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Europe Gets Cold Feet on “TTIP,” Americans Should Too, But Obama Needs it for his Legacy
Europe Gets Cold Feet on “TTIP,” Americans Should Too, But Obama Needs it for his Legacy
As almost always, the U.S. government and European Commission are on the same page, reading from the same script. This year they have one overriding goal in common: to create the world’s biggest “free” trade area by passing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) into national and supranational law on both sides of the Atlantic.
To this end the White House is furiously lobbying Congress to grant it fast track authority for the passage of not only TTIP, but also TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership). It is to be Obama’s swansong legacy. And with the pro-“free” trade Republicans firmly back in control on the Hill, he’s almost certain to get what it wants.
As such, TPP and TTIP negotiations will likely remain closed off from the public until the deals are finalized, by which time it will already be too late: just as happened with the passage of NAFTA in 1994, a largely compliant Congress will sign along the dotted lines without questioning what they’re actually signing into existence.
While some members of Congress are quite happy to waive their rights to actively participate in the lawmaking process, others are wary of granting sole authority to documents that have yet to be seen. Here’s what independent senator Bernie Sanders had to say on the issue in a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
‘Failure of Conscience’: Groups Urge Congress to Fund Social Well-Being, Not Fossil Fuel Industry
‘Failure of Conscience’: Groups Urge Congress to Fund Social Well-Being, Not Fossil Fuel Industry
Diverse coalition launches calculator to measure cost of fossil fuel subsidies
A coalition of environmental and social justice groups has come together to declare collective disgust with the spending of billions of taxpayer dollars on unnecessary subsidies for the oil and gas industries when that same money could be used to improve the lives of millions if spent on social services, renewable energy investments, healthcare, and education.
The coalition includes Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, People for the American Way, and Oxfam America, among others. As part of its effort, the coalition has launched a Fossil Fuel Subsidies Tradeoff Calculator, a tool which breaks down both the government’s giveaways to the oil industry into smaller brackets, such as tax credits for manufacturers and fossil energy research programs, and the social programs that could benefit from those subsidies instead, like school lunches and veteran healthcare.
“Leaving the social safety net in tatters and keeping Big Oil on the dole is not just a failure to prioritize. It is a failure of conscience,” said Lukas Ross, climate and energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, one of the organizations in the coalition. “In the face of record inequality, crumbling infrastructure, and looming climate disruption, it is time for Congress to think hard about the government spending we need and the corporate welfare we don’t.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Here’s Why Keystone XL Is the Wrong Choice for Our Nation
Here’s Why Keystone XL Is the Wrong Choice for Our Nation
The new Republican majority in Congress wants to force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline for dirty tar sands oil. President Obama announced he will veto bills that bypass the official review of Keystone XL.
There are plenty of reasons to block these bills and this pipeline.
Keystone XL would carry the dirtiest oil on the planet from Canada through the American heartland. The vast majority of it would be shipped overseas, while people here at home cope with the threat of contaminated water and difficult-to-clean-up oil spills.
Polluters are fighting hard to get Keystone approved. The oil and gas industry pumped $53.1 million into last year’s congressional campaigns–87 percent of which went to Republican candidates. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell raked in$608,000 from the industry for his 2014 campaign, and now he is putting Keystone XL at the heart of his big polluter agenda.
But this isn’t just a battle over industry influence. This is a choice about the kind of nation we want to live in.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
SAYONARA GLOBAL ECONOMY
SAYONARA GLOBAL ECONOMY
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” –Ludwig von Mises
The surreal nature of this world as we enter 2015 feels like being trapped in a Fellini movie. The .1% party like it’s 1999, central bankers not only don’t take away the punch bowl – they spike it with 200% grain alcohol, the purveyors of propaganda in the mainstream media encourage the party to reach Caligula orgy levels, the captured political class and their government apparatchiks propagate manipulated and massaged economic data to convince the masses their standard of living isn’t really deteriorating, and the entire façade is supposedly validated by all-time highs in the stock market. It’s nothing but mass delusion perpetuated by the issuance of prodigious amounts of debt by central bankers around the globe. And nowhere has the obliteration of a currency through money printing been more flagrant than in the land of the setting sun – Japan. The leaders of this former economic juggernaut have chosen to commit hari-kari on behalf of the Japanese people, while enriching the elite, insiders, bankers, and their global banking co-conspirators.
