Today's Stories

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

February 12, 2009

P. Sainath
Neo-Liberal Terrorism in India: The Largest Wave of Suicides in History

Jean Bricmont
French Echoes of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict

Michael Hudson
Trying to Revive the Bubble Economy: Obama's Awful Financial Recovery Plan

Peter Lee
Pakistan, Not Afghanistan, is the Main Event

Dave Lindorff
Judges Nabbed, Jailing Kids for Kickbacks

February 11, 2009

Neve Gordon
Few Peacemakers in the New Israeli Knesset

Peter Morici
Anatomy of a Hemorrhage

Andy Worthington
Who's Running Guantánamo?

Marjorie Cohn
A Call to End All Renditions

Fred Gardner
Change We Can Smoke?

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The G & O (Geithner and Obama) Bank

Zoe Blunt
Vancouver Island Hippies: Top Security Threat for 2010?

Belén Fernández
Politics on the Panamericana

Martha Rosenberg
Don't Breathe the Meat

Website of the Day
George Dyson on Project Orion

Blues of the Day
David Vest on the CBC

February 10, 2009

Kathy Kelly
How Do People Keep Going?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Stimulus Imbroglio

Uri Avnery
Dirty Socks

Michael J. Berg
Will South Carolina be the Center of the Nuclear Revival?

Russell Mokhiber
Et Tu, Atul?

Joe Bageant
A Commodity Called Misery

Gareth Porter
Petraeus' Subterfuge

Dave Lindorff
Seek Truth, But Prosecute Liars

Rannie Amiri
The Implications of Recognizing Israel's "Right to Exist"

Harvey Wasserman
Nukes and the Stimulus

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What We Didn't Learn at Obama's Press Conference

Website of the Day
RIAA Takes Over DoJ Under Obama

February 9, 2009

Vicente Navarro
Why Sanjay Gupta is the Wrong Man for Top US Health Job

Paul Craig Roberts
Driving Over the Cliff

Julio Sanchez /
Feliz de Bedout
The Threat of Peace in Colombia: an Interview with Hollman Morris

National Lawyers Guild
Strong Indications of Israeli War Crimes

Jonathan Cook
Israeli University Welcomes "War Crimes" Colonel

Alana Smith
The Nightmarish Case of Fahad Hashmi

Binoy Kampmark
Taking the Bong

Sam Bahour
End the Occupation First

Nicole Colson
Can You Afford College?

Ron Jacobs
Remembering the Second Intifada

Website of the Day
The Legacy of Ed Grothus and the Black Hole

February 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama's First Bad Week

Ishmael Reed
Saint Thelma's Book

James Abourezk
Obama, Mitchell and the Palestinians

William Blum
Obama and the Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Maliki's Triumph

Henry A. Giroux
Educating Obama

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Darwin's Living Legacy

Mouin Rabbani
A New Low on Gaza?

David Yearsley
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Springsteen!

Saul Landau
The Wrestler: an American Tragedy

Jules Rabin
Israel's Disproportionate Responses

Raymond J. Lawrence
A Country Awash in Money But Going Broke

Janette Habel
Castro's Socialism in Crisis

Dave Lindorff
Economy on a Thread

Missy Beattie
Blackout at the Gaza Zoo Massacre

Dale Gieringer
The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909: Marking 100 Years of Failed Drug Prohibition

John Ross
Davos vs. Belem; Swine vs. Pearls

Richard Rhames
Jobs is a Four Letter Word

Bob Wing
Obama, Race and the Future of U.S. Politics

Robert Bryce
Corn Dog Update: Another Study Exposes Bio-Fuel Scam

David Macaray
AFL-CIO and Change to Win in "Re-Wed" Talks

James L. Secor
Inaugural Questions Nobody Asks: Notes from Kuala Lumpur

Jason Flom /
Anthony Papa
The Scourging of Michael Phelps

Norm Kent
Ten Reasons to Get High About Pot in 2009

Kim Nicolini
When Utopia Crumbles: Why Revolutionary Road was Shut Out of the Oscars

Lorenzo Wolff
Ridiculous Flow: How Cee Lo Green Sells Soul

Poets' Basement
Emily Dickinson (with Commentary by Daniel Wolff)

Website of the Weekend
S.J. Gould: Darwin's Untimely Burial

February 5, 2009

Michael Mandel
Self-Defense Against Peace

Saul Landau /
Philip Brenner
Killing the Monroe Doctrine

Ralph Nader
Tax the Speculators!

