Plus BBC News: Leaders welcome G20 action plan

It is amazing to see how all these leaders from almost all leading nations are failing. It’s not just failure. They are making things worse. They just throw more and more public money they don’t have at huge corporations without a long term plan or strings attached.

Neither the bankers nor the Auto industry have to follow any rules, pay a "price" or "change" in any way to get the money. The same people that have failed their companies, stockholders and the markets are still in command in most of these greedy enterprises.

Why not let these companies goes bankrupt and let proper bankruptcy laws and management take over and get rid of these failed companies?

Otherwise they will be back in six or twelve months asking again for more money. And these bailouts are unfair. There are companies that haven’t failed. They are punished and have to deal with hugely subsidized competitors in the future.

Neither the "free markets" work nor does the "nanny state".

And we all have to watch the all these managers and politicians fail us again and again.

BBC News:  Eurozone officially in recession

Thank you so much – I have hardly recovered from the dotcom bubble burst! Why can’t there be a new kinda gold rush or green revolution that brings in a lot of money.

Thank you very much America and your unregulated financial institutions!

But Europe really has had a bad economy for some time – and not much growth anyway. So even the slightest wobbles make the EU nation quake in their economic boots.

Britain and Spain have been hit hard by the housing crises. But only British banks crumbled like mad, Spain had much better regulation and oversight. The Spanish bank Santander is currently picking up former competitors all over Europe.

But I am still not sure what to do with these terrorists in Iceland! They still insist they are normal people just like and me.

BBC News Special: Global financial crises

So all the rescue packages are a done deal, the credit crunch can hopefully “healed” before it gets even worse. Everybody is a state of shock, repentance or high alert.

But have we learnt anything? And are we all to blame?

Read the rest of this entry »

There has never been so much wealth around than in our days. Today’s wealth is for more complex and eloquent than simply owning some land, some gold, slaves, a mine or a factory.

Since the 1960’s the financial markets have seen an explosion of new “products” and ways to make and most of all loose money.

Especially in the Decade of Greed (called the 1980’s) the stock broker is the new hero and villain at the same time. Getting rich quickly has gotten a new meaning when you literally can shift billions of Dollars in a split second and make a healthy profit.

But some financial “products” have become almost surreal how they work - even so called experts seem to have a harder and harder time to understand how they work. And even harder to regulate.

The Banks and the Brokers have moved far away from the most important aspect of the financial system: investment. So many “games” on the financial markets are only about the markets themselves - not about investing in companies, people, property, ideas or resources.

I don’t mind these people making fat profit - as long as they help the rest of us building healthy economies, houses, companies and production lines.

Money shouldn’t play ping pong with itself - it needs to create real assets. Virtual money can easily be lost, but a factory or a house are not that easily “lost”.

This crises is a big chance to rebuild the financial markets and force those greedy bastards to funnel their money into “proper” investments.

Click Stadium for more poverty.

China is one of the richest countries on earth with a huge amount of cash at it’s disposal. Plus the US owes China loads of money as well.

But still China is a poor country: it’s infrastructure still needs loads of work, concrete and still before it’s anywhere near European or American standards. Social security, pensions and the health systems are in shambles too.

Sure China has a huge Army, but today’s wars are fought with technology, not huge masses of soldiers.

Is anyone surprised why China’s bloody communists are so ruthlessly pushing the country forward and are not in the mood for any compromises on human rights or the environment. They finally want China to finish the Great Leap Forward that Mao and his comrades fucked up many years ago …

But for the sake of progress no tyranny is acceptable. Not even capitalistic communism …

What Ms Sklar clearly describes in this interview has been happening all over the industrial and advances countries: the middle class is disappearing and a new form of class system has been forming since the 1980’s.

Thank you Mr Reagan and Ms Thatcher for establishing the greedy philosophy of "free markets", "trickle down economic" and "market democracy". It simply isn’t a social way to run a society and establish a "just" economy.

Social societies are a GOOD thing. Capitalism is good, but it needs oversights and corrections to work for the benefit of all and not just a few people.

Spiegel Online: Spying Scandal Widens at Deutsche Telekom

The German Telekom never had a very good reputation - but it just went totally downhill. Since the year 2000 this huge corporate monsters has monitored thousands of phone calls of managers and journalists. They even placed a mole in a German magazine to find out what journalists knew about other dirty tricks of the Telekom.

Plus Telekom tracked the movement of journalists via cell phone data.

It once again proves the point that modern telecommunication providers should not be left alone - or better say - without a watchdog. These companies have way too much power and information to be left alone with it.

Data protection is a modern human right - and should be taken MUCH MUCH MUCH more seriously. Most people don’t care or understand the issues.

But companies like Deutsche Telekom can track, listen in and read every mail, phone call, text message or web site you visited via their services. Even when you NOT use their services - a lot of phone and internet traffic runs via their routers and data nodes - so they can eavesdrop even when you are not their client.