Japan is just the point of the global debt spear in a world gone mad. Total world debt, excluding financial firms, now exceeds $100 trillion. The worldwide banking syndicate has an additional $130 trillion of debt on their insolvent books. As if this wasn’t enough, there are over $700 trillion of derivatives of mass destruction layered on top in this pyramid of debt. Just five Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks control 95% of the $302 trillion U.S. derivatives market. The reason Jamie Dimon and the rest of the leaders of the Wall Street criminal syndicate commanded their politician puppets in Congress to reverse the Dodd Frank rule on separating derivatives trading from normal bank lending is because these high stakes gamblers want to shift their future losses onto the backs of middle class taxpayers – again. The bankers, with the full support of their captured Washington politicians, will abscond with the deposits of the people to pay for their system destroying risk taking, just as they did in 2008 by holding taxpayers hostage for a $700 billion bailout.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Obama To Sign Off On Lethal US Aid To Ukraine By End Of Week, Russian Response To Follow | Zero Hedge
As we reported over the weekend, in the tumult surrounding Citigroup’s annexation of Congress with the passage of the theatrically dramatic $303 trillion derivative quid-pro-$1.1 trillion spending quo,what most missed is that Congress also unanimously passed the The Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014, which not only expands Russian sanctions (read the details here) but far more impotantly, provides “lethal assistance to Ukraine’s military.” And as we explained, passage of this law is just the pretext some Russian legislators needed to push for a full-blown, preemptive military incursion in east-Ukraine.
“The decision of the US Senate is extremely dangerous. If it is supported by the House of Representatives and signed by their president, Russia must reply with adequate measures,” Mikhail Yemelyanov of the Fair Russia party told reporters on Friday.
“It is quite possible that we should return to the decision by our Upper House and give the Russian president an opportunity to use military force on Ukrainian territory preemptively. We should not wait until Ukraine is armed and becomes really dangerous,” the lawmaker stated.
Yemelyanov also noted that in his opinion the US Senate’s decision to arm Ukraine had revealed that Washington wasn’t interested in the de-escalation of the Ukrainian conflict. He then said that US actions gave him the impression they was seeking to turn Ukraine into some sort of an “international militant targeting the Russian Federation.”
“In a few years Ukraine will turn into a poor and hungry country with an anti-Russian government that will teach its population to hate Russia. They will be armed to the teeth and Ukraine and US reluctance to recognize the Russian Federation within its current borders would always provoke conflicts,” the MP said.
Presenting The $303 Trillion In Derivatives That US Taxpayers Are Now On The Hook For | Zero Hedge
Presenting The $303 Trillion In Derivatives That US Taxpayers Are Now On The Hook For | Zero Hedge.
Courtesy of the Cronybus(sic) last minute passage, government was provided a quid-pro-quo $1.1 trillion spending allowance with Wall Street’s blessing in exchange for assuring banks that taxpayers would be on the hook for yet another bailout, as a result of the swaps push-out provision, after incorporating explicit Citigroup language that allows financial institutions to trade certain financial derivatives from subsidiaries that are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, explicitly putting taxpayers on the hook for losses caused by these contracts. Recall:
Five years after the Wall Street coup of 2008, it appears the U.S. House of Representatives is as bought and paid for as ever. We heard about the Citigroup crafted legislation currently being pushed through Congress back in May when Mother Jones reported on it. Fortunately, they included the following image in their article:
Unsurprisingly, the main backer of the bill is notorious Wall Street lackey Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a former Goldman Sachs employee who has discovered lobbyist payoffs can be just as lucrative as a career in financial services.
We say explicitly, of course, because taxpayers have always been on the hook implicitlyfor the next Wall Street meltdown.
Why?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Congress Just Passed Legislation Ramping Up Mass Surveillance to Super-Steroid Levels Washington’s Blog
Fascist Power Grab Wipes out 4th Amendment
Remember how Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to mass surveillance, and how the government promised to rein in spying on Americans?
Instead, Congress snuck a provision into the Intelligence Authorization Act which will ramp up spying on us normal, average, innocent Americans.
Congressman Justin Amash explains:
When I learned that the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2015 was being rushed to the floor for a vote—with little debate and only a voice vote expected (i.e., simply declared “passed” with almost nobody in the room)—I asked my legislative staff to quickly review the bill for unusual language. What they discovered is one of the most egregious sections of law I’ve encountered during my time as a representative:
Itgrants the executive branch virtually unlimited access to the communications of every American.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Congressional Leaders Reach Deal on Spending – NYTimes.com
Congressional Leaders Reach Deal on Spending – NYTimes.com.
Congressional leaders reached a deal Tuesday on a more than $1 trillion spending package that would fund most of the federal government through the current fiscal year.
But because negotiations on the package dragged over policy details, House lawmakers also prepared to move on a short-term spending measure that would avert a government shutdown if Congress cannot pass the larger bill by Thursday, when the current funding expires.
Even with nettlesome last-minute issues, leaders in both parties expressed confidence that they would be able to keep the government running. Lawmakers battled behind the scenes over dozens of additional policy provisions ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency’s jurisdiction over some bodies of water to the District of Columbia’s marijuana laws to matters of campaign finance.
The big spending package, which congressional leaders had hoped to have ready on Monday, did not come until Tuesday evening. The final legislation would largely keep domestic funding at current levels, while providing more money to fight various crises abroad.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Treasury Warns Congress (and Investors): This Financial Creature Could Sink the System | Wolf Street
Treasury Warns Congress (and Investors): This Financial Creature Could Sink the System | Wolf Street.
