Tuesday, December 30, 2014

ANS -- There's a Big Anniversary This January That the Christian Right Doesn't Want You to Know About

Here is an interesting article about a holiday we never hear about, on January 16, called Religious Freedom Day.
Perhaps we should start celebrating it. 
Find it here:  http://www.alternet.org/belief/theres-big-anniversary-january-christian-right-doesnt-want-you-know-about?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark  
--Kim
 

  BELIEF 
talk2action.org / By Frederick Clarkson
comments_image   26 COMMENTS

There's a Big Anniversary This January That the Christian Right Doesn't Want You to Know About

An important turning point in the separation of church and state happened in January, 1786.
26 COMMENTS 26 COMMENTS
 
 

December 29, 2014
 
 
 
 

In the heat of our political moment, we sometimes don't see how our future connects deeply to our past. But the Christian Right does ­ and they do not like what they see.

The Christian Right has made religious freedom the ideological phalanx of its current campaigns in the culture wars. Religious freedom is now invoked as a way of seeking to derail access to reproductive health services as well as equality for LGBTQ people, most prominently regarding marriage equality.

But history provides little comfort for the theocratic visions of the Christian Right. And that is where our story begins.

***

For all of the shouting about religious liberty ­ from the landmark Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case, to the passage of the anti-gay Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Mississippi, and more ­ there is barely any mention, let alone any observance, of the official national Religious Freedom Day, enacted by Congress in 1992 and recognized every January 16 by an annual presidential proclamation.

The day commemorates the enactment of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.

Why is this seemingly obscure piece of Revolutionary-era legislation so vital? And why doesn't the Christian Right want you to know anything about it?

The bill, authored by Thomas Jefferson and later pushed through the state legislature by then member of the House of Delegates, James Madison, is regarded as the root of how the framers of the Constitution approached matters of religion and government, and it was as revolutionary as the era in which it was written.

It not only disestablished the Anglican Church as the official state church, but it provided that no one can be compelled to attend any religious institution or to underwrite it with taxes; that individuals are free to believe as they will and that this "shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."

As a practical matter, this meant that what we believe or don't believe is not the concern of government and that we are all equal as citizens.

Following the dramatic passage of the Statute in 1786, Madison traveled to Philadelphia, where he served as a principal author of the Constitution in 1787. As a Member of Congress in 1789 he was also a principal author of the First Amendment, which passed in 1791.

Jefferson was well aware that many did not like the Statute, just as they did not like the Constitution and the First Amendment, both of which sought to expand the rights of citizens and deflect claims of churches seeking special consideration.

So before his death, Jefferson sought to get the last word on what it meant. The Statute, he wrote, contained "within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohametan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."

That is a powerful and clear statement. Jefferson, almost 200 years ago, refuted the contemporary claims of Christian Right leaders, many of whom not only insist that America was founded as a Christian nation, but that the framers really meant their particular interpretation of Christianity. (And they are sometimes encouraged by a surprisingly wide array of pundits.)

Jefferson further explained that the legislature had specifically rejected proposed language that would have described "Jesus Christ" as "the holy author of our religion." This was rejected, he reported, "by the great majority."

No wonder the Christian Right does not want us to remember the original Statute for Religious Freedom ­ it doesn't fit their narrative of history! Nor does it justify their vision of the struggles of the political present, or the shining theocratic future they envision.

Religious Freedom Day is nothing but bad news for the likes of Religious Right leaders like Tony Perkins, who argue that Christians who favor marriage equality are not really Christians. They can believe that if they want, but it can make no difference in the eyes of the law. That is probably why on Religious Freedom Day 2014, Perkins made no mention of what Religious Freedom Day is really about ­ instead using the occasion to denounce president Obama's approach to religious liberty abroad.

This barely commemorated day provides an opportunity for LGBTQ people, and progressives generally, to reclaim a philosophical, legal and constitutional legacy that the Christian Right is busy trying to redefine for their own purposes.

Alright. So the Christian Right really does not want us to know about this day, but if we do, they certainly don't want us thinking about this stuff -- and so the standard fare of faux outrage about president Obama and various conspiracies against faith in general and conservative Christianity in general is likely to dominate our foreseeable future. 

But it doesn't have to be this way. And the Christian Right probably knows it.

When I say that the Christian Right does not want "us" to think about it, I mean everyone who is not the Christian Right and their allies, and especially not LGBTQ people and the otherwise "insufficiently Christian."  I think that is why the Christian Right is mostly so eerily quiet about it, even though religious freedom is so central to their political program.

But what if we did?

What if we seized this day to think dynamically about the religious freedoms we take for granted at our peril; freedom that is in danger of being redefined beyond recognition.  What if we decided to seize this day to consider our best values as a nation and advance the cause of equal rights for all?

If we did, we might begin by recalling the extraordinary challenge faced by the framers of the Constitution when they gathered in Philadelphia. They met to create one nation out of 13 fractious colonies still finding their way after a successful revolt against the British Empire; and contending with a number of powerful and well-established state churches and a growing and religiously diverse population.

Their answer?   Religious equality.  And it is rooted in Jefferson's bill. Let's remind ourselves about the origins of the bill.

Jefferson wrote the first draft in 1777 ­ just after having authored the Declaration of Independence in 1776.  And it was James Madison who finally got the legislation passed through the Virginia legislature in 1786, just months before he traveled to Philadelphia to be a principal author of the Constitution.  The Virginia Statute states that no one can be compelled to attend or support any religious institution, or otherwise be restrained in their beliefs, and that this "shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities . . ."

The Constitution, framed according to "The Virginia Plan," drafted primarily by Madison, contains no mention of God or Christianity.  In fact, the final text's only mention of religion is in the proscription of "religious tests for public office," found in Article 6. 

In other words ­ Jefferson's words ­ one's religious identity, or lack thereof, has no bearing on one's "civil capacities."

If we thought about the meaning of Religious Freedom Day, we might start thinking about things like that ­ and not capitulate to the Christian Right's effort to redefine religious freedom to include a license for business and institutional leaders (both government and civil) to impose their religious beliefs on employees and the public.

If we thought about things like that, then we might consider them in light of a host of initiatives in recent years, often advanced under the banner of religious freedom, but which, in fact, restrict the religious freedom of others.

We might consider, for example, the recent federal court decisionin the case of General Synod of the United Church of Christ v. Cooper, which found that North Carolina's ban on clergy performing marriage ceremonies without first obtaining a civil marriage license, was unconstitutional.

Since state law declared that same-sex couples could not get marriage licenses, this subjected clergy in the United Church of Christ, the Alliance of Baptists, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, among others, to potential prosecution for performing a religious ceremony.

As religious equality advances, so does equal rights for all. So you can see why the Christian Right might not want people­people like us­thinking like Jefferson. And that is why we must.

Religious Freedom Day was the brainchild of some of the town fathers and mothers of Richmond, Virginia, who have since created a museum dedicated to education about the Virginia Statute (PDF).

But we need more than a museum to breathe more life and liberty into the living Constitution.  Not much goes on around the country on Religious Freedom Day, January 16th.

There is no time like the present to seize this day.

 
This post is adapted from two recent columns at LGBTQ Nation, and is crossposted from Talk to Action.

 

 

Frederick Clarkson is a senior fellow at Political Research Associates and a member of the Public Eye editorial board. He is the editor of Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America, and the author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.
 

Saturday, December 27, 2014

ANS -- Putin, Neocons and the Great Illusion

Here's a short article by Paul Krugman advancing a good point: that conquest doesn't fit in the 21st century.  It was sent to me by one of our readers. 
Can we get Republicans to come into the 21st century politically?  (They are already there and way ahead of Democrats psychologically). 
Find it here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/22/opinion/paul-krugman-putin-neocons-and-the-great-illusion.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region%C3%82%C2%AEion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0   
--Kim



The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Columnist


Conquest Is for Losers


Putin, Neocons and the Great Illusion

DEC. 21, 2014
[]  

Paul Krugman

More than a century has passed since Norman Angell, a British journalist and politician, published "The Great Illusion," a treatise arguing that the age of conquest was or at least should be over. He didn't predict an end to warfare, but he did argue that aggressive wars no longer made sense ­ that modern warfare impoverishes the victors as well as the vanquished.

He was right, but it's apparently a hard lesson to absorb. Certainly Vladimir Putin never got the memo. And neither did our own neocons, whose acute case of Putin envy shows that they learned nothing from the Iraq debacle.

Angell's case was simple: Plunder isn't what it used to be. You can't treat a modern society the way ancient Rome treated a conquered province without destroying the very wealth you're trying to seize. And meanwhile, war or the threat of war, by disrupting trade and financial connections, inflicts large costs over and above the direct expense of maintaining and deploying armies. War makes you poorer and weaker, even if you win.

The exceptions to this dictum actually prove the rule. There are still thugs who wage war for fun and profit, but they invariably do so in places where exploitable raw materials are the only real source of wealth. The gangs tearing the Central African Republic apart are in pursuit of diamonds and poached ivory; the Islamic State may claim that it's bringing the new caliphate, but so far it has mostly been grabbing oil fields.

