to who gets to manage the 'fiat'?
Maybe something like that is inevitable. Or, if not inevitable, maybe people will make it happen anyway. That's a big question: how much of economics is psychology?
I was surprised by these statistics thinking surely Mexico had a free public K12 going on. That's really pretty horrific and why I said it. Although in the U.S., these days I am so glad I'm not a kid in public schools. It was a sewer when I went through.
I agree that gold standard would likely usher in an era of global neo-feudalism.
Henry Simons (1899-1946) - who is the real deal for libertarian economic theory, including monetarism - adamantly opposed the gold standard or any such standard.
A democratic nation, to survive, requires a people, a legislature and governance by law - including a sane monetary policy.
No gimmicks are actually needed. What is needed is integrity and honesty. Does gold foster integrity and honesty? Will it? Could it?
It's another gimmick, promising everything, returning nothing but more graft and corruption.
Now I remember the actual significance - the 60 or so Democrats who tried to get some kind of public option (supported by Howard Dean, M.D.) into the healthcare bill. Weiner was rallying them at one point, then they capitulated ... leaving Dennis Kucinich to stand alone, a role to which he is too often consigned. Ultimately, President Obama flew from Washington to Cleveland with Kucinich riding along in US 1, and shortly thereafter Dennis bowed to the inevitable and announced he would vote for a compromise bill.
Kucinich had earlier introduced six (I think it was) amendments that were passed out of committee (about April 2009) by a substantial majority of Judiciary Committee (I think it was), including Republicans. Then the insurance company lobbyists reorganized and counter-attacked, co-opting the original (protectionist) Tea Party populist movement and merging it into the obstructionist (and anti-protectionist) anti-Obama movement (anti-Obama except with-Obama when it comes to endorsing 'free' trade). CONTENT OF ALL KUCINICH AMENDMENTS WERE PROBABLY VIEWED FAVORABLY BY THE PUBLIC BUT NOT ONE SURVIVED INTO THE LEGISLATION ENACTED EARLY IN 2010.
Bottom line: another victory for the Money Party (not Michael Collins' The Money Party blog!)
Myself, I follow MSM hardly at all, and I still don't know - don't care to know - the nature of whatever the alleged scandalous behavior of Weiner may have been. The point is that this Weinergate news story seems to be receiving far more and in-depth coverage than did the Kucinich amendments that were, I believe, systematically ignored by most of MSM.
I guess the moral of the story is that MSM news sources, and those who pay attention to them, are and will always be surrounded by self-imposed darkness. They are like the legend of Diogenes, who supposedly wandered around Athens with a lantern in broad day light looking for an honest man. (MSM television is the unnecessary energy-wasting lantern!)
There is an Edit link when I first post, and that Edit link remains BUT ONLY UNTIL SOMEONE POSTS A REPLY TO MY POST.
For example, I can still edit my reply titled "Yes, but how?", and I will be able to edit this reply titled "Edit link?" but only UNTIL SOMEONE POSTS A REPLY UNDER THIS.
I don't know about permissions, but the system as it works for me makes sense in that it's kinda unfair if I post a reply and then my reply makes no sense after the comment has been redacted.
I thought probably you could click a button and maybe open my post up to edit or, more likely, vanish it. Then I could repost my redaction wherever it would end up - which still would be a little confusing in that people would not have context for your remark (paraphrased) "Folks, I do not know where this 'gender test' is coming from." (Context was my quote from the Christian Science Monitor opinion page that suggests, not a statutory gender test, but a gender test that voters may apply as a result of this brouhaha of media misdirection and actual or alleged sexual indiscretions ... or worse.)
Michael Collins has made valid points about political campaign law, drawing important distinctions that are ignored by mainstream media and probably not understood by most EP followers. Also, EP does from time to time touch on campaign finance reform as essential to necessary reform of economic policies ... but I don't think that EP is going to descend to the level of gossip or 'liberal versus 'conservative' sound-and-fury-signifying-nothing or the other media crapola that we are all happy to avoid but cannot completely ignore.
BTW: Banning of trolls is appreciated! Also appreciated is that I have not been banned for some unfortunate approaches I have taken in my comments.
They are all mixed together. I can take the part time job creation numbers from the establishment survey and give a rough estimate. You're right, the report mixes anything even remotely called a job opening.
