Income Confusion

Ideology vs Reality

By Thomas Sowell

Anyone who follows the media has probably heard many times that the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and incomes of the population in general are stagnating. Moreover, those who say such things can produce many statistics, including data from the Census Bureau, which seem to indicate that.

On the other hand, income tax data recently released by the Internal Revenue Service seem to show the exact opposite: People in the bottom fifth of income-tax filers in 1996 had their incomes increase by 91 percent by 2005.

The top one percent -- "the rich" who are supposed to be monopolizing the money, according to the left -- saw their incomes decline by a whopping 26 percent.

Meanwhile, the average taxpayers' real income increased by 24 percent between 1996 and 2005.

How can all this be? How can official statistics from different agencies of the same government -- the Census Bureau and the IRS -- lead to such radically different conclusions?

There are wild cards in such data that need to be kept in mind when you hear income statistics thrown around -- especially when they are thrown around by people who are trying to prove something for political purposes.

The Regulatory State

The Enemy Within

By CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH

Washington is in a regulatory growth spurt. Hundreds of rulemaking proceedings are underway or impending under the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), both enacted in 2010. The Environmental Protection Agency is pursuing many hugely expensive pollution-control initiatives. The Federal Communications Commission wants to regulate the internet. Agencies are tightening highway fuel-economy standards and banning the incandescent light bulb. Price controls are making a comeback in health insurance and debit cards.

Congressional Republicans are up in arms, and their charges of over-regulation are justified. The Obama administration's confidence in central planning is as manifest in its regulatory policies as in its taxing and spending policies. The administration is clearly comfortable with executive government, as in its dispensation of waivers from the requirements of the Obamacare and No Child Left Behind statutes, as well as in its $20 billion compensation program for people affected by the BP oil spill (a program that had no statutory basis at all). The administration uses regulatory authorities to pursue unspoken policies, such as hobbling carbon-based energy production (evident in the rejection of the environmentally benign Keystone XL pipeline) and promoting labor unions (demonstrated by its campaigns to stop Boeing from building airplanes in South Carolina and to overrule state constitutions that guarantee the secret ballot in union elections).

Business and the Literati

American literature hates American business for what it has done to the souls of the rich, the poor, and the middling alike

By ALGIS VALIUNAS

For as long as the culture of business has been an integral part of American life, it has also been frowned upon by important sectors of our society. Among our intellectuals especially, the business world has been the subject of many brutal caricatures, portraying corporations large and small, and the people who run them, as heartless, soulless agents of greed. These caricatures have shaped our implicit understanding of the nature of the business world, so much that they have come to pass for conventional wisdom.

In recent years, one of the clearest expressions of the reigning caricature was that offered by the commencement speaker who addressed the graduating class of Arizona State University in May 2009. Warning the students away from what he described as the familiar American formula for success, the speaker put forward what he took to be the ethic of the business world:

You're taught to chase after all the usual brass rings; you try to be on this "who's who" list or that top 100 list; you chase after the big money and you figure out how big your corner office is; you worry about whether you have a fancy enough title or a fancy enough car. That's the message that's sent each and every day, or has been in our culture for far too long — that through material possessions, through a ruthless competition pursued only on your own behalf — that's how you will measure success. Now, you can take that road — and it may work for some. But at this critical juncture in our nation's history, at this difficult time, let me suggest that such an approach won't get you where you want to go; it displays a poverty of ambition.

Cuba is walking a delicate line on health

Cuba campaign takes on 'free' health care

by PETER ORSI

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba's system of free medical care, long considered a birthright by its citizens and trumpeted as one of the communist government's great successes, is not immune to cutbacks under Raul Castro's drive for efficiency.

The health sector has already endured millions of dollars in budget cuts and tens of thousands of layoffs, and it became clear this month that Castro is looking for more ways to save when the newspaper voice of the Communist Party, Granma, published daily details for two weeks on how much the government spends on everything from anesthetics and acupuncture to orthodontics and organ transplants.