The point is that what works for a fourth-world warlord is just self-destructive for a nation at America's level ­ or even Russia's. Look at what passes for a Putin success, the seizure of Crimea: Russia may have annexed the peninsula with almost no opposition, but what it got from its triumph was an imploding economy that is in no position to pay tribute, and in fact requires costly aid. Meanwhile, foreign investment in and lending to Russia proper more or less collapsed even before the oil price plunge turned the situation into a full-blown financial crisis.

Which brings us to two big questions. First, why did Mr. Putin do something so stupid? Second, why were so many influential people in the United States impressed by and envious of his stupidity?

The answer to the first question is obvious if you think about Mr. Putin's background. Remember, he's an ex-K.G.B. man ­ which is to say, he spent his formative years as a professional thug. Violence and threats of violence, supplemented with bribery and corruption, are what he knows. And for years he had no incentive to learn anything else: High oil prices made Russia rich, and like everyone who presides over a bubble, he surely convinced himself that he was responsible for his own success. At a guess, he didn't realize until a few days ago that he has no idea how to function in the 21st century.

The answer to the second question is a bit more complicated, but let's not forget how we ended up invading Iraq. It wasn't a response to 9/11, or to evidence of a heightened threat. It was, instead, a war of choice to demonstrate U.S. power and serve as a proof of concept for a whole series of wars neocons were eager to fight. Remember "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran"?

The point is that there is a still-powerful political faction in America committed to the view that conquest pays, and that in general the way to be strong is to act tough and make other people afraid. One suspects, by the way, that this false notion of power was why the architects of war made torture routine ­ it wasn't so much about results as about demonstrating a willingness to do whatever it takes.
edit for how he handle the Ukrainian issue and this thug. The President took his queue from a Grand Master of...

Neocon dreams took a beating when the occupation of Iraq turned into a bloody fiasco, but they didn't learn from experience. (Who does, these days?) And so they viewed Russian adventurism with admiration and envy. They may have claimed to be alarmed by Russian advances, to believe that Mr. Putin, " what you call a leader," was playing chess to President Obama's marbles. But what really bothered them was that Mr. Putin was living the life they'd always imagined for themselves.

The truth, however, is that war really, really doesn't pay. The Iraq venture clearly ended up weakening the U.S. position in the world, while costing more than $800 billion in direct spending and much more in indirect ways. America is a true superpower, so we can handle such losses ­ although one shudders to think of what might have happened if the "real men" had been given a chance to move on to other targets. But a financially fragile petroeconomy like Russia doesn't have the same ability to roll with its mistakes.

I have no idea what will become of the Putin regime. But Mr. Putin has offered all of us a valuable lesson. Never mind shock and awe: In the modern world, conquest is for losers.
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A version of this op-ed appears in print on December 22, 2014, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Conquest Is for Losers. Order Reprints| Today's Paper | Subscribe

Monday, December 15, 2014

ANS -- Twins With Different Sexual Orientations: How Could it Happen?

Here's a short article responding to an anti-gay billboard purporting to say that gayness can't be genetic because TWINS!!!!!  Note that the "twins" in the billboard picture are really two pictures of the same guy.  Besides, the rate of two twins being both gay is much higher than two non-twin siblings.  What the article doesn't explicitly say, though it does say that twins may not be exactly genetically identical, is that not being exactly identical may be what makes twins instead of one fetus. 
I think the right wing sees gayness as an issue slipping away from them -- and this is evidence of increasing desperation in trying to hold on to it.  Plus, they lie so easily, it's appalling. 
Find it here:  http://www.care2.com/causes/twins-with-different-sexual-orientations-how-could-it-happen.html  
--Kim



Twins With Different Sexual Orientations: How Could it Happen?

Twins With Different Sexual Orientations: How Could it Happen?  


An ex-gay group is making headlines across the United States after erecting a billboard in Richmond, Virginia, proclaiming that twin studies prove no one is "born gay."

The billboard, paid for by the group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), features (what we're meant to assume are) identical twins, one labeled gay and the other labeled straight.

As the PFOX website aping its press coverage tells us, the billboard is based on the notion that (emphasis theirs):

Identical twins have the same genes or DNA. They are nurtured in equal prenatal conditions. If homosexuality is caused by genetics or prenatal conditions and one twin is gay, the co-twin should also be gay … because identical twins are always genetically identical, homosexuality cannot be genetically dictated. No-one is born gay.

To understand why this isn't convincing, we have to ask the question: how can twins have different sexual orientations, or in fact any other differences?

Well it's important to know right from the outset that recent scientific studies have shown that identical twins may not actually have exactly the same genetic code due to what are known as copy number variants. This is where in certain parts of the genome the usual two-copy rule is thrown out and a person may have anywhere between zero to in excess of 14 copies of a gene. This process isn't faithful and may differ between twins despite splitting from the same egg.

I raise this not to suggest this is the reason twins may have different sexualities, as there's no specific evidence to suggest this, but rather as an example of how identical twins can have significant differences at the genetic level despite being classed as "identical"–and why PFOX's line of argument falls flat from the very start.

Next, PFOX makes a massive leap of logic: it asserts that twins are exposed to exactly the same conditions in the womb. That's not necessarily true.

For instance, we have reasonably consistent research to suggest that the more older brothers a man has, the more likely that he is to be gay. Researchers believe this is the result of the youngest sibling being exposed to a slightly different hormone profile. We're not exactly sure what that might be, but one theory is that after carrying a number of male children, the mother begins to produce antibodies to certain "male" proteins. These antibodies would then be delivered to the fetus through the placenta and may result in different genes being switched on or off during the pregnancy, and thereby giving different sexual characteristics.

While obviously that doesn't neatly translate for identical twins, they can still be born with significant differences too. For instance, and to take a very obvious example, one twin may be born heavier than the other, and that difference may only grow over time as that heavier twin becomes a stockier adult than his or her sibling. How does that happen? Well, it can be the result of one twin getting a better connection to the mother's placenta than their sibling. In turn, this could even lead to different hormone exposures which again could affect how one sibling develops in a different way to the other.

This is due to what are known as potential epigenetic factors, that is to say environmental factors both inside the womb and during infancy that can affect what characteristics we inherit and what are active in us.

Don't misunderstand this use of "environmental," though. To those unfamiliar with this topic, "environmental" might be thought to refer to just things like how we are taught as we grow up, for instance. This, certainly, is the way that PFOX wants us to think about the "nurture" portion of the " nature v. nurture" argument, but it isn't usually what scientists mean in this context.

Researchers have long believed that something as complex as sexuality isn't just the result of our DNA, but rather that it is a mix of different factors like different genes being switched on or off at various stages of early development coupled with things like the womb environment, our formative diets, our early exposure to stress/pleasant conditions, and more.

There are many more environmental factors but these are the kinds of things that we are often talking about when we discuss the formation of sexuality, ones that are completely out of our control because they happen so subtly and so early on in life that we couldn't possibly make any kind of choice.

As you can see, PFOX's insistence that identical twins with different sexualities disproves the idea that people are born gay simply isn't true, and it misunderstands what is a very complex issue.

The reason that PFOX took out this billboard though is a direct response to a Northwestern University Study released in 1991 that found 52 percent of identical twin brothers of gay men also were gay. This sharply contrasts to just a 22 percent rate among fraternal twins, and an 11 percent rate between genetically unrelated brothers (i.e. siblings who are not the product of one egg splitting or sharing a womb). This suggested a strong genetic relationship for homosexuality that excited research in the field.

That PFOX would bother to return to that study after all this time represents how desperate they are to attack what they believe are the underpinnings of modern-day research into homosexuality. This just isn't true, though. While that study was crucial at the time, we have much more recent findings that have added depth and nuance, including a study released in the past few months that tracked homosexuality in men to two chromosome regions, which together with other evidence suggests our genes really may provide the basis for same gender attraction in men which may in turn combine with other contributing factors to "switch on" homosexuality.

PFOX has created a logical fallacy where it has supposed something must be false simply because it doesn't appear to be aware of (or is willing to ignore) the wider research on this topic. Unfortunately, because general knowledge of the research behind sexuality isn't particularly high, their line of argument might sound convincing to some ­ but we shouldn't be fooled.

It's also worth mentioning, however, that there is a significant gap in our understanding of the environmental factors that shape us and there are a number of ongoing studies on twins that are attempting to track how different environments during our formative years changes us, and indeed may shape our sexuality.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/twins-with-different-sexual-orientations-how-could-it-happen.html#ixzz3LzVbGkPs

Saturday, December 13, 2014

ANS -- Elizabeth Warren has arrived and so have we

This is about Elizabeth Warren and the new protest movements that are sweeping the nation.  maybe something is starting. Maybe a new idealism is rising.  Keep watching. 
find it here:   http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/12/1351333/-Elizabeth-Warren-has-arrived-and-so-have-we?detail=facebook #  
--Kim


Kerry Eleveld Follow RSS
Daily Kos staff

FRI DEC 12, 2014 AT 11:20 AM PST

Elizabeth Warren has arrived and so have we

by Kerry Eleveld FollowforKerry Eleveld Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat for Massachusetts
Sen. Elizabeth Warren has become the rockstar that Barack Obama once was. The difference is that she's already in a position to effect both the national conversation and U.S. governance. When Obama announced himself on the scene in 2004, he was still just running for U.S. Senate. That meant that he was in a position to change the national conversation (which he did) but not necessarily to mold its policy. And when he got the U.S. Senate, he was already eyeing a run for president, so we will never really know what he might have done or wanted to do as a senator.

