Shhh! We Can’t Talk About the Dollar’s Flash Crash on Wednesday

By Pam Martens: March 20, 2015

One would think we had asked for missile launch codes when we reached out to the futures exchanges to find out what caused the precipitous plunge in the U.S. Dollar’s futures contract at 4:04 P.M. Wednesday afternoon – long after the Federal Reserve’s market moving news had been digested by traders.

If currencies are now the new weapons of mass destruction – maybe we were asking for the equivalent of missile launch codes.

14 Reasons Why House and Senate Republicans Have Declared Economic War On Average Americans

Poll after poll finds Americans want the exact opposite of what the GOP proposes.

By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet

If you’re among the millions of Americans who feel bypassed by the economic recovery, you should pay attention to what the GOP-controlled Congress says it wants do to the federal government—via the 2016 budget—because if Republicans get even a fraction of what they have proposed, your living standards will start sliding downhill.

This is the takeaway from economists and experts who know how to ignore the right wing’s ridiculous rhetoric about freedom and opportunity, and instead see exactly who will be hurt, and how that will unfold—if the GOP rips the floor out of virtually every federal social safety net, as they propose, and also raises taxes on already struggling lower wage earners, which they also propose.

Altering brain chemistry makes us more sensitive to inequality

Study finds that prolonging dopamine's effects in the brain boosts compassion

University of California - Berkeley

What if there were a pill that made you more compassionate and more likely to give spare change to someone less fortunate? UC Berkeley scientists have taken a big step in that direction.

A new study by UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco researchers finds that giving a drug that changes the neurochemical balance in the prefrontal cortex of the brain causes a greater willingness to engage in prosocial behaviors, such as ensuring that resources are divided more equally.

Paul Krugman: Trillion Dollar Fraudsters

By now it’s a Republican Party tradition: Every year the party produces a budget that allegedly slashes deficits, but which turns out to contain a trillion-dollar “magic asterisk” — a line that promises huge spending cuts and/or revenue increases, but without explaining where the money is supposed to come from.

But the just-released budgets from the House and Senate majorities break new ground. Each contains not one but two trillion-dollar magic asterisks: one on spending, one on revenue. And that’s actually an understatement. If either budget were to become law, it would leave the federal government several trillion dollars deeper in debt than claimed, and that’s just in the first decade.

The 1 percent rigged everything: Why no one can end Ronald Reagan’s “dead wrong” voodoo economics

A thriving middle class is the cause of growth. The middle class creates rich people -- not the other way around

Paul Rosenberg

Venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, a highly visible champion of Seattle’s $15/hour minimum wage, wrote a piece in the Atlantic last month pushing on another front in the war against toxic income inequality. “Stock Buybacks Are Killing the American Economy,” he warned, and getting rid of them would be a tremendous boon to the economy.

This latest front rebukes those who say that raising the minimum wage does little to address what ails the American middle class. First, it underscores the obvious: that battling against decades of bad economic policy must necessarily be a multi-pronged affair, with no single action able to solve everything at once. But second, it starkly highlights how much of the problem can be traced to a single source—the profoundly misguided notion that giving even more money to rich people would produce prosperity for all. Instead, the exact opposite has happened. That’s why the attack on stock buybacks is an even more profound attack on economics as usual, even if it, too, only represents one facet of what has to be a multi-faceted approach.

Internal Documents Reveal Extensive Industry Influence Over EPA's National Fracking Study

By Sharon Kelly, DeSmogBlog | Report

In 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched an ambitious and highly consequential study of the risks that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, poses to American drinking water supplies.

"This is about using the best possible science to do what the American people expect the EPA to do - ensure that the health of their communities and families are protected," Paul Anastas, Assistant Administrator for the agency's Office of Research and Development, said in 2011.

Despicable: '60 Minutes' Does Another Hit Job on Social Security

Why is the esteemed show carrying Republicans' water on this issue?

By Joan McCarter / DailyKos, March 19, 2015

CBS News and 60 Minutes love carrying water for Republicans in their ongoing war on Social Security. In the fall of 2013, it was Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-OK) attack on Social Security disability, in which the news magazine presented an entire segment without talking to one single disabled person or disability advocate and declared that the program was "a secret welfare system ... ravaged by waste and fraud." In that case, the program previewed sham report Coburn was releasing. This weekend, they did it again, previewing a Senate hearing on the Social Security Administration's massive database, the "Death Master File," touting the possibilities for fraud and abuse if someone was either incorrectly reported dead or the converse, died and didn't show up on the file.