It's part of a wider media campaign that seems geared to discourage frivolous use of medical services, to explain or blunt fears of a drop-off in care and to remind Cubans to be grateful that health care is still free despite persistent economic woes. But it's also raising the eyebrows of outside analysts, who predict further cuts or significant changes to what has been a pillar of the socialist system implanted after the 1959 revolution.

"Very often the media has been a leading indicator of where the economic reforms are going," said Phil Peters, a longtime Cuba observer at the Lexington Institute think tank. "My guess is that there's some kind of policy statement to follow, because that's been the pattern."

A wonder of the modern world

The London Underground

Andrew Martin does a fine job in celebrating the history and experience of the Tube, a pioneering railway that embodies all the characteristics - good and bad - of our capital city.

by Neil Davenport 

The closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics was notable for its groaning reliance on tourist-shop icons - all black cabs, bowler hats, Houses of Parliament, red pillar-boxes and Mini Coopers. In a dreary way, what could we expect? A tourist-shop portrayal of Britain is still internationally recognisable and, for the organisers, safe enough to avoid party-pooping controversy. Curiously, though, one famous figure of the capital was noticeable by its absence: the London Underground. With its roundel logo, distinctive trains and elegantly functional map, few landmarks of London are as richly iconic as this. Indeed, as a character player in umpteen films, novels and pop songs, no London setting would be complete without the Underground.

Throughout the network’s history, though, Londoners’ relationship with the Tube has often been uneasy and aggravating: overcrowding, delays, cancellations, the fare’s dent on the wallet and, for the middle classes, striking tube workers and their ‘inflated’ salary. Nevertheless, it is only when the Tube is not working properly that we become aware of its magnitude. Unlike Tower Bridge or Beefeaters, the Tube isn’t a remote or mythical symbol of London. It’s the living, working and organic lifeblood of the capital. It is the way in which millions of Londoners are able to work and play and thus, unlike Parliament, has meaning to ordinary people’s lives.

The Unseen Class War that could decide the presidential election

The New Political Geography

by Joel Kotkin

Much is said about class warfare in contemporary America, and there’s justifiable anger at the impoverishment of much of the middle and working classes. The Pew Research Center recently dubbed the 2000s a “lost decade” for middle-income earners — some 85% of Americans in that category feel it’s now more difficult to maintain their standard of living than at the beginning of the millennium, according to a Pew survey.

Blaming a disliked minority — rich business folks — has morphed into a predictable strategy for President Obama’s Democrats, stripped of incumbent success. But all the talk of “one percent” versus “the ninety nine percent” misses new splits developing within both the upper and middle classes.

There is no true solidarity among the rich since no one is yet threatening their status. The “one percent” are splitting their bets. In 2008 President Obama received more Wall Street money than any candidate in history, and he still relies on Wall Street bundlers for his sustenance. For all his class rhetoric, miscreant Wall Streeters, particularly big ones, have evaded big sanctions and the ignominy of jail time.

Field of dreams

Israel’s natural gas

By Tobias Buck

After decades of importing every drop of fuel, Israel has struck it rich, uncovering vast reserves of natural gas in the Mediterranean

The black and yellow helicopter heads north from Tel Aviv, passing over empty beaches, a yacht harbour and a string of sprawling seafront residences that house some of Israel’s wealthiest families. After a few minutes the pilot makes a sharp turn to the left and steers his ageing Bell 412 towards the open sea.

For more than half an hour, all there is to see is the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Then suddenly a hulking mass of brightly painted steel rises from the midday haze. Towering more than 100m above the water, this is the Sedco Express, a drilling rig that has been operating in this stretch of ocean for almost three years. As the helicopter touches down on the landing pad, we see a small blue and white Star of David flag fluttering in the wind. It is the only sign that the Sedco Express sits atop one of the greatest treasures that Israel has ever found. Far below, connected to the rig by a slender steel pipe that runs through 1,700m of ocean and another 4,500m of rock and sand, lies a vast reservoir of natural gas known as the Tamar field.

