How Wall St. Bailed Out the Nazis

June 6, 2013

 

Exclusive: The amoral calculations of Wall Street insiders guided Washington’s post-World War II decision to give many Nazi war criminals a pass if they’d help in the Cold War against the world’s socialist movements. CIA Director Allen Dulles was just one of the ex-investment-bank lawyers pushing the trade-off, writes Jerry Meldon.


By Jerry Meldon

Near the end of World War II, the secret collaboration between U.S. spymaster Allen Dulles and Nazi SS officers enabled many German war criminals to escape prosecution and positioned them to fan the flames of post-war tensions between the former allies, the United States and the Soviet Union.

In that way, the Old Nazis — aided by Dulles and other ex-Wall Street lawyers – prevented a thorough denazification of Germany and put the Third Reich’s stamp on decades of atrocities during the long Cold War, spreading their brutal death-squad techniques to faraway places, especially Latin America.

Second Thoughts on October Surprise

June 8, 2013

Special Report: New evidence has shaken the confidence of former Rep. Lee Hamilton in his two-decade-old judgment clearing Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign of going behind President Carter’s back to frustrate his efforts to free 52 U.S. hostages in Iran, the so-called October Surprise case, Robert Parry reports.


By Robert Parry

Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who oversaw two congressional investigations into Ronald Reagan’s secret dealings with Iran, says a key piece of evidence was withheld that could have altered his conclusion clearing Reagan’s 1980 campaign of allegations that it sabotaged President Jimmy Carter’s hostage negotiations with Iran.

In a phone interview on Thursday, the Indiana Democrat responded to a document that I had e-mailed him revealing that in 1991 a deputy White House counsel working for then-President George H.W. Bush was notified by the State Department that Reagan’s campaign director William Casey had taken a trip to Madrid in relation to the so-called October Surprise issue.

How powerful elites divide the rest of us

The split between political junkies and everyone else stifles meaningful activism. Here's how to break out of it 

By David Sirota

Among the complaints you often hear from political organizers is the one about silos. As the lament goes, too many organizations are trapped in specific single-issue silos and are therefore unable to work in any coordinated fashion as part of a larger movement. It’s a fair criticism, but it misses an even bigger obstacle to achieving lasting change: the vast divide between political junkies and Everyone Else.

On the political junkie side of this chasm are those of us who follow politics and social issues closely. We typically get our information through niche media, email newsletters, membership organizations and the attendant social media feeds. The media that serves this audience seems perfectly happy to commodify dissent by providing niche content that speaks only to a narrow audience — and nobody else. To many looking in from the outside, that creates the image of a holier-than-thou insularity that is, to say the least, off putting. Ultimately, from within this bubble, “activism” becomes narrowly defined as a grinding project of political work trying to somehow convince A) politicians to do things their donors don’t want them to do or B) the larger politically disengaged world to do stuff that can seem too difficult (door knocking, phone banking, etc.) or wholly futile (signing petitions, sending a letter to a lawmaker, etc.).

10 Things Americans Underestimate About Our Massive Surveillance State

June 7, 2013  |  Americans may be upset about the latest revelations in the government’s ability to spy on citizens via their online lives, but no one should be surprised. We've underestimated and overlooked many key aspects of the government’s ability to track our lives for years.

 

The bottom line, which resonates most strongly among civil liberties advocates on the left and conservative libertarians on the right, is not just the loss of privacy but also the growing power of the state to target and oppress people who it judges to be critics and enemies. That list doesn’t just include foreign terrorists of the al-Qaeda mold, or even the Chinese government that has stolen [3] the most advanced U.S. weapon plans; it also includes domestic whistleblowers, protesters and journalists—all of whom have been targeted [4] by the Obama administration Justice Department.

 

Let’s go through 10 points about these latest revelations of domestic spying to better understand what Americans have underestimated and overlooked about electronic eavesdropping.

 

Pollution in Northern Hemisphere helped cause 1980s African drought

By Hannah Hickey

Decades of drought in central Africa reached their worst point in the 1980s, causing Lake Chad, a shallow lake used to water crops in neighboring countries, to almost dry out completely.

The shrinking lake and prolonged drought were initially blamed on overgrazing and bad agricultural practices. More recently, Lake Chad became an example of global warming.

Trash-Talking Economists

By Richard Eskow | June 6, 2013


Thomas Carlyle called economics “the dismal science.” Journalist A. J. Liebling called boxing “the sweet science.” To read the Internet lately you’d think they got the two professions mixed up.

Economics is becoming a battle royale, a free-for-all. It’s a melee where everybody with a fist, glove or folding chair can jump out of the audience and into the ring. It doesn’t matter how much the ref blows his whistle. There will be blood. If economists had entourages, bullets would be flying.