Robert Bryce
The Unraveling of the Ethanol Scam

Russell Mokhiber
Occupied Territory

Sameh Habeeb /
Janet Zimmerman
Innocents Lost

Dave Lindorff
Small Change

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
Beyond Green Capitalism

George Ochenski
A Blow to Big Coal in Montana

Website of the Day
Putting CEO Pay in Context

February 4, 2009

Arno J. Mayer
On Corruption

Paul Craig Roberts
The War on Terror is a Hoax

Patrick Cockburn
The Iraqi Elections

Jonathan Cook
An IDF Jihad?

Fred Gardner
Obama's Mixed Messages on Marijuana

Stan Cox
Slumwrecking Millionaires: India's Fragile New Temples

Margaret Kimberley
The Deepening Economic Crisis

Lawrence Velvel
Agony & Desperation: Madoff's Victims

Dave Lindorff
A Generals' Revolt?

Doug Giebel
A Helping of Bitter Beltway Baloney

Serge Quadruppani
Student Protests Sweep Italy

Website of the Day
The San Francisco 8

February 3, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency & Anthropology: Roberto Gonzalez on Human Terrain Systems

Bill Moyers
Obama's Wars: an Interview with Pierre Sprey and Marilyn Young

Kirkpatrick Sale
Obama's Lincoln Thing

Conn Hallinan
When Mind Wounds Don't Count

Peter Morici
The Slippery Slope of Stimulus

George Ciccariello-Maher
From Oakland to Santa Rita: "Fired Up, Can't Take It No More"

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
The BBC's Nadir

Allan Nairn
What Does It Take to Get a Meal Here, an Earthquake?

Norman Solomon
Why are We Still at War?

David Macaray
The Late, Great UAW

Website of the Day
The Bloody Cove

February 2, 2009

Uri Avnery
Under the Black Flag: Israeli War Crimes

Ralph Nader
What to Do About Wall Street

Gareth Porter
Generals Move to Obstruct Obama's Iraq Withdrawal Orders

Paul Craig Roberts
The Death of American Leadership

Harvey Wasserman
The Nuclear Industry's Latest Money Grab

Rannie Amiri
Gaza and the Crimes of Mubarak

Cal Winslow
Stern's Gang Seizes UHW Union Hall

Steve Early
Checking Out of Stern's Hotel California

Alan Farago
Superbowl as Panopticon

Diane Farsetta
Banning Domestic Propaganda

January 30 / February 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Obama and the Oddsmakers

Michael Hudson
Obama's New Bank Giveaway

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
"Too Big to Fail:" a Bailout Hoax

Dave Lindorff
The Ugly Truth: the American Economy is Not Coming Back

Saul Landau
Freedom Fighters, Terrorists or Schlemiels?

Andy Worthington
Blame the Chef: How Cooking for the Taliban Can Get You Life in Gitmo

Subcomandante Marcos
Gaza Will Survive

Robert Jensen
Future Farming: an Interview with Wes Jackson

Ron Jacobs
Return of the Democrats

Gareth Porter
Is Gates Undermining Another Opening to Iran?

Allan Nairn
Hope for the Dump Cities?

Laura Carlsen
NAFTA's Dangerous Security Agenda

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Feelings of a Stranger

Christopher Brauchli
From Gitmo to Supermax?

Jules Rabin
Israel and the Bomb

Col. Dan Smith
Thoughts From an Inauguration Refugee

Missy Beattie
The US Garden of Evil

Tom Barry
Obama's Immigration Challenge

J. Michael Cole
The Downfall of an Academic

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Burning the First Amendment

Dan Bacher
How Dam Removal Can Save the Klamath River

David Rosen
Last Gasp of the Culture Wars?

Don Monkerud
Religion in the American Bedroom

Binoy Kampmark
Updike: Apostle of the Middlebrows

Lorenzo Wolff
Playing Down a Bad Reputation: the Lovin' Spooful's Near Perfect Record

David Yearsley
When Orfeo and Euridice Lived Happily Ever After in Upstate New York

Poets' Basement
Valentine and Rihn

January 29, 2009

Peter Linebaugh
Tom Paine's Birthday

Paul Craig Roberts
Is It Time to Bail Out of America?