Not so with Warren. We know what she wants to do (stick up for the little guy), has the expertise to do (protect average consumers from big money interests) and is increasingly doing it with expert effect. Thursday, in many ways, Warren arrived on the national political stage as a force to be reckoned with­not simply as a conversation changer but as a steward of policy. This week, Warren became the progressive litmus-test, a one-woman gatekeeper that must be consulted on the way to enacting any law, or at least those that fall within her policy wheelhouse. (We can only hope the right-wingers in the GOP stay as unruly as ever because they will force Boehner to appeal to the Warren-Pelosi tag team in order to get anything through the House.)

Many on the left want Warren to run for president for obvious reasons. In many ways, she is proving herself to be the person that the left yearned for but Obama never actually was. Earlier this week, Moveon.org launched a million-dollar effort to draft Warren for president and on Friday a group of 300 Obama alums signed an open letter urging her to run because, as they put it, they already knew what is was like to believe "in an unlikely candidate who no one thought had a chance." 

Warren is not likely to run. As Markos wrote in July, she's not running and that's a good thing. In that post, Markos noted that she doesn't have the ego to run, that doing so would marginalize her, that Hillary would crush her, and that she has all the perch she needs to effect both policy and the national conversation right there in the Senate. Never was that more clear than this week. On every bill the congressional leadership negotiates they will now have to wonder, "What will Warren do?" And at every turn during her presidential run, Hillary Clinton will have to answer the questions that Elizabeth Warren plants in the national conscience.

But even if Warren doesn't run, the energy that exists to draft her is still worth having because it gives her power, it gives her relevance, and it can absolutely be used to moderate the forces on the right.

Please read below the fold for more on this story.

Over the past six years, we have gotten a look at what happens when one person stirs a nation's soul and then a majority of that nation elevates him to office believing that he is some kind of messiah who will answer all their prayers. He was bound to fail, he could only answer some, and while he was a great orator and a great campaigner, he wasn't as effective at changing policy as many on the left had hoped.

He was also a gradualist. Phillip Agnew, an activist who is part of the #blacklivesmatter movement against police brutality and one of six grassroots leaders who met with Obama in the Oval Office last week, wrote this of their encounter with the president:
He listened. Intently. He responded passionately. He agreed with many of our points and offered his take on the current State of the Union. He presented the reforms that have dominated the discourse in the hours after our meeting. He cautioned us against demanding too big and stressed gradualism. He counseled us that the wheels of progress turn sluggishly and reminded us of the progress that got us to this point: a room full of black folk in the Oval Office. He asked for our help, harkening back to his organizing days when, in the streets of Chicago, the cries of the people shifted the landscape. We debated on the power of the vote and the lack of faith in the Democratic party.

We did not budge.

In the aftermath of the Eric Garner case, Charles Blow at the New York Times recently notedthe groundswell of activism in this country.
There seems to be a new age of activism rising. From Occupy Wall Street, to the "Stop Watching Us" march against government surveillance, to the Moral Monday protests, to the People's Climate March, to the recent nationwide protests over the killings of men and boys of color by police, there is obviously a discontent in this country that is pouring into the streets.

He left out the LGBT movement, which most definitely has protested and agitated for change. In fact, the National Equality March in the fall of 2009 was the first major national protest from the left after President Obama took office.

But Blow's point is well taken. We have become a nation of protesters. And that is partially due to a president who raised hopes that no one could have ever humanly fulfilled and a Congress that can't govern worth a damn.

We have become a nation of protesters because more than believing in one person, we believe in ideals­equality of income, equality of opportunity, equality under the law­that have been lost in policy and governance.

Elizabeth Warren is articulating and even embodying many of those ideals. But she need not run for president for those ideals to matter or to effect change in this country.

After covering the LGBT movement for nearly a decade, I have come to believe in the power of numbers and the power of an emergent movement of people speaking their truths­sometimes in public, sometime en masse, and sometimes in the lonely corners of their homes and families.

I, like many others, would love to see someone like Elizabeth Warren capture the imagination of the nation and be elevated to the highest office in the land. But we have already seen that come to be. And in many ways, the energy behind the hope for her candidacy is more important than the candidacy itself.

Friday, December 05, 2014

ANS -- Time-Restricted Feeding Is a Preventative and Therapeutic Intervention against Diverse Nutritional Challenges

This is really interesting.  My personal experience, long before hearing about this, was that I cut out after dinner snacking and that was how I lost 29 lbs.  This is an abstract; if you go to the page, there are links to related things there.
Short article.
Find it here:  http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/abstract/S1550-4131(14)00498-7   
--Kim





Time-Restricted Feeding Is a Preventative and Therapeutic Intervention against Diverse Nutritional Challenges

Amandine Chaix
,
Amir Zarrinpar
,
Phuong Miu
,
Satchidananda Panda email
Article has an altmetric score of 215
 

Figure thumbnail fx1

Highlights

  • •Time-restricted feeding (TRF) confines food access to 9–12 hr during the active phase
  • •TRF is a therapeutic intervention against obesity without calorie restriction
  • •TRF protects against metabolic diseases even when briefly interrupted on weekends
  • •TRF is effective against high-fat, high-fructose, and high-sucrose diets


Summary

Because current therapeutics for obesity are limited and only offer modest improvements, novel interventions are needed. Preventing obesity with time-restricted feeding (TRF; 8–9 hr food access in the active phase) is promising, yet its therapeutic applicability against preexisting obesity, diverse dietary conditions, and less stringent eating patterns is unknown. Here we tested TRF in mice under diverse nutritional challenges. We show that TRF attenuated metabolic diseases arising from a variety of obesogenic diets, and that benefits were proportional to the fasting duration. Furthermore, protective effects were maintained even when TRF was temporarily interrupted by ad libitum access to food during weekends, a regimen particularly relevant to human lifestyle. Finally, TRF stabilized and reversed the progression of metabolic diseases in mice with preexisting obesity and type II diabetes. We establish clinically relevant parameters of TRF for preventing and treating obesity and metabolic disorders, including type II diabetes, hepatic steatosis, and hypercholesterolemia.
Received: July 23, 2014; Received in revised form: September 15, 2014; Accepted: October 31, 2014;
© 2014 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Thursday, December 04, 2014

ANS -- This Is No Conspiracy Theory: A Small Group of Companies Have Enormous Power Over the World

Here's an article about who is really in charge in the world: banks. 
find it here:   http://www.alternet.org/economy/no-conspiracy-theory-small-group-companies-have-enormous-power-over-world?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark   
--Kim


  ECONOMY 
Andrewgavinmarshall.com / By Andrew Gavin Marshall
comments_image   5 COMMENTS

This Is No Conspiracy Theory: A Small Group of Companies Have Enormous Power Over the World

A study identified a number of companies with outsized control over a huge portion of the earth's economy.
5 COMMENTS 5 COMMENTS
 
 

December 1, 2014
 
 
 
 

In October of 2011, New Scientist reported that a scientific study on the global financial system was undertaken by three complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. The conclusion of the study revealed what many theorists and observers have noted for years, decades, and indeed, even centuries: "An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy." As one of the researchers stated, "Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market… Our analysis is reality-based." Using a database which listed 37 million companies and investors worldwide, the researchers studied all 43,060 trans-national corporations (TNCs), including the share ownerships linking them.[1~footnotes at the end of the article]

The mapping of 'power' was through the construction of a model showing which companies controlled which other companies through shareholdings. The web of ownership revealed a core of 1,318 companies with ties to two or more other companies. This 'core' was found to own roughly 80 percent of global revenues for the entire set of 43,000 TNCs. And then came what the researchers referred to as the "super-entity" of 147 tightly-knit companies, which all own each other, and collectively own 40 percent of the total wealth in the entire network. One of the researchers noted, "In effect, less than 1 percent of the companies were able to control 40 percent of the entire network." This network poses a huge risk to the global economy, as, "If one [company] suffers distress… this propagates." The study was undertaken with a data set established prior to the economic crisis, thus, as the financial crisis forced some banks to die (Lehman Bros.) and others to merge, the "super-entity" would now be even more connected, concentrated, and problematic for the economy.[2]

The top 50 companies on the list of the "super-entity" included (as of 2007):

Barclays Plc (#1), Capital Group Companies Inc (#2), FMR Corporation (#3), AXA (#4), State Street Corporation (#5), JP Morgan Chase & Co. (#6), UBS AG (#9), Merrill Lynch & Co Inc (#10), Deutsche Bank (#12), Credit Suisse Group (#14), Bank of New York Mellon Corp (#16), Goldman Sachs Group (#18), Morgan Stanley (#21), Société Générale (#24), Bank of America Corporation (#25), Lloyds TSB Group (#26), Lehman Brothers Holdings (#34), Sun Life Financial (#35), ING Groep (#41), BNP Paribas (#46), and several others.[3]

