Missing the Point

By James Kwak

The Basel Committee’s recent decision to change the definition of the leverage ratio is bad news for two reasons.

There’s the obvious: A smaller denominator means less capital. The leverage ratio requirement says, in principle, that banks must have capital equal to at least X% of their total unweighted assets, where “assets” is supposed to include anything they hold that could fall in value. Take some bank that has some amount Y of traditional assets and other things that could fall in value, like derivatives positions. Then it has to have capital equal to X * Y / 100. If we take the exact same bank but decide to call Y some smaller number, say Z, then it can get bay with less capital. Less capital = more risk.

Then there’s the slightly less obvious. The whole point of the leverage ratio is to safeguard against the ability of banks to game capital requirements based on risk-weighted assets. Under Basel I and II, banks had to hold capital equal to some percentage of their assets, but those assets were weighted according to their perceived (or politically defined) risk. Most notoriously, all sovereign bonds had a risk weighting of zero, no matter what country issued them, so if all you held was Greek bonds, you didn’t need to have any capital. The leverage ratio is supposed to provide a backstop so that no matter how clever the bankers and their lawyers are, the bank still has to hold some capital.

For this reason, the definition of assets for leverage ratio purposes should really include everything you can possibly think of: non-netted derivatives, implicit guarantees to off-balance-sheet entities, everything. Then we can argue about what the percentage should be. But it makes no sense to have a leverage ratio definition that doesn’t include everything, because then banks will be able to game it. At the end of the day, we’ll just have two different risk-weighting mechanisms, each of which is fodder for clever lawyers and accountants.

The only partial hope is that the United States will hold the line with a strict definition of the leverage ratio and a higher percentage than that in Basel. This is the one thing that Tim Geithner promised when he was fighting every other serious attempt to solve the TBTF problem: higher, stricter capital requirements. Of course, now that the banks have had their way in Basel, they will use that as an argument for weakening U.S. capital regulations. It’s unlikely the Obama administration will try very hard to hold the line, given its record and the people who hold the economic policy positions these days. That more or less leaves Janet Yellen, who doesn’t have much of a record—good or bad—when it comes to standing up to big banks.

109 thoughts on “Missing the Point”

  3. Here he is!

    Bank capital requirements are to cover for “unexpected losses”, since “expected losses” are covered by the bankers, by means of interest rates, size of exposure and other terms.

    But the regulators, for reasons of simplicity, explicitly based their risk-weights, those which determine the effective capital requirements, on the same perceived risks of expected losses… and which means that current capital requirements cover twice for expected losses, and not once for unexpected losses.

    And this allows banks to earn much higher risk adjusted returns on equity when lending to the “safe” than when lending to “the risky”, something that makes it impossible for banks to allocate credit efficiently in the real economy.

    And to top it up the risk-weights are, explicitly, “portfolio invariant” which means they do not consider the benefits of asset diversification, or the dangers of asset concentration.

    And so the real issue is not about whether the leverage ratios are correct or not…. the real issue, the most important missing point, is that the current bank regulators simply do not know what they are doing… and should therefore not be allowed to regulate.

    http://subprimeregulations.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-basel-committee-incorrectly-assumes.html

    Why are we allowed to interview a pilot when he makes a bad landing which endangers the lifes of passengers and the crew but are not allowed to question the bank regulators when they endanger our whole economy?

  4. Per, but as we saw in 08, it only takes one unexpected loss to bring the system to it’s knees, and then the tax payer picks up the tab in the form of higher prices due to the one loss. The last sentence is a good question, and I would respond that there comes a point where the hypocrisy of the situation become so intense that it can no longer be addressed. This leads to a denial of the situation, which then requires that a God they don’t believe in, to take the situation back to square one, where the resistance level will be more visibly manageable.

  5. I am not sure leverage is relevant any longer. Leverage rules presuppose an operational diffuse market. Banks no longer operate in such a market. They are monopolies. They are either run well on good rules and with full understanding and total integrity, or not. In 2008, we learned they were not, and that their top people in charge were not in charge, indeed were grossly ignorant of business basics. This was especially true of Basel II.

  6. Read the tea-leaves: The fiat structure is ascending for a reason and the air is getting very thin in the strata-sphere of global finance.
    Sustaining wealth/austerity expansion is becoming desperate.

  8. One of the central causes of this problem is the lie put about by banks namely that excessive capital requirements would hit economic growth: a lie that politicians swallow hook line and sinker. Mainly they swallow it because they’re dumb, but the ones that aren’t dumb can be bought.

    The reality is that we could perfectly well raise capital requirements to 100% (as advocated by for example Lawrence Kotlikoff and John Cochrane). That is, ALL BANK CREDITORS would become loss absorbers. And to make up for the deflationary effects of that we could just print base money and spend it into the economy. But of course private banks don’t want central banks muscelling in on their money creation business.

    For Kotlikoff and Cochrane see respectively:

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-27/the-best-way-to-save-banking-is-to-kill-it.html

    http://www.hoover.org/news/daily-report/150171

  9. real-worldeconomicsreview,issue no.66 p144
    Book review
    Heikki Patomäki,
    The Great Eurozone Disaster:
    From Crisis to Global New Deal
    (London & New York: Zed Books, 2012) (co-transl. JamesO’Connor & Heikki Patomäki)
    Magnus Ryner
    [King’s College, London]

    Click to access Ryner66.pdf

    “Patomäki demonstrates the limits not only of neoliberal solutions (as currently offered by the so-called‘Troika’), but also of nationalist and Euro-Keynesian ones.
    In essence, the argument is that the imbalances that generated the crisis will prevail and eventually be activated until what
    Patomäki calls a ‘democratic global Keynesianism’ has been implemented.
    This is to be understood as a multileveled system, with considerable local, national and regional autonomy, but also one with substantively beefed up global governance, consisting for instance of global transaction taxes, redistributive mechanisms and a global reserve currency developed out of the embryo of Special Drawing Rights.”

