Exclusively in the new print issue of CounterPunch
HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.
Archives by Tag 'debt'
Naxos
“People are coming back to farms around here that they abandoned years ago so they can grow potatoes, cabbages and vegetables to help them survive the crisis,” says Petros Citouzouris, as he pruned his vines high in the mountains of Naxos...
European Union workers’ pretentions to better pay and working conditions, shorter working lives, munificent retirement benefits, long holidays and time off for this and that have got to be brought under control! Enough is enough!
Let ...
The doom mongers are out in force. The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has dramatically stated that European authorities have “just a matter of weeks” to avert economic disaster. Likewise, the mouthpiece of conventional financial “wisdom”, the Financial...
No one opposes unity. And no one opposes a stronger, more unified Europe. What people oppose is policy; policies that slash workers wages, privatize state assets, increase unemployment, and prolong recession. That’s what people oppo...
Food pantries picked over. Incomes drying up. Shelters burst...
In a recent piece in The Nation Thomas Geoghegan argues fiercely that few points were made more emphatically by John Maynard Keynes than his opinion that: “no country, ever, should run up any kind of trade deficit, much less the trade deficit on steroids we a...
German parliamentarians reaffirmed their commitment to the Euro-project on Thursday by approving an expansion of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). The balloting provided the landslide victory (523 to 85) that German Chancellor Angela Merkel needed to reest...
Three months ago I wrote ...
That is a question that people should be asking as the other potential candidates withdraw from the race. At the moment, the economies of the United States, Europe, and Japan are all suffering from weak growth or worse. The debt crisis of eurozone countries threatens anot...
Everyday the same news – Greece lurches nearer to a default, the financial markets panic, and governments come up with a few more euros or some soothing words to calm them for a few hours. The meltdown has been put off for another day.
Almost every commentato...
In July-September 2011 the stock markets were again shaken at international level. The crisis has become deeper in the EU, particularly with respect to debts. The CADTM interviewed Eric Toussaint about various facets of this new ...
One word dominates political discourse in America today: Jobs! It was the centerpiece of recent the debate between Republican presidential contenders and the Democratic president’s speech to the nation.
The official unemployment rate stands at 9.1 percent; whe...
China’s leaders, even in their wildest nationalist dreams, could not have imagined a more spectacular reversal of history than that the US should be chastened and no longer top of the (capitalist) class, appealing to China to bail it out and boost world growth.
T...
The cost of the 2011 cutbacks in federal spending will fall most directly on consumers and retirees by scaling back Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and social spending programs. The population also will suffer indirectly, by lower federal revenue sharing with U.S. sta...
On Friday, August 5, the credit rating agency, Standard & Poors, downgraded US debt from AAA to AA+.
Gerald Celente’s view that S&P’s downgrade of the US Treasury’s credit rating reflects a loss of confidence in the political system was confirmed by...
The Boston Tea Party in December 1773 threw the East India Company’s tea overboard. The Republican Tea Party in August 2011 threw America overboard.
Only in Congress, with its rules for minority rule, can a minority of the Republican Party in the House of Rep...
Last Thursday when the market crashed, the volume on the New York Stock Exchange was 7.5 billion shares, obviously much higher than usual. The Nasdaq volume was also unusually high. If we could levy a fee of one penny for each share bought and sold in the United States, t...
So the ratings agencies have reared their ugly heads again. David Beers, head of S&P’s government debt rating unit, announced Friday night that S&P has downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time, from AAA to AA. It’s a sham: S&P’s whole ana...
That debt and sin are synonymous in Christian thought and liturgy might help explain the righteousness of Tea Party discourse, as well as the genuflections of Obama and his acolytes.
It’s true that the Sojourners and other progressive Christian groups have attack...
The chief economist at ratings agency Moodys is warning that the U.S. could be headed for a renewed recession.
Calling the current situation “very perilous,” John Lonski adds that the politicians in Washington, where both parties are vying to present bu...
If Congress doesn’t reach a deal to extend our debt ceiling, the economy might collapse, and We the People will become We the Paupers. As the author of a new “financial advice” book, I investigate below whether some time-tested money tips might still app...
As grains of sand drip one by one through the hour glass, marking time as we move toward the debt ceiling deadline, the political posturing takes on the appearance of a game of chicken or Russian Roulette.
The comparisons are apt but as time slips on and the postur...
An insolvent giant? A colossus weighed down by debt? This is the situation the United States finds itself in over the raising of the debt ceiling after the last one was hit on May 16. Bills designed to do so have been voted down in the House. The Ob...