Paul Krugman: The Spite Club

House Republicans have voted 37 times to repeal ObamaRomneyCare — the Affordable Care Act,
which creates a national health insurance system similar to the one Massachusetts has had since
2006. Nonetheless, almost all of the act will go fully into effect at the beginning of next year.

There is, however, one form of obstruction still available to the G.O.P. Last year’s Supreme Court
decision upholding the law’s constitutionality also gave states the right to opt out of one piece of
the plan, a federally financed expansion of Medicaid. Sure enough, a number of Republicandominated
states seem set to reject Medicaid expansion, at least at first.

Your student loan isn’t really a loan

You can't refinance, or get rid of the debt through bankruptcy. Here's how it's even more of a sham than you know 

By David Dayen

It’s becoming an annual ritual. Every June, Congress debates what to do about the interest rate on federally subsidized student loans, to avert what this year will be the imminent doubling from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent. But interest rates alone don’t tell the whole story.

At a time when overall student debt approaches $1 trillion, the facts reveal that student loans aren’t loans, not in the traditional sense. They exhibit none of the qualities of modern consumer financial instruments, and are often sold under false pretenses, with the promise of a lifelong benefit that never materializes. We need to change how these loans work and have a broader conversation about what we should be doing — including bankruptcy and refinancing — to help future generations obtain a quality, affordable education, which is critical to our economic future.

Noam Chomsky: Ronald Reagan's Secret, Genocidal Wars

June 6, 2013  |  On Mother’s Day, May 12, The Boston Globe featured a photo of a young woman with her toddler son sleeping in her arms.

 

The woman, of Mayan Indian heritage, had crossed the U.S. border seven times while pregnant, only to be caught and shipped back across the border on six of those attempts. She braved many miles, enduring blisteringly hot days and freezing nights, with no water or shelter, amid roaming gunmen. The last time she crossed, seven months pregnant, she was rescued by immigration solidarity activists who helped her to find her way to Boston.

Most of the border crossers are from Central America. Many say they would rather be home, if the possibility of decent survival hadn’t been destroyed. Mayans such as this young mother are still fleeing from the wreckage of the genocidal assault on the indigenous population of the Guatemalan highlands 30 years ago.

Paul Krugman: Ruinous Policies Plunge Portugal into Despair

The Financial Times recently published a long, deeply depressing portrait of conditions in Portugal, focusing on the plight of family-owned businesses — once the core of the nation's economy and society, but now going under in droves.

This is what it's really about.

And anyone playing any role in our current economic debate, whether as an actual policy maker or as an analyst giving advice from the sidelines, should be focused, above all, on how and why we're allowing this nightmare to happen all over again, three generations after the Great Depression.

The Obama climate move that nobody noticed

By David Roberts

The Obama administration just made a fairly significant move on climate change, and it flew right under the radar.

To explain, let me back up a bit.

How much damage does a ton of carbon emissions do? That dollar figure is known as the “social cost of carbon” and it is, as economist Frank Ackerman put it a few yeas ago, “the most important number you’ve never heard of.”

Dean Baker: Student Loans on the Cheap

Last month Senator Elizabeth Warren put forward her first bill as a senator, a proposal to allow students to borrow for college at a 0.75 percent interest rate, the same rate that the Federal Reserve Board charges banks for borrowing reserves. In putting forward the bill Warren noted the rapid run up in student debt at a time when recent graduates face an especially bleak job market.

As much as I think it would be good to help struggling students, I initially did not like the proposal. As a general rule it is best for the government to be transparent in its subsidies, which means appropriating

Wisconsin Lawmakers Vote To Expel Investigative Journalism Org From University Campus

Tom Kludt 8:06 AM EDT, Thursday June 6, 2013 


Legislators in Wisconsin voted Wednesday to include a provision in the state's budget that would expel an independent and non-partisan investigative journalism group from the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

On a 12-4 vote, with Republicans in the majority, the Joint Finance Committee approved a provision barring the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism from occupying any facilities overseen by the University of Wisconsin's board of regents system and prohibiting university employees from working with the center.

American Fascism: Ralph Nader Decries How Big Business Has Taken Control of the US Government

Wednesday, 05 June 2013 11:29

By Amy Goodman and Aaron Mate, Democracy Now | Video Report

Describing the United States as an "advanced Third World country," longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader calls for a new mass movement to challenge the power corporations have in Washington. "It is not too extreme to call our system of government now 'American fascism.' It's the control of government by big business, which Franklin Delano Roosevelt defined in 1938 as fascism," Nader says. "We have the lowest minimum wage in the Western world. We have the greatest amount of consumer debt. We have the highest child poverty, the highest adult poverty, huge underemployment, a crumbling public works — but huge multi-billionaires and hugely profitable corporations. I say to the American people: What's your breaking point? When are you going to stop making excuses for yourself? When are you going to stop exaggerating these powers when you know you have the power in this country if you organize it?" Nader has just published a new book, "Told You So: The Big Book of Weekly Columns."

