This movie and website is making the rounds lately, so I thought I'd take a closer look. As a bioregionalist, I found myself asking a series of questions about what I found. So in the spirit of the website's admonition "not to take on, unquestioningly, a new set of beliefs," I share this review with the reader.
2010 Oscar Winner for Best Documentary, 'Inside Job' provides a comprehensive analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008, which at a cost over $20 trillion, caused millions of people to lose their jobs and homes in the worst recession since the Great Depression, and nearly resulted in a global financial collapse. Through exhaustive research and extensive interviews with key financial...
THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD is a screwball true story about two gonzo political activists who, posing as top executives of giant corporations, lie their way into big business conferences and pull off the world's most outrageous pranks.
Can thousands of diverse, locally-rooted, grassroots economic projects form the basis for a viable democratic alternative to capitalism? It might seem unlikely that a motley array of initiatives such as worker, consumer, and housing cooperatives, community currencies, urban gardens, fair trade organizations, intentional communities, and neighborhood self-help associations could hold a candle to...
This is the text of an essay on the new Liberty Movement that has sprung up across the United States in response to the "socialist" policies of the current administration.It is intended for distribution at gun shows, and the audience it hopes to reach is mainly white working class people.
Deep in a recession and with scary ecological scenarios looming, now may be the ripest moment we’ll ever have to power-shift global capitalism onto a new path. Adbusters #85 asks economics students around the world to join the fight to revamp Econ 101 curriculums and challenge the endemic myopia of their tenured neoclassical profs. Go to KICKITOVER.ORG, read a few texts, download the Kick it Over...
Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last five decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate, the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100.This extraordinary...
Corporate Capitalism As a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege. Manorialism, commonly, is recognized to have been founded by robbery and usurpation; a ruling class established itself by force, and then compelled the peasantry to work for the profit of their lords. But no system of exploitation,including capitalism, has ever been created by the action of a free market. Capitalism was founded...
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi On "How Goldman Sachs Has Engineered Every Major Market Manipulation Since The Great Depression"The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.Any attempt to...
On Monday, we said just 40 House Progressives could end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan (Af/Pak) by opposing the Pentagon's demand for another $95 billion. That's because all 178 Republicans will vote no over $5 billion for the IMF.Nearly 10,000 of you emailed your Representatives, and 15 House Progressives responded to you by opposing the $95 billion. So now we need just 25 more. So...
Dear Fellow American Citizen: The ongoing, severe economic turmoil in our nation - destined to get worse if the right remedy is not enacted - was predicted in our video The Money Masters as the inevitable result of our fractional reserve banking system.
THE MONEY MASTERS is a 3 1/2 hour non-fiction, historical documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure. (This film screening will cover part 1, roughly 90 minutes). The modern political power structure has its roots in the hidden manipulation and accumulation of gold and other forms of money. The development of fractional reserve banking practices in the 17th century...
7:00pm - 8:00pm/ Kansas University Union. Alderson Auditorium. Lawrence, KS/ FREEIn 47 minutes, Paul Grignon, writer, artist and animator of the movie Money as Debt , tells the whole story about how money works. Believe me, this is a huge accomplishment. For as long as I've studied this topic (going on 26 years), I found it difficult to find any one author who could break down the facts for a lay...
That's right. We're selling out. We got a rather scrupulous offer from Google to sell FFA, and we thought, screw it. Now that Obama's in power we don't need activism to change things. We've got change in the White House, working for us! We've been working at this for four years, no pay. What kind of job is that? Well, no more! Fast cash now! Google promised they'd only make a few changes too...
Adopting the slogan "life before debt," Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa announced that his government will default on $3.9 billion in foreign commercial debts.
Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority.Participants on the October 17 call -- including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG -- were urged to persuade their clients to...
As our 44th President prepares to enter the Oval Office, bank lending has seized up, some of the nation’s largest banks are on life support, and the big three automakers are bankrupt. Housing continues to crash, and so does the economy.Little wonder that Obama is being compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who entered the White House in similar financial straits in 1932. Even before taking office...
Though Citicorp is deemed too big to fail, it's hardly reassuring to know that it's been allowed to sink its fangs into the Mother Zombie that the US Treasury has become and sucked out a multi-billion dollar dose of embalming fluid so it can go on pretending to be a bank for a while longer. I employ this somewhat clunky metaphor to point out that the US Government is no more solvent than the...
One week before Buy Nothing Day focuses the attention of activists around the world on the perils of overconsumption, groundbreaking economist, Herman Daly, zeroes in on the root cause of our financial meltdown.
The financial crisis has put to rest the myths that our economic institutions are sound and markets work best when deregulated.Our economic institutions have failed, not only financially, but also socially and environmentally. This, combined with the election of a new president with a mandate for change, creates an opportune moment to rethink and redesign.President-elect Obama has promised to...