Tag Archives: economy

Business/Economics, International, Technology

One Year later: Tourist bus finally removed from top of two story building in Japan

On March 11, 2011, a 17 ton tourist bus was left on top of a two story community hall building, after the tsunami sucked itself back out to sea.

That was in Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, Honshu, Japan (Nippon).

On March 10, 2012, nearly one year later, the bus was finally removed from the roof.  Many survivors said it was a bad reminder of the tsunami.  The owner of the bus company said the sight of his bus on the roof drove him to swear that he will operate his bus line again.

The bus had been sitting in a garage, 500 meters (1,640 feet) from its resting place, when the tsunami swept it away.  Watch NHK reporter who filmed as she ran from disaster video to see the bus immediately after the tsunami.

Business/Economics, U.S.

Government Incompetence: Pentagon gives multi-million dollar contracts to yet another company that hasn’t paid taxes!

It’s been revealed that Leonie Industries owes the United States $4 million in taxes, yet has been awarded Defense Department contracts worth at least $120 million.

The company is supposed to be providing marketing and media services, as well as intelligence and information operations.

U.S. Senators Tom Carper (D-Delaware) and Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) have demanded that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta explain how a company that owes taxes gets awarded so many contracts.

 

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

No True Economic Recovery: Renowned Economist says this is totally the Banks’ fault, nothing can be done by governments, working class been paying for it, it’s called Deleveraging and it’s a sign we’re in a “Terminal Downturn”!

Steve Keen is Professor of Economics & Finance at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.  He was named by Forbes as the most accurate economic forecaster in this economic disaster.  He received the Revere Award from the Real World Economics Review, also for his accurate predictions. He wrote the book Debunking Economics.

Now in a recent interview with former Wall Street broker, Timothy Maxwell “Max” Keiser, Keen says there is nothing governments can do to save the economy, because it is actually an inherent part of the banking system’s sinister operations!

No amount of tax increases, or government spending cuts (austerity), or government spending increases (Keynesian spending), or even corporate bailouts will help save the economy.  It’s called deleveraging: “The reason it hasn’t worked….this is massive deleveraging. The private sector has borrowed its way into enormous levels of debt over about 40, 50 year period….from owing about half a year’s GDP as the debt level in the 1950s to [owing] three years GDP now!”

I’ve already written about the IMF’s order to continue deleveraging of households (that’s you and me), Keen is saying this is part and parcel of the too big to fail banks policies.

Deleveraging (retracting credit) means the banks try to get rid of their debts.  Those debts include the mortgages and credit cards they’ve issued to the general public.

They deleverage households by calling in your chips, saying pay up now.  It doesn’t matter if you’re credit rating is good or not.  Many of the foreclosures involved people who had never missed payments, even people who had paid off their homes!  And deleveraging attacks corporations as well.

A recent case of deleveraging, involving a major corporation, was the shut down of Air Australia. The airline was shut down when it’s creditors (too big to fail banks) refused to leverage (issue credit) for Air Australia’s fuel purchases.

Steve Keen says the too big to fail banks are now deleveraging everyone because the too big to fail banks became addicted to debt themselves!  This goes back to the 1980s, and includes personalities like Alan Greenspan and Mitt Romney.

Keen says it’s the vulture capitalist mentality that is destroying the country: “…capitalists in euphoric states, and certainly finance capitalists…they borrow money, they gamble on asset prices, they’ll cause a bubble…of course the borrowing is badly thought out, projects don’t work, they’re ponzi schemes in many ways to begin with…you go through periods of ratcheting up levels of debt, until you get to the point that there’s so much debt the system simply can’t cope with it and you go into a terminal downturn, and that’s where we are right now.”

The 1980s saw the beginning of the trend of vulture capitalists, like Mitt Romney, using leverage (loans) to take over companies, carve them up and sell them off.  Not only did it make big money for people like Mitt Romney (while causing millions of U.S. workers to lose their jobs between the 1980s and now) it made big money for the too big to fail banks.

In steps Alan Greenspan.  The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the U.S.  It actually makes money off issuing loans to the too big to fail banks.  So, it is in the interest of the Federal Reserve to keep this game going.  It’s not about jobs at all, it’s about making money purely through loans.

Presidential candidate Ron Paul is correct about the Federal Reserve being part of the problem, because Keen says Greenspan is responsible for what is about to become the biggest depression ever: “…Alan Greenspan turned what would have been a garden variety small depression, back in 1987, into the biggest depression in human history by rescuing the financial industry from each of its mistakes.  Which simply meant that it [finance industry] would go looking for another social class to lend money to, expanding the level of debt…If the central banks hadn’t been trying to rescue us from each of the individual financial crisis we would’ve had a minor depression…we’re now in for the biggest of all time…now we’re dealing with the biggest financial crisis ever, and we can certainly blame the central banks for the scale of it.”

