Riots hit Greek cities after teen killed by police

Violent riots hit the streets of Greek cities late Saturday and early Sunday as hundreds of youths battled police after an officer shot dead a teenager late Saturday.

The rampaging youths, many of who were self-styled anarchists, threw firebombs, smashed storefronts and burned businesses as they battled with police, who fought back with tear gas.

The violent anger soon spread from central Athens, where it began to other cities.

The shooting death of a 16-year-old boy by a member of an elite police corps was the trigger, officials said.

A police statement said the incident started when six youths pelted a police patrol car with stones.

The teen was shot as he tried to throw a fuel-filled bomb at the officers, police said.

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"Like the Fall of the Wall" (Joseph Stiglitz)

By Joseph Stiglitz

2 Dec, 2008

 

The mixture of low interests, excessive liquidity and lax oversight on money institutes led to the financial crisis. National indebtedness rose two-thirds in only eight years. The government should immediately begin investing in the infrastructure, education and other projects that help strengthen our economy and competitiveness.

 

LIKE THE FALL OF THE WALL

For Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, market fundamentalism survives with the crisis

[This interview published in: Frankfurter Rundschau, 11/7/2008 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.fr-online.de.]


Mr. Stiglitz, your book is titled "The Three Trillion Dollar War." Is there a connection between the financial crisis and the Iraq war?

Yes. Firstly, the Iraq war has much to do with the higher price of oil. Americans financed the increased price of oil on credit with foreign money. The American Federal Reserve acted shortsightedly when it lowered the interest rate to revive the economy. The mixture of low interests, excessive liquidity and lax oversight on money institutes led to the financial crisis. Secondly, the Iraq war was completely financed with credits. National indebtedness rose two-thirds in only eight years. In August 2007 something had to be done but the government was not concerned until February 2008. What it then did was very reserved in view of the enormous budget deficit. The way the war was financed will lengthen America's economic downswing.

Do we face the greatest crisis since the Great Depression?

This is certainly the most serious problem since the Great Depression. But there won't be comparable negative effects like 1929. The financial institutions of the US caused the current momentous problems with so-called "financial innovations" designed to manage risk. Instead they created a new kind of non-transparency with tremendous consequences. No one knows now how bad things really are. Compared with the banking sector, the consequences of the crisis are much milder for the real economy. At the time of the Great Depression, there was 25 percent unemployment. Today thanks to the economist John Maynard Keynes, we know hot to stop things before they develop as terribly as then. The government should immediately begin investing in the infrastructure, education and other projects that help strengthen our economy and competitiveness.

Is the financial crisis the end of the Reagan-revolution?

Former US president Ronald Reagan appointed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve because he trusted the free play of market forces. The real estate bubble arose during Greenspan's term in office. Although Greenspan had many instruments for counter-measures, he failed. His predecessor Paul Volcker was known for keeping inflation under control. He was fired because the Reagan administration did not trust appropriate de-regulation. One thing is clear today: to correct the problem, we need political leadership and legislation that exercises more control on the financial markets.

Who is most to blame?

The destruction was largely the work of Wall Street. Wall Street people forgot their real reason for existence, namely to manage risks and use capital rightly. They were frauds with the money of unknown people knowing taxpayers would step in the breach if the losses were too great. They knew they were "too big to fail," too big for the state to let them crash. Therefore they failed to limit risk. They used capital wrongly. Enormous sums flowed into the real estate market that exceeded the human possibilities of shouldering them. Too little capital was made available to the high-tech firms that are now changing our life. The rage that many have toward people on Wall Street results from the defensive stance of bankers. Their high income is well deserved, it is said. Moreover they had raised productivity in such a way that everyone would be better off on account of the profits of the financial sector than without them. We only see now that they in no way made the economy more efficient. They simply built the house of cards and decimated rather than improved the productivity of the economy. The life of people in the country was relieved since hundreds of billions were borrowed on credit from foreign countries to service the consumer frenzy and the housing boom.

What could improve the system?

Regulations are necessary to restore trust. By that I mean rules for corporate governance, that is principles for the business community, performance incentives and interest systems. We must make sure the rest of the country is heard, not only the voice of Wall Street. A commission for financial products should be a part of the new system. It must guarantee that no products can be bought or sold by banks or pension funds that are unbearable for people. Such a commission could help strengthen innovativeness, protect homeowners and make our economy more efficient.

Did Europe react rightly?

The reaction of European governments is interesting. Germany's promise to guarantee all bank deposits should help increase trust in the country. The British plan for revitalizing the banks and partly nationalizing them is certainly the right way. In my opinion, pressure from Europe helped US Treasury secretary Henry Paulson modify his bailout plan. The first version was a washout.

Does the financial crisis mark the end of an epoch?

Apart from some stubborn hardliners, everyone would say this is the end of market fundamentalism. The fall of Wall Street for market fundamentalism is what the fall of the wall was for communism. It shows the way of this economic order is not workable. Now the governments must act.