Ben Bernanke And His Merry Band Of Thieves

The Real Reverse Robin Hood

Away from the stifling media crush, staid Ben Bernanke is dashing Reverse Robin Hood, lackey pawn of the Neofeudalist Financial Lords who shamelessly steals from the poor to give to the parasitic super-rich.

by Charles Hugh-Smith

Amidst electioneering chatter about a "reverse Robin Hood" who steals from the poor to give to the rich, it's important to identify the real Reverse Robin Hood: Ben Bernanke and his Merry Band of Thieves, a.k.a. the Federal Reserve. It's especially appropriate to reveal Ben as the real Reverse Robin Hood today, as the Chairman is as omnipresent in the media as Big Brother due to the Cargo-Cult confab in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Please answer the following questions before launching a rousing defense of the All-Powerful Fed and its chairman:

1. What is the nominal yield on your savings account, thanks to the Fed's zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP)? (Answer: 0.25%)

2. What is the inflation-adjusted yield on your savings account? (Answer: - 2.25%)

3. What is the rate of interest the Fed charges banks for "free money"? (Answer: 0%)

Gold Is A Barbeque Relish

There was nothing wrong with my weight, I just wasn’t tall enough

by Mark McHugh

My Doctor’s an idiot.  A few years ago, he started expressing concerns about my weight, pointing at this chart supposedly showing how much a man of my height should weigh.  One glance at his stupid chart and it was clear to me that he had completely misdiagnosed my condition.  There was nothing wrong with my weight, I just wasn’t tall enough.  Clearly I needed to grow my way out of this. So I went home and googled “how to stimulate growth.”  Once I got past the all the baldness cures and penis pumps (it’s not my bag, baby), I found hundreds of papers so incredibly boring I knew they had to be true.  In no time, I was able to design and implement my own stimulus plan based on the irrefutable scientificky principles of Nobel prize winners and other people so smart they never had to do an honest day’s work in their lives.  Despite the difficulty climbing stairs, I was feeling pretty good about things until my last check-up….

“Hi, Doc.”

“Hi,” he said, examining my file.  He looked up, “You’ve put on twenty pounds since the last time I saw you”

“Thanks for noticing,” I beamed.

He frowned.  “I remember now.  You’re the guy on the diet designed to make you grow.  What’s that called again?”

“The Keynesian Plan.”

“Is that the one where you eat bacon and cheese, but not vegetables?”

The New Endangered Species

Liquidity & Reliable Income Streams

by Charles Hugh-Smith

The causal relationship between scarcity, demand, and price is intuitive.  Whatever is scarce and in demand will rise in price; whatever is abundant and in low demand will decline in price to its cost basis.

The corollary is somewhat less intuitive, but still solidly sensible: the cure for high prices is high prices, meaning that as the price of a commodity or service reaches a threshold of affordability/pain, suppliers and consumers will seek out alternatives or modify their behaviors to lower consumption.

We talk about the demand for commodities being elastic or inelastic, meaning that some commodities such as oil and grain are so essential that the demand for them is less elastic than demand for discretionary goods and services.  Despite its essential role in the global economy, the demand for oil is not fixed; as prices rise, demand falls. Since all commodities are priced at the margin, the price of oil is actually quite volatile, despite the supposed inelasticity of demand for oil.

Public Power, Private Gain

The Abuse of Eminent Domain

By John Kramer

The Current Issue

For most of her 36 years in Atlantic City, Vera Coking, an elderly widow, ran a tidy little boarding house just off the Boardwalk. She convinced her husband to buy the property because she loved the house, the beach and Atlantic City. There, long before gambling was legalized and towering casinos rose up around her, she greeted guests from around the world with one of the six languages she speaks. She raised three children in the house, and one daughter still lives with her.

Retired now, the house is her only residence and only asset. But if tycoon Donald Trump has his way, a New Jersey government agency will use its power of eminent domain to condemn Vera's property, take it away from her at a bargain-basement price, then transfer the ownership to Trump for a fraction of the market value. Trump then plans to park limousines where Vera's bedroom, kitchen and dining room now stand. In short, New Jersey will take from one private owner and transfer that property to another private owner for his exclusive gain.