    Book review of The Great Eurozone Disaster: From Crisis to Global New Deal
    Copyright:
    Magnus Ryner, 2014

  11. Off topic, apologies to blog hosts

    Remember people, Benjamin Netanyahu “prays for the peace of Israel”, probably “everyday”, but as the leader/Head of State, he doesn’t want his money to go to Israel. And there—boys and girls—is ALL you really need to know about this man (although there are many other things Netanyahu could be called out on) to know he’s a piece of crap with very little interest in making peace with the women and children of Palestine/Gaza, who he works so hard to deny water, food and basic living supplies:
    http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000909829&fid=1725

  12. http://www.cnbc.com/id/101337913

    Claw back from GLOBAL War, Drug and Slave Lords is inevitable. Just a question of how ugly will it get…..getting the people to chew each other up continues to be wildly successful….Homeland Insecurity goons were laughing their arses off with Christie’s puerile abuse of Port Authority power….BILLIONS went into the Port Authority for “security” upgrades…good investment? Seem like that has been the only “redistribution” of “wealth” ala The Patriot Act.

    So “no thanks” to THAT king of redistribution via “government”….

  13. @Anonymouse “Per, but as we saw in 08, it only takes one unexpected loss to bring the system to it’s knees”

    Indeed, but then again expected losses rarely if ever cause a problem… it is always the unexpected ones… always those to be found among those who have perceived as safest… those who therefore present the largest potential for unpleasant unexpected losses surprises.

  15. @Per – everyone was gunning to steal from the “safest”, weren’t they?

    Rinse and repeat history…

  16. @Annie “@Per – everyone was gunning to steal from the “safest”, weren’t they?”

    I am not sure I understand you but NO! the way the capital requirements for banks which cleared twice for perceived risk of expected losses works, is that they steal bank credit possibilities from “the risky” in order to give these to the “absolutely safe”

  17. Patrick Sullivan: Banking is a monopolistic industry. Largely because of regulation. You can have that, if and only if you get the regulation right. Call it a cartel. Same difference.

  18. Let me ask you this then Per, why would one “expect a loss” in the first place (unless you designed to be that way?). And then further more, why should an “expected loss” rarely if ever cause a problem? If it’s a loss, it’s a problem to someone, somewhere. So those people who profit from such beliefs can talk the talk, but eventually they must also walk the surprised walk.

  19. @Anonymouse
    Banks analyze a credit, perhaps by just using of a credit rating, then they define the possibility of a default, an expected loss, and so they cover for this by means of risk premiums, the size of the exposure and other means. And indeed the individual creditor might default but what the banks earn in additional risk premiums from other creditors in that risk class and who do not default covers the loss…

    But an “unexpected loss”… like that which hit all the banks when suddenly the AAA ratings given to the securities collateralized with mortgages to the subprime sector, turned out to be Potemkin ratings… for that they do not cover in their risk premiums, and it is therefore for that that regulators must require banks to have their own capital.

    But what capital did the regulator require the banks to hold for those AAA securities?… Only 1.6 percent because the regulators also used the same risk perceptions of the expected losses, to set the capital requirements for the unexpected losses… and that´s the mother of all regulatory mistakes… something for which if there was any accountability at all, the regulators should all be fired.

    By the way it is not that all regulators did not know what they were doing… the Basel Committee explicitly recognized the dangers but went still ahead with it, all in the name of simplification…

    Of course, Ministers of Finance and other who must approve what the regulators are doing, they just do not understand a word of what the regulators are talking about…

  20. Your first sentence explains it all, you want to grade people’s ability to make and manage money, and use that as basis for income.
    When it would now seem that you are more a part of the country financial problems, then a solution to these problems,(and I suspected such from the very beginnings of your writings a long time ago). Since you refuse to recognize the fact that once banks were allowed to exceed the 2000 year history of a 10 % limit on interest rate charges, we entered the phase where every means possible to extract wealth from the lower classes has been used and abused to the point of no return, except for the one unexpected one which will catch you and yours off guard at the moment you least expect it.

  21. @Anonymouse “you want to grade people’s ability to make and manage money, and use that as basis for income” ????

    I am not sure you get it.

    As is, those borrowers perceived as “risky”, and who already have to pay higher interest rates because of those perceptions, must pay even higher interest rates, only because the regulators decided that they the “risky” cause higher unexpected losses.

    And that is an odious discrimination against the “risky”, especially considering that the truly dangerous unexpected losses do almost always occur among those who have been perceived as absolutely safe.

  22. @ Per Kurowski: “By the way it is not that all regulators did not know what they were doing… the Basel Committee explicitly recognized the dangers but went still ahead with it, all in the name of simplification… ”

    TAK! Sir, this is one of the most accurate and concise statements that can be made. I was just reviewing a pretty technical research report on the “Shock Therapy” as it was utilized in Poland during the recent transition. This was a text book handling and while it did not attribute complete recovery to this tactic, it did not seriously consider the social damages either. In typical fashion over time the damages were ignored and the historic recovery was considered a complex but relatively successful transition (infering that the shock therapy did create the recovery, rather than what truly happened). The statements concluded that the “system” was under disequilibrium at the start, and that “equilibrium” was restored through privatizing incentives. Of course proportions do not count here, only that the “system” is now “coherent” even if society’s cohesion has been ruptured seriously in the process. The “picture frame” of the economy does not count real lives, only bottom lines. The “baseline scenario” was an rational economic system in focus, not a society. The Basil Committee is doing the same thing for all Europe. The banks are merely train stations on the rails that are serving the private market economy specifically. “…all in the name of simplification…” as you say.
    But perhaps “expedience” is a more appropriate term?
    Regards:
    Bruce

  23. @Bruce “The banks are merely train stations on the rails that are serving the private market economy specifically”

    I do not fully agree with that. Those who the banks most serve are those who are perceived as “not risky”, like the “infallible sovereign” and the AAAristocracy. The ‘risky” private market, that one is very much underserved.

