Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Everything You Need To Know About The End Of Net Neutrality
HP | Gerry Smith | 04/24/14

It may be the end of the Internet as we know it. That was the reaction from consumer advocates and some websites after the Federal Communications Commission announced new rules governing Internet service on Thursday. The rules effectively put an end to net neutrality, or the idea that all web traffic should be treated equally.

... The FCC insists, however, that the new rules would not harm Internet users. In a blog post Thursday, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said there had been “a great deal of misinformation” about the proposal, which he said would not permit “behavior harmful to consumers or competition by limiting the openness of the Internet.” ... Read more

52 Year-Old French Banker Jumps To Her Death In Paris
ZeroHedge | author | 04/24/14

There have been 13 senior financial services executives deaths around the world this year, but the most notable thing about the sad suicide of the 14th, a 52-year-old banker at France's Bred-Banque-Populaire, is she is the first female. As Le Parisien reports, Lydia (no surname given) jumped from the bank's Paris headquarter's 14th floor shortly before 10am. FranceTV added that sources said "she questioned her superiors before jumping out the window," but the bank denies it noting that she had been in therpapy for several years. ... Read more

Meet AISight - The "Pre-Crime"-Detecting Software Being Installed On Global CCTVs
ZeroHedge | author | 04/24/14

If you thought that CCTV cameras tracking your every move in public was bad enough, you’re going to just love AISight (pronounced “eyesight” of course). The invention of a Houston, Texas based company called BRS Labs (which stands for Behavioral Recognition Systems) is headed by former secret service special agent John Frazzini, and this Orwellian surveillance platform brings artificial intelligence to all of those creepy cameras that have been installed everywhere around you. Apparently, this system is currently being installed in Boston, and has already been implemented in Chicago and Washington. The most disturbing part about this platform is that this artificial intelligence defines what is “normal” behavior and anything that falls outside of that narrow band can be flagged for “pre crime” potential. ... Read more
BRSLabs' AISight - The World's Only Behavioral Recognition System for Video Surveillance () [15:44]

An Indictment of the Invisible Hand
Bill Moyers | Jeffrey Madrick | 04/18/14

Thomas Piketty’s 700-page book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has stunned both the economic profession and most political observers. But the economic mainstream is not truly dealing with its most serious implications even as they widely praise his work.

Here in a nutshell is what he argues: Current rates of inequality are closer to historical norms than aberrations. Inequality is likely to stay high and perhaps increase. The normal workings of the free market won’t change this. The only way to rectify the imbalance is more aggressive taxes on property and high incomes to reduce inequality.

All this from an economist with strong mainstream credentials, and whose work in tandem with Emanuel Saez, Tony Atkinson and a few others has profoundly changed how we think about inequality. It was Piketty et al. who showed that a huge amount of income goes to the top 1 percent, and most of that to the top 0.1 percent. We don’t really have an inequality problem. We have stagnating incomes for the bottom 90 percent and a runaway of incomes at the very top. ... Read more

The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World's Richest
NYTimes | author | 04/22/14

The American middle class, long the most affluent in the world, has lost that distinction. While the wealthiest Americans are outpacing many of their global peers, a New York Times analysis shows that across the lower- and middle-income tiers, citizens of other advanced countries have received considerably larger raises over the last three decades.

After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada -- substantially behind in 2000 -- now appear to be higher than in the United States. The poor in much of Europe earn more than poor Americans. ... Read more