I know for a fact in tech, they put out phony job openings all of the time, they import foreign workers instead of even considering an American. Or, they are resume harvesting, also not actual intention to hire.
Consider registering for we go over these reports with a comb and especially all of the labor related ones.
Great report. I'm glad to see that someone besides myself is using the underemployment rate regarding JOLTS. "If one takes the official broader definition of unemployment, or U6, currently at 15.8%, the ratio becomes even worse, 8.2 unemployed people per each job opening."
Another issue is that the number of part-time jobs in the JOLTS report. I have not seen the full-time/part-time jobs breakdown. Of those 3 million jobs, a large percentage could be part-time positions. In fact, the unemployment rate for those seeking full-time work is 9.7%, while for those seeking part-time work the unemployment rate is much less at 6.3% http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t10.htm.
Keep up the great work. No one in the MSM is accurately presenting unemployment. The 9.1% spiel is simply the best case scenario.
There should be an edit comment link next to the reply link on the comment form. You don't see that?
If not, let me know which means something is wrong with the site permissions, for you should see that.
I find it disgusting generally that the only thing that gets creeps out of office is if they get caught with their pants down.
Damn, one would think being bought by Goldman Sachs would be way way worse, but nope....
I don't seem to be able to redact my comment at this point, and I don't want to withdraw the main thrust of it - which wasn't about gender politics or sexual behavior!
PLEASE ALLOW ME TO CHANGE THE TITLE TO "Economic as well as political consequences: Strauss-Kahn", DELETE INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH, AND, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR QUOTE.
(Or, delete my entire comment, and I'll post it in redacted form.)
Actually, although I have seen the name Weiner lately in the ubiquitous media background, it hasn't interested me enough to look into it. I don't watch TV news and I have no idea who Anthony Weiner is or the nature of allegations against him. THAT'S how little I care about that lumpen junk!
I quoted John Klotsche to introduce - NOT the Strauss-Kahn case but - ECONOMIC and POLICY issues arising from consideration of Strauss-Kahn, how the media may be manipulated to create profiteering opportunities in trading, and, issues related to destabilizing effects of such profiteering.
Primarily, I am discussing the consequences of the blend of prurient interest and celebrity cultism of the public, sensationalism and distractionism of mainstream media, and, opportunities that those create for profiteering manipulation of markets in paper of all kinds. These have consequences for consideration of policy issues and also for investment decisions of individuals.
No one has commented on the primary subject matter of my comment, so I guess I should not have used the quote that I did. I used that quote because it seemed to tie my thoughts into the related discussion of the John Edwards case. (Both about politico-economic consequences associated with phenomena cited.)
My intent was to draw discussion toward topics of economic policy.
Of course, rape is about psychopathology relating to power relationships and should not be confused with healthy sexual activity.
It is astounding the spin I see in the financial press over these economic report releases. This is why I write them up. First, the government has their own websites and it's their data, their release so how someone can spin these to the extent they do is beyond me....
shows just how much spin goes into something more complex, such as a bill in Congress...
Esp. explaining movement in the stock market when 70% of all trades are robo trades in the first place.
This is not a benign report. Anything about 400k is absolutely not benign.
MSNBC is reporting that today's increase in the stock market index is in part the result of “benign unemployment numbers”.
They actually used the word "Benign" - are they on another planet, or just a different planetary economic class?
Even NDD over at Bonddad is concerned about unemployment not boding well for the economy.
I am so much trying to avoid Weinergate and it's just saturating the news. I just do not care about some sexting, sexual predatory asshat.
Folks, I have no idea where this gender test is coming from. These behaviors have much more to do with power, which goes along with sociopathic behaviors of CEOs, politicians and such, than actual sex.
Women can get off on power just as much as a male can. You just haven't seen it because women are denied power.
Strauss-Kahn is charged with attempted rape. This is a violent crime and all about power. Think about it. He could have ordered up any kind of strange and have it delivered to his hotel door in 5 minutes in NYC. They specialize in strange of all kinds, 24/7, free delivery.
Nope, that was about power. Same with Weiner at this point, or some sort of self-destruct weirdness button or whatever..
but our site is an economics site, please, let's stick to the topics at hand..
Let's focus in on policies. I just don't give a rats ass about anyone photographing their woodie beyond criminal charges for flashing or whatever.