Keen also discovered, while working through his mathematical models, that when the shit hits the fan it’s not the banks and vulture capitalists who pay for the debt they themselves created, it’s the working class: “…So, as the level of debt rose, it wasn’t the capitalists who paid for it, even though they were the ones doing the borrowing, it was the workers in terms of their income share…the ones who are now paying for it through austerity actually are the ones who’ve been paying for it through a lower share of income, not the capitalists….” 

Here’s what Keen had to say about the too big to fail banks: “Having a large financial sector is a sign of a sick economy.”  Because banks represent finance capital and “…finance capital doesn’t make money!”  Keen explained that banks are there to help true industries operate, and make money the old fashioned way, by earning it through providing products or services.  In other words you should not have too big to fail banks making up the majority of your country’s GDP, which is in fact what’s happening in the U.S.

Towards the end of Keen’s interview with Max Keiser, he predicted that Australia’s economy will begin to crash within six to 12 months, and he thinks the Australian government will attempt the same pro-bank, anti-worker, rescue policies as that of the United States.  Keen calls the U.S. policy “…rescuing the parasite [banks, Romney style capitalists, etc] rather than rescuing the host [true industries, working class].”

In the early 1990s Keen came up with an economic model that takes into account vulture capitalist debt financing.  He used mathematical chaos theory to prove what film maker Oliver Stone tried to warn about in his movie Wall Street: Mitt Romney style capitalism doesn’t work, and doesn’t create more jobs in the long run.  Back in 1993 Keen warned that any apparent tranquility caused by the out of control crony capitalist debt financing was actually “…the lull before the storm.” 

Check out debtdeflation.com

 

 

 

 

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

World War 3 & Government Incompetence?: U.S. Senator calls for blocking all Iranian oil, even thought it would destroy U.S. allies. War with Iran is meant to allow the U.S. to become a major oil exporter

Days after a UBS oil analyst said ten countries (allies of the U.S.) would be destroyed if Iranian oil was cut off, a dumb U.S. Senator proposes to cut off Iranian oil!

In a Friday interview with C-SPAN’s (Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network) Newsmakers program, democrat Carl Levin says he wants to use the U.S. Navy to blockade Iranian oil shipments.

Levin is inviting other countries to join in: “I think (these are) options that whoever is willing to participate should explore, including Israel and including the United States.”

Levin admitted that alternative oil supplies would have to be found for the allies of the United States.  Mmmm, you mean like the United States now that it actually has too much oil on hand (recently the CEO of Exxon Mobil said the U.S. oil “…markets are well supplied.”)?  Now we know the real reason for going to war against the World’s second largest petroleum producer  (oil from Canada and North Dakota is actually creating a surplus in the U.S.).

 

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

World War 3: UBS says war with Iran will destroy U.S. allies

Julius Walker, an oil analyst with Swiss based financial company UBS, says war with Iran could destroy ten countries, from lack of oil.

He told Business Insider that not only would the price of oil skyrocket past $250 per barrel, but the economies of ten countries could be devastated.

Those ten countries are actually allies of the United States (and some are already on the verge of collapse): China, India, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Greece, South Africa and France.  Maybe they won’t be allies for very long?

 

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

Financial Incompetence: After ratings agencies declare Greece in default, IMF offers yet another billion dollar loan!

March 10, 2012, just hours after Moody’s declared Greece in full default the U.S. based International Monetary Fund offers Greece another multi-billion Euro loan.

Moody’s declared Greece in full default after Greece agreed to a new sovereign debt (government bonds) swap deal, which will see 53% of Greece’s debt erased.  Many holders of Greek bonds will be forced to take losses.

Now Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the IMF, is offering Greece a U.S. $36.7 billion loan.  That’s on top of the other loans Greece is still waiting for.

So credit ratings companies are saying Greece is not in a position to pay back more debt, yet the U.S. led world finance institutions are offering Greece more debt?  By the way, the  IMF had to borrow that money from BRICS!   In 2011, for the first time in the IMF’s history they were broke, and went ‘cap in hand’ to BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to beg for money, so they could in turn lend it to Western countries.

 

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? Moody’s declares Greece in full default

Earlier in the day the main stream media was reporting “good” news on the latest agreement between creditors and Greece, but that’s not how Moody’s sees it.

Moody’s says the latest deal actually pushed Greece into automatic default: “According to Moody’s definitions, this exchange represents a ‘distressed exchange’ and therefore a debt default.”