In the United States, five banks control half the economy: JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs Group collectively held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, which equals roughly 56 percent of the U.S. economy. This data was according to central bankers at the Federal Reserve. In 2007, the assets of the largest banks amounted to 43 percent of the U.S. economy. Thus, the crisis has made the banks bigger and more powerful than ever. Because the government invoked "too big to fail," meaning that the big banks will be saved because they are very important, the big banks have incentive to make continued and bigger risks, because they will be bailed out in the end. Essentially, it's an insurance policy for criminal risk-taking behaviour. The former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis stated, "Market participants believe that nothing has changed, that too-big-to-fail is fully intact." Remember, "market" means the banking cartel (or "super-entity" if you prefer). Thus, they build new bubbles and buy government bonds (sovereign debt), making the global financial system increasingly insecure and at risk of a larger collapse than took place in 2008.[4]

When politicians, economists, and other refer to "financial markets," they are in actuality referring to the "super-entity" of corporate-financial institutions which dominate, collectively, the global economy. For example, the role of financial markets in the debt crisis ravaging Europe over the past two years is often referred to as "market discipline," with financial markets speculating against the ability of nations to repay their debt or interest, of credit ratings agencies downgrading the credit-worthiness of nations, of higher yields on sovereign bonds (higher interest on government debt), and plunging the country deeper into crisis, thus forcing its political class to impose austerity and structural adjustment measures in order to restore "market confidence." This process is called "market discipline," but is more accurately, "financial terrorism" or "market warfare," with the term "market" referring specifically to the "super-entity." Whatever you call it, market discipline is ultimately a euphemism for class war.[5]

The Global Supra-Government and the "Free Market"

In December of 2011, Roger Altman, the former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under the Clinton administration wrote an article for theFinancial Times in which he explained that financial markets were "acting like a global supra-government," noting:

They oust entrenched regimes where normal political processes could not do so. They force austerity, banking bail-outs and other major policy changes. Their influence dwarfs multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Indeed, leaving aside unusable nuclear weapons, they have become the most powerful force on earth.[6]

Altman continued, explaining that when the power of this "global supra-government" is flexed, "the immediate impact on society can be painful – wider unemployment, for example, frequently results and governments fail." But of course, being a former top Treasury Department official, he went on to endorse the global supra-government, writing, "the longer-term effects can be often transformative and positive." Ominously, Altman concluded: "Whether this power is healthy or not is beside the point. It is permanent," and "there is no stopping the new policing role of the financial markets."[7] In other words, the 'super-entity' global 'supra-government' of financial markets carries out financial extortion, overthrows governments and impoverishes populations, but this is ultimately "positive" and "permanent," at least from the view of a former Treasury Department official. From the point of view of those who are being impoverished, the actual populations, "positive" is not necessarily the word that comes to mind.

In the age of globalization, money – or capital – flows easily across borders, with banks, hedge funds and other financial institutions acting as the vanguards of a new international order of global governance. Where finance goes, corporations follow; where corporations venture, powerful states stand guard of their interests. Our global system is one of state-capitalism, where the state and corporate interests are interdependent and mutually beneficial, at least for those in power. Today, financial institutions – with banks at the helm – have reached unprecedented power and influence in state capitalist societies. The banks are bigger than ever before in history, guarded by an insurance policy that we call "too big to fail," which means that despite their criminal and reckless behaviour, the government will step in to bail them out, as it always has. Financial markets also include credit ratings agencies, which determine the supposed "credit-worthiness" of other banks, corporations, and entire nations. The lower the credit rating, the riskier the investment, and thus, the higher the interest is for that entity to borrow money. Countries that do not follow the dictates of the "financial market" are punished with lower credit ratings, higher interest, speculative attacks, and in the cases of Greece and Italy in November of 2011, their democratically-elected governments are simply removed and replaced with technocratic administrations made up of bankers and economists who then push through austerity and adjustment policies that impoverish and exploit their populations. In the age of the "super-entity" global "supra-government," there is no time to rattle around with the pesky process of formal liberal democracy; they mean business, and if your elected governments do not succumb to "market discipline," they will be removed and replaced in what – under any other circumstances – is referred to as a 'coup.'

Banks and financial institutions provide the liquidity – or funds – for what we call "free markets." Free markets in principle would allow for free competition between companies and countries, each producing their own comparative advantage – producing what they are best at – and trading with others in the international market, so that all parties rise in living standards and wealth together. The "free market" is, of course, pure mythology. In practice, what we call "free markets" are actually highly protectionist, regimented, regulated, and designed to undermine competition and enforce monopolization. The "free markets" serve this purpose for the benefit of large multinational corporations and banks.

When we use the term "free markets" we are generally referring to the "real" economy, legitimate and legal. When it comes to illegitimate markets, for example, the global drug trade, we do not tend to refer to them as "free markets" but rather, "illegal" and run by "cartels." Cartels, like corporations, are hierarchically organized totalitarian institutions, where decisions and power and exercised from the top-down, with essentially no input going from the bottom-up. Large multinational corporations, like large international cartels, seek to control their particular market throughout entire nations, regions, and beyond. Often, co-operation between corporations allow them to function in an oligopolistic manner, where the collectively dominate the entire market, carving it up between them. Major oil companies, agro-industrial firms, telecommunications, pharmaceutical, military contractors and water management corporations are well-known for these types of activities.

Cartels have often been known to engage in a similar practice, though typically they are more competitive with each other. When interests are threatened – which is defined as when a corporation or cartel is at risk of losing its total dominance of its market in a particular region – conflict arises, and often violently so, with the potential for coups, assassinations, terror campaigns, and war. This is when the state intervenes to protect the market for the cartel or corporate interests. Thus, a market like the global drug trade functions relatively similar to those of the "legitimate" economy, pharmaceuticals, energy, technology, etc. The illicit trade in drugs is as much a "free market" as is the trade in automobiles or oil. And of course, the money ends up in the same place: the global supra-government of "financial markets."

Banking Cartel or Drug Cartel… or What's the Difference?

In 2009, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that billions of dollars in drug money saved the major banks during the financial crisis, providing much-needed liquidity. Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime stated that drug money was "the only liquid investment capital" available to banks on the brink of collapse, with roughly $325 billion in drug money absorbed by the financial system. Without identifying specific countries or banks, Costa stated that, "Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities… There were signs that some banks were rescued that way."[8]

In 2010, Wachovia Bank (now owned by Wells Fargo) settled the largest action ever under the U.S. bank secrecy act, paying a fine of $50 million plus forfeiting $110 million of drug money, of which the bank laundered roughly $378.4 billion out of Mexico. The federal prosecutor in the case stated, "Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations." The fine that the bank paid for laundering hundreds of billions of dollars in drug money was less than 2 percent of the bank's 2009 profit, and on the same week of the settlement, Wells Fargo's stock actually went up. The bank admitted in a statement of settlement that, "As early as 2004, Wachovia understood the risk" of holding such an account, but "despite these warnings, Wachovia remained in the business." The leading investigator into the money laundering operations, Martin Woods, based out of London, had discovered that Wachovia had received roughly six or seven thousand subpoenas for information about its Mexican operation from the federal government, of which Woods commented: "An absurd number. So at what point does someone at the highest level not get the feeling that something is very, very wrong?" Woods had been hired by Wachovia's London branch as a senior anti-money laundering officer in 2005, and when in 2007 an official investigation was opened into Wachovia's Mexican operations, Woods was informed by the bank that he failed "to perform at an acceptable standard." In other words, he was actually doing his job. In regards to the settlement, Woods stated:

The regulatory authorities do not have to spend any more time on it, and they don't have to push it as far as a criminal trial. They just issue criminal proceedings, and settle. The law enforcement people do what they are supposed to do, but what's the point? All those people dealing with all that money from drug-trafficking and murder, and no one goes to jail?[9]

As the former UN Office of Drugs and Crime czar Antonio Maria Costa said, "The connection between organized crime and financial institutions started in the late 1970s, early 1980s… when the mafia became globalized," just like other major markets. Martin Woods added that, "These are the proceeds of murder and misery in Mexico, and of drugs sold around the world," yet no one went to jail, asking, "What does the settlement do to fight the cartels? Nothing – it doesn't make the job of law enforcement easier and it encourages the cartels and anyone who wants to make money by laundering their blood dollars. Where's the risk? There is none." He added: "Is it in the interest of the American people to encourage both the drug cartels and the banks in this way? Is it in the interest of the Mexican people? It's simple: if you don't see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 30,000 people killed in Mexico, you're missing the point." Woods, who now runs his own consultancy, told the Observer in 2011 that, "New York and London… have become the world's two biggest laundries of criminal and drug money, and offshore tax havens. Not the Cayman Islands, not the Isle of Man or Jersey. The big laundering is right through the City of London and Wall Street."[10]

Just as the "too big to fail" program acts as an insurance policy for the big banks to engage in constant criminal activity, taking ever-larger financial risks with the guarantee that they will be bailed out, the settlements and lack of criminal prosecutions for banks laundering drug money provides the incentive to continue laundering hundreds of billions in drug money, because so long as the fine is smaller than the profit accrued from such a practice, it comes down to a simple cost-benefit analysis: if the cost of laundering drug money is less than the benefit, continue with the policy. The same cost-benefit analysis goes for all forms of criminal activity by banks and corporations, whether bribery, fraud, or violating environmental, labour and other regulations. So long as the penalty is less than the profit, the problem continues.