Riz Khan
The Future of Gaza: an Interview with Jimmy Carter

M. Reza Pirbhai
Pakistan: a New Cambodia?

Wajahat Ali
Obama's Al-Arabiya Interview

Gregory Vickrey
What About the Environment? Cap and Trade and Selling Out

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
Whither the Two State Solution?

Alison Weir
Killing Palestinians Doesn't Count: Fact-Checking Ceasefire Breaches

Alan Farago
Economy Without Escape Routes

Walter Brasch
Taxing a House of Cards

Website of the Day
Madoff Inc.

January 28, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
Behind the Bloodbath in Gaza

Noam Chomsky
Obama's Emerging Policies on Israel, Iraq and the Economic Crisis

Patrick Cockburn
Is Mitchell's Mission Already Doomed?

Rob Larson
The Clinton Foundation Donors

George Wuerthner
Who Will Speak for the Forests?

Allan Nairn
South-East Asian Groups Threaten Retaliation Over Gaza Invasion

M. Junaid
Levesque-Alam
A Muslim's Memo to Obama

Stefan Simanowitz
The Silent Trade

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of the Patriot

Website of the Day
Veggie Love: PETA's Banned Superbowl Ad

January 27, 2009

Winslow T. Wheeler
Save the Economy by Cutting the Defense Budget

Yigal Bronner /
Neve Gordon
Fueling the Cycle of Hate

Joshua Frank
Obama's Neocon: the Curious Case of Richard Holbrooke

Jordan Flaherty
Torture at a Louisiana Prison

Ralph Nader
Access to Economic Justice

Rev. José M. Tirado
How Iceland Fell: a Hundred Days of (Muted) Rage

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Looking Forward

Russell Mokhiber
What If Israel Were in Your Neighborhood?

Martha Rosenberg
Who Says Technology Transfer Doesn't Pay?

C. G. Estabrook
The Inaugural Address: the Digested Read

Website of the Day
Who Profits From the Occupation?

January 26, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Speaking the Truth is a Career-Ending Event

Deepak Tripathi
The BBC's Day of Shame

Vijay Prashad
The India Lobby: Drunk with the Sight of Power

Peter Lee
Geithner's Pop Gun Volley at China

Allan Nairn
The Torture Ban That Doesn't Ban Torture

Uri Avnery
On the Wrong Side of History

John Sayen
The Next Shoe to Drop

Dave Lindorff
Afghanistan is No Threat to America

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff

David Macaray
Obama vs. Labor

Roger Burbach
Winds of Change in Cuba

Norman Solomon
The Ghost of LBJ

Website of the Day
Landscapes of Occupation

January 23 / 25, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Ghosts at Obama's Side

P. Sainath
The Freefalling Economy

Patrick Cockburn
In Israel, Detachment From Reality is the Norm

Saul Landau
Reasons for War?

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Our Current Economic Crisis: the Monks' Cure

Alan Farago
The Problem with the Stimulus

Christopher Brauchli
When Due Diligence is a One-Way Street

Andy Worthington
Return to Law?

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pentagon: Bowing to the Masters of War?

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Four)

Henry A. Giroux
The Audacity of Educated Hope

David Yearsley
The Music That Wasn't There: Chamber Music for Obama's Masses

Raymond F. Gustavson
Here We Go Again: General Shinseki and Veterans

Dave Lindorff
The Way Forward

Roberto Rodriguez
Fighting for Migrant Justice in the Desert

Dina Jadallah-Taschler
The Struggle of an Un-People

Fidel Castro
Meeting Cristina

J. Michael Cole
Can Obama's Shift on Terror Succeed?

Bob Fitrakis /
Harvey Wasserman
It's Time to Free Leonard Peltier

Ramzy Baroud
Breaking Gaza's Will

Mohammad Ali Shabani
The Aftermath of the War on Gaza

Richard Rhames
Panning for Pyrite on a Cold Day at the Mall

Stephen Martin
Voices in the Mirror

Lorenzo Wolff
Jurassic Radio

Kim Nicolini
Katrina's Endless Loop

Poets' Basement
Fleming, Henson, First, Jaramillo and Glendinning

Website of the Weekend
Cartoon Love

January 22, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
Another Real Estate Crisis is About to Hit