'Lending circles' help low-income communities join the financial mainstream

Program helps low-income people build credit, reduce debt, SF State study shows

SAN FRANCISCO, June 4, 2013 -- An innovative financial lending program is helping low-income individuals build credit, reduce debt and find their financial footing, according to a pair of studies released today from San Francisco State University's César E. Chávez Institute (CCI).

Lending Circles, a program managed by the nonprofit Mission Asset Fund, dramatically improved credit scores for low-income residents of San Francisco, the studies found. In addition, the reports suggest the program can be successfully replicated in other communities and could serve as a nationwide model for helping vulnerable populations, particularly immigrants, achieve economic stability. Many of these communities were among the hardest hit by the recent recession.

The World Economy ‘s a Ticking Time Bomb (and The Fuse is Burning)

By Richard Eskow | June 4, 2013

Respected economist John Kay is about to make a public statement which essentially says that the world economy is a ticking time bomb and global markets are a lit fuse.

Kay is a professor at the London School of Economics, a columnist for the Financial Times, and the author of a widely-read report on stock market flaws which was commissioned last year by the British government.

Kay says that the world is “waiting for the next crisis.” He’ll present that conclusion in a keynote speech which was previewed and extensively quoted earlier this week.

Don't be fooled by the false economic recovery

We all want to believe a recovery is here, but indicators are that it's not. We're getting swindled again by banks and politicians

Heidi Moore
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 May 2013 07.15 EDT
After five years of unemployment, government deficits and financial struggle, every American wants to call it a recovery and call it a day. That's why some optimistic economic data this week seem to have messianic importance, in the ever-optimistic belief that higher consumer confidence and rising home prices will deliver us from economic evil.

But if evil has one power, it is the power of illusion, to mask reality. And, in this case, that is also the power of the positive economic data.

Take the consumer confidence numbers, which are measured every month by the Conference Board and act as one of the more foolish hinges on which to hang our hopes. Consumer confidence in May jumped to 76.2, on a scale of 100. In the popular interpretation, that indicates that consumers believe the economy is improving.

The 4 Plagues: Getting a Handle on the Coming Apocalypse

By Don Hazen

June 4, 2013  |  Every day, thousands, probably millions of people ask their family, friends, neighbors and colleagues similar and increasingly familiar questions: What has happened to our country? How did we get here? Isn’t it scary? Can anything be done about it?

 

There is an abundance of evidence that there are forces tearing apart the U.S. economy and society, causing increasing levels of fear, anxiety and trauma for large numbers of people. Many people are mystified as to the specific causes of their fears, with a mass media system that constantly broadcasts propaganda about how great America is and a new digital media system that may be exacerbating the problems for a society under immense and unprecedented duress.

There is the added problem that the theories and the means of social change we are familiar with, and to which we still turn, are not remotely up to the task we face, and have mostly proven to be inadequate. Virtually every problem we face has gotten worse over the past 40 years, and heavily sped up since 9/11 and the economic crash of 2007.

New data shows school “reformers” are full of it

Poor schools underperform largely because of economic forces, not because teachers have it too easy 

By David Sirota

In the great American debate over education, the education and technology corporations, bankrolled politicians and activist-profiteers who collectively comprise the so-called “reform” movement base their arguments on one central premise: that America should expect public schools to produce world-class academic achievement regardless of the negative forces bearing down on a school’s particular students. In recent days, though, the faults in that premise are being exposed by unavoidable reality.

Before getting to the big news, let’s review the dominant fairy tale: As embodied by New York City’s major education announcement this weekend, the “reform” fantasy pretends that a lack of teacher “accountability” is the major education problem and somehow wholly writes family economics out of the story (amazingly, this fantasy persists even in a place like the Big Apple where economic inequality is particularly crushing). That key — and deliberate — omission serves myriad political interests.

The Middle Class Faces Extinction—So Does the American Dream

By Stewart Lansley

June 3, 2013  |  This article first appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books [3].

Inequality is now one of the biggest political and economic challenges facing the United States. Not that long ago, the gap between rich and poor barely registered on the political Richter scale. Now the growing income divide, an issue that dominated the presidential election debate, has turned into one of the hottest topics of the age.

Postwar American history divides into two halves. For the first three decades, those on middle and low incomes did well out of rising prosperity and inequality fell. In the second half, roughly from the mid–1970s, this process went into reverse. Set on apparent autopilot, the gains from growth were heavily colonized by the superrich, leaving the bulk of the workforce with little better than stagnant incomes.

The return of inequality to levels last seen in the 1920s has had a profound effect on American society, its values, and its economy. The United States led the world in the building of a majority middle class. As early as 1956, the celebrated sociologist, C. Wright Mills, wrote that American society had become “less a pyramid with a flat base than a fat diamond with a bulging middle.”