Clean energy future: New cheap and efficient electrode for splitting water

University of New South Wales

UNSW Australia scientists have developed a highly efficient oxygen-producing electrode for splitting water that has the potential to be scaled up for industrial production of the clean energy fuel, hydrogen. The new technology is based on an inexpensive, specially coated foam material that lets the bubbles of oxygen escape quickly.

"Our electrode is the most efficient oxygen-producing electrode in alkaline electrolytes reported to date, to the best of our knowledge," says Associate Professor Chuan Zhao, of the UNSW School of Chemistry.

The Quiet Plan To Sell Off America’s National Forests

by Claire Moser - Guest Contributor Posted on March 16, 2015 at 8:00 am
Updated: March 16, 2015 at 10:03 am

A proposal to seize and sell off America’s national forests and other public lands could make its way into the House GOP’s budget resolution when it is announced this week.

In a recent memo to the House Budget Committee, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, proposed that America’s public lands be transferred to state control. He then requested $50 million of taxpayer money to be spent to enable transfers to “start immediately.” The memo states that public lands “create a burden for the surrounding states and communities,” and “the solution is to convey land without strings to state, local, and tribal governments.”

Ellen Brown: The ECB’s Noose Around Greece: How Central Banks Harness Governments

Remember when the infamous Goldman Sachs delivered a thinly-veiled threat to the Greek Parliament in December, warning them to elect a pro-austerity prime minister or risk having central bank liquidity cut off to their banks? (See January 6th post here.) It seems the European Central Bank (headed by Mario Draghi, former managing director of Goldman Sachs International) has now made good on the threat.

The week after the leftwing Syriza candidate Alexis Tsipras was sworn in as prime minister, the ECB announced that it would no longer accept Greek government bonds and government-guaranteed debts as collateral for central bank loans to Greek banks. The banks were reduced to getting their central bank liquidity through “Emergency Liquidity Assistance” (ELA), which is at high interest rates and can also be terminated by the ECB at will.

Wealth and power may have played a stronger role than 'survival of the fittest'

Number of reproducing males declined during global growth

Tempe, Ariz. -- The DNA you inherit from your parents contributes to the physical make-up of your body -- whether you have blue eyes or brown, black hair or red, or are male or female. Your DNA can also influence whether you might develop certain diseases or disorders such as Crohn's Disease, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia or neurofibromatosis, to name a few.

In a study led by scientists from Arizona State University, the University of Cambridge, University of Tartu and Estonian Biocentre, and published March 13 in an online issue of the journal Genome Research, researchers discovered a dramatic decline in genetic diversity in male lineages four to eight thousand years ago -- likely the result of the accumulation of material wealth, while in contrast, female genetic diversity was on the rise. This male-specific decline occurred during the mid- to late-Neolithic period.

Only Less Will Do

by Richard Heinberg

When I’m not writing books or essays on environmental issues, or sleeping or eating, you’re likely to find me playing the violin. This has been an obsessive activity for me since I was a boy, and seems to deliver ever more satisfaction as time passes. Making and operating the little wooden box that is a violin is essentially a pre-industrial activity: nearly all its parts are from renewable sources (wood, horsetail, sheepgut), and playing it requires no electricity or gasoline. Violin playing therefore constitutes an ecologically benign hobby, right?

It probably was, a couple of centuries ago; now, not so much. You see, most violin bows are made from pernambuco, a Brazilian hardwood that’s endangered because too many bows have already been made from it. Ebony, too, is over-harvested; it’s used for making fingerboards, tuning pegs, and bow parts. Some fancy older violin bows are even decorated with tortoiseshell, ivory, and whalebone. And while maple and spruce (the main woods from which violins are constructed) are not endangered, whole forests are being cut in China to meet the burgeoning global demand for student instruments. Modern strings (most of which are made using petroleum derivatives) are often wound with nonrenewable silver or aluminum, and almost nobody tries to recycle them.

Nomi Prins: The Volatility / Quantitative Easing Dance of Doom

The battle between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of global financial policy is escalating to the point where the ‘haves’ might start to sweat – a tiny little. This phase of heightened volatility in the markets is a harbinger of the inevitable meltdown that will follow the grand plastering-over of a systemically fraudulent global financial system. It’s like a sputtering gas tank signaling an approach to ‘empty’.

Obscene amounts of central bank liquidity applauded by government leaders that have protected the political-financial establishment with failed oversight and lack of foresight, have coalesced to form one of the most unequal, unstable economic environments in modern history. The ongoing availability of cheap capital for big bank solvency, growth and leverage purposes, as well as stock and bond market propulsion has fostered a false sense of economic security that bears little resemblance to most personal realities.