How about the Strauss-Kahn case? John Klotsche writes in opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor (June 5, 2011)
What is troublesome in the Strauss-Kahn case, and perhaps in many others, is this: suppose that a person would happen somehow to know just one day in advance that the incident would take place. That person with accounts, leverage (margin or connections) and access to exchanges could likely have parlayed a $100,000 play in Greek government bonds into something like perhaps $300,000 or more within 48 hours! This is an oversimplified account, and a much more detailed analysis by Forest Cookson is available at
DebateRX.com (May 2011): Deep doings at the IMF
which speaks in these terms:
Of course, this is 'conspiracy theory', but -- again quoting Mr. Cookson:
IMO, something like the Strauss-Kahn scenario could be done by people who are organized to do such things for surely not more than $100,000. Are there people in this world, in New York City, who do things like this, perhaps even specialize in things like this? Hmmm ... what do you think?
What about the ephemeral news item about some guy (connected into 'Wall Street') who allegedly bragged to a woman (with whom he was allegedly intimately involved outside of any marriage) that he knew the day before the Deepwater Horizon explosion that he was about to make a fortune playing BP short, and was certain enough of his insider information that he was already celebrating his big win at the tables of Casino Financial Capitalism?
For example, back in the Kennedy administration, knowing in advance about a government news release about anti-trust actions in communications cases, allegedly allowed some people to make a fortune overnight playing AT&T short.
I believe that ALL derivatives in paper, that is paper built on paper (as opposed to commodities) -- even such simple derivatives as ordinary futures -- are essentially forms of gambling prone to 'THE FIX'. To some extent, this is true even in the case of commodities, as shown in the notorious De Angelis vegetable oil case (1963), that destroyed the hoary reputation of, and forced reorganization of American Express. Is there gold in Fort Knox?
People worry about paper money - even though money is less paper and more digital these days - but they should IMO worry more about all the other forms of paper (digital) commodities. Trading in paper is inherently risky and always subject to 'THE FIX'. That's why there are great profits to be made! That's why it can't happen without considerable governmental regulation. That's why it's imperative to aggressively pursue corruption in high places (and low) and not get side-tracked into People-Magazine-type stuff about politicos (not that politicos should be above the law but we should observe the law, including the part about innocent until proven guilty and the part about not speculating on a pending case).
I don't know anything about the facts of the Strauss-Kahn case, although I have formed an impression that, as it stands now, it's she-said-he-did. So, it's a pending case and should not be discussed. I only discuss it here as an example of how confused matters can become in a corrupted world system of finance-capitalism and how problematic it therefore is to accept numbers (averages over time) as the basis for economic decisions.
Rampant huge speculation in currency markets may constitute just the tip of the iceberg. No wonder people like to have actual gold, silver and platinum buried in a safe buried under the basement!
Requirements for a healthy free economy: (1) effective aggressive regulatory activities by stable government trusted by the people; and, (2) transparency in and systematic controls over possible corruption undermining the activities and the government.
Really, what's essential is integrity and trust - not the same as the appearance of integrity or as blind trust in government.
Commerce is impossible without an environment of mutual trust.
Seriously. Report them and made a big deal out of this. We've seen multiple reports on this crap and it is, in my view, pure discrimination. Corporations lay people off like Schnidler's list and usually has nothing to do with that person being a great employee or not.
But these bastards are trying to use someone's need for a job as a reason to reject them for a job, which is pure B.S.
You might mention another thing, how about a PA state funded venture capital to put these people to work forming startups, new businesses, with funding. One would have to go through the same dog and pony show all startups go through to get funding, but make it a top priority to start organizing the unemployed to do this.
Nothing would be better than to form corporations to compete these S.O.B.s right out of business.
I agree with your points about the dangers of corporatism ... intermingling of corporate and state power ...
BUT, how do I go about boycotting Cisco routers if I am to use the internet?
I was at a job fair in Pittsburgh this week where a representative of the event specifically told us before entering the convention hall, that the unemployed or self-employed would NOT be considered for a job!!
I had heard of this happening before, but seeing it happen right in front of me was eye opening.
Boycott Cisco routers. Money is the only thing they understand. I just wish we could boycott our government too for aiding and abetting the Cisco investigation.
Cisco + Government power = scary
It was Mussolini who said fascism is the combining of corporate and government powers.