    A system which requires banks to hold 8 percent when lending to the citizens, but allows banks to lend to the sovereign against zero capital, is a devious non-transparent subsidy of the sovereign, paid by lesser and more expensive access to bank credit for the citizens.

    That said banks are of course making out like bandits, being allowed to leverage their capital immensely when lending to the “absolutely safe”… and mostly being bailed out when something unexpected happens.

    Regards

    Per

  24. @Per:
    But would you not agree that in the real world where private equity and hedge funds serve the sovereign wealth, and sustain this mass of private wealth in a zero sum gain against the general population (public and legitimate private enterprise), the banks are merely intermediaries and brokers to the big economic game (albeit that many “bankers” are players themselves…)?

  25. @Bruce

    You are referring to a much wider problem with many facets.

    With respect to just banks, I just know that, courtesy of bank regulators, banks are allowed to make much much higher risk-adjusted returns on equity when lending to what is perceived safe than when lending to what is perceived risky… and that has our banks mostly refinancing the safer past, and not financing the riskier future… so poor our unemployed youth… they could end up as a lost generation.

  26. Per: I know you have old fashion integrity and speak to a system where commercial banks helped build real economy and real equity as foundations for real growth. This today in text book vanilla has become a fantasy where digitized economic fiat has cloaked a system that is sanitized and deodorized for public consumption. Knowing your passion for the better half of the system, I do not criticize you for defending it. But if it was working correctly we would not need to hear any defenses (think back we were all in a pleasant but ignorant bliss). Today the razzle-dazzel language hides a process of exploit that fights itself for position and self-serving financial power. The escalation that is needed just to “sustain” a wealth is aggressively pursued by market forces that actually promise to sustain growth itself to the already existing wealth and it has become a system of stealth. We all know about peak oil now despite the current glut and the progressive push to consume more. If we were speaking about oil, this would be the banks making money selling dry wells. But it is more invisible than peak oil. We are at a stage of “peak wealth” in a vicious fiat economy that is looking for a 1% equilibrium model of growth.

    Here we are speaking about “missing the point. But what is the point if we are forgetting real history altogether in this matter (or worse…we allow the perverted incentives to obscure & hide their work?
    Keep these as your references:
    http://rwer.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/a-plutonomy-and-a-precarite/#more-6378
    October 25, 2011 Edward Fullbrook
    from Edward Fullbrook
    and;
    http://rwer.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/from-november-2010-citigroup-attempts-to-disappear-its-plutonomy-report-2/
    Home > Political Economy > from November 2010: Citigroup attempts to disappear its Plutonomy Report #2
    from November 2010: Citigroup attempts to disappear its Plutonomy Report #2.
    [ further still]…
    “In 2005 and 2006 Citigroup issued two now notorious but highly significant reports for the exclusive use of its richest clients. The first, from October 16, 2005, was “Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalance”. This 35 page report begins:
    The World is dividing into two blocs – the Plutonomy and the rest. (it continues in detail).
    Citigroup’s second Plutonomy report, titled “Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer”, was issued on March 5, 2006 and began:

    The latest Survey of Consumer Finance data was released Friday 24th of February. It shows that the rich in the US continue to be in great shape. We thought this was good time to bang the drum on plutonomy.
    Back in October, we coined the term ‘Plutonomy’ (The Global Investigator, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, October 14 2005). Our thesis is that the rich are the dominant drivers of demand in many economies around the world (the US, UK, Canada and Australia). These economies have seen the rich take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years, to the extent that the rich now dominate income, wealth and spending in these countries. Asset booms, a rising profit share and favourable treatment by market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper and become a greater share of the economy in the plutonomy countries.”

    Have we all “missed the point” or has the 1% managed to suppress the essential points involved in this austerity/peak-wealth trap of
    fiat economics?

  29. I think Bruce has it right here, if the banks had any real strength or power, they could bring us back the gold standard solely and leave the gvt behind. The fact that they can’t, only shows they are instead merely a transmission mechanism (or a tool) for an unsustainable political model. And they behave as such every time they attempt to financialize the worlds economy for their own interests, without considering the consequences of doing so.

  31. Every human being has the RIGHT to make their lives less miserable through honest work – is there a political “ism” that comes close to organizing itself around that REALITY??!! Nope. GLOBAL War, Drug and Slave Lords have been “union” busting with BRUTE FORCE and all they have to show is their pile of bloody filthy stolen booty and an ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER inside Spaceship Earth.

    This is DIABOLICAL “finance” and no one is going to let any “math” arguments run the show:

    More misery for others = More $$$$ for ME ME ME.

    Never bending my knee to the GLOBAL War, Drug, and Slave Lords.

    There are so many ways to fight the “war” against their psychotic rule that “your comment is awaiting moderation” is so stupid, it’s funny.

  32. Bruce already informed you that huff and puff won’t (or better said, can’t) give you the time of day over there Annie.

  33. Stupid #2 – slap “annie” instead of discussing that there is no POLITICAL “ism” that is organized around the FACT that every human being has the right to make their lives less miserable through honest work….

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/empowering-women-empowers_b_4602783.html

    Yup, you and I listen to a different “god’s” voice in the head (which, sadly, I do not have the gift of hearing voices in my head – shucks) – my God is MERCIFUL.

    The worship of math algorithms…? A religion, no doubt, but you will need to make a lot more NOISE slapping “annie” to SELL the racial and moral superiority of the god that generated the creation of a material universe based on the math:

    More misery for others = More $$$$ for ME ME ME

    5 years in to hell on earth we are still discussing the math error, right?

