Is the Era of Oil Nearing Its End?

Sunday, 12 August 2012 09:16  
By Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers | Report 


Washington - After nearly a decade of warnings that the world’s oil supply was running out, Americans now are hearing about technology breakthroughs that can unlock vast U.S. deposits of natural gas, help reverse a 40-year slide in domestic oil production and perhaps transform America into the next Middle East.


But despite the euphoria, there’s a major problem: The looming American oil glut may simply not be enough to sate the United States and the rest of motorized humanity.

Seven Things The Media Need To Know About Paul Ryan

The media have portrayed Rep. Paul Ryan as a courageous reformer who is offering serious solutions to fix the country's finances. In reality, Ryan is an ideologue who offers fraudulent proposals that would hurt low and middle income Americans and put the social safety net in jeopardy. Media Matters looks at what the media should know about Paul Ryan and his policies.

Media Have Portrayed Ryan As A Serious and Responsible Reformer

1. Ryan Wants Low And Middle Income Americans To "Bear The Entire Burden" Of His Fiscal Reforms

2. Ryan Plan Would Drastically Hurt Medicare And Medicaid Recipients

3. Ryan Has A Fraudulent Plan To Reduce The Deficit

4. Fiscal Hawk? Ryan Supported Policies That Caused Massive Deficits

5. Ryan Has Repeatedly Proposed Partially Privatizing Social Security

6. Ryan Is A Historically Ideological VP Nominee Pick

7. Paul Ryan: George W. Bush Endorsed

Media Have Portrayed Ryan As A Serious and Responsible Reformer

Members Of The Media Have Called Ryan "Courageous," "Genius" And "The Adult In the Room." During his time as House Budget Committee chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has been portrayed by members of the media as a serious reformer who is working to diligently reform the country's financial situation. For examples of the media's praise of Ryan, go here, here, here, here and here.

Credit to Small Enterprise: The Silent Crisis

Saturday, 11 August 2012 12:09  
By Jayati Ghosh, TripleCrisis | News Analysis 


A new BIS working paper by Cecchetti and Kharroubi makes a point that is becoming more widely known, especially after the continuing financial crises experienced globally since 2008. This is that the level of financial development is good only up to a point, after which it becomes a drag on growth. In fact, the authors argue that when the focus is on advanced economies, a fast-growing financial sector is actually detrimental to aggregate productivity growth. This is explained by the authors on the grounds that, because the financial sector competes with the rest of the economy for scarce resources, financial booms are not, in general, growth-enhancing.


The recent experience of the United States and now particularly Europe, certainly confirms this – and even established doyens of the world of private finance are now more willing to concede this. But one critical aspect of the failure of financial intermediation is still inadequately recognised and discussed: the inability of the currently constituted private financial system to deliver funds to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which still account for the bulk of employment not just in developing countries but also in advanced economies.

Study shows official measures of American poverty off-base

For more than 45 years, the poor in this country have been identified by the U.S. Census Bureau's Official Poverty Measure — a tool that determines America's poverty rate based on pretax money income, which does not reflect all the resources at a family's disposal.


That method of calculating who is poor and who is not has been under fire by researchers for years because it doesn't calculate the benefits of anti-poverty programs — such as food stamps and housing subsidies — into its formula. In response to the criticism, the Census Bureau released in fall 2011 the Supplemental Poverty Measure to more accurately assess poverty in America. A culmination of more than three decades of research on poverty measurement, the supplemental measure is used as a complement, not a replacement, for the Official Poverty Measure.

Why the Right Has New Legal Ammunition in Its Quest to End Medicare, Social Security and Our Entire Social Safety Net


By Jessica Mason Pieklo


If you think the right wing would have been content with killing the healthcare reform law that is the centerpiece of President Obama's agenda, think again. With a new strategy in hand, they're coming for it all: Medicaid, Social Security and welfare programs -- in addition to the Affordable Care Act.

Conservatives may have been dealt a momentary set-back when the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act in June, but there's every reason to think they plan to use that decision to launch even more legal attacks [3] not just on the healthcare reform law, but on the entire social safety net -- and plenty of reason to worry they'll succeed.

Launching a legal crusade takes time, and theories challenging established law usually get worked out first in the laboratories of law schools and think-tanks. In the case of the challenges to constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, and the coming challenges to other social programs, conservatives first decided on a political strategy and then reverse-engineered a legal strategy to get them to their political goals.