On March 9, 2012, a deal was made that allowed a debt exchange plan hoping to cancel about U.S. $143 billion dollars in Greek government bonds.

Fukushima

Global Food Crisis: Out of desperation Japanese Grocery stores turn to Chinese Rice!

No thanks to the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi, Japanese rice prices have skyrocketed.  This is because the amount of Japanese rice that is not contaminated with radiation is getting smaller every month.

That fact has caused wholesale prices for Japanese rice to rise 20% since March 2011. Traditionally Japanese grocery stores will sell only Japanese rice, but now they are turning to rice from China.

Some stores are offering free samples to get their customers to buy it. Major supermarket operator, Seiyu, says they will try a test sale this coming weekend.  If it’s successful then Chinese rice could become the main food staple of Japan!

Business/Economics, International, Technology, U.S.

Oil & Gas Prices: Iraq increases oil production, North Dakota #3 oil producer, latest increase in oil prices blamed on Iran & Greece

The Iraqi government owned South Oil Company said they are about to increase oil flow from a new floating oil platform in the Persian Gulf.

The new platform is one of four to be built by an Australian company.  Each platform can flow 22,000 barrels per day.  Recently the Iraqi government said their oil production hit three million barrels per day.  This backs up the CEO of Exxon Mobil who said there is plenty of oil in the supply system.

Another proof of plenty of oil in the system; North Dakota has passed up California, as the number three oil producing state in the U.S.

Most of the oil in North Dakota comes from the controversial fracking of shale oil.  In January 2012 North Dakota’s oil production hit 546,500 barrels per day. That’s a 59% increase from January 2011!  By the way, crony capitalist Mitt Romney has hired a CEO, of one of the companies working the oil fields in North Dakota, to be his energy adviser.

Western media blaming recent increase in oil prices on Greek bailout news.  They say prices went up because (once again) a new deal has been reached, on the old deal.  It’s strange ’cause the media sometimes blames an oil price increase on the Greek deals being held up or falling through.

By the way, the Western media hasn’t really explained why the so called Greek debt problem is affecting oil prices.  Greece is not a oil producing country, and they don’t use that much petroleum compared to bigger European countries. In fact, Greece gets a lot of oil from Iran.  Maybe that’s it, they don’t want to play the sanctions game, along with my speculation about their non-compliance with Leviathan.

Western media also blaming reduction of Iranian oil bound for Europe on the price increase.  One Western source even said it was proof the oil sanctions against Iran are working.  One problem with that; Iran says they’ve made up for their cuts (note: “their” cuts, not the sanctions imposed by U.S./Europe) to Europe by increasing sales to other countries.  So who’s really getting hurt by those sanctions?

 

 

Business/Economics, International, Technology, U.S.

Oil & Gas Prices: Exxon Mobil will cut oil production, blames high fuel prices on speculators, blames Republican controlled Congress for too much regulation

Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest corporate producer of oil and natural gas, announced they will cut oil/gas production for 2012 by at least 3%.

This comes as companies like Exxon have said that they have to increase spending of their record setting profits on developing access to new sources of petroleum.

Exxon has already spent tens of billions in the past year, and they’re planning nine projects for 2013, and 12 projects for 2014.

However, it could be that the real reason Exxon Mobil is reducing production is that Iraq is challenging their contracts with the Kurdistan Regional Government.  Iraqi officials say Exxon’s contracts with Iraqi Kurdistan are illegal.  Iraq is taking legal action to kick Exxon out of the huge oil fields in northern Iraq!

Even so, Exxon Mobil’s CEO, Rex Tillerson, said fuel prices are not up because of lack of supply: “On pure supply-demand fundamentals, the markets are well supplied.”

So why are prices going up? Tillerson says “Gasoline prices are up because crude oil is up.”  Really? Duh! But wait, there’s more.  Tillerson also indicated oil prices will continue to go up because of supply issues: “People who are trying to secure those supplies are going to pay what it takes…today with the view that they might not be able to get them later.”

Basically he’s saying that despite plenty of oil already in the supply system, the speculators are driving up prices because they are afraid the oil supply will suddenly stop.

Tillerson explained that it’s not just wars that could stop the oil/gas supply, but over regulation by the Republican controlled U.S. Congress: “Our regulatory process has become so complicated by so many duplicative agencies, by so many mandates from Congress, that now it has become a way to stop things from happening. There are a thousand ways you can be told ‘no’ in this country.”

Oh, and by the way, all those billions of dollars that Exxon Mobil is going to be spending ($185 billion estimated) on those dozen or more projects in the next few years, is expected to increase their production by only 4% to 8% by 2016!!!