The same is true for so many other giants like Vodaphone, AT&T, Comcast and NT&T etc.

Finally the boss of the American Federal Reserve confronts reality -and uses the dreaded ‘R’-Word.

How much more obvious does American decline to be to get Washington and the public to act?

The US Dollar is weaker then the Canadian Dollar.

The Euro has eclipsed the Dollar and stands good chances to become the dominant currency for reserves.

The US infrastructure is crumbling and underfunded.

The middle class is slowly disappearing, instead tent cities are appearing.

Even Wall Street and big banks are in serious trouble.

The Industrial-Military-Complex has worked in the past - but only because it employed massive amounts of people. Today’s streamlined and outsourced manufacturing no longer is a benefit to the American masses (only to the stockholders).

Who is to blame? A lazy US congress, a very bad President, the huge American deficit, the expensive war in Iraq and the total lack of good oversight of the financial markets and big business.

I wonder if most Americans will ever understand how long the Bush legacy, deficit and his idiotic war will burden their lives?

Adam Curtis / documentary / ca 44 minutes

From Wikipedia:

Thirty years ago, a group of economists managed to convince British politicians that they had foolproof technical means to make Britain great again. Pandora’s Box tells the saga of how their experiments have led the country deeper into economic decline, and asks - is their game finally up?

More? Pandora’s Box Series

Business magazines like the great Economist already talked about a weak economy last year - and also about the chance for a recession. Sure, some indicators in the US showing signs of weakness, but overall the global economy is running quite nice.

The burst of the credit bubble was a nasty event, but still not big enough to bring the whole economic system down.

But the real  ‘panic’ started once the presidential candidates used the ‘R’ fear to get votes. Now everybody started talking and most of all worrying about a ‘Recession’.

Stock Brokers are like sheep in any other profession- they easily panic and follow the herd. Although the economy didn’t really crash or some nasty event like 9/11 happened they panicked.

The American economy might be a bit wobbly, bit it’s not bad. The rest of the world is running quite nicely - so can we please stop that panic and WORK on a better economy instead of crashing it?

Ok, it began with fast food and pizza restaurants. Grabbing a bite in our hectic days makes sense, having the same boring food all over the world doesn’t.

Then came the Coffee Shops to give us the extra needed caffeine kick and sugar rush - plus some free wireless access. Well, still makes sense - although I hate the standard Ikea-Starbucks nesting instinct that’s developing globally.

But who needs a cell phone store - one for each provider - on every highstreet? It’s not that we need a daily supply of ‘phonettes’, batteries or ‘call minutes’?! We maybe upgrade our phone once a year or change our contracts maybe every two?

These shops are there mostly for presence, marketing and showing off their brand. I rather have some good old sandwich shops or some other specialized merchant that sells anything BUT a cell phone, a burger or a Latte.

Our inner cities have lost their unique mix of local shops and retailers. Almost all over the planet the big shopping centers offer the same crap from the same crappy companies. So much about free markets, choice for the consumer and competition.

Since the introduction of the Euro the Dollar has lost almost a quarter of it’s value. George Bush’s terrible trade politics and the war based on mostly foreign credit is responsible for the weakness.

Now China - who has huge reserves and has bought many US government bonds - is sounding the alarm. After all: the US are China’s biggest customer. But a weak dollar means less income and profit for the Chinese economy. And  China hardly is interested to follow the fall of the Dollar - especially since petrol is still paid in Dollars.

Several times now China has warned the US Government to bolster the weak Dollar - but America has reacted with an ignorant sneer so far.

If China would retreat from the Dollar it would have enormous consequences for the US. But this would be a home made fiasco.

The World Economic Forum is a high profile organization - which does publish many interesting and well researched reports. The result of the Gender Gap Report 2007 is hardly surprising - it’s rather very predictable.

Woman in Nordic and European countries have the best chances to find good jobs and being treated like their male counterparts. From there it’s all downhill.

128 countries from all regions of the globe have been ranked. You would think that all western countries would rank at least in the top 50% - but even countries like Switzerland (Rank 40) and the USA (Rank 31) have lost ranks - or better say - woman lost social and economic status.

I find Japans Rank with 91 especially shameful, since it is in the company with such illustrious nations like Iran, Kuwait and Tunisia.

More? Download the Report or read the Press Release for a shorter version

Thanks to Xtine66 for sending in the link / news!

BBC News: New eBay site helps finance poor

Microfinance is a brilliant idea - especially since it went onto the Web. So normal people in rich countries can finance with a few Dollars or Euros small business owners in developing countries.