 

http://www.mbtranslations.com

 

 

~ San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center ~

 

'Obama's economic team is missing the one guy who's been right all along'

No surprise there. Stiglitz, more than anyone on the Washington scene, was the biggest fly in the ointment of "free-market fundamentalism" pressed on the world in the '90s by Summers, Geithner and their mentor, former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin—advice that has now contributed to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. It's not just that Stiglitz's Nobel-winning work, building on John Maynard Keynes's insights, uncovered profound fallacies in the Reagan-era idea that markets, especially in finance, can always correct themselves (good call, Nobel committee). In his writings and speeches since serving as chairman of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors and then chief economist of the World Bank, Stiglitz has been the leading voice opposed to the mindless liberalization of capital flows that brought us to where we are today.

In a spate of books, essays and speeches dating from the early '90s, Stiglitz denounced Rubin's support for repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial from investment banking for precisely the reasons we are now witnessing on Wall Street: new "full-service" banks would seek to hype companies that their stock-market side underwrote and issue loans to them even if they were not credit-worthy. "The ideas behind Glass-Steagall went back even further [than the 1929 crash] to Teddy Roosevelt and his efforts to break up the big trusts," he wrote presciently in "The Roaring Nineties" (2003). "When enterprises become too big, and interconnections too tight, there is a risk that the quality of economic decisions deteriorates, and the 'too big to fail' problem rears its ugly head." Unfortunately, Stiglitz wrote, his worries "were quickly shunted aside"' by the Clinton Treasury team. Earlier, in his book "Globalization and its Discontents" (2002), Stiglitz became the most prominent voice in Washington to say plainly that free-market absolutism, which began with the Reagan revolution and continued under Clinton (who upon being elected declared the era of "big government" was over), was ill-founded theoretically and disastrous practically. "In 1997 the IMF decided to change its charter to push capital market liberalization," he wrote. "And I said, where is the evidence this is going to be good for developing countries? Why haven't you produced some research showing it was going to be good? They said: we don't need research; we know it's true. They didn't say it in precisely those words, but clearly they took it as religion."

As far back as 1990, Stiglitz argued in a paper (it can be found on The Economist's Voice Web site at www.bppress.com) against securitizing mortgages and selling them because "when banks retained the mortgages which they issued, they had greater incentives to screen loan applicants." He asked, again with startling prescience: "Has securitization been a result of more efficient transactions technologies, or an unfounded reduction in concern about the importance of screening loan applicants?" None other than Milton Friedman, the founding father of the free-market era, told me in an interview before he died that Stiglitz also had been more correct than everyone else about how to transform Russia into a market economy when he argued that institution-building and creating regulatory authorities were an important preliminary step. "In the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, I kept being asked what the Russians should do," Friedman told me in 2002. "I said, 'Privatize, privatize, privatize. I was wrong. Joe was right. What we want is privatization, and the rule of law."

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Army ?ecruiters ?pen War 'Experience' Arcade to attract youngsters

From football to beach volleyball, competitive games can get your juices going.

But the ultimate game, the one that'll give you the greatest rush, is ... what? Why, it's war, of course. Yeah, man, you literally get to kill the other team! How great is that?

Such thinking (if it can be called thinking) is behind the latest leap in marketing by the U.S. Army. In its constant effort to lure young people into the killing business, the office of military recruitment has come up with a whiz bang showcase to appeal to a generation that's been raised on computer games and that hangs out at the mall a lot. It's called the "Army Experience Center," and the first one has opened right across from the Dave & Busters food and fun outlet in a mall in northeast Philadelphia.

With more than 14,000 square feet of prime mall space, the experience center is bigger than three basketball courts and is filled with lots of dazzle. There are nearly 80 video gaming stations, all sorts of interactive exhibits, a replica command-and-control center, and -- best of all -- a bunch of high-tech simulators that let the kids get a feel for the military action of, say, a Black Hawk helicopter.

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American science and the enforcement of happiness

BBC News - December 6th, 2008 Wrote:

"Happiness is infectious and can "ripple" through social groups, say US researchers. Researchers found a person is 25% more likely to be happy if they have a friend living within a mile who becomes happy - an effect that declined with distance.The study of 5000 adults, led by the Harvard Medical School, says the 'happiness effect' extends to three levels of separation - to the friend of a friend of a friend.However, the study also found that the mood of work colleagues did not play a part in happiness."

America has long distorted most research on human contentment, and happiness. We have to look at more solid sociology, psychology, from 40 years ago to begin to comprehend the negative changes that American science has consistently suffered during America's constant swing towards totalitarianism, tainted with its peculiar version of "spirituality".

