week ending July 24th

the review of the week ending July 24th has been completed and posted on the globalglassonion blog...it briefly summarizes and links to articles from MSM and the blogosphere, generally on the topics listed below and whatever else, with a heavy focus this week on monetary and fiscal policy, the likelihood of another downturn, and unemployment..

anyone who wants my weekly emailing of selected links, mostly from these GGO posts, contact me...

primary topics: banks, budget, climate change, deficit, Elizabeth Warren, energy, euro bank stress tests, Europe, financial regulation, fiscal policy, gulf oil spill, inflation, monetary policy, mortgage crisis, state budgets, the Fed, unemployment

voodoo is back!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

its the end of the world as we knew it

What are 308,367,109 Americans supposed to do?

First of all, despite clamping down on immigration, our population grew by 2.6M people last year.  Unfortunately, not only did we not create jobs for those 2.6M new people but we lost about 4M jobs so what are these new people going to do?  Not only that, but nobody is talking about the another major