Unfortunately, Vera Coking is not alone in this battle. Other private property owners in Atlantic City and nationwide find their property rights under attack from unethical marriages of convenience between developers, local governments and state agencies. The result is an erosion of a fundamental constitutional right. And the legal landscape-especially at the federal level-is stacked against the land holders.

On December 13, 1996, the Institute for Justice joined Vera's attorney, Glenn Zeitz, in asking the New Jersey Supreme Court to reverse an appellate decision allowing the condemnation of Vera's property and to hold that the condemnation violated the New Jersey and federal Constitutions

Inconceivable Complexity

A market economy is indescribably vast and complex

By Donald J. Boudreaux

We’ve all seen old photos and film clips of people trying to fly like birds. Each of these aspiring aviators has wing-like things strapped to his arms. But no amount of flapping, however furious, ever gets him airborne like the birds he’s trying to imitate.

The man dressed in wings observes a flying bird and then analogizes his own limbs and muscle movements to what he supposes, from his observations, are those of the bird. But the human is misled into thinking that because he’s intelligent and has some body parts that are more or less analogous to a bird’s body parts, he can easily enough mimic the bird’s body and movements and thereby achieve flight.

Of course this man is deeply mistaken. Despite our smarts, we humans can observe only a tiny fraction of the details that enable birds to fly. We can with our naked eyes observe only the most obvious, large, “macro” details (“bird flaps limbs that extend from bird’s upper torso”; “bird’s flapping limbs are made of lightweight, flexible, overlapping things that we call ‘feathers’ ”). But the amount of detail that we don’t—that we cannot—observe through simple observation is overwhelming. The bird’s musculature; its cardiovascular system; the weight, positioning, and minuscule maneuverings of its tail—these and countless other relevant details aren’t observed.

We see only an animal extending itself horizontally, flapping its limbs, and then, voila!, it is safely and gracefully airborne!

The illusion of the frictionless State

The Unnoticed Deficit That Makes Us $6 Trillion Poorer

By James L. Payne

Politicians are busy these days trying to fix deficits, trying to close the gap between what government spends and what it takes in. It’s a difficult task, but it is assumed that in the long run some combination of spending cuts and tax increases will bring us to balanced budgets. If that day ever arrives, the politicians will toast each other for their maturity and leadership, and assume that the country’s fiscal problems have been solved.

Unfortunately, this self-congratulation would not be justified. In this balanced budget situation, with taxes fully covering expenditures, there would still be a huge negative number eating at the heart of national finances. This other “deficit” consists of the overhead costs, or waste, in government tax-and-spend systems. Though there is an element of redistribution in many spending programs, basically government is taxing people and then trying to return the money to them as some benefit they could have bought for themselves, such as education, housing, art, pensions, medical care, and so on. This cycling of funds through government involves enormous waste. My estimate of this loss puts it at $5.7 trillion.

Merkel wedded to euro and guilt

Long gone is the time when long-term thinking was still possible in Western Europe

By Gunnar Beck 

"If the euro fails, Europe fails." German Chancellor Angela Merkel's words remind one of her predecessor Helmut Kohl's dictum that "European integration is the other side of the coin of German reunification." And just as one set of words is reminiscent of the other, so both are equally devoid of logic. 

Yet, they signify a deep-seated and abiding commitment to European Union integration and the defense of the single currency which is not readily understood outside Germany. Merkel will defend the euro to the hilt, to her own peril, that of her country, and that of the euro itself - and the same holds for any mainstream German politician who might replace or succeed her. The reasons for this are many, but they all relate to Germany's historical guilt complex and the triumph of short-term calculus over long-term evaluation that is symptomatic of our Western democracies. 