  34. It’s Kabuki theater. The dutiful spaniels in the socalled government and the socalled regulatory apparatus in concert with their evilsisters in the socalled judiciary and the creature we call the Fed, (and all the global central banks and fiat moneychangers) – and the complicit parrots in the socalled MSM, are all writhing putrid toxic tentacles of the predatorclass beast sucking the life and blood and capital out of the rest of humanity, the 99%!

    All these shaitans and fiends bend over backwards and insidiously manipulate every possible twisted mechanism in their considerable power to shield, protect, cloak, and advance the interests of the overlords in the predatorclass. The criminal retardation of accounting law and principles allowing predatorclass oligarchs to alter reality by marktobook practices instead of the sane and logical marktomarket practices of “sound” accounting! The gargantuan unregulated quadrillion dollar derivative Ponzi schemes and rank criminality! And here the ridiculous absurdity of reducing capital requirements. I could go on for pages, but the brutal point is all these nefarious machinations are insidiously heaped on our societies by the obedient spaniels in political and judicial systems to protect, shield, cloak, and advance the interests of the psychopaths and fascists in the predatorclass singularly and exclusively!!! It’s all one single many tentacled beast. Only the predatorclass benefits from these retarded, nefarious, and criminal machinations! There is no way to right these monstrous wrongs. There’s no fixing this malignant system. There’s no fixing this horrorshow! There is no balm in Gilead!

    Burn it all down. Reset! It’s the only hope for the 99%!!!

  35. I’m sorry you can’t see the invisible (slapping) solution Annie. There is no discussing issues with people who take a hippocratic oath, and then fight to death with it, I know from experience you are wasting your time trying.
    Your God may be merciful,( a good thing for the most part) but the only problem with that is, those people can’t change the outcome of our problem. And unfortunately most of them will be swept away innocently with the problem, in order to resolve our situation. Hang in there to the end though and you might just have enough scraps to get through to the other side, if you play your cards right.

  36. Ah, I see, “invisible” solutions are all that the “annies” in the world are ALLOWED to use to combat the GLOBAL War, Drug and Slave Lords who have TRASHED Spaceship Earth beyond recognition.

    ROTFL

    I’m already standing in Eternity, and there are no “scaps”, invisible or visible, that will open that door for you, Anonymousy. Your “god” is CLEARLY the depraved human-hater Caligastia….read up on his “mind” and you’ll see yours….

    burn it all down and reset it – invisibly…?

    ROTFL

    Every human being has the right to make their lives less miserable through honest work. And they have the RIGHT to enjoy the fruits of their labor, like duh.

    There is only one freedom, freedom from VISIBLE PRIMA FACIE rank savagery monkey brain psychotic criminality – AKA as the 1%. I know what I am talking about – they are bat sheet crazy and getting the Middle Class’s “fruits” back from them is a DUTY.

    CLAWBACK.

  37. Nope, looks like you ain’t gonna make it in the long run, which is growing shorter by the day.

  39. Yup, “god” speaks through you, Anonymousy, directly to “annie” – god’s a misogynist, who knew?

  40. Here’s a plan, Tony, for the “invisible” :-)

    “Click here to reset your computer to an earlier time”.

    No faster way to reveal the massive heist and who did it.

    Set the computer restore date for September 10, 2001

  42. BAIL OUT PLAN
    The global economy needs braces.
    BAIL OUT PLAN
    The global economy needs braces.
    BAIL OUT PLAN
    The global economy needs braces.
    BAIL OUT PLAN
    The global economy needs braces.
    BAIL OUT PLAN
    The global economy needs braces.
    BAIL OUT PLAN
    The global economy needs braces.

    This is a pun on the Simpsons meme of Dental Plan/Lisa needs braces.

  43. Missing points: ….of general interest on corruption:
    Wow! The Christie Koch Connection

  44. As far as Janet Yellen “standing up to the big banks”. Don’t hold your breath! Like all the Obama economic and financial appointee’s, advisors, and ministers and those of the fascist bushgov – Yellen is an obedient minion of the predatorclass and the TBTF oligarchs. Her job is to “paint lipstick on a pig” on TV, – and shield, cloak, and advance the interests of the predatorclass and the TBTF oligarchs behind the scenes to perpetuate the evils that allow 85 predatorclass fiends to control half of all the worlds wealth.

    Until that rank wrong is righted – there is no fixing this horrorshow!

    Burn it all down! Reset!! There’s no other hope for the 99.9%!!!

  49. especially dedicated to Per Kurowski:
    Banking on Basel: The Future of International Financial Regulation by Daniel K. Tarullo (Sep 30, 2008)

  50. Reinventing “The People”: The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem, and the Origins of Modern Liberalism (Working Class in American History) by Shelton Stromquist

  52. http://rt.com/usa/first-amendment-us-law-colleges-029/

    http://rt.com/usa/prescription-store-crime-drug/

    The “Lean on Their Neck El-duhs of ScZion” will soon be passing legislation – and TAXES on health care – that allows them to psychobabbelize your kids BEFORE they go to school – must carefully cull the herd of DECENT human beings to keep the devil spawn 1% on top – eugenics, insane style…

    C’mon, people, there is just too much iniquity running amok everywhere….it’s sickening COWARDICE. What do we need….? An “institution” to protect the NORMAL gene pool….?

    Never bending my knee to GLOBAL War Drug and Slave Lords who kiss – or is it poke? – the arse of the banksters….

  54. Davos attendees are obviously suffering from early onset dementia….propagandists must not know about YouTube where everyone was recorded saying the exact opposite of what they are saying now…

    alas, this is the only Konstandt:

    More misery for others = More $$$$ for ME ME ME

    The only Math formula that is not a “theory” :-)

  57. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/24/jpmorgan-dimon-pay-raise_n_4656711.html

    A Comment from “Marsha” regarding the “mercy” that the GLOBAL War Drug and Slave Lords extend to their banksters –
    “…How many of us regular people would still have our jobs if we’d cost our employer multiple fines and damaged its reputation? Zero. We are living in Backwards Times, where the hard-working, ever more productive poor and middle class are considered to be manifestly evil because they aren’t rich, and the non-working, non-productive and corrupt rich are heroes….”