An article in the Observer from July of 2012 referred to global banks as "the financial services wing of the drug cartels," noting that HSBC, Britain's biggest bank, had been called before the U.S. Senate to testify about laundering drug money from Mexican cartels, holding one "suspicious account" for four years on behalf of the largest drug cartel in the world, the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico.[11] In fact, a multi-year investigation into HSBC revealed that the bank was not only a major international drug money-laundering conduit, but also laundered money for clients with ties to terrorism. In July of 2012, as the Senate was publicly investigating HSBC, Antonio Maria Costa stated, "Today I cannot think of one bank in the world that has not been penetrated by mafia money." The global drug trade is estimated to be worth roughly $380 billion annually, with most of the money made in the consumer markets of North America and Europe. Using the example of the $35 billion per year cocaine market in the United States, only about 1.5 percent of these profits make their way to the coca-leaf producers (mostly poor peasants) in South America (who became the target of our bombing and chemical warfare campaigns in the "war on drugs"), while the international traffickers get roughly 13 percent of the profits, with the remaining 85 percent earned by the distributors in the U.S. HSBC was accused of laundering the profits of the distributors.[12]

The U.S. Senate report concluded that HSBC had exposed the U.S. financial system to "a wide array of money laundering, drug trafficking, and terrorist financing," including billions in "proceeds from illegal drug sales in the United States." HSBC acknowledged, in an official statement, that, "in the past, we have sometimes failed to meet the standards that regulators and customers expect." Among those "standards" that HSBC "sometimes failed to meet," according to the Senate investigation, were financing provided to banks in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh which were tied to terrorist organizations, while the bank's regulator failed to take a single enforcement action against HSBC.[13] Among the terrorist organizations which potentially received financial assistance from HSBC through Saudi banks was al-Qaeda. HSBC put aside $700 million to cover any potential fines for such activities, which is not uncommon for banks to do. Banks like ABN Amro, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Lloyds and ING had all reached major settlements for admitting to facilitating transactions and engaging in money laundering for clients in Cuba, Iran, Libya, Myanmar and Sudan.[14]

As executives from HSBC appeared in the U.S. Senate, the bank's head of compliance since 2002, David Bagley, resigned as he testified before the committee, commenting, "Despite the best efforts and intentions of many dedicated professionals, HSBC has fallen short of our own expectations and the expectations of our regulators."[15] As Ed Vulliamy reported in the Observer, in May of 2012, a poor black man named Edward Dorsey Sr. was convicted of peddling 5.5 grams of crack cocaine in Washington D.C. and was given 10 years in jail. Meanwhile, just across the river from where Dorsey had committed his crime, executives from HSBC admitted before the U.S. Senate that they laundered billions in drug money, just as Wachovia had admitted to the previous year, with no one going to prison.[16] The lesson from this is clear: if you are poor, black, and are caught with a couple grams of crack-cocaine, you can expect to go to prison for several years (or in this case, a decade); but if you are rich, white, own a bank, and are caught laundering billions of dollars (or hundreds of billions of dollars) in drug money, you will be fined (but not enough to make such practices unprofitable), and may have to resign. Too big to fail is simply another way of saying "too big to jail."

Of course, it's not fair to put all the blame for international drug money-laundering on the shoulders of HSBC and Wachovia, as Bloombergreported, Mexican drug cartels also funneled money through the Bank of America and even the banking branch of American Express, Banco Santander, and Citigroup.[17] Even the FBI has accused Bank of America of laundering Mexican drug cartel funds.[18] But it's not just drug money that banks launder; all sorts of illicit funds are laundered through major banks, many of which have been fined or are now being investigated for their criminal activities, including JPMorgan, Standard Chartered, Credit Suisse, Lloyds, Barclays, ING, and the Royal Bank of Scotland, among others.[19] Another major Swiss bank, UBS, has been very consistent in committing fraud and engaging in various conspiracies, a great deal of which was committed against Americans, though the bank was given "conditional immunity" from the U.S. Department of Justice.[20]

Financial Fraud and the 'Get Out of Jail Free Card'

The major banks of the world have been caught in conspiracies of ripping off small towns and cities across the United States, which allowed banks like JPMorgan Chase, GE Capital, UBS, Bank of America, Lehman Brothers, Wachovia, Bear Stearns, and others, to steal billions of dollars from schools, hospitals, libraries, and nursing homes from "virtually every state, district and territory in the United States," according to a court settlement on the issue. The theft was done through the manipulation of the public bidding process, something that the Mafia has become experts in with regards to garbage and construction industry contracts. In short, the banking system actually functions like a Mafia cartel system, not to mention, taking money from the Mafia and cartels themselves.[21] Banks like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs engaged in bribery, fraud, and conspiracies which resulted in the bankruptcy of counties all across the United States.[22] Still, they continue to be 'respected' by the political class which refuses to punish them for their criminal activity, and instead, rewards them with bailouts and follows their instructions for policy.

Over the summer of 2012, another major banking scandal hit the headlines, regarding the manipulation of the London inter-bank lending rate known as the Libor. The Libor rate, explained the Economist, "determines the prices that people and corporations around the world pay for loans or receive for their savings," as it is used as a benchmark for establishing payments on an $800 trillion derivatives market, covering everything from interest rate derivatives to mortgages. Essentially, the Libor is the interest rate at which banks lend to each other on the short term, and is established through an "honour system" of where 18 major banks report their daily rates, from which an average is calculated. That average becomes the Libor rate, and reverberates throughout the entire global economy, setting a benchmark for a massive amount of transactions in the global derivatives market. Whereas the derivatives market is a massive casino of unregulated speculation, the Libor scandal revealed the cartel that owns the casino.

The scandal began with Barclays, a 300-year old bank in Britain, revealing that several employees had been involved in rigging the Libor to suit their own needs. More banks quickly became implemented, and countries all over the world began opening investigations into this scandal and the role their own banks may have played in it. By early July, as many as 20 major banks were named in various investigations or lawsuits related to the rigging of the Libor.[23]

Among the major global banks which are being investigated by U.S. prosecutors are Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, UBS, Bank of America, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, Credit Suisse, Lloyds Banking Group, Rabobank, Royal Bank of Canada, Société Générale, and others. Prosecutors in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Japan were investigating collusion between the major banks on the manipulation of the Libor. In June of 2012, Barclays paid a fine to US and UK authorities, admitting its culpability in the rigging with a $450 million settlement.[24] With information and documents pouring out, implicating further banks and institutions in the scandal, a general consensus was emerging that the Libor had been manipulated since at least 2005, though, as one former Morgan Stanley trader wrote in the Financial Times, the rigging had began as early as 1991, if not before. The British Banker's Association was responsible for setting the Libor rate by polling roughly 18 major banks on their highest and lowest rates daily. Thus, rigging by one bank would require the co-operating of at least nine other banks in purposely manipulating their rates in order to have any effect upon the Libor. Douglas Keenan, the former Morgan Stanley trader, wrote that, "it seems the misreporting of Libor rates may have been common practice since at least 1991."[25]

Rolf Majcen, the head of a hedge fund called FTC Capital told Der Spiegel that, "the Libor manipulation is presumably the biggest financial scandal ever." As regulators were using words like "organized fraud" and "banksters" to describe the growing scandal, it was becoming common to refer to the major banks as functioning like a "cartel" or "mafia."[26] The CEO of Barclays, Bob Diamond, resigned in disgrace, as did Marcus Agius, the Chairman of Barclays (who also serves as a director on the board of BBC, and is married into the Rothschild banking dynasty). The "cartel" manipulated the Libor for a great number of reasons, among them, to appear to be in better health by rigging their credit ratings upwards.[27] The Business Insider referred to the Libor rigging as a "criminal conspiracy" from the start, essentially designed to promote manipulation as the Libor was determined by an "honor system" for banks to properly report their rates.[28] Imagine giving a pile of credit cards to a group of credit card fraud convicts and establishing an "honour system." Could one truly be surprised if it didn't work out? Well, the Libor scandal is effectively based upon the same logic, except that the repercussions are global in scope.

