{"id":17870,"date":"2016-02-16T14:34:17","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T19:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17870"},"modified":"2016-02-16T14:34:17","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T19:34:17","slug":"profits-for-the-economic-club-how-us-military-spending-benefits-the-few","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=17870","title":{"rendered":"Profits for the Economic Club: How US Military Spending Benefits the Few"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"headline\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2016\/02\/16\/profits-for-the-economic-club-how-us-military-spending-benefits-the-few\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Profits for the Economic Club: How US Military Spending Benefits the Few<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<p>In his January 2016 State of the Union Address, President Obama smugly\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/the-fix\/wp\/2016\/01\/12\/what-obama-said-in-his-state-of-the-union-address-and-what-it-meant\/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_transcript-945pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory\">declared<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cWe spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined,\u201d which was a startling and repulsive boast.\u00a0 What is less surprising is the Pentagon\u2019s decision to refocus military spending, thus boosting profits for military industry companies.<\/p>\n<p>Then on February 2 Obama\u2019s Defence Secretary Ashton Carter gave a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-usa-defense-budget-idUSKCN0VB1HX\">speech<\/a>\u00a0on defense affairs at the Economic Club in Washington, which is proud of the fact that it\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.economicclub.org\/\">provides<\/a>\u00a0\u201ca forum for prominent business and government leaders who have influenced economic and public policy both here and abroad. Members represent over 600 businesses and organizations [in Washington, DC] that are at the forefront of the private sector economy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Having no sense of humor, Mr Carter would fail to see the wonderful irony in choosing that location to define his priorities in national military affairs, \u00a0but its significance didn\u2019t escape the financial market\u2019s wheeler dealers, and values of defense industry corporations received a hike all round.<\/p>\n<p>In his speech Carter\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.japantimes.co.jp\/news\/2016\/02\/03\/world\/carter-says-u-s-reacting-chinas-isles-moves-including-defense-budget\/#.Vre22-ZimWd\">said<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cthe Pentagon plans to spend about $2 billion over the next five years to buy more Raytheon Company\u00a0<em>Tomahawk<\/em>\u00a0missiles and upgrade their capabilities, bringing the inventory of the missiles to above 4,000.\u201d\u00a0 At midday on February 2, Raytheon shares stood at 123.47.\u00a0 By 4 p.m. next day they had\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.co.uk\/webhp?tab=mw&amp;gws_rd=ssl#q=raytheon+share+price\">increased<\/a>\u00a0to 128.07.<\/p>\n<p>After his comforting chat to the Club of \u201cprominent leaders\u201d of military-focused commercial enterprises, Reuters\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-usa-defense-budget-idUSKCN0VB1HX\">reported<\/a>\u00a0that Mr Carter \u201cflew to the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California to get updates on new high-end weapons being developed and tested there, including precision Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles built by Lockheed Martin Corp. He said the [defense] department would spend nearly $1 billion over the next five years to buy the new missiles.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Profits for the Economic Club: How US Military Spending Benefits the Few In his January 2016 State of the Union Address, President Obama smugly\u00a0declared\u00a0that \u201cWe spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined,\u201d which was a startling and repulsive boast.\u00a0 What is less surprising is the Pentagon\u2019s decision to refocus military spending, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[5910,12435,5493,12436,525,528,584,620,1980,865],"class_list":["post-17870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-geopolitics","tag-ashton-carter","tag-brian-cloughley","tag-counterpunch","tag-economic-club","tag-military","tag-military-industrial-complex","tag-obama","tag-pentagon","tag-profit","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17871,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17870\/revisions\/17871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}