Thanks To Obamacare, Major Insurers Have To Give Back $36 Million To California Small Businesses

By Sy Mukherjee on Jun 5, 2013 at 9:00 am

On Tuesday, Golden State small businesses and their employees got some great news: two of the state’s largest insurers will have to give them over $36 million in insurance rebates because of an Obamacare consumer protection.

The health law forces insurers to spend at least 80 percent of the premiums they charge on paying for actual medical services, rather than administrative overhead or profits. That means more money for ordinary consumers — and less for profitable insurance companies.

How Elite Economic Hucksters Drive America’s Biggest Fraud Epidemics

By William K. Black

May 29, 2013  |  Editor's note: This article is part of an ongoing AlterNet series, "The Age of Fraud."

What do you get when you throw together economic fraudsters, plutocrats and opportunistic criminals? A financial crisis, that’s what. If you look back over the massive frauds that have swept the country in recent decades, from the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s to the 2007-'08 financial crash, this deadly combination always appears.

A dangerous cycle begins when prominent economists pander to plutocrats and bought politicians, who reward them with top posts, where they promote the perverse economic policies that cause fraud epidemics. Crises develop, and millions of people are ripped off. Those who fight for truth are ignored or ruined. The criminals get wealthier, bolder and more politically powerful, and go on to hatch even more devastating cons.

How Big Finance is Eating the World’s Lunch Agricultural Wealth

By Sasha Breger, a lecturer at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and author of the recent book Derivatives and Development. Her research includes global finance, derivatives, social policy, food, and farming. Cross posted from Triple Crisis

If you hear a kind of whooshing, rushing noise, don’t worry—it’s not US jobs moving to China. Today’s great sucking sound is the sound of agricultural wealth being siphoned off into the global financial system. Dragging poverty and insecurity in its wake, this broad movement of wealth from agriculture into finance is enriching and empowering finance capital at the expense of farmers, traders, consumers, rural communities and the earth. In fact, that sucking sound is really the sound of injustice.

Finance capital globally deploys a huge variety of methods and techniques that generally serve to redistribute wealth from agriculture to finance. These include debt, farmland acquisition, commodity hoarding, and derivative and insurance markets. In the following posts, I outline the wealth transfer mechanism in each of these contexts, focusing largely on new data and evidence from the past several years.

What does it mean to have "predicted the crisis"?

Posted by Noah Smith

Since 2008, quite a lot of people have boldly claimed that they "predicted the crisis". Usually, the claimants use this "fact" to argue for the superiority of their economic school of thought, modeling approach, investing approach, or personal intuition. But what does it mean to have "predicted the crisis"?

First of all, there are different things that get labeled "the crisis". These include:

1. The big drop in U.S. housing prices that started in 2006-7.

2. The systemic collapse of the U.S. financial industry that began in 2008.

3. The deep recession and the long stagnation that began in late 2008.

Predicting one of these is not the same as predicting the others.

Walker's Dismal Jobs Agenda Gets a Gold Star in ALEC's "Rich States, Poor States" Report

Monday, 03 June 2013 09:34
By Nick Surgey, PR Watch | Report

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker got a boost last week from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in its annual Rich States, Poor States report. Despite Bureau of Labor Statistics data putting Wisconsin in 44th place for private-sector job creation, ALEC placed the state as 15th in the country in its ranking of economic outlook, giving Walker -- a former ALEC member -- a boost as he lays the groundwork for a re-election campaign and a possible Presidential bid.

The ALEC report ranks the states by "economic outlook," based on factors including the existence of "right to work" anti-union laws, and the rates at which personal and corporate taxes are levied by the state. Wisconsin gains points in the ALEC assessment for having no inheritance tax, the lowest possible minimum wage, and for having a lower than average number of public employees. But ALEC also docks points because, despite Walkers' infamous attack on the right of public-sector workers to organize in Wisconsin, the state has not passed a private-sector "right to work" law.

How Fox News Misleads Its Viewers

By Laura Clawson

June 3, 2013  |  Last week, John Stossel gave a master class [3] in how Fox News keeps its viewers misled and misinformed on economic issues, concluding with the bombshell "fact" that "think about the Depression. That was before there was any welfare state at all. How many people starved? No one."

Whoa, really? No, actually. [4]

President Herbert Hoover declared, "Nobody is actually starving. The hoboes are better fed than they have ever been." But in New York City in 1931, there were 20 known cases of starvation; in 1934, there were 110 deaths caused by hunger. There were so many accounts of people starving in New York that the West African nation of Cameroon sent $3.77 in relief.

Also, breadlines. Also, an increase in the suicide rate [5]. But before Stossel even got to that claim, he'd unleashed quite the load of right-wing economic messaging disguised as homespun folksy common sense.