First, Chancellor Merkel, like Helmut Kohl and indeed almost any mainstream German post-war politician outside Bavaria, is a convinced pro-European and pro-integrationist. For better or worse, that means she is committed to the euro. It also means that she will defend it for its own sake, not because it may be in Germany's narrow economic self-interest, debatable as even that no doubt is.

France to Hire 150,000 Subsidized Workers With Zero Qualifications

Why Stop There?

By MIKE SHEDLOCK

Looking for a loony idea to address unemployment in France? Look no further because I have a doozie.

Via Google Translate from El Economista, France will create 150,000 jobs for young people without qualifications

The French Government has today adopted a draft law providing for the creation of 150,000 subsidized jobs for young people with little or no qualifications, which are most affected by unemployment and employability harder.

The beneficiaries of these so called "jobs of tomorrow" will work for municipalities, hospitals, schools, social organizations, associations or, exceptionally, in private companies, and will receive a grant of up to 75% of their compensation.

The estimated cost is 500 million euros in 2013 and "more than 1,500 million" next year by the state budget, said Labor Minister Michel Sapin, at a press conference.

Frédéric Bastiat on Legal Plunder

The State is the mechanism by which a small privileged group of people lives at the expense of everyone else

By David Hart

Frédéric Bastiat’s unwritten History of Plunder ranks alongside Lord Acton’s History of Liberty and the third volume of Murray Rothbard’s Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought as the greatest libertarian books never written. Had he lived to a ripe old age, instead of dying at the age of 49 from throat cancer, Bastiat might have finished his magnum opus,Economic Harmonies, and completed his history of plunder. It should be noted that Karl Marx published the first volume of his magnum opus, Das Capital(1867), when he was 49 but lived another 16 years. Given the chance, Bastiat might well have fulfilled his great promise as an economic theorist and historian and become the Karl Marx of the nineteenth-century classical-liberal movement.

Hollande’s Burden

The French president is blind to the contradictions of his philosophy

BY THEODORE DALRYMPLE

My late friend, the eminent development economist Peter Bauer, liked to complain that while knowledge had increased, mankind’s capacity for connected thought seemed to have decreased. François Lamy, France’s new minister of urban affairs, illustrated Bauer’s point nicely when he visited Amiens recently, a city in whose northern suburbs the week before his visit a small but nasty riot had broken out, causing millions of dollars’ worth of damage. As in all such French suburbs, the youth unemployment rate there is very high. The minister said that the government would carry out one of Socialist French president François Hollande’s election promises—namely to allow certain tax exemptions on companies that hired young workers from suburbs with high unemployment.

Whatever the merits of such a policy, Messrs. Hollande and Lamy clearly hope and expect that it will work. What they don’t notice is that this hope and expectation drives a coach and horses through their entire social philosophy.

What in effect such a policy acknowledges is that high payroll taxes on French companies discourages them from taking on new workers. This must be because the cost of their labor is, thanks to the taxes, higher than its economic value. Only by lowering the taxes can their labor be made economically worthwhile for an employer.

The European Tragedy

The inevitable result of the hubris of political actors

By Stephen Davies

People are closely watching the slow-motion train wreck that is the crisis of the eurozone—that is, the economic travails of Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, and Italy (known collectively as the PIIGS). The problem with much of the discussion in the United States is that both of the main camps are right about some things but wrong about others because neither fully grasps the real nature and cause of the crisis in Europe.

One view holds up the Europeans as a warning to the United States of the consequences of government profligacy. The problem, so the argument goes, is crushing sovereign debt brought about by excessive government spending over many years funded by borrowing rather than taxation. The rising yields on sovereign debt reflect that investors now realize the European governments are bankrupt and cannot be relied on to service their accumulated debt, much less repay it. As yields rise the burden of debt becomes greater until the only ways out are either default or fiscal stringency with a combination of tax increases and cuts in government spending to bring stability. This is also the view, it would appear, of the German finance ministry and much of the German public.