    More misery for others = More $$$$ for ME ME ME

    JUST WAR.

  58. Well lets face it, it could be worse, we could be the worst! ….And then we could declare it, live it, enrich ourselves, entitle ourselves, ….enslave, ourselves.
    Or we could just relie on the last few remaining phrases and tricks we deadicated ourselves too, oh so many years ago.

  60. The author misses the point. The netting rules are few and overstate non-critical risks. One may ask why only written credit derivatives show up as balance sheet exposures where long-dated, gross settled, non-CLS FX transactions cause no issues…
    Why not apply full credit conversion to trade finance receivables to jeopardize global trade despite the extremely low risk of these products due to their nature.
    To insist on non-netted derivative exposure when there is a tested, operating framework to net derivative portfolios on default (ISDA for OTC and GMRA for SFTs) makes no sense.

  61. The reason it makes no sense is that there never should have been a business built around them in the first place. We needed a Financial Emancipation, instead we got financial derivatives. If you do get confused about something in this industry, it could be the resistance from the FE crowd. So your premise is completely a solo judgement call.

  64. But in the meantime: ….
    Democratic idealism & Globalization is on the March!

    Chinese Activist Calls For Equal Education For Rural Children . . . Chinese Government Jails Activist For Four Years

    January 27, 2014 by jonathanturley
    “The Chinese government has continued its crackdown on environmental and social activists this month with the shocking sentence handed down for Xu Zhiyong, a former law professor who simply campaigned for the right of children in rural areas to be educated in cities and not barred from equal opportunity.”
    Continue Reading »http://jonathanturley.org/2014/01/27/chinese-activist-calls-for-equal-education-for-rural-children-chinese-government-jails-activist-for-four-years/.

  65. http://libya360.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/ukraines-color-revolution-natos-prize-assault-on-russia-revenge-for-syria/

    Ukraine’s Color Revolution: NATO’s Prize,
    Alexandra Valiente / December 15, 2013

    Reports compiled by Libya 360° and Stop NATO
    The Eastern European Islands of the Global GULAG
    Ukraine: NATO’s Eastern Prize

    By Wayne Madsen

    In the wake of what has been called the «Orange Revolution II» …

    “Ukraine, which resisted efforts by the European Union to integrate it into Europe’s banker-led federation of austerity and poverty, came into the EU’s cross hairs after it abandoned an «Association Agreement» pact with the EU. Instead, Kyiv opted for a more lucrative economic union with Russia. That move triggered off a mass street uprising in Kyiv’s Maidan (Independence) Square that demanded the resignation of Ukraine’s democratically-elected President and government.

  66. @Woych – if ever there was just ONE story to prove the existence of evil getting hysterical when it is clearly exposed – follow the bouncing ball across the decades in the Katyn forest….

    http://rt.com/news/polish-president-crash-suicide-483/

    Eight year olds grew up, once upon a time, in USA surrounded by adults talking about moon landings….the eight year olds in 2001 grew up listening to people arguing about the “definition” of torture….

    Looks like “torture” definitions didn’t do much for the math skiils of USA kids, but so what, right? They only need to know the SUPREME math formula that rules them all:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/pisa-wealth_n_4641669.html?utm_hp_ref=world

  67. http://libya360.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/the-eastern-european-islands-of-the-global-gulag/
    The Eastern European Islands of the Global GULAG
    By Nikolai Malishevski
    “Among the first to report the existence of CIA special prisons and concentration camps in a number of countries, for example, in Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and on the territory controlled by the Kosovar Albanian regime, were the Swiss media. In December 2005 the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza confirmed that the «main European secret CIA prison» is located in Poland. The scandal which was at that time hushed up has now resurfaced. In Strasbourg hearings have begun in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on a suit brought by two prisoners of the American Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Palestinians Al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, who assert that in the early 2000s U.S. intelligence agencies detained them in a Polish military prison…”
    ——————————————————————————-
    (coming from a Polish-American family this hits home more normal, and for the USA to use these historically severely abused locations as a perverse sanctuary for their state sponsored terrorism is a monstrously cruel crime against humanity. Add to this that, as children, we were taught that only evil Communists do this kind of thing and the hypocrisy thickens into a thick thick soup of pure blood tinged bullshit from people who have captured the power of the our country to perpetrate injustice in the world’s back rooms. All while cloaking themselves in MY FLAG and in the name of Freedom and Democratic ideals. It is sicckning…, brutal and inhumane.

  68. Thanks Annie: I remember when that so-called plane crash happened. It is one of the most ludicrously under-investigated “coincidences” in all history.

  69. Getting back on topic: More global CHURNING in the pump-n-dump cycle of exploits that ramble and gamble with global economies.. Capital flight chasing capital fright and “capitalizing” in true cannibalistic fashion.
    [excerpt]:
    “This time, the Federal Reserve has created a truly global problem. A big chunk of the trillions of dollars that it pumped into the financial system over the past several years has flowed into emerging markets. But now that the Fed has decided to begin “the taper”, investors see it as a sign to pull the “hot money” out of emerging markets as rapidly as possible. This is causing currencies to collapse and interest rates to soar all over the planet. Argentina, Turkey, South Africa, Ukraine, Chile, Indonesia, Venezuela, India, Brazil, Taiwan and Malaysia are just some of the emerging markets that have been hit hard so far. In fact, last week emerging market currencies experienced the biggest decline that we have seen since the financial crisis of 2008. And all of this chaos in emerging markets is seriously spooking Wall Street as well.”
    http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/are-we-on-the-verge-of-a-massive-emerging-markets-currency-collapse
    ————————————————————————
    This summer of “crisis” driven mandates and capture is going to be a start-up on the rocky road of the last 2 years left to this political cycle. It will “mandate” the legitimation of new measures for wealth support (Republican power politics under Koch Brothers and others in the global back rooms) and justify more austerity consequences (the compromises of Obama and the exoneration of the money democratic machine that rationalizes the acceptance speeches and the narrative for public consumption). That is the picture. An exasperation economy pushing a desperation agenda where opportunity breeds contempt for any public and bleeds-out the notion of any socially based well being.

