Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Germany Has Recovered A Paltry 5 Tons Of Gold From The NY Fed After One Year
ZeroHedge | author | 01/19/14

On December 24, we posted an update on Germany's gold repatriation process: a year after the Bundesbank announced its stunning decision, driven by Zero Hedge revelations, to repatriate 674 tons of gold from the New York Fed and the French Central Bank, it had managed to transfer a paltry 37 tons. This amount represents just 5% of the stated target, and was well below the 84 tons that the Bundesbank would need to transport each year to collect the 674 tons ratably over the 8 year interval between 2013 and 2020. The release of these numbers promptly angered Germans, and led to the rise of numerous allegations that the reason why the transfer is taking so long is that the gold simply is not in the possession of the offshore custodians, having been leased, or worse, sold without any formal or informal announcement. However, what will certainly not help mute "conspiracy theorists" is today's update from today's edition of Die Welt, in which we learn that only a tiny 5 tons of gold were sent from the NY Fed. The rest came from Paris. ... Read more

How the U.S. Uses Surveillance and Scandal to Advance Its Global Control
AlterNet | Alfred McCoy | 01/19/14

... Not only does such surveillance help gain intelligence advantageous to U.S. diplomacy, trade relations, and war-making, but it also scoops up intimate information that can provide leverage -- akin to blackmail -- in sensitive global dealings and negotiations of every sort. The NSA's global panopticon thus fulfills an ancient dream of empire. With a few computer key strokes, the agency has solved the problem that has bedeviled world powers since at least the time of Caesar Augustus: how to control unruly local leaders, who are the foundation for imperial rule, by ferreting out crucial, often scurrilous, information to make them more malleable. ... Read more

What I learned from a week on food stamps: Paul Ryan couldn't be any more wrong
Salon | Sarah Gray | 01/19/14

... It has been 50 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson -- the architect of the modern food stamp -- set out to "conquer poverty" in America. Some, like Rep. Paul Ryan, are ready to declare the "War on Poverty" a failure, and gut funding for things like food stamps. What their objections ignore, however, is that SNAP is vitally important to 47 million Americans -- one sixth of our country, from rural plains to swelling cities. And the program works. ...

... Cantor et al. would be wise to know that 41 percent of SNAP recipients are in a household generating income. Yet, for some "able-bodied" workers, a meager income is still not enough to put food on the table. Employees of Wal-Mart and McDonalds, for example, are major beneficiaries of SNAP. (A 2012 Daily Kos article reported that 80 percent of Wal-Mart's employees benefit from SNAP. One Wal-Mart in Canton, Ohio, even held a food drive for their fellow employees struggling to afford the cost of Thanksgiving dinner.) Those SNAP beneficiaries who are not employed include children, the disabled and the elderly. It is estimated 25 percent of households that benefit from SNAP include an elderly family member, and 72 percent of such households include children. In fact, at some point in their childhood, a full half of America's children will be fed with food stamps. In 2011, only 11 percent of food-stamp recipients in New Jersey were single, childless, non-disabled, non-elderly adults. ... Read more

Garbage Island [20:48]

Richard Wolff | Global Capitalism: June 2013 Monthly Update (06/12/13) [1:49:51]