The contrary view is that the European crisis is indeed a warning to the United States—of the dreadful consequences of austerity. For this camp the experience shows the folly of responding to the financial crisis of 2007–08 with cuts in government spending and efforts at balancing the books. These efforts are self-defeating because they will aggravate the economic contraction and reduce government revenues while increasing spending (because of “automatic stabilizers” such as unemployment benefits), worsening the government’s finances. The correct response to the economic slowdown in Europe, therefore, is a Keynesian one of increasing government spending and widening deficits, at least in the short term, until the economy recovers.

Germany is cornered

Germany is in the box and now Frau Pandora and not Frau Merkel owns the key

By Mark J. Grant

Several recent releases of data bring the problem into focus; a sharp focus. With Ms. Merkel in China trying to buoy the European position China announced that exports to the European Union declined 16.2% in July with sales to Italy falling off the cliff; down 35.8%. These are not small variations or figures just slightly off the consensus opinion but disastrous numbers that clearly indicate the deepening recession that is taking place on the Continent and there will be quite serious consequences that come from a fall-off of this magnitude.

This morning the Consumer Sentiment numbers were released for Europe and the number was 86.1 down from 87.9 in July and far worse than the median forecast of 87.5 and the worst number, in fact, since August 2009. In Germany, once thought to be almost invincible and somehow outside the recession that is raging in Europe, the crisis is just beginning but it has commenced and it is clearly indicated by the newest data which shows that Germany has begun the descent down the rabbit hole with the rest of its brethren.

Unemployment increased in Germany, which was reported out this morning, to 2.9mm people and it was a greater drop than had been forecast. German capital investment fell 0.9% in the second quarter, factory orders were down 7.8% from a year earlier, business confidence fell for the fourth straight month and growth slowed to 0.3% as all of the EU-17 reported a -0.2 contraction.

Nazi Economics

The Wages of Destruction

by Bill Bonner

Adam Tooze, a British historian, has written a marvelous book on the Nazi economy, The Wages of Destruction. He shows that, far from illustrating the success of intelligent central planning, the German economy of the Third Reich was a disaster. The National Socialists – or “Nazis” – had their plans for Germany. They were determined to put them into practice, regardless of what the Germans may have wanted for themselves. They fiddled with one sector after another. When one fix failed to produce the desired results, actually bringing unintended and undesired consequences, they tried to fix the fix with a new fix. Most of these fixes involved spending money – if not on actual output, then on bureaucracies that regulated output. And most of them were directed towards a goal that only a demagogue politician or a lame economist would find attractive – making Germany self-sufficient. Imports cost money, they reasoned. Besides, trade forced a nation to behave. Neither was attractive to the Nazis.

Of Mice and Men

Why progress remains stuck on the tarmac

The dithering over building a third runway at Heathrow, never mind new airports, exposes our leaders’ inability to seize control of the future.

by Tim Black 

Do you remember what one of the first, headline acts of the current coalition government was? That’s right, on 12 May 2010, just days after the Lib Dems and Conservatives false-smiled their way into a loveless marriage, the freshly conjugated coalition announced it was to abandon New Labour plans to build a third runway at Heathrow airport. So after the idea was first mooted in a government green paper in 2003, it appeared, after years of Labour dithering before a last-gasp decision in 2009, that the prospect of an improved Heathrow had finally been shot down.

But this is a twenty-first century British government. There is no decision that cannot be unmade, no action that cannot be delayed for years upon end. Uncertainty is near enough deemed an electoral virtue by the modern political party. So, nine years after the idea was first mooted, senior Tories are now, almost predictably, suggesting that plans for a third runway might be revived after all.

The leaked murmurings began earlier this year when chancellor George Osborne said that Britain needed to confront the problem of the lack of runways. Since then, several Tories have come out of the closet wearing ‘I love runway’ t-shirts. Just last week, voluble housing minister Grant Shapps came over all Victorian: ‘As a great trading nation we need to have sufficient numbers of ports to get people and goods in and out.’ And then, more memorably, came senior Tory Tim Yeo, chairman of the energy and climate change select committee. ‘An immediate go-ahead for a third runway will symbolise the start of a new era, the moment the Cameron government found its sense of mission. Let’s go for it’, chirruped Yeo in a piece for the Telegraph. He then challenged Cameron personally, asking him if he is ‘man or mouse’.