  70. @Woych – it IS on topic because that class of “evil doers” are the same people who had, and continue to have, your finances on their laptop screens and they do stuff like pay for weapons for “moderate” Syrian rebels by removing $20 from your monthly food allowance eve \n AFTER they completely wiped out your life’s work and savings to pay for their Iraq adventure.

    We are dealing with full-blown iniquity. In many ways, exponentially worse because of the level of philosophical extremism that nihilism added to the other “isms” already entrenched in the 20th century.

    Freedom from iniquity’s reach is not possible because of math and technology?!

  72. Same psychos who pulled off all the other stuff – like the Katyn “coincidence” – are gunning for mayhem in Sochi as payback for the checkmate in Syria…just sayin’…

    Never bending my knee to the GLOBAL War, Drug and Slave Lords and it is time to thin the rabid raccoon herd they release periodically from the cages.

    What can you say about people who do not care what they write – with THEIR free will – into the history books….like being the first USA President, ever, (even Lincoln during the Civil War never had a personal kill list, while Stalin did) to have a personal hit list to pass on to the game boyz controlling the drones, that, and of course, being the first “black ” USA President…a bunch of “firsts”…

    Hillary should give THE salute to the rulers from the shadows of hell that they deserve to get after the way they treated her run for President last time around…

    “I’m not your grinder monkey…” :-))

    More people in USA are registered as “Independent”, not Dem or Rethug.

    By LAW, that means we have the right to put forth a candidate…

    And the cry will be, “what stinkin’ “law”….the nihilist’s mantra….

  79. …And may perpetual light shine upon him: Pete Seeger;
    The last living authentic democrat:

  83. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
    PREAMBLE
    Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
    Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
    Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
    Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
    Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
    Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
    Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
    Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
    Article 1
    All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
    Article 2
    Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
    Article 3.
    Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
    Article 4.
    No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
    Article 5.
    No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
    Article 6.
    Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
    Article 7.
    All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
    Article 8.
    Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
    Article 9.
    No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
    Article 10.
    Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
    Article 11.
    (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
    (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
    Article 12.
    No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
    Article 13.
    (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
    (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
    Article 14.
    (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
    (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
    Article 15.
    (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
    (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
    Article 16.
    (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
    (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
    (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
    Article 17.
    (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
    (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
    Article 18.
    Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
    Article 19.
    Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

    Article 20.

    (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
    (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

    Article 21.

    (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
    (2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
    (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

    Article 22.

    Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

    Article 23.

    (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
    (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
    (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
    (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

    Article 24.

    Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

    Article 25.
    (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
    (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

    Article 26.

    (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
    (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
    (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

    Article 27.

    (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
    (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

    Article 28.

    Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

    Article 29.

    (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
    (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
    (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

    Article 30.

    Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

  86. Outstanding Bruce! Here is a framework to build a better society, a better nation, a better world. Would that the 99% globally unite behind this framework this proclamation and demand that leadership in every nation implement policy and law guaranteeing, protecting, and enforcing these rights! Count me in!

    Be warned however that the predatorclass are ruthless psychopaths and will resist with all their considerable and nefarious power any effort to change or alter the perfidious status quo. The predatorclass will never relinquish their control and domination of the earth, and all earths creatures peacefully, or bloodlessly. The predatorclass will fight like demons every and any attempt to empower the 99%, or diminish in any way predatorclass control, domination, or one penny of their illgotten gains and immeasurable wealth and power. Burn it all down. Reset!!! It’s the only hope for the 99%!

    “….We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness….”

  87. You know what is the real genius, imho, behind the establishment of “law” in USA, beginning with the Declaration of Independence against King George?

    The checks and balances against power because there was NO hypocrisy in their arguments, debates, discussions and hard work to set a “philosophy for living” in a rugged land like North America. They brought the BEST of thousands of years of “rule of law” – that being that FORCE is not only just, but a duty, to keep the free will tendency towards INIQUITY (More misery for others = More $$$$ for ME ME ME) in check.

    A SOTU speech that IGNORED the root of the economic “meltdown” of the RIGHTS of the “middle class” to not be robbed for a PRE-EMPTIVE WAR of savings and life work and a HOME is so delusional, that the “safety” of “the American people” is even LESS assured than before billions went into “spying” on the accounts in order to rob them.

    The one line everyone misses that Obama throws in – 5 times now – is “it won’t happen overnight”.

    Oh yeah, it will….

  88. Would love to know how CNBCs mantra that silenced the screams of those they were skinning alive – “everyone does not DESERVE to own a home” -fits in with “community” living?

    More like a for-profit prison “business model” is what the 1% consider “community”….that multi-billion spy center in the middle of Utah’s polygamy country was built with the STOLEN life savings and home equity of the baby boomer women on their “feminist” list…

    Imagine the cheers going up when it goes “kaboom” – maybe give green cards to the “moderate” Syrian rebels getting weapons again to do the dirty work for the 99% here in USA….?

  93. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution

    A 501C organization!!!!????

    from wiki, “….At the end of 2004 the Brookings Institution had assets of $258 million and spent $39.7 million, while its budget has grown to more than $80 million in 2009.[64] Its largest contributors include the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband Richard C. Blum, Bank of America, ExxonMobil, Pew Charitable Trusts, the MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Qatar, the Republic of China and the District of Columbia….”