Sensing threat, utilities put squeeze on solar-roof industry

By Joby Warrick, WASHINGTON POST
on March 15, 2015 - 12:01 AM

Three years ago, the nation’s top utility executives gathered at a Colorado resort to hear warnings about a grave new threat to operators of America’s electric grid: not superstorms or cyberattacks, but rooftop solar panels.

If demand for residential solar continued to soar, traditional utilities could soon face serious problems, from “declining retail sales” and a “loss of customers” to “potential obsolescence,” according to a presentation prepared for the group. “Industry must prepare an action plan to address the challenges,” it said.

US Quietly Abandons Troop Reduction Plans in Afghanistan

Administration could allow up to 9,800 troops to remain into next year's 'fighting season'

by Nadia Prupis, staff writer

The Obama administration is dropping its plans to reduce the amount of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to 5,500 by the end of the year, significantly altering the timeline which officials had said would see troops largely withdraw from the country by 2016, according to reports.

In fact, officials say, the administration could allow up to 9,800 American troops to remain in Afghanistan well into next year's "fighting season."

Data and Goliath: Privacy Expert Explains the Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World

Bruce Schneier says there are similarities between government and corporate spying.

By Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez / Democracy Now!

Leading security and privacy researcher Bruce Schneier appeared on Democracy Now! to talk about the golden age of surveillance and his new book, "Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World." In it, he mentioned that companies use surveillance to manipulate prices as well as news stories and advertising. He told Amy Goodman: “The ads you see aren’t going to be the ads someone else sees, based on your interests, but also based on what the companies believe is your income level, how good a customer you are. You’re going to see different search results than somebody else. So, depending on your political persuasion, you’ll see different advertisements. You’ll see different offers. So you might get a different credit card offer than someone else. And that might be based on your income, on proxies for your minority status. We see a lot of this very personalized advertising designed to influence you and you alone.”

Social Security Doesn’t Come To All Who Paid

Farmworkers find their employers pocketed their Social Security payments—rendering them ineligible for benefits.

BY Joseph Sorrentino

Israel Morales, 44, is one of the thousands of migrant farmworkers hired to harvest New Mexico’s famous chiles. For the past five years, Morales, who asked that his real name not be used, has earned between $4,000 and $7,000 a year stooping to pick chiles in the hot fields. Much of that he sends back to Chihuahua, Mexico, to support his wife and two children, ages 16 and 22, both in school. His earnings are fairly typical for chile workers, according to the Border Agricultural Workers Project. But only a fraction of his earnings were ever reported to the IRS or the Social Security Administration (SSA).

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Is Big Oil Finally Entering a Climate Change World?

By Michael Klare
Posted on March 12, 2015, Printed on March 21, 2015

Welcome to the asylum! I’m talking, of course, about this country, or rather the world Big Oil spent big bucks creating.You know, the one in which the obvious -- climate change -- is doubted and denied, and in which the new Republican Congress is actively opposed to doing anything about it. Just the other day, for instance, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote a column in his home state paper, the Lexington Herald-Leader, adopting the old Nancy Reagan slogan “just say no” to climate change. The senator from Coalville, smarting over the Obama administration’s attempts to reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, is urging state governors to simply ignore the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed “landmark limits” on those plants -- to hell with the law and to hell, above all, with climate change. But it’s probably no news to you that the inmates are now running the asylum.

[...]

Big Oil’s Broken Business Model
The Real Story Behind the Oil Price Collapse
By Michael T. Klare

Many reasons have been provided for the dramatic plunge in the price of oil to about $60 per barrel (nearly half of what it was a year ago): slowing demand due to global economic stagnation; overproduction at shale fields in the United States; the decision of the Saudis and other Middle Eastern OPEC producers to maintain output at current levels (presumably to punish higher-cost producers in the U.S. and elsewhere); and the increased value of the dollar relative to other currencies. There is, however, one reason that’s not being discussed, and yet it could be the most important of all: the complete collapse of Big Oil’s production-maximizing business model.

Paul Krugman: Strength Is Weakness

We've been warned over and over that the Federal Reserve, in its effort to improve the economy, is "debasing" the dollar. The archaic word itself tells you a lot about where the people issuing such warnings are coming from. Its an allusion to the ancient practice of replacing pure gold or silver coins with "debased" coins in which the precious-metal content was adulterated with cheaper stuff. Message to the gold bugs and Ayn Rand disciples who dominate the Republican Party: That's not how modern money works. Still, the Fed's critics keep insisting that easy-money policies will lead to a plunging dollar.