The Paramilitarized Bureaucracies

A dangerous contradiction

By mark steyn

I flew in to Montreal from an overseas trip the other day and was met by a lady from my office, who had kindly agreed to drive me back home to New Hampshire. At the airport she seemed a little rattled, and it emerged that on her journey from the Granite State she had encountered a "security check" on the Vermont–Quebec border. U.S. officials had decided to impose temporary exit controls on I-91 and had backed up northbound traffic so that agents could ascertain from each driver whether he or she was carrying "monetary instruments" in excess of $10,000. My assistant was quizzed by an agent dressed in the full Robocop and carrying an automatic weapon, while another with a sniffer dog examined the vehicle. Which seems an unlikely method of finding travelers' checks for $12,000.

Being a legal immigrant, I am inured to the indignities imposed by the U.S. government. (You can't ask an illegal immigrant for ID, even at the voting booth or after commission of a crime, but a legal immigrant has to have his green card on him even when he's strolling in the woods behind his house.) And indeed, for anyone familiar with the curious priorities of officialdom, there is a certain logic in an agency that has failed to prevent millions of illegal aliens from entering the country evolving smoothly into an agency that obstructs law-abiding persons from exiting the country.

IRAQ, Mission accomplished for Big Oil?

Well, not exactly 

By Greg Muttitt 

In 2011, after nearly nine years of war and occupation, US troops finally left Iraq. In their place, Big Oil is now present in force and the country's oil output, crippled for decades, is growing again. Iraq recently reclaimed the number two position in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), overtaking oil-sanctioned Iran. Now, there's talk of a new world petroleum glut. So is this finally mission accomplished? 

Well, not exactly. In fact, any oil company victory in Iraq is likely to prove as temporary as George W Bush's triumph in 2003. The main reason is yet another of those stories the mainstream media didn't quite find room for: the role of Iraqi civil society. But before telling that story, let's look at what's happening to Iraqi oil today, and how we got from the "no blood for oil" global protests of 200 to the present moment. 

Here, as a start, is a little scorecard of what's gone on in Iraq since Big Oil arrived two-and-a-half years ago: corruption's skyrocketed; two Western oil companies are being investigated for either giving or receiving bribes; the Iraqi government is paying oil companies a per-barrel fee according to wildly unrealistic production targets they've set, whether or not they deliver that number of barrels; contractors are heavily over-charging for drilling wells, which the companies don't mind since the Iraqi government picks up the tab. 

Meanwhile, to protect the oil giants from dissent and protest, trade union offices have been raided, computers seized and equipment smashed, leaders arrested and prosecuted. And that's just in the oil-rich southern part of the country. 

Why Everybody's Going To War in the Middle East

American soldiers are still fighting for the power elites and their favored industries

by Ron Holland

Iran Wants War

Although a peaceful nation for hundreds of years, Iran was invaded and occupied by the Allies in both World War One and Two. Then in 1980, at the urging of the United States, Saddam Hussein invaded them and used poison gas against both Kurds and Iran. Over 500,000 civilians, Iranian and Iraqi soldiers died in the longest war of the 20th century, which lasted until 1988.

Iran wants war because they believe they can withstand an Israel and US air assault and that unless they are invaded and occupied they can claim victory. No Middle East nation has ever been victorious against either the US or Israel and to declare victory against both will make Iran the leading nation across the entire region, at least for the people in the street. An Israel/US assault would also solve growing domestic political problems against the regime.

Israel

Bibi Netanyahu obviously believes Iran threatens the survival of Israel, as no major domestic political reasons to go to war are evident. The majority of Israel's population appears to be opposed to a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities because of retaliation from Iran and Hezbollah. But as in the US, what the majority of the people want is of no consequence.