Traders at the Royal Bank of Scotland referenced, in internal emails, to their participation in operating a "cartel" that made "amazing" amounts of money through the manipulation of interest rates, with a former senior trader at RBS writing that managers at the bank had "condoned collusion." The same trader, who was later hung out to dry by RBS as a scapegoat, wrote in an email to a trader at Deutsche Bank that, "It is a cartel now in London," where the Libor is established.[29]

The cartel, however, did not simply include the major banks, but also required the cooperation or at least negligence of regulators and central banks. Documents released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank of England show correspondence between then-President of the NY Fed Timothy Geithner (who is now Obama's Treasury Secretary) and Bank of England Governor Mervyn King discussing how Barclays was manipulating the Libor rates during the 2008 financial crisis. While the NY Fed corresponded with both the Bank of England and Barclays itself on the acknowledgment of interest rate manipulation, it never told the bank to stop the rigging practice. An official at Barclays even informed the NYFed in 2008 that the bank was under-reporting the rate at which it could borrow from other banks so that Barclays could "avoid the stigma" of appearing to be weaker than its peers, adding that "other participating banks were also under-reporting their Libor submissions."[30]

A Barclays employee told the New York Fed in an April 2008 phone call that, "We know that we're not posting um, an honest Libor… and yet we are doing it, because, um, if we didn't do it, it draws, um, unwanted attention on ourselves." The New York Fed official replied: "You have to accept it… I understand. Despite it's against what you would like to do. I understand completely." Several months later, a Barclays employee told a New York Fed official that the Libor rates were still "absolute rubbish."[31]

While the New York Fed expressed sympathy for the poor and helpless global banks need to engage in fraud and interest rate manipulation in order to lie and appear to be healthier than it was, the Bank of England went a step further, when Paul Tucker, the head of markets at the BoE wrote a note to Barclays CEO Bob Diamond in 2008 suggesting that Barclays lower its Libor rate, thus encouraging the rigging itself, instead of just expressing sympathy for the "need" to commit fraud.[32]

The main British banking lobby group, the British Banker's Association (BBA), which was responsible for overseeing the Libor rate process (no conflict of interest there, right?), was, in late September of 2012, stripped of its right to oversee the Libor, to be replaced with a formal regulator. The BBA's "oversight" of Libor dates back to 1984, when the City of London (Britain's Wall Street) had begun an experiment to establish a new way of setting interest rates, asking the banking lobby group to set the rate in 1986 when the Libor began.[33] The BBA's Foreign Exchange and Money Markets Committee is responsible for setting the Libor, and they meet every two months to review the process in secret without any minutes being published, and even the membership of the Committee is kept a secret. Spokespersons at Credit Suisse, Royal Bank of Scotland, and UBS refused to comment on whether they had any representatives on the committee, while Barclays, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Bank of America and Citigroup didn't even respond to emailed inquiries about their involvement with the committee, as Bloomberg reported. A British regulator, in the understatement of the century, stated, "There is an apparent lack of transparency," adding that the BBA's committee "doesn't appear to be sufficiently open and transparent to provide the necessary degree of accountability to firms and markets with a direct interest in being assured of the integrity of Libor."[34] When the fox guards the henhouse, it takes a great deal of stupidity to be "surprised" when some hens go missing.

In an April 2008 meeting with officials at the Bank of England, Angela Knight, the head of the British Banker's Association, suggested that the BBA perhaps should no longer be responsible for oversight of "the world's most important number," which had become too big for the BBA to manage. No one at the meeting cared enough to do anything about it, however, and so nothing changed.[35] Where was the incentive to change the system, after all? Yes, massive fraud was taking place, and this was well understood by the banks committing it, as well as the regulators and central banks overseeing it. But on the plus side, everyone was getting away with it. So indeed, there was no incentive to change the system. From the point of view of those managing it, the Libor was functioning as it should. A cartel was established because a cartel was desired. The fact that it was all highly illegal, fraudulent, and immoral was – and is – beside the point. Mexican drug cartels do not worry about the legality of their operations because they are, by definition, illegal. They worry simply about getting away with their illegal operations. The same can be said for the global banking cartel. So long as they get away with criminal cartel operations, there is no incentive to change the system, and instead, there is only an incentive to expand and further entrench the cartel's operations.

Canada's antitrust regulator began an investigation into the "international cartel" of banks rigging the Libor, focusing on the role played by banks such as JP Morgan Chase, Royal bank of Scotland, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and Citigroup, among others. A law professor at the University of Toronto who was hired by the regulator to study the case commented that, "international cartels are of a significant concern for the Canadian economy."[36] We have truly reached an impressive circumstance when the actual regulators of the banks refer to the banking system as an "international cartel."

A lawsuit was being filed by several homeowners in the U.S. who were attempting to sue some of the world's largest banks for fraud, as the Libor manipulation sparked increases on their mortgages, resulting in illegal profits for banks. The class action lawsuit filed in New York in October of 2012 accused banks such as Bank of America, Citigroup, Barclays, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and others of fraud over a period of ten years.[37] For U.S. states and municipalities that bought interest-rate swaps before the financial crisis, the Libor rigging was poised to more than double their losses. Banks had sold roughly $500 billion of interest-rate swaps (in the derivatives market) to municipalities before the financial crisis, with roughly $200 billion of those swaps tied to the Libor. As one legal expert who studies derivatives told Bloomberg, "Almost all interest-rate swaps begin with Libor." This prompted several states in the U.S. to begin their own investigations into how the Libor-rigging may have negatively affected them.[38]

Punishing the World's Population into Poverty: Life Under the Global Cartel

While the global cartel of criminal banks rig rates, launder drug money, fund terrorists, engage in bribery, fraud and demand multi-trillion dollar bailouts from our governments (effectively selling their bad debts to the public), and then give themselves massive bonuses, they are also demanding – through what is called "market discipline" – that our governments deal with our debts by undertaking policies of "austerity" and "structural reform," which are euphemisms for impoverishment and exploitation. Thus, after the cartel helped create a massive financial crisis, and after our governments rewarded them for their criminal activity, the cartel now demands that our governments punish their populations into poverty and open their economies, resources and labour up for cheap and easy exploitation by banks and multinational corporations. This is referred to as the "solution" for getting out of the 'Great Recession,' and which is sure to great a Great Depression. Greece is now two and a half years into its "austerity" and "adjustment" reforms, with its debt growing as a result, poverty exploding, misery spreading, health, education, welfare rapidly declining, suicide rates and hunger increasing, as the Greek people are subjected to a program of "social genocide." Market discipline demands austerity and adjustment, or in other words, class warfare creates poverty and exploitation.[39]

Countries that refuse to implement programs of austerity and adjustment are subjected to financial terrorism by the "international cartel," as financial markets engage in "market discipline" by using the derivatives market to speculate against that particular country's ability to pay its interest or debt, thus making its credit ratings decrease and borrowing rates increase, plunging the country into a deeper crisis. In any other scenario, this is called terrorism or in the very least, extortion: do what I say or I will punish you and destroy you. This is what former U.S. Treasury official Roger Altman referred to in the Financial Times as the new "global supra-government" who can "force austerity, banking bail-outs and other major policy changes," and thus, "have become the most powerful force on earth."[40] Countries, regional, and international organizations all bow down to the dictates of the "international cartel" of the "global supra-government," and so countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal, organizations like the European Union, European Central Bank, powerful states like Germany, France, Britain, and the U.S., and other international organizations like the IMF, Bank for International Settlements, and the OECD all demand and implement austerity measures and structural "reforms." Either they follow the orders of the "cartel" – which we commonly refer to as the "invisible hand" of the "free market – or they directly challenge "the most powerful force on earth." In the global economy, a small country like Greece standing up to the "global supra-government" is much like a small Greek restaurant trying to stand up to the city Mafia.

In the U.S., states that were defrauded in the billions of dollars by the cartel, and took on major debts as a result, are now the harbingers of austerity in America. Beginning in 2010, roughly 20 states across the U.S. began implementing austerity measures, and have been doing much worse economically as a result (the predicted effect of austerity). Even the institutions which are the most militant in demanding austerity measures, such as the European Union and the IMF, have acknowledged in recent reports that countries which pursue austerity to supposedly reduce their debts end up getting much larger debts as a result, and that such measures are actually extremely damaging to economies. This is not news, of course, since there is a rather large sample of data from the past 30 years of forced austerity and adjustment measures across Africa, Asia, and Latin America (at the behest of the IMF, World Bank, western governments, and of course, the "cartel"), which show quite clearly the effect that austerity and adjustment have in rapidly expanding poverty and facilitating exploitation. As austerity is hitting several U.S. states, jobs are lost and poverty increases with debt, standards of living decline and the recession deepens into a depression. The population is essentially punished for the crimes of the global cartel, while public employees, pensioners, welfare recipients, teachers and workers get the blame.[41]

In late October of 2012, the CEOs of 80 major corporations and banks in the United States banded together (as any well functioning cartel does) in order to pressure Congress, regardless of who the next President is, to pursue an agenda of harsh austerity measures and structural reforms. In a statement to Congress signed by the 80 CEOs, the American branch of the global cartel (its most significant branch), demanded that policies be enacted immediately, though implemented gradually, "to give Americans time to prepare for the changes in the federal budget." Among the demands are to reform Medicare and Medicaid, healthcare, Social Security, increase taxes, and generally reduce spending. All of this amounts to a large federal program of austerity, to cut social spending and increase taxes on the population, thus impoverishing the population. This, in the words of the letter to Congress, "must be bipartisan and reforms to all areas of the budget should be included."[42] Among the signatories to the letter were the CEOs of AT&T, Bank of America, BlackRock, Boeing, Caterpillar, Dow Chemical Company, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Merck, Microsoft, Motorola, Time Warner, and Verizon, among many others.[43]

This followed roughly one week after a group of 15 major global bank CEOs sent a letter to President Obama and the U.S. Congress lecturing the U.S. political class on "moral authority," giving their formal orders to the U.S. political establishment, that regardless of Democratic or Republican administrations, they are losing patience with the democratic apparatus of the state, and warned: "The solvency, productive capacity, and stability of the United States, as well as its moral authority as a global leader, require that its fiscal challenges be credibly met." Among the signatories to the letter were the CEOs of Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. The Wall Street Journal, reporting on this letter, commented that even for "a dying democracy, it's embarrassing enough to see bankers telling our government what to do," but in this letter, "we even see foreign bankers telling our government what to do," as other CEOs of the global cartel signed the letter, from banks such as UBS, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Bank. The "consequences of inaction" on the U.S. debt, read the letter, "would be very grave." In other words, the U.S. political class has received a threat from the global cartel that it is now time to implement austerity and adjustment measures, or to face the consequences of financial terrorism.[44]

