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| Taking a Closer Look at the Stories Ignored by the Corporate Media |
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Archive for the Month of August, 2005.
Viewing Economics NEWS articles 1 through 24 of 24.
- Bush has thrown the U.S. government deeply into the red by combining a massive trillion dollar tax cut for the rich with stupendous imperial "defense" expenditures sold to the populace on a shifting set of false pretenses that merged the imperial occupation of Iraq (a key Bush II project from day one) with something called "a war on terrorism." Boldly linking his twin imperatives of Empire and Inequality, Bush has used fear and deception to cover the gaping disconnect between (a) his claim that we are all united in a war for our shared survival and (b) his stupendous giveaways to the privileged few.
- If one puts all this together, it is hard to escape the conclusion we just may be very close to Hubbert's peak right now and, some day, 2005 will be declared the year of peak oil.
- CAFTA and NAFTA are not simply agreements; rather, they set up authorities that trump federal, state, and local laws and constitutions. When our elected officials signed CAFTA into law, they signed over a piece of our sovereignty. The U.S. Constitution gives Congress and only Congress the power to regulate trade. NAFTA, on the other hand, sets up a tribunal to rule on all maters of trade
- International oil companies have advertising campaigns warning that the world is running out of oil and calling on the public to help the industry do something about it. - by Michael Ruppert Big Oil tells us that actual peak is further away than we know it to be. And the fact that in some cases they are even acknowledging a possible peak in three to five years means that it’s probably here right now. Remember Karen Silkwood?
- The US continues its descent into the Third World, but you would never know it from news reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July payroll jobs release.
- Everybody has started to pick on the poor Americans: - High gas prices may not only pinch your wallet at the pump but also at the supermarket
- In South Florida, housing analyst Jack McCabe said the housing market has reached its pinnacle and as interest rates increase over the next year, prices will begin to decline. The hardest-hit market will be new condominiums, McCabe said.
- The majority of people who place bets on gasoline expect prices to keep surging this year.
- President George Bush, a man who has never soiled his hands with a hard day’s work for a day’s pay in his life, promotes illegal alien migration by saying, "They do work that Americans won’t do." What he really means is--corporations welcome illegal aliens so they can work for slave wages which aids his corporate friends to help buy more Lear Jets and drive Rolls Royces along with a third home in Aspen, Colorado.
- In a newly released book, investment banker Matthew R Simmons convincingly demonstrates that, far from being capable of increasing its output, Saudi Arabia is about to face the exhaustion of its giant fields and, in the relatively near future, will probably experience a sharp decline in output.
- The world could run out of time to develop cleaner alternatives to oil and other fossil fuels before depletion drives prices through the roof, a leading Dutch energy researcher said on Thursday. - An oil expert and author who correctly forecast $3 per gallon gasoline in the United States this year says the price will reach $5 next year.
- If the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped steadily for twenty years it would be front page and leading broadcast news day after day until government took action. That 32 million of our population have their housing, food, and clothing "index" drop steadily for more than 30 years is worth only an occasional feature story about an individual or statistical fragments in back pages of our most influential news organizations. An unnecessary poverty class is shameful in "the leader of the free world" and the richest one at that.
- The rising price of gasoline troubles Americans, because it threatens our sustaining, cultural illusion of our freedom of mobility -- a commercial con job that, over time, has served to transform us from the citizens of a sprawling republic into de facto slaves of the corporate classes. Our masters have the mobility -- we have a long commute.
- With corporations sitting on more than a trillion dollars in idle cash, with tax breaks helping create astonishing increases in wealth at the top, the people who make this economy work deserve some cash of their own. They also need it.
- Rushing to beat an October deadline, when the biggest overhaul of the bankruptcy law in 25 years goes into effect, rising numbers of Americans seeking to have their debts erased have filed for protection. - Black and poor Americans receive less life-saving medical treatment than their white and well-off compatriots, health researchers said in separate studies suggesting that inequality is worsening.
- A UN report has found that the world is more unequal today than it was 10 years ago, despite considerable economic growth in many regions.
- The estate tax represents a profoundly American idea: Although parents should be able to pass on wealth to their children, great concentrations of personal wealth should not grow unchecked from generation to generation. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt put it, "Inherited economic power is as inconsistent with the ideals of this generation as inherited political power was inconsistent with the ideals of the generation which established our government."
- ...the Saudis are about to hit their peak production, if they haven't already - Tuition at these public institutions has been going up quickly in the past decade, reversing the long-held public policy that tax monies should pay for most of the tuition and the rest of the expenses of public higher education. Quietly year by year, privatization of a public good has been growing. - Campaigners say that the scrapping of textile trade rules eight months ago has the potential to destroy the economies of tsunami-hit countries such as Bangladesh, while the EU quotas are only designed to protect rich countries such as France and Italy, rather than help those worst hit by the situation.
Pages for August, 2005
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