That means you and me can help to develop local business in places that really need it. You can use websites like Kiva.org to lend some money to people who propose their projects to you. You don’t DONATE money, you LEND it. Instead of charity you get to help to develop the economy - something charity doesn’t do well.

eBay’s new site Microplace.com also allows you to invest in such business proposals in developing nations. So give it a try and get involved with maybe 20, 50 or even 100 Dollars or Euros.

But most of all: see that so called poor people really want to built their own future. They don’t want donations and poverty - they want to built their own good lives.

This old, but still tragic events at the Spanish-Moroccan border just uncover an old truth: rich countries despise economic refugees. We Europeans can only thank nature for the Mediterranean sea - otherwise we would be ‘invaded’ by a gazillion Africans and Arabs.

Europe has tried to keep these people out - because we want to enjoy our privileged lifestyle quietly. Yeah, send them some development money and blankets when another earthquake or whatever happens. And some AIDS medicine.

The tragic is, that neither Europe nor the US has done enough to develop democratic nations ‘down there’ with a working economy. But Arabs and Africans haven’t done enough either. Corruption and cronyism are not imported ‘ideas’, but local failures. It doesn’t matter if rich Arabs rather buy at Harrods or African kings another wife, they fail their own people.

So Europe simply builds higher fences and flies those poor souls back to their shit holes. Lets hope that these people find a way to make their own nations worth staying there - and let’s also hope that Europe and the US get better at ‘helping’ these nations.

So far most of the help was a failure.

China currently produces 70% of the world shoe market. Since it’s killing the shoe industry in Europe they are considering some sort of import tariff. No problem said shoe retailers in Europe - we then simply buy them someplace else - like India or Bangladesh. The lesson: it’s hard to protect your economic sphere against dumping - and even harder when the rest of the world lives and works on a very different and cheaper economic scale.

Compared to most animals we humans have developed a huge variety of jobs. First we started out as simple hunter-gatherers with only a specialization between genders. But as our mental capabilities grew - so did the job market.

Since we are lazy creatures we tried to find methods to make life easier and work less. Technology and machines are the result of this - sadly slavery and feudal systems as well.

Until the industrial revolutions everything was handmade - machines played only a limited role for example in irrigation, mills and building. That all changed with the steam engine.

But in early stages of industrialization life & work was still harsh and deadly.

World War II laid the foundation for a different global economy after colonialism and the coming information age.

Overall work (and life) got a lot easier for most humans. We even invented holidays - a very modern social gimmick that would be astonishing to Egyptian slaves or medieval peasants.

Even more amazing is our range of jobs: some people get huge amounts of money for hitting small balls with sticks, some very few navigate machines thru the sky and some others simply for listening to other people’s problems.

Amazing, don’t you think?

BBC News: Dollar hits new low against euro

What did people expect to happen? The ever growing American trade deficit, the costs of the War on Terror and simply bad fiscal policy will weaken the Dollar more and more:

The dollar has been weakening for some time.

The fundamental problem is the growing US trade deficit, now more than $700bn, as the US economy has imported far more goods than it has exported.

This has long been seen as unsustainable, and in the long-run some kind of currency adjustment has been seen as both inevitable and desirable.

But the recent change in policy by the US central bank has accelerated the decline, because people who put their money in dollars no longer get such a high rate of return.

So it will be only a matter of time until some oil nation will trade only in Euros instead of Dollars. China won’t be so stupid and ruin it’s big market and put pressure on the Dollar as well, but I am sure they will diversify their cash reserves as well.

If there is going to be another recession of black Monday or something the reason will be most likely bad American monetary policy.

Once again the irony: Alan Greenspan was the financial guru associated with the Republican party in the US. After serving several US presidents he retired recently and finally his book will be published.

Some bits are already out there and causing some big political waves. Guess who Alan Greenspan praised above all other presidents in terms of political and financial sanity: Bill Clinton.

More? Some recent TV interviews: About the Clintons, George W. Bush, Taxcuts,& Cheney and the real kicker The Iraq war was about Oil (surprise!).

BBC News: Italy urged to go on pasta strike

This sounds like a joke, but Italians face a price increase for it’s national meal up to 20%. Once again the production of bio fuels is part of the increased price. Pasta was always considered ‘cheap’ food, attainable for everyone.

BBC: Mobiles for the ‘world’s poorest’

Forget the 100 Dollar Laptop - the good old mobile phone is proving to be a techno tool for change. Cell towers are cheaper and easier to install then landlines over huge ‘empty’ areas. Cell phones themselves are easy to learn and use without much literacy and they can also recharged with solar energy or little electricity.

Most of all it simply helps people to communicate and start a business. This is especially important in rural areas in Africa were basics of simple communication and even often transportation are lacking. With a cell phone news travels fast … and some progressive speed is something Africa and the poor can use.

In that context: if you have an old cell phone or if you upgrade in the near future donate your that thing to wirelessrecycling.com. And there are many other organizations that can use your mobile for other purposes.

See also Africa’s mobile entrepreneurs