Kathy Kelly
Worse Than an Earthquake

Allan Nairn
US Intel Nominee Lied About Church Murders

Lawrence Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience (Part Three)

Andy Worthington
Halting the Gitmo Trials

Peter Morici
How to Fix the Banks

Joseph G. Davis
The First MBA Presidency and the Business Academy: a Damage Assessment

Adriana Kojeve
The Democrats on Israel: a Brief Oral History

Benjamin Dangl
Bolivia Poised for Historic Vote

Website of the Day
Support the Gaza Community Mental Health Program

January 21, 2009

Gabriel Kolko
Understanding Gaza

Harry Browne
Obama's Work Ethic

Michael Colby
Ready. Aim. Organize.

Lawrence R. Velvel
Investing with Madoff: My Experience

Audrey Stewart
Starting Over in Gaza

Wajahat Ali
Obama and the Muslims

Binoy Kampmark
The Marketing of Hope

David Kεr Thomson
Abolition

John Ross
In My Own Bones

Allan Nairn
Killer in Chief: Will This President Murder Civilians?

Sheldon Richman
The Peaceful Transfer of Violent Power

Website of the Day
Globistan

January 20, 2009

Chuck Spinney
Hosing Obama Israeli Style

Kathy Kelly
The Strongest Weapon of All

Raymond Deane
The EU, Gaza and the Lisbon Treaty

Ralph Nader
State Terrorism Against Gaza

Audrey Stewart
Why I am in Gaza

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Doctrine of Destruction

Harvey Wasserman
A Ten-Point Solar Agenda for Obama

Christopher Ketcham
Inauguration Ad Nauseam

Robert Jensen
A Citizen's Oath of Office

Dave Lindorff
Commie Chorus on the Mall: This Land Really is Made for You and Me

David Macaray
SAG Watches It All Slip Away

Weekend Edition
February 13 - 15, 2009

CounterPunch Diary

On the Rocks

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

I write these words at the end of a week in which:

A new Democratic president, Barack Obama, via his Attorney General, has explicitly endorsed Bush's policy on renditions and Bush's refusal to recognize the jurisdiction of US courts in any legal proceedings in this regard; a week in which Obama’s solicitor general has explicitly endorsed  Bush’s policy on enemy combatants. 

I write not long after the New York Times  reported that state welfare rolls are actually shrinking in months when unemployment has risen to real totals of 17 and 18 per cent - 1.7 million in Dec and Jan and thus when more and more people are in desperate straits. This is a consequence of a former Democratic president's "reform" of welfare in the mid-90s.

Back then, Clinton reached out in the spirit of bipartisanship to Republicans to effect this piece of legislative savagery. In the same spirit of bipartisanship Obama invited a New Hampshire right-winger, Judd Gregg, to be his Commerce Secretary, while simultaneously pledging that Judd’s vacated seat would be filled by… a Republican!  Ultimately, Judd contemptuously kicked away the proffered hand of friendship.

For much of last year progressives rallied support for Obama, not just with scenarios of the destruction that would be wrought by John McCain, but with screams of fear at the menace of right-wing populist insurgency, embodied in the supposed threats to mainstream consensus represented by Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin. You know, fascists; at least two of them Christian fascists. Head for the deep shelters and vote Democrat! Vote for change.

The menace of the Christian hordes?   Christians now exult that Obama is talking of a waiver on constitutional prohibitions concerning federal support for faith-based initiatives. As the Los Angeles Times editorialized angrily last week, “Like his predecessor, Obama has supported providing federal grants and contracts to social-service programs operated by religious groups. The surprise -- an unpleasant one -- is that he is equivocating on a campaign promise to condition such aid on an agreement by religious charities not to discriminate in hiring.”

And meanwhile, in America as across the planet, it’s economic devastation, near and far. Here in northern California I walk into a local plumbing store, a large place used by building contractors. There’s one other man in the store, buying a $5 plastic fitting. One of the owners says there’s zero new construction in the area. “We fix a few toilets. The only people actually building  are the marijuana growers down in southern Humboldt.”