Hiding the Loot: The Offshore Economy in the Age of the Global Plutonomy

While people are being forced into poverty to pay off the bad debts of the "super-entity" global banking cartel of drug-money laundering banks which make up the "global supra-government," the richest people in the world have been hiding their wealth in offshore tax havens, and of course, with the help of those same banks. James Henry, a former chief economist at McKinsey, a major global consultancy, published a major report on tax havens in July of 2012 for the Tax Justice Network, compiling data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the IMF and other private sector entities which revealed that the world's superrich have hidden between $21 and $32trillion offshore to avoid taxation. Henry stated: "This offshore economy is large enough to have a major impact on estimates of inequality of wealth and income; on estimates of national income and debt ratios; and – most importantly – to have very significant negative impacts on the domestic tax bases of 'source' countries." John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network commented that, "Inequality is much, much worse than official statistics show, but politicians are still relying on trickle-down to transfer wealth to poorer people… This new data shows the exact opposite has happened: for three decades extraordinary wealth has been cascading into the offshore accounts of a tiny number of super-rich." Roughly 92,000 of the super-rich, globally, hold at least $10 trillion in offshore wealth. In many cases, the worth of these offshore assets far exceeds the debts of the countries that they flow from, the same debts that are used to keep these countries and their populations in poverty and a constant state of exploitation.[45]

The estimated total of hidden offshore wealth amounts to more than the combined GDP of the United States and Japan, hidden in secretive financial jurisdictions like Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. The process of hiding this wealth is largely facilitated by the major global banks, which compete with one another to attract the assets of the world's super-rich. James Henry explained that the wealth of the world's super-rich is "protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy;" more of that "free market" magic. The top ten banks in the world, which include UBS and Credit Suisse (based in Switzerland) as well as Goldman Sachs in the United States, collectively managed roughly $6.4 trillion in offshore accounts for 2010 alone. As the report revealed, "for many developing countries the cumulative value of the capital that has flowed out of their economies since the 1970s would be more than enough to pay off their debts to the rest of the world," debts which are largely illegitimate as it stands. This trend is exacerbated in the oil-rich states of the world such as Nigeria, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. The report stated: "The problem here is that the assets of these countries are held by a small number of wealthy individuals while the debts are shouldered by the ordinary people of these countries through their governments." With roughly half of the world's offshore wealth belonging to the top 92,000 richest individuals, they represent the top 0.001 percent, a far more extreme global disparity than that which is invoked by the Occupy movement's 1 percent paradigm. Henry commented: "The very existence of the global offshore industry, and the tax-free status of the enormous sums invested by their wealthy clients, is predicated on secrecy."[46] Remember, "free market" means that those who own the market (the global cartel), and free to do anything they please.

A 2005 report from Citigroup coined the term "plutonomy," to describe countries "where economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few," and specifically identified the U.K., Canada, Australia, and the United States as four plutonomies. Keeping in mind that the report was published three years before the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, the Citigroup report stated: "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," and that, "the rich are in great shape, financially."[47] It's only everyone else that is suffering, which by definition, is a "well functioning" economy. As the Federal Reserve reported, "the nation's top 1 percent of households own more than half the nation's stocks," and "they also control more than $16 trillion in wealth ­ more than the bottom 90 percent." The term 'Plutonomy' is specifically used to "describe a country that is defined by massive income and wealth inequality," and that they have three basic characteristics, according to the Citigroup report:

1. They are all created by "disruptive technology-driven productivity gains, creative financial innovation, capitalist friendly cooperative governments, immigrants…the rule of law and patenting inventions. Often these wealth waves involve great complexity exploited best by the rich and educated of the time."

2. There is no "average" consumer in Plutonomies. There is only the rich "and everyone else." The rich account for a disproportionate chunk of the economy, while the non-rich account for "surprisingly small bites of the national pie." [Citigroup strategist Ajay] Kapur estimates that in 2005, the richest 20 percent may have been responsible for 60 percent of total spending.

3. Plutonomies are likely to grow in the future, fed by capitalist-friendly governments, more technology-driven productivity and globalization.[48]

Kapur, who authored the Citigroup report, stated that there were also risks to the Plutonomy, "including war, inflation, financial crises, the end of the technological revolution and populist political pressure," yet, "the rich are likely to keep getting even richer, and enjoy an even greater share of the wealth pie over the coming years."[49]

In February of 2011, Ajay Kapur, the author of the Citigroup report who is now with Deutsche Bank, gave an interview in which he explained that, "the world economy is even more dependent on the spending and consumption of the rich," and that, "Plutonomist consumption is almost 10 times as volatile that of the average consumer." He further explained that increased debt levels are a sign of plutonomies:

We have an economy today where a large fraction of the population doesn't pay federal income taxes and, because of demand for entitlements, we have a system of massive representation without taxation. On the other hand, you have plutonomists who protect their turf and the taxation amounts are not enough to pay for everyone's demand. So I've come to the conclusion that budget deficits are biased toward getting bigger and bigger. Budget deficits are going to become a manifestation of a plutonomy.[50]

The plutonomy is largely characterized by a lack of a consuming and vibrant middle class. This is a trend that has been accelerating for several decades, particularly in North America and Britain, where the middle class population is heavily indebted. The middle class has existed as a consumer class, keeping the lower class submissive, and keeping the upper class secure and wealthy by consuming their products, produced with the labour of the lower class.

The most advanced plutonomies in the world are the most advanced industrial and technological nations, where the major corporations and banks are highly subsidized and protected by the state, as is typical for a state-capitalist society. While the industrial and rich northern state-capitalist societies were able to industrialize and grow rich through highly protectionist measures, the poor south of the world (Africa, Asia, Latin America) were subjected to "free market" policies which opened up their economies to be exploited and plundered by the rich northern nations. No country has ever become an industrial power by implementing free market policies, but rather, by doing the exact opposite: heavy subsidies and state protection for key industries, technologies, and corporate entities.

While the 'Third World' was forced to implement "free market" policies in order to get loans, the predictable result took place: mass impoverishment and exploitation. The 'Third World' states were run by tiny elites who dominated the countries politically and economically, and who hid their stolen wealth in foreign banks and offshore tax havens. Now, in the midst of the global economic crisis which has been ravaging the world for the past four years, the rich northern countries are themselves implementing the same "free market" policies, though designed to subject their populations to "market discipline" while maintaining – and in fact increasing – the protectionist and subsidized policies for the multinational corporations and banks. It is important to note that "market discipline" and actual "free market" policies are exclusively designed for the general population, not the elite. Workers, students, the elderly, the poor and the many are to be subjected to "market discipline" while the banks and multinational corporations continue to be heavily subsidized (as the largest national welfare recipients) and protected by the state. Thus, just as our banks and corporations have plundered the Third World with rapacious delight over the past three decades, now they will be able to do the same to the populations of the rich nations themselves. The state will transform, as it did in the 'Third World', into a typically totalitarian institution which is responsible for protecting the super-rich and controlling, oppressing, or, in extreme cases of resistance, eliminating the 'problem populations' (i.e., the people).

Welcome to the global plutonomy in the age of austerity, the result of living under – and tolerating – a global "super-entity" corporate-financial cartel. Truly, one must pause and, if only for a moment, appreciate the ability of this global cartel to function so effectively in spite of its blatant criminal activities, and face almost absolutely no repercussions. Something truly is wrong with a society when a poor black man caught with 5 grams of crack-cocaine goes to prison for ten years, while rich white bank executives admit to laundering billions of dollars in drug money and receive only a fine and a slap on the wrist (maybe).

The lesson is clear: if you are a thief, steal by the billions or trillions, and then no one can do anything about it. If you are in the drug trade: handle only billions (or hundreds of billions) in drug money, and then you will get away with it. If you don't want to pay taxes, be a member of the top o.oo1 percent of the world's super-rich and hide your billions in offshore tax-free accounts. If you want more, create a global economic crisis, demand to be saved by the state to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars, and then, tell the state to punish their populations into poverty in order to pay for your mistakes.

In other words, if you want to indulge your criminal fantasies, lie and steal, profit from death and drugs, dominate and demand, be king and command, become the highly-functioning socially-acceptable sociopath you always knew you could be… think big. Think BANK. Serial killers, bank robbers and drug dealers go to jail; bankers get bailouts and get an unlimited insurance policy called "too big to fail."

Notes

[1]       Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie, "Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world," New Scientist, 24 October 2011:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed–the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html

[2]       Ibid.

[3]       Ibid.

