Archive for the ‘debt’ tag
Occupy buys up debt to abolish it, international austerity protests, Jamie has a sad
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Occupy buys up debt to abolish it, international austerity protests and eviction resistance, and Jamie has a sad.
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Thousands converge on Spain’s Parliament, #Strike Debt, the crime of making public information public
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Thousands converge on Spain’s Parliament to oppose a new round of austerity measures, #StrikeDebt and The Debt Resistors’ Operations Manual, Aaron Swartz charged withnine new felony counts for the crime of making public information public, activists crash HMRC boss’ retirement. Release the hounds!
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Maniacs go to college, 15 organizers face up to 2 years in jail for peacefully guarding home
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Allison and Jamie offer advice to Maniacs going to college, 15 organizers face up to two years in jail for peacefully guarding a home from foreclosure, the disturbing case of Brandon Raub, and members of Pussy Riot flee Russia.
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The messed up world of the Olympics, 12-year-old tasered by police, the student debt bubble
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Allison and Jamie talk about the fucked up side of the Olympics, police taser a 12-year-old girl, and Iran decides to execute some suits for bank fraud, while the U.S. can’t even pass basic reforms.
In the second half of the show, Jesse Myerson (@JAMyerson) has a field report about the student debt bubble.
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Insane times with Battleship director, Greece gets new elections, global austerity protests
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Insane times with Battleship director, Greece gets new elections, which may feature a bigger parliamentary presence by right-wing extremists, major global protests in Spain and London, NATO demonstrations kick off early, Jan Brewer ups the crazy, Rebekah Brooks to be charged with perverting the course of justice, a US soldier trained neo-Nazis for a coming “race war,” Jamie explains the blacks-hate-gayz myth, and CR reads some of your mail.
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Scalia horrifies court with SB1070 comments, debt collectors at hospitals
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Allison and Jamie discuss Justice Scalia’s horrifying comments during the SB1070 hearing, debt collectors at hospitals, Obama Justice and medical marijuana,CISPA, and Rupert Murdoch updates.
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Class war: Criminalizing poverty
As opposed to supporting raising wages and passing a public option in order to forge a more egalitarian future, it appears members of the elite have committed themselves to controlling the growing underclass by criminalizing poverty.
David Walker, a lackey of billionaire and Social Security pirate, Pete Peterson, openly pined for the days of debtors’ prison, which is actually already a reality in six states.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj2jcSABmdI]
WALKER: You know, the fact of the matter is we have to change how we do things. We are on an imprudent and unsustainable path in a number of ways. You talk about debtors’ prisons, we used to have debtors’ prisons, now bankruptcy is no taint! Bankruptcy is an exit strategy! Our society and our culture has changed. We need to get back to the opportunity, we need to move away from entitlement, we need to provide reasonable risk but we need to hold people accountable when they do imprudent things. It’s pretty fundamental.
Right! We need to hold people accountable. Er, poor people – not the rich people, who sold them the shit mortgages, and gave them credit cards with astronomical interest rates. Those people are entrepeneurs and can go free.
Digby has been reporting on the demonization of the unemployed. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has proposed an amendment that would demand mandatory drug tests for welfare and unemployment beneficiaries. Because, as one of this blog’s less enlightened commenters put it, “you gotta make sure they’re not on the crack pipe.” After all, we know the only reason people are unemployed is because they’re all a bunch of Welfare Queen drug addicts. Mind you, cocaine addicted Yale and Harvard grads won’t face this obstacle when re-entering the business world. This is just a filter for the undesirables.
'It’s not a bailout for Greece. It’s a bailout for European banks'
Athens, Greece - Youths class with riot police during a demonstration. Image by Getty Images via Daylife
(The audio of my interview with Yanis Varoufakis can be heard in the second half of this Citizen Radio episode.)
This morning, I spoke with Yanis Varoufakis, Professor of Economic Theory, and Director of the Department of Political Economy within the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Athens. From 2003 to 2008, he served as Director of The University of Athens Doctoral Program in Economics.
I asked Varoufakis about the riots, the German media campaign depicting Greeks as lazy and corrupt, and the details of the IMF loans.
“It’s quiet now”
It was always my opinion that a period of serious, deep recession is not a period when demonstrations have a lasting power. You don’t get revolutionary spirits rising during a recession, at least, not at the beginning of a recession. There will be flare-ups. There’s no doubt about that, but I don’t think the trend is going to be upward – not in the next year, or so.
If you think of 1929, when the crash of that era happened in the United States, it took two, or three, or four years before collective action began to emerge. At first, when a crash occurs, people [keep private] their fears, and dreams, and they lick their wounds for a while.
There are plenty of wounds, and they’re deep. Varoufakis says there’s a widespread sense of injustice in Greece. The $30 billion IMF loan comes with a price tag of wage cuts and tax increases, additional burdens on an already stressed and overworked population. In this way, Greece mirrors the United States. Workers are frustrated in the wake of the massive bailouts, and with their own social paralysis.
Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009/2010
Image by gerriet via Flickr
Project Censored has posted its list of the top 25 censored stories of 2009 continuing into 2010.
1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
The dirty story of the decade? Project Censored thinks so:
Federal lawmakers responsible for overseeing the US economy have received millions of dollars from Wall Street firms. Since 2001, eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates and the Republican and Democratic parties. As senators, Barack Obama and John McCain received a combined total of $3.1 million. The donors include investment bankers Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, insurer American International Group, and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