Take out Humboldt’s good fortune in being in the Emerald Triangle and multiply  by every plumbing store in America. Throw in the idled lumber yards, construction stores, paint suppliers, and building crews. Count in the car lots that are going out of business because the banks won’t finance car loans. Go to the lost auto assembly jobs. It tots up to job loss across America just in December and January of 1,175,000. And that’s an underestimate. Every president since Reagan, particularly Clinton, has jimmied the unemployment criteria to produce an undercount. The actual number for the two months is nearer one and three quarter million. The actual total unemployment rate, according to statistician John Williams, by pre-Reagan criteria,  rose to 18 per cent  in January, from 17.5 per cent in December.

These are numbers out of the great Depression of the 1930s and it’s going to get worse in the next few months as businesses put up their shutters. The air is whistling out of  the American economy. We’re now heading into the Feb-May trough dreaded by every retail store on every Main Street in America. Consumer spending is dropping longer and faster than at any time since they began keeping records in 1947. A quarter of all home-buyers are late on mortgage payments or in foreclosure. People inch through monthly payments on maxed out credit cards.

My own state of California – often touted as the eighth largest economy in the world --  can’t pay its bills. There’s a shortfall in revenues and it can’t sell enough bonds. On January 26 the California State Controller John Chiang announced that the state is going to print its own money. If the state owes us money we’ll get this scrip as IOUs.  Who knows, in happier times maybe we can hawk them on e-Bay. Student aid and payments to the disabled and needy will also come in the form of  IOUs.  Governor Schwarzenegger and his aides are negotiating with the banks to get them to accept the IOUs as deposits.

America is in economic meltdown. In Washington President Obama has been battling for  his stimulus plan, with the Congress now totting up the exact total – somewhere around $800 billion.  Although it’s the largest such package in US history the New York Times’  Paul Krugman, resplendent with his Nobel prize for Economics, has torn into it for being way too skimpy and conservative,  far too respectful of Republican prejudices against hand-outs to anyone without a 10021 zip code, a Wall St business address and a mansion in Connecticut or Long Island.

The Republicans  have elected to array themselves in implacable opposition to the package – surely the stupidest political strategy available for public inspection since Walter Mondale tried to beat Reagan in 1984 by promising to raise taxes. One of the maddest moments was when they raised Herculean guffaws at money requested for a program trying to figure out the decline of the honey bee. What use is the honey bee – damn bug, buzzing around in the spring, pollinating.

When Obama went last week to Elkhart, Indiana, where official unemployment is running at over 15 per cent because no one wants to buy a recreational vehicle, he invited Indiana Republican Senator Dick Lugar to come along. Lugar declined – a petty, sectarian display of a sort which could cost Republicans badly in the 2010 midterm elections.

Obama’s package is meant to generate three to four million new jobs which will maybe cope with job losses from December through next April if we’re lucky. It’s piecemeal: a wad  of money for schools, for health insurance for all children, for “infrastructure” – which means good times for cement pourers. But as Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out many times on this site,  to clamber out of this terrible economic hole Uncle Sam has to start making things he can sell abroad. That way the nation can offset the problem of running huge deficits importing things from China. “Infrastructure repair”  doesn’t do that. It causes traffic jams for the next ten years as the highway lobby gets its new overpasses, underpasses, bridges, freeway exits and toll-road expressways, none of which can be sold overseas and all of which don’t restore America’s near-dead manufacturing economy.

Obama’s Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tried to sell his bank bail-out plan earlier this week. He deservedly drew an F because in his mumbled prospectus he conceded he didn’t actually  have a plan, but was toiling night and day to come up with  one. Markets duly plunged. In outline, the prospective  trillion-plus plan has the usual  forced perspective of a banker, whose idea of rescue is to lend people money, thus drowning them in even more debt. Americans don’t need more debt. They need debt relief.

Obama’s bailout plan, added to the FY 2009 budget deficit he has inherited from Bush, opens a expenditure hole of about $3 trillion.  As Roberts, former assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan years, pointed out here last week, “Who is going to purchase $3 trillion of US Treasury bonds? Not the US consumer.  The consumer is out of work and out of money. Private sector credit market debt is 174 per cent of GDP.” The sum is too big for the increasingly wary Chinese and Saudis to underwrite by buying Treasury bills where interest yields are have been so low that one joke, quoted by CounterPuncher P. Sainath,  is that the US Treasury is the only institution in the world to be actually abiding by Islamic prohibitions on usury.