    Brookings Institute, or as it is called by REAL people, “The Rich Gay Guy’s Institute”, got a BILLION $$$$ from Obama’s first term’s economic jump start DELUSIONAL policy to – get this – “review” MEDICAL data with a fresh eye to see what the NIH and big pharma “missed” seeing in the HIV data.

    So now 4 guys at Brookings are living off a BILLION dollar budget – tax free donations using taxpayer $$$$s???!!! – writing up speculative stat programs on crap data.

    That’s NOT a plan for beating swords back into ploughshares, is it?

  94. Annie: …there are better examples then Brookings, consider this:
    http://www.bookforum.com/interview/12711
    “Peter W. Singer’s previous books introduced the public to an unfamiliar world of privatized armies, child soldiers, and frightening robotic military machines. His latest offering, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press), coauthored by cybersecurity specialist Allan Friedman, doesn’t take us to some distant, hypothetical battlefield, but rather into our own computers, to the dark—and, at times, bizarre—cyberworld that he calls “a place of risk and danger.” Singer, who is a Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution and the Director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, points out that…”

    Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century by P. W. Singer (Dec 29, 2009)

    Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, Updated Edition (Cornell Studies in Security… by P.W. Singer (Nov 29, 2007)
    Children at War by P. W. Singer (Apr 10, 2006)
    =================================
    Also see the original and only paper that ever revealed the corrupt practice of Texas Looting, which happens to fit very nicely to the Savings & Loan Swindle and the looting of the Treasury by extension:
    see:
    Akerlof, George A. and Paul M. Romer. 1993. “Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. 2: 1-73
    http://www.jstor.org/pss/2534564
    …from Brookings!
    Yu may have missed the pt.

  95. @Woych – How is Brookings a “non-profit” 501 C when everything it does is according to the PROFIT algorithm:

    More misery for others = More $$$$ for ME ME ME

    And Brookings got a BILLION dollars of Obama’s STIMULUS program $$$$ – that’s insane. That should have went to INFRASTRUCTURE!

  97. Politics & Chicken Interactions: (read all)
    http://thinktank-watch.blogspot.com/2007/12/sir-anthony-fisher.html
    Think Tank Watch
    “Litter the world with free-market think-tanks”
    Sir Anthony Fisher (1915 – 1988)
    Sir Anthony Fisher
    [selected excerpts only…there is a lot more at the link]:
    “Born in London in 1915, educated at Eton and Cambridge, Fisher was elected to the Mont Pelerin Society in 1954. The following year, he founded the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, as the first of dozens of front groups for Mont Pelerin that he would help launch.”

    With the help of the rightwing Liberal Oliver Smedley, he set up the IEA in 1955.
    “After serving in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, Fisher moved to farming.
    In 1952, he took a study trip to the United States, where he visited the still-new Foundation for Economic Education. F. A. Harper of the FEE introduced Fisher to former colleagues from the Agriculture Department of Cornell University, who showed him intensive chicken farming techniques with which Fisher was very impressed. Fisher returned home to start England’s first battery chicken farm, Buxted Chickens, introducing broiler chickens in the UK, which eventually made him a millionaire.

    Consequently, Fisher used his money to set up the hugely influential Institute of Economic Affairs with Ralph Harris in 1955.”

    “When Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister of Britain in 1979, the Mont Pelerin apparatus moved right into 10 Downing Street.”

  98. Useful to know:
    http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n17/james-meek/how-we-happened-to-sell-off-our-electricity
    Privatisation was not a Thatcher patent. The Spanish economist Germà Bel traces the origins of the word to the German word Reprivatisierung, first used in English in 1936 by the Berlin correspondent of the Economist, writing about Nazi economic policy. In 1943, in an analysis of Hitler’s programme in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the word ‘privatisation’ entered the academic literature for the first time. The author, Sidney Merlin, wrote that the Nazi Party ‘facilitates the accumulation of private fortunes and industrial empires by its foremost members and collaborators through “privatisation” and other measures, thereby intensifying centralisation of economic affairs and government in an increasingly narrow group that may for all practical purposes be termed the national socialist elite’.The gung-ho free marketeers who rode to power with Thatcher in 1979 don’t seem to have been aware of the Nazi prelude, although they would have known of later privatisations in Pinochet’s Chile. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n17/james-meek/how-we-happened-to-sell-off-our-electricity

  99. http://michael-hudson.com/2013/04/failed-privatizations-the-thatcher-legacy/
    Michael Hudson
    “How British Monetarism Planned the Neo-Conservative Takeover…
    No economic theory can be promoted successfully today without institutional sponsorship. In America, monetarist ideas were spread by policy institutes such as the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. Likewise in England, if the history of privatization is dominated by Margaret Thatcher, her victory was largely a product of British monetarism’s main policy institute, the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), founded in 1974 by her mentor Keith Joseph (then a Member of Parliament). With Mrs. Thatcher as its President, the CPS used the economic philosophy of Frederick Hayek (the “father of monetarism”) and Milton Friedman to launch the “Thatcher Interlude” that culminated in 1979 with her election as Prime Minister.”

  100. “In 1977 Fisher moved to San Francisco “with his second wife Dorian, who he had met through the Mont Pelerin Society, and founded the Pacific Institute for Public Policy in 1979,” Cockett wrote. According to Cockett Fisher and Milton Friedman lived in the same apartment block in San Francisco during the 1980’s.

    “In 1981, to co-ordinate and establish a central focus for these institutes that Fisher found himself start up all over the world, he created the Atlas Economic Research Foundation which in 1987 joined up with the Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) founded by the Mont Pelerin member F.A. Harper in 1961) to provide a central institutional structure for what quickly became an ever-expanding number of international free-market think-tanks or research institutes,” Cockett wrote.

    According to Cokett, as the international think-tanks proliferated “Fisher used the local and international gatherings of the Mont Pelerin Society to find personnel, fund-raisers and donors for many of the Atlas Institutes”.