This case is a good example of fascism.
The US government prosecutes nobody on Wall St. for our economic collapse, yet when Cisco decides they want to have someone arrested, the US government jumps into action. Just who is running this country?
Weren't we told that the inevitable result of the globalization thing would be the economic well-being of everyone, in all countries, would improve?
We wuz scammed.
I was volunteering to teach a free ESL group, and I met a student who had come from Mexico to work at construction labor (probably paid under the table). A serious working man, his thing was to try to send as much money to his extended family back home to be able to pay for as many kids to go to school as possible.
He explained it this way: it wasn't that he really preferred to be in the U.S. or that he could not survive in Mexico. It was just that the tuition for even one kid in Mexico was greater than what a man could conceivably earn there. He himself could barely read Spanish, let alone English. All he had ever done was hard work.
I don't know if he was legal or not. Never asked.
We could probably try to give enough money to Mexico that at least their K-6 or K-8 would be free ... but would that money ever filter down to the ground where people live? Anyway, what that would cost the taxpayer would probably be less than the costs associated with illegal immigration.
We don't really need a metal standard at all, certainly not a gold standard. The truth is that we must have some medium of exchange, but the key to that is confidence pure and simple.
People tend to fear 'fiat' currency, but isn't all currency 'fiat'? Bottom line is it doesn't matter what kind of money the tax collectors demand, they have more guns and ammo than you do. Like in the Bible, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's" - referring perhaps to the image of Caesar Augustus on Roman coins.
It isn't the 'fiat' nature of some money more than others that really matters. It's really all about who is the boss of 'fiat' - an emperor, a central banker, or the people through their trust-worthy elected representatives
Look at how today we actually use digital signals recorded on servers in the ubiquitous 'cloud' as the primary medium of exchange. If confidence in electronic money is lost, the whole system will collapse.
But then some other system would soon take it's place, because there is always a need for some medium of exchange.
So, of course, the basis of any medium of exchange is psychological, along with governmental restraint
and governmental enforcement 
Seems likely that, at some point, some kind of gimmick will be necessary to restore or bolster confidence. Maybe that's inevitable - not a gold standard though. Why would you want to limit it to gold? Or even a bimetallic mix of gold and silver? There's no particular reason for that, except that some interested parties would become even more rich and powerful than they already are.
BUT a commodity basket standard of maybe 30 raw metals (or maybe even some alloys or amalgams) - now that's an idea. And, by all means, let's include aluminum, which has the great value that it requires a lot of electrical juice to create it - so that ties it to all the energy-related commodities.
A commodity basket approach, I recall, was seriously proposed to President Kennedy back around 1961, but it lasted as a headline in the NYT for about a day and then disappeared. Kennedy, of course, was a big fan of gold, as was his father before him. Probably, Kennedy briefly considered the commodity basket idea, but discarded it as politically unrealistic.
F. A. Hayek is identified with the idea of "free banking" - not a bad idea - and the central concept was any number of commodity basket-based currencies, none subject to the greedy whims of nations and their corrupt leaders. Sometimes Hayek makes a lot of sense. (Of course, it still all relies on trust, unless you're going to carry your commodity basket around with you in a pretty big wallet, and then you would probably need to also pack your guns and ammo!)
Recently, there's been discussion of a more-or-less official commodity-backed reserve currency. See how it all comes down to who gets to manage the 'fiat'?
Maybe something like that is inevitable. Or, if not inevitable, maybe people will make it happen anyway. That's a big question: how much of economics is psychology?
...and no-holds-barred analysis.
I was surprised by these statistics thinking surely Mexico had a free public K12 going on. That's really pretty horrific and why I said it. Although in the U.S., these days I am so glad I'm not a kid in public schools. It was a sewer when I went through.
I agree that gold standard would likely usher in an era of global neo-feudalism.
Henry Simons (1899-1946) - who is the real deal for libertarian economic theory, including monetarism - adamantly opposed the gold standard or any such standard.
A democratic nation, to survive, requires a people, a legislature and governance by law - including a sane monetary policy.
No gimmicks are actually needed. What is needed is integrity and honesty. Does gold foster integrity and honesty? Will it? Could it?
It's another gimmick, promising everything, returning nothing but more graft and corruption.
Not the basis for a sane economic policy.
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