Failing everything else, there’s the government printing press, which can roll out the dollars and add inflation to unemployment.

The Republicans don’t have a plan, and though Obama has been  energetically selling his package even his fans are beginning to wonder if he really has a convincing vision either. Americans can understand something big in the way of make-work – like Roosevelt’s dams, or the construction of the interstate highway system in the 1950s, or Kennedy’s space project or even, in its ultimate absurdity and waste, Reagan’s Star Wars plan , still unworkable and now consuming 19 per cent of the Defense budget. There’s nothing rhetorically tremendous in Obama’s stimulus plan, just a billion here and a billion there, on and on in an endless array.

There’s  always something cloudy about Obama, just when I’ve almost persuaded myself to like the guy, always hedging his bets, doffing his cap to the ruling powers, even micromanaging his press conferences so there are no follow-up questions. That meant last week  he didn’t have to deal with Helen Thomas following up on her initial inquiry as to whether he could name a nuclear power in the Middle East. Obama stalled until his aides could force Thomas to sit back down. The blacks his press secretary installed in the front row said later they were just put there as window dressing.

America is broke but here’s Obama , seemingly set on boosting a US force in Afghanistan where, according to the Center for Budgetary Analysis, it costs $775,000 per year to send a single soldier.  And, as I noted at the outset, this week Obama punched his core supporters twice in the stomach by committing his administration to the same unconstitutional canons of secrecy and claims of executive immunity to the rule of law that made Bush one of the most hated presidents in history. His staff can’t seem to nail down safe appointments. In sum, in these crucial early weeks, Obama  seems to have trouble setting his  compass, as the ship heads towards the rocks.  But hey, at least we have a Democrat in the White House, saving us from endless war, constitutional abuses and bank bailouts, right?

Could the Press Have Nailed Madoff Years Ago?

Bernie Madoff is one of the great thieves of history.  He looted $50 billion. His criminal career stretched across a generation. Is it conceivable that no suspicions were aroused, no warning bells sounded the alarm? Of course they were and they did. As a stockbroker, CounterPunch’s Pam Martens was on to Madoff’s game in 1991. Wall Streeter Harry Markopolos had him cold in 1995 and gave a detailed outline of Madoff’s Ponzi game to the SEC which did nothing.

If only the press had gotten hold of Markopolos’ report. Just think what the Wall Street Journal would have done with it. Madoff would have been  arrested and four more years of robbery – his biggest years – stopped in its tracks. But wait!  The Wall Street Journal did get Markopolos’ report  in 2005, straight from Markopolos. Markopolos says he also alerted the New York Times. 

The incredible story of how the watchdogs of the  Fourth Estate took good care to doze in their kennels is told at length by Eamonn Fingleton in the new edition of our CounterPunch newsletter.   Amid  the death throes of the old corporate press, Fingleton pitilessly excavates one of its greatest failures.  The smoking gun was placed in their newsroom  in-trays and they carefully looked the other way.

Also in this new edition of our newsletter Paul Craig Roberts concludes his three-part series on economics,  -- the shortest, sharpest guide ever written.

Let me quote a couple of paragraphs:

Modern economic theory is based on “empty-world” economics. But, in fact, today the world is full. In a “full world,” the fish catch is limited by the remaining population of fish, not by the number of fishing boats, which are man-made capital in excess supply. Oil energy is limited by geological deposits, not by the drilling and pumping capacity of man-made capital. In national income accounting, the use of man-made capital is depreciated, but the use of nature’s capital has no cost. Therefore, the using up of natural capital always results in economic growth.

For example, the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico from fertilizer runoff from chemical fertilizer farming are not counted as a cost against the increase in agricultural output from chemical farming. The brown clouds that reduce light over large areas of Asia are not included as costs in the production of energy from coal. Economists continue to assume that the only limits to growth are labor, man-made capital, and consumer demand. In fact, the critical limit is ecological.

Get our newsletter to read Fingleton on the press and Roberts’ outline of full-world economics.

Subscribe Now!

Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com

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