Office of Financial Research slams Leveraged Loans
In its 2014 Annual Report to Congress, the US Treasury’s Office of Financial Research, which serves the Financial Stability Oversight Council, analyzed for our Representatives the “potential threats” to the US financial house of cards. Among the biggest concerns was a financial creature that has boomed in recent years. The Fed, FDIC, and OCC have warned banks about it since March 2013. But they’re just too juicy: “leveraged loans.”
Leveraged loans are issued by junk-rated corporations already burdened by a large load of debt. Banks can retain these loans on their balance sheets or sell them. They can repackage them into synthetic securities called Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs) before they sell them. They have “Financial Crisis” stamped all over them.
So the 160-page report laments:
The leveraged lending market provides a test case of the current approach to cyclical excesses. The response to these issues has been led by bank regulators, who regulate the largest institutions that originate leveraged loans, often for sale to asset managers through various instruments. Despite stronger supervisory guidance and other actions, excesses in this market show little evidence of easing.
How did we get here?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Uncertainty in Washington Poses Long List of Economic Perils – NYTimes.com
Uncertainty in Washington Poses Long List of Economic Perils – NYTimes.com.
WASHINGTON — As House Republicans mull another round of fiscal brinkmanship with President Obama, a dark cloud is threatening to return to otherwise clearing economic skies: fiscal and political uncertainty.
Republican leaders moved Tuesday to finesse their way around another government shutdown next week, but the fiscal gantlet extends well beyond Dec. 11, when the current stopgap spending law that funds much of the federal government expires.
Absent congressional action, a host of business and personal tax breaks expires on Jan. 1. The government’s borrowing limit is reinstated on March 16, although the government might not actually hit the ceiling until August.
On March 28, unless lawmakers act, physician reimbursements fromMedicare drop off a cliff. On May 31, the highway trust fund runs out of money. In June, the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance overseas purchases of American exports, might shut in the face of conservative opposition to its mission. Then on Sept. 30, the entire Children’s Health Insurance Program faces its expiration. A few days later, across-the-board spending cuts loom once again.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Tomgram: Michael Klare, The New Congress and Planetary Disaster | TomDispatch
Tomgram: Michael Klare, The New Congress and Planetary Disaster | TomDispatch.
Looking for a little hope on climate change? Believe it or not, it’s here and it’s real. And I’m not referring to the fact that, at least temporarily, oil prices have gone through the floor, making environmentally destructive “tough oil” projects like western oil-shale fracking and Canadiantar sands extraction look ever less profitable. Nor do I mean the climate change deal that was just reached at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and is being called “historic.” It’s true that President Obama made a positive move at that summit, another symbolic gesture in its wake, and is promising more of the same in the future. These steps to check the worst future depredations of climate change have been hailed as perhaps more transformational than they are. Nonetheless, in the face of a new Republican Congress in which anti-climate-change hawks may outnumber war hawks (no small feat), this is well worth noting.
I’m talking, of course, about the potentially carbon-reducing long-term deal between the planet’s two major greenhouse gas polluters, between, that is, Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Both of them have been running “all of the above,” drill-baby-drill — or in China’s case dig-baby-dig and import-baby-import — energy programs to devastating effect. China, for instance, is slated to bring online the equivalent of a new coal-powered plant every 10 days for the next decade, even as it’s taken a leading position in developing solar power technology.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Target Liberty: New Bill Circulating in the Senate Moves US Closer to Direct Confrontation with Russia
Michael S. Rozeff explains:
This proposed act is here… mong other provisions that sanction Russia, this Act commits America to reestablish the territorial integrity of Ukraine by providing advanced weapons to Ukraine’s government. This sets America against Russia, which supports Crimea as a Russian federal district. Russia also respects the eastern Ukraine Donbass republics whereas the U.S. does not…
The proposed legislation deepens the American commitment to Ukraine. It places America a significant step closer to direct confrontation with Russia. It places advanced weapons in the hands of a government that has attacked its own people and whose current leader is more than willing to conduct a “total war”. He sees the earlier fighting in Donbass as a prelude and warmup. He tells us that he has in mind a much deeper and more destructive application of force. The bill before Congress proposes to support him.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Neo-Feudalism Has Officially Arrived – Congressman Suggests Building a Moat Around White House | Liberty Blitzkrieg
What has been occurring over the past several years is not a recovery, rather, it’s a painful transition of the U.S. into a neo-feudal society. Earlier this week in the post, Welcome to the Recovery – U.S. Child Homelessness Hits Record as Poverty in Mass. is Highest Since 1960, I wrote:
While the general population is aware something is seriously wrong, people remain extremely confused about the root of the problem. This is because what’s happening all around us isn’t socialism and it isn’t free market capitalism. It is actually a return to something much more ancient and much more oppressive. It is a return to serfdom, neo-fedualism and oligarchy.
Well now we have definitive proof. It can’t get any more in your face than this.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