Retirement expert: Medicare woes mostly rooted in myth

8/8/2012 | Phil Ciciora, Business & Law Editor | 217-333-2177; pciciora@illinois.edu

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Various misconceptions surrounding the continued viability of Medicare can be debunked or discredited, making it more important than ever for voters and policymakers to fully understand the program’s existing contours and limitations, according to a paper published by a University of Illinois expert on retirement benefits.

Law professor Richard L. Kaplan says Medicare has become one of the most controversial federal programs for numerous reasons, but misinformation has played a key role in fostering criticism of it.

Five Ways We Can Break the Big Banks' Death Grip on the Economy

Thursday, 09 August 2012 14:04
By Stephen Lerner, AlterNet | Op-Ed

Wall Street’s incredible greed and arrogance may have finally handed us the tools and leverage we need. 

Let’s be honest. Many people are feeling a little hopeless and cynical about whether anything can change how Wall Street banks run roughshod over the economy and our democracy. We’ve marched, rallied, sat-in and thousands have been arrested--and yet bankers have remained unrepentant, unpunished, unindicted and seemingly untouchable. But the wheels of history are turning and Wall Street’s incredible greed and arrogance may have finally handed us the tools and leverage we need to challenge and break the death grip Wall Street has on struggling people and communities around the country.

Reuters Runs Interference for Elite Corruption, Scrubs Article That Shows How Banks Get Out of Jail Free

Marcy Wheeler put up a useful post yesterday morning, based on a Reuters article describing the efforts of Standard Chartered to combat the damage done by its making illegal transfers on behalf of Iranian banks.


Marcy picked up on how the article revealed the techniques used by big banks to escape suffering meaningful consequences of their misdeeds:

DHS Crushed This Analyst for Warning About Far-Right Terror

By Spencer Ackerman, August 7, 2012 | 5:04 pm


Daryl Johnson had a sinking feeling when he started seeing TV reports on Sunday about a shooting in a Wisconsin temple. “I told my wife, ‘This is likely a hate crime perpetrated by a white supremacist who may have had military experience,’” Johnson recalls.


It was anything but a lucky guess on Johnson’s part. He spent 15 years studying domestic terrorist groups — particularly white supremacists and neo-Nazis — as a government counterterrorism analyst, the last six of them at the Department of Homeland Security. There, he even homebrewed his own database on far-right extremist groups on an Oracle platform, allowing his analysts to compile and sift reporting in the media and other law-enforcement agencies on radical and potentially violent groups.

David Cay Johnston: The troubled trade deal with South Korea

SEOUL — In March, the United States and South Korea implemented a Free Trade Agreement that President Barack Obama touts as more significant than the last nine such agreements combined. He also said it was central to his goal of doubling American exports within five years.

I think the president suffers from irrational trade exuberance, a view reinforced by my reporting in this city of 10 million people.

This deal is likely to turn out badly for American taxpayers and workers, especially autoworkers.

How The House GOP Budget Would Decimate America’s Cities And States

By Travis Waldron on Aug 9, 2012 at 10:50 am

ThinkProgress has chronicled the ways in which the House Republican budget, authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), targets programs that benefit the poor and middle class to find most of its spending cuts, even as it gives the rich and corporations $3 trillion in tax breaks. The budget also would hit America’s middle class in another way: by decimating state and local budgets, as a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities details.

The budget’s cuts to federal discretionary spending would cause reductions in the amount the federal government contributes to state and local governments, causing deep cuts to state programs that deal with transportation, education, housing, public safety, and the environment, according to CBPP.

Defense Companies Use Congress to Save Their Profits, No Matter What (Part One)

Thursday, 02 August 2012 09:54  
By Dina Rasor, Truthout | Solutions 


In this column two weeks ago, I discussed how the Pentagon and its contractors used several ruses over the years to thwart any discussion about cutting their budget. These ploys are especially frustrating now because the generals and bureaucracy in the Pentagon act like any cuts, especially the cuts planned in the budget sequestration that may or may not take place by the end of the year, are the end of the world as we know it. All this frenzy over any Pentagon budget cuts needs to be tempered by the facts - the Pentagon budget is higher than during the height of the cold war and even the sequestration cuts would take us back to 2006 levels when George Bush was president.