This is partially due to ideology that emphasizes being sold on the idea and rejects real psycho-physiological responses to the meeting of real material needs and wants. A popular phrase, some years ago, was "sweetness and light", prevalent in the religious right. The attitude of uncomplaining, "smile and be happy", no matter what is actually happening or being experienced in material life of body and social, behavioral, political and economic facticity, extended far beyond the religious right into redefining concepts of "health". Dissent, disagreement, even debate, and particularly expressions of unhappiness and discontent, were increasingly to be believed as being "unhealthy". In that paradigm something is always wrong with the complainant, and everything reflects back onto self, including all blame for every variety of anxiety, adversity, failure, obstacle, and misfortune.

It really meant that a frown of dissent was unacceptable, as were any critical, dissenting, words. Similarly the concept of "congruence" crept into Americanism, and meant that not only were people expected to smile and be happy on the surface, but they had to internalize that superficial fascism of externalized happiness as being what they truly believed about themselves. Internalization of external behavior is a factor in political totalitarianism. Earlier socio-psychological ideas did not venture into promoting congruence but tended to follow theories such as Irving Goffman's "Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" where the difference between internal thinking and expressions of external behavior was validated. The theory of congruence tends to invalidate internal dissent and discontentment, supporting the superficial living of the lie. The belief is also inculcated that expressions of happiness and contentment, even when completely inappropriate to circumstances are rewardable, while expressions of unhappiness and discontentment are punishable reinforcing the revised political value system.

The political implications are obvious. Slowly and certainly everything that is wrong with society, the social situation, the political realm, economics, and particularly wrong with religion or the national ideology, is pushed behind the curtain of happiness. It no longer exists. Only happiness exists. Those other matters are increasingly "passed over in silence". Another angle derivative from Americanist religious ideology, If you are unhappy, discontented, critical about anything, you can talk to yourself, by yourself, forever, or seek medical help in terms of pharmaceuticals that will help you change your mind to one of totalized happiness, via a manipulation of your physiology. You have no freedom to be unhappy and remain a member of society. That is not allowed. You will be passed over in silence, utterly ignored, and told that you are crazy, needing help, unhealthy, ill, and unacceptable to society, god, the nation, the group, and so forth. Social dynamics become part of the reinforcement of happiness enforcement.

Now we can see why the real condition of America has deteriorated consistently and constantly for nearly 40 years, in every area of its life, behind that curtain of enforced expressions and feelings of contentment and happiness. We can now see why America, as nation, in terms of its condition today, still cannot face its own truth, at home and in the world beyond its borders. Why its upper leadership still sells false beliefs, unable to face up to responsibility and failure. Faith in the future, optimism, and being completely sold on those has become a standard of health, of sanity, and a condition of social, political even of economic membership. Even leadership is constrained to the ideology of happiness. We have seen the slow erosion and destruction of real political dissent in America, and of religious dissent, watching it pushed increasingly underground and its manifestations changed to increasingly ineffective, unemotive, masked behind conflicted behavioral expressions and internal feelings. Real dissent and discontent is no longer allowed its honest expression. It is placed into social and psychological conflict with itself, in regard to its negative valuing as unhealthy and inappropriate in the larger sphere of life. It is parochialized to the extreme, and becomes the preserve of smaller and smaller groups, who are increasingly labelled as being the equivalent of dangerously infected, and necessarily as undergoing treatment for what is wrong with them. The usual result is increasing member antipathy and ambivalence to their own cause and their own social associations.

Americanism has increasingly become an ideology that requires, in fact demands, happiness, and demands its valuing by others when it occurs meaninglessly in any, even when needs and wants are entirely unmet and even when the circumstances make happiness inappropriate. In that Americanist ideology dissent, discontent, unhappiness, and their external to the psyche behavioral expressions become increasingly always inappropriate, while their opposites are given increasing value as being appropriate.

Americanism, even in its social and psychological science, is not necessarily the truth about the human condition and about humanity. The rest of the world needs to rethink the issues, and apply solid real science and genuine critical thinking to it, not simply accept it as given "gift from the American god". Science cannot be properly pursued on the basis of deeply held ideological assumptions, unexamined and unexaminable beliefs, acting simply as handmaiden in support of a failing ideology.

Now, smile and be happy whenever you see an American flag. America demands it.
You have no choice. Not only must you smile and be happy on the outside, but you must
feel that happiness as your one and only internal response. All your feelings and all your
thoughts must be pure happiness when you see that flag. You have something seriously
wrong with you if you do not feel happy inside and show your happiness outside as behavior
that is clearly expressive to all around you, when you see that flag.

And never utter what might be considered to be a discouraging word, or you will end up the recipient of a flood of discouragement. You have to sell the ideology. You have to promote it. You have to be an American salesman of a bill of goods ideology and spirituality, joining a nation of such salesmanship, if you want to succeed at anything.

You see what has gone wrong now, don't you ?


Cheers.

Robert Morpheal

 

~ Democratic Underground ~