[4]       David J. Lynch, "Banks Seen Dangerous Defying Obama's Too-Big-to-Fail Move," Bloomberg, 16 April 2012:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-16/obama-bid-to-end-too-big-to-fail-undercut-as-banks-grow.html

[5]       Dean Baker, "The eurozone crisis is not about market discipline," Al-Jazeera, 18 December 2011:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/12/2011121874651469307.html

[6]       Roger Altman, "We need not fret over omnipotent markets," The Financial Times, 1 December 2011:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/890161ac-1b69-11e1-85f8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1fnNHC8YP

[7]       Roger Altman, "We need not fret over omnipotent markets," The Financial Times, 1 December 2011:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/890161ac-1b69-11e1-85f8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1fnNHC8YP

[8]       Rajeev Syal, "Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor," The Observer, 13 December 2009:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/dec/13/drug-money-banks-saved-un-cfief-claims

[9]       Ed Vulliamy, "How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs," The Observer, 3 April 2011:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs

[10]     Ibid.

[11]     Ed Vulliamy, "Global banks are the financial services wing of the drug cartels," The Observer, 21 July 2012:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/21/drug-cartels-banks-hsbc-money-laundering

[12]     John Paul Rathbone, "Money laundering: Taken to the cleaners," 20 July 2012:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/702a64a6-d25e-11e1-ac21-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2ALt54B7K

[13]     Agustino Fontevecchia, "HSBC Helped Terrorists, Iran, Mexican Drug Cartels Launder Money, Senate Report Says," Forbes, 16 July 2012:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2012/07/16/hsbc-helped-terrorists-iran-mexican-drug-cartels-launder-money-senate-report-says/

[14]     Roberto Saviano, "Where the Mob Keeps its Money," The New York Times, 25 August 2012:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/where-the-mob-keeps-its-money.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[15]     Dominic Rushe, "HSBC 'sorry' for aiding Mexican drugs lords, rogue states and terrorists," The Guardian, 17 July 2012:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/17/hsbc-executive-resigns-senate

[16]     Ed Vulliamy, "Global banks are the financial services wing of the drug cartels," The Observer, 21 July 2012:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/21/drug-cartels-banks-hsbc-money-laundering

[17]     Michael Smith, "Banks Financing Mexico Gangs Admitted in Wells Fargo Deal," Bloomberg, 29 June 2010:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-29/banks-financing-mexico-s-drug-cartels-admitted-in-wells-fargo-s-u-s-deal.html

[18]     Alexander Eichler, "Mexican Drug Cartel Laundered Money Through BofA, FBI Alleges," The Huffington Post, 9 June 2012:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/09/los-zetas-laundered-money-bank-america_n_1658943.html

[19]     Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Edward Wyatt, "In Laundering Case, a Lax Banking Law Obscured Money Flow," The New York Times, 8 August 2012:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/business/how-a-lax-banking-law-obscured-money-flow.html?pagewanted=all ;

Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Ben Protess, "

Money-Laundering Inquiry Is Said to Aim at U.S. Banks," The New York Times, 14 September 2012:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/business/money-laundering-inquiry-said-to-target-us-banks.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[20]     James B. Stewart, "For UBS, a Record of Averting Prosecution," The New York Times, 20 July 2012:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/business/ubss-track-record-of-averting-prosecution-common-sense.html?pagewanted=all

[21]     Matt Taibbi, "The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia," Rolling Stone, 21 June 2012:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620

[22]     William D. Cohan, "How Wall Street Scams Counties Into Bankruptcy," Bloomberg, 1 July 2012:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-01/how-wall-street-scams-counties-into-bankruptcy.html

[23]     "The Libor Scandal: The Rotten Heart of Finance," The Economist, 7 July 2012:

http://www.economist.com/node/21558281

[24]     Shahien Nasiripour, "Nine more banks added to Libor probe," The Financial Times, 26 October 2012:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6f4e7960-1f1a-11e2-be82-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2ARAog5NE

[25]     Douglas Keenan, "My thwarted attempt to tell of Libor shenanigans," The Financial Times, 26 July 2012:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/dc5f49c2-d67b-11e1-ba60-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2ARAog5NE

[26]     "The Cartel: Behind the Scenes in the Libor Interest Rate Scandal," Der Spiegel, 1 August 2012:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/the-libor-scandal-could-cost-leading-global-banks-billions-a-847453.html

[27]     Matt Taibbi, "Why is Nobody Freaking Out About the LIBOR Banking Scandal?" Rolling Stone, 3 July 2012:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-is-nobody-freaking-out-about-the-libor-banking-scandal-20120703

[28]     Raúl Ilargi Meijer, "LIBOR Was A Criminal Conspiracy From The Start," The Business Insider, 11 July 2012:

http://www.businessinsider.com/libor-was-a-criminal-conspiracy-from-the-start-2012-7

[29]     Steven Swinford and Harry Wilson, "RBS traders boasted of Libor 'cartel'," The Telegraph, 26 September 2012:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9568087/RBS-traders-boasted-of-Libor-cartel.html

[30]     Jill Treanor and Dominic Rushe, "Timothy Geithner and Mervyn King discussed Libor worries in 2008," The Guardian, 13 July 2012:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/13/tim-geithner-mervyn-king-libor

[31]     Mark Gongloff, "New York Fed's Libor Documents Reveal Cozy Relationship Between Regulators, Banks," The Huffington Post, 13 July 2012:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/13/new-york-fed-libor-documents_n_1671524.html

[32]     Chris Giles, "Libor scandal puts BoE in line of fire," The Financial Times, 17 July 2012:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/68605a86-d02a-11e1-bcaa-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2ARAog5NE

[33]     Jill Treanor, "British Bankers' Association to be stripped of Libor rate-setting role," The Guardian, 25 September 2012:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/sep/25/bba-libor-setting-role-stripped-banks

[34]     Liam Vaughan, "Secret Libor Committee Clings to Anonymity Following Scandal," Bloomberg, 21 August 2012:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-20/secret-libor-committee-clings-to-anonymity-after-rigging-scandal.html

[35]     David Enrich and Max Colchester, "Before Scandal, Clash Over Control of Libor," The Wall Street Journal, 11 September 2012:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443847404577631404235329424.html

[36]     Andrew Mayeda, "Canada Regulator Says Has Power to Probe Libor 'Cartel'," Bloomberg, 22 June 2012:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-22/canada-regulator-says-has-power-to-probe-libor-cartel-.html

[37]     Halah Touryalai, "Banks Rigged Libor To Inflate Adjustable-Rate Mortgages: Lawsuit," Forbes, 15 October 2012:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2012/10/15/banks-rigged-libor-to-inflate-adjustable-rate-mortgages-lawsuit/

[38]     Darrell Preston, "Rigged Libor Hits States-Localities With $6 Billion: Muni Credit," Bloomberg, 9 October 2012:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-09/rigged-libor-hits-states-localities-with-6-billion-muni-credit.html

[39]     Andrew Gavin Marshall, "Austerity, Adjustment, and Social Genocide: Political Language and the European Debt Crisis," Andrewgavinmarshall.com, 24 July 2012:

http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2012/07/24/austerity-adjustment-and-social-genocide-political-language-and-the-european-debt-crisis/

[40]     Roger Altman, "We need not fret over omnipotent markets," The Financial Times, 1 December 2011:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/890161ac-1b69-11e1-85f8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1fnNHC8YP

[41]     Ben Polak and Peter K. Schott, America's Hidden Austerity Program," The New York Times, 11 June 2012:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/americas-hidden-austerity-program/ ;

Jason Cherkis, "A Thousand Cuts: Austerity Measures Devastate Communities Around The World," The Huffington Post, 17 July 2012:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/12/austerity-measures-a-thousand-cuts_n_1666309.html ;

Editorial, "The Austerity Trap," The New York Times, 23 October 2012:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/opinion/the-austerity-trap.html?_r=0 ;

Derek Thompson, "American Austerity: Why the States Cutting Spending Are Doing Worse," The Atlantic, 21 June 2012:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/american-austerity-why-the-states-cutting-spending-are-doing-worse/258825/

[42]     "CEOs Deficit Manifesto," The Wall Street Journal, 25 October 2012:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203937004578076254182569318.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[43]     "Executives Who Signed the Fix the Debt Declaration," The Wall Street Journal, 25 October 2012:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203897404578077251928040508.html

[44]     Al Lewis, "Bankers Face the Abyss," The Wall Street Journal, 21 October 2012:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444734804578064840879262594.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[45]     Heather Stewart, "Wealth doesn't trickle down – it just floods offshore, research reveals," The Observer, 21 July 2012:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/21/offshore-wealth-global-economy-tax-havens

[46]     Heather Stewart, "£13tn hoard hidden from taxman by global elite," The Observer, 21 July 2012:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/21/global-elite-tax-offshore-economy

[47]     We're living in a plutonomy, The Telegraph, 2 April 2006:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2935809/Were-living-in-a-plutonomy.html

[48]     Robert Frank, Plutonomics, The Wall Street Journal, 8 January 2007:

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/01/08/plutonomics/

[49]     Ibid.

[50]     Gus Lubin, Deutsche Bank Says The 'Global Plutonomy' Is Stronger Than Ever, And That Means 10X More Volatility, Business Insider, 17 February 2011:

http://www.businessinsider.com/ajay-kapur-plutonomy-2011-2

Andrew Gavin Marshall is an independent researcher and writer based in Montreal, Canada. He is project manager of The People's Book Project, and he hosts a weekly podcast, "Empire, Power, and People," on BoilingFrogsPost.com.