Shift to US Backed Securities

Bloomberg:

Institutions pulled out of U.S. prime money-market funds at the fastest pace in 15 months, shifting to funds that invest only in U.S. government-backed securities out of concern the European debt crisis would worsen.

The possible collapse of the Euro will do nothing to create the conditions for a slow slide in the US dollar and a calm deflating of the Global Imbalances plaguing the capitalist world system. The longer the dollar remains artificially inflated due to residual US political and military hegemony, the greater the collapse when its true value as a measure of production in the manufacturing and real goods sectors emerges.

De Long:

A too-strong dollar is not in the public interest: a too-strong dollar greatly increases the future chances of a major, major dollar crash that will produce a depression that makes today look like a day on the beach at Malibu. When the dollar is at a level where U.S. net foreign debt is growing unsustainably fast it is time to think about lowering it, not keeping it where it is or raising it...

RIP Clarence Clemons

Links, Old and New

Pentagon Considers Cyber Attacks To Be Acts Of War' - WSJ

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'The global order fractures as American power declines' - Financial Times

American power is in inexorably decline, which means ruling class disorganization will only increase, perhaps even resembling the years immediately after World War 1. (1917) Much of the global ruling class is looking for a new (or reinvigorated) boss to follow, that is not the direction we need to take.

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'Two Worrying Charts About Chinese Oil Demand' - Econbrowser, Business Insider

Well, there are a lot of people in China, most still quite poor. It would seem inevitable that 'they' would end up having more cars than 'us'.

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'RNA Editing to Create 'Acquired Characteristics' Appears Common' - Scientific American

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'Self-Consuming Capitalism' - Jesse's Cafe

“And the British political economist Fred Hirsch generalized the point: once a social system, such as capitalism, convinces everyone that it can dispense with morality and public spirit, the universal pursuit of self-interest being all that is needed for satisfactory performance, the system will undermine its own viability, which is in fact premised on civic behaviour and on the respect of certain moral norms to a far greater extent than capitalism’s official ideology avows.”

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The Assassination of Caesar as Counter Revolution

Michael Parenti on class warfare in the Roman Republic, and Caesar as a reformer of a rotten, corrupt, and bifurcated social structure.

Links New and Old

'Wikipedia isn't about human potential, whatever Wales says' - UK Guardian 1

"Wales speaks a language of corporate collectivism that would not be out of place in Rand's novels. Hyperbolically, it's where docile workers express joy that wonderful capitalists have provided the means of production, enabling glorious collective enterprises such as a laissez-faire market. This sounds strange to people who don't know about esoteric business-worshipping ideologies, and so mistakenly assume that phrases like "collective action" automatically indicate communism. Just think of a viewpoint which regards a powerless proletariat labouring to produce wealth for owners as being the highest social achievement, and the connections should be clearer."

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'Radhey Shyam Roy, Indian Executive Burned To Death By Fired Workers' - Huff Po 2
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'UN General Assembly President Praises Venezuela for Development Goals Progress'3

Chavez is no clown.

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'Cancer linked to cold war bomb tests' - UK Guardian 4

"A US government study says that the fallout from cold war nuclear tests carried out by the US, Britain, France and the Soviet Union has caused the death of an estimated 15,000 Americans. "


Fukushima will kill many many people, silently.

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'Report: Bin Laden Already Dead' - Fox News 5

From 2001

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'Long-Prized Tech Visas Lose Cachet- WSJ 6

Good luck importing all that skilled labor as the rest of the world catches up, fast; meanwhile the American education system starves.

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