    Quote from the Manhattan Intitute´s website:
    “As for how I came to the Manhattan Institute, I met Antony Fisher in the Taiwan airport in 1978 on the way to a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society—an organization founded by the Noble Prize winning author of The Road to Serfdom, Frederick Von Hayek.

    It turned out that Anthony, a former RAF-Battle-of-Britain pilot, had, after the war, made it good in business, and had read an abbreviated version the Hayeck’s book in the Readers Digest. His interest sparked, he sought out Hayek, and asked him how a newly minted rich man could prevent his country and western civilization from going any further down the statist road the Austrian economist had famously described. At the time, Fisher thought going into politics was the answer.

    Hayek answer: “If you want to do something more for your country, DON’T go into politics, since politicians always lag behind public opinion. And public opinion always lags behind the tide of intellectual thought. So try to change elite intellectual opinion. Which, he added, is a 20-30 year process.

    Buying into the idea, Anthony left the chicken business where he had made his fortune and went into the think tank business—where he changed history. Within a decade, he had seeded 30 think tanks 20 nations around the world—a 150 think tanks to date.

    As I mentioned, I had met Anthony Fisher in 1978 in Taiwan. This was shortly after he and Bill Casey, one of Wild Bill Donovan’s key people in the OSS in WWII—had founded the Manhattan Institute—the third installment in this free-market franchise.

    It should be noted that his first venture the Social Market Foundation (TK) developed Margaret Thatcher as candidate and Thatcherism as governing philosophy.” Manhattan Institute 2003″
    (and)
    The Thatcher government relied heavily on the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) in London, as well as The Centre for Policy Studies, a Conservative Party think tank, and several other independent public-policy institutes in the U.K. The Reagan administration drew heavily from ideas and experts in the Heritage and Hoover Foundations, as well as the American Enterprise, Cato Institutes and the ACCF Center for Policy Research.”
    (and)
    By this time, Fisher had already furthered the Mont Pelerin subversion by establishing the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, Canada in 1974, the Manhattan Institute in New York City in 1977, and the Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research in San Francisco in 1978. In 1973, Mont Pelerin had also been instrumental in launching the Coors family think tank, the Heritage Foundation, in Washington, D.C. Following the Thatcher victory, Mont Pelerin launched an ambitious overhaul of Heritage, importing a half dozen British Mont Pelerinites in anticipation of the 1980 Presidential run by Ronald Reagan.

    It was through the Atlas Economic Research Foundation that Fisher was able to extend his beliefs worldwide. By 1984, Fisher was watching over eighteen institutions in eleven countries.

    Today, Atlas supports and works with around 150 libertarian think-tanks.

    Following the Thatcher election in Britain, Fisher also contacted von Hayek, Milton Friedman, and other leading Mont Pelerin figures and spelled out an ambitious expansion effort; in effect, the launching of a new international.”
    all from:
    http://thinktank-watch.blogspot.com/2007/12/sir-anthony-fisher.html
    Think Tank Watch
    “Litter the world with free-market think-tanks”
    Sir Anthony Fisher (1915 – 1988)

  102. Just to double on the back of Bruce’s facts, In the very early seventies it was touted that electricity was to be so cheap that large city hotels were constructed to heat and cool with electricity. The cheap electricity became a myth after a construction boom of electricity consuming buildings were made. Why? Well the financialization of energy of course.
    We got a Dept of Energy out of the deal, but no consumer price controls, which also lead to the taxation of the middle class while the upper class got lower taxes so they could invest their monies in high interest gvt loans to be used to financialize the entire world economy.
    The plan was devious and keen at the same time, never respond quickly for the enemy might break down the defenses by a slip of our tongue. No, we must brainstorm first and then reply with a majority view, that certainly will guarantee our future success. With the kids in mind because without the kids, we, and them, are nothing. Yes, this must be the way forward, the positive thing, the right thing to do with the majority’s backing too. We can’t fail, we won’t fail, we will make it happen or else.

    Or else what?

  103. But Annie: lest we “miss the point” here, follow the money:
    Funders:
    “At the end of 2004 the Brookings Institution had assets of $258 million and spent $39.7 million, while its budget has grown to more than $80 million in 2009.[64] Its largest contributors include the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her husband Richard C. Blum, Bank of America, ExxonMobil, Pew Charitable Trusts, the MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Qatar, the Republic of China and the District of Columbia.”
    source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution

  105. @Woych – the Obama stimulus $$$$ was supposed to circulate as currency for MAIN STREET – giving a Billion to Brookings is LEGAL, how????

    Since the “elite” want to use the legal system to mercilessly skin everyone alive through TAXES, it should come as no surprise when they get hauled off their high horse and literally get skinned alive – all the while being told it is not, in letter of the law, “torture”.

  106. Stop the presses, heard on CNBC from a talking head, in a “ho hum, that is reality”, manner

    “….the Federal Reserve Board can destroy wealth, or re-distribute it, but they can’t create wealth….”

    More misery for others = More $$$$ for ME ME ME

  107. Nobody ever won an argument with a false premise Annie, you are full of them too, I would look in the mirror and have my brain checked by shrink if I were you, I know 5 year olds who could embarrass you Annie. Or you could try the Church again, I’m sure they would take and forgive you, but not take your Urantia law and attitude. The bar prolly not a good idea for you, too many fights and some of the turds there are bigger and quicker than me.(i might get hurt). But don’t worry Annie, I feel your pain, and the end is near for many. And you will find yourself amongst good company with this out going crowd, and reach and understand everlasting peace within yourself once and for all, all with the ubiquitous 3 am wake up call.

  108. Not a SINGLE “prophecy” has come true for you, Anonymouse, since you did us all the favor of stalking and posting your “knowledge” on this site – confirming how whacked the “elite” are…and even more iniquitous are the wannabees like you who do the arse-kissing…

Comments are closed.