Berlin's Cozy New Relationship with Beijing

Merkel in China

By Markus Deggerich, Ralf Neukirch and Wieland Wagner

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and much of her cabinet are headed to Beijing on Thursday for a two-day diplomatic offensive. China has quickly become one of Germany's key partners, but several heated disagreements remained to be solved.

The quality of the relationship between two world leaders isn't revealed in official appearances, military parades and festive dinners that have been planned down the very last detail. Instead, it is reflected in the small gestures and conversations that take place on the sidelines of the main events, especially when unexpected problems arise.

That was the case in February, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel was last in China. The Chinese authorities had prevented human rights attorney Mo Shaoping from attending Merkel's reception at the German Embassy in Beijing. Merkel could have scored points with voters back home by issuing in sharp protest. But it would have also complicated her foreign-policy mission.

QE3 and the looming currency war

An unstable situation could worsen

By Michael Casey

First, let’s get this straight: The U.S. Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee is composed of some very smart, sensible people.

But...for all the unreasonable accusations that are sometimes leveled at Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues, there is one good reason to complain about the FOMC’s detachment from the world. It stems from the fact that the Fed’s mandate extends no further than U.S. borders. The committee members are under no legal obligation to consider the impact of their actions on foreign countries. And yet their decisions inevitably have a sweeping, disruptive influence on global money markets and, by extension, on the world economy.

Economic reality will reassert itself. Again.

Our fatally conceited elites are being confronted with reality

By ALLISTER HEATH

IT was FA Hayek, an economics Nobel prize winner of immeasurably greater distinction than Paul Krugman, who put it best. In his book the Fatal Conceit, he launched a devastating attack on those who believe that elites can mould and control humanity’s destiny. Central direction is impossible, a limitation those in authority never accept.

Past fatal conceits include the view that private property and markets can be abolished, and replaced by pure socialism and central planning, whereby a small group decides what is produced, what is consumed and who works where and gets what. But we remain plagued by many other, contemporary fatal conceits. Here are two especially pernicious ones.

The first is the belief that governments can endlessly create growth out of thin air by manipulating aggregate demand – cutting rates, printing money or borrowing and spending more. Of course, such actions can have a huge effect. Monetary policy can be extremely potent; the cost of borrowing is the most important price in the economy and the quantity of money, and the speed at which it circulates, is fundamental to the health of an economy, because money is used in every single exchange. It may well have made sense to cut interest rates in China, for example, as the Beijing authorities did yesterday for the first time since 2008. Varying public spending to manipulate GDP, however, is pretty useless at the best of times.

The Capture of the Professional Class

The Rot Runs Deep Part 3 

A rotten-to-the-core system continues grinding on because it has effectively co-opted (captured) the professional/managerial class with promises of phantom wealth and security.

by Charles Hugh

The Status Quo depends on the professional/managerial class to maintain order and keep the machine running. Since this class has more options in life than less educated lower-income workers, their belief in the fairness and stability of the Status Quo is essential: should their belief in the Status Quo weaken, so would their commitment to positions that require long work days and abundant stress.

I addressed this dependence on the professional/managerial class over four years ago in When Belief in the System Fades (March 12, 2008):

The corollary to this structural need for highly motivated, dedicated people to work the gears is that if their belief in the machine fades, then the machine grinds to a halt.

This belief is far more vulnerable than the Powers That Be seem to understand.

Poor In India Starve As Politicians Steal $14.5 Billion Of Food

Indian Socialism in Action

By Mehul Srivastava and Andrew MacAskill

Ram Kishen, 52, half-blind and half- starved, holds in his gnarled hands the reason for his hunger: a tattered card entitling him to subsidized rations that now serves as a symbol of India’s biggest food heist.

Kishen has had nothing from the village shop for 15 months. Yet 20 minutes’ drive from Satnapur, past bone-dry fields and tiny hamlets where children with distended bellies play, a government storage facility five football fields long bulges with wheat and rice. By law, those 57,000 tons of food are meant for Kishen and the 105 other households in Satnapur with ration books. They’re meant for some of the 350 million families living below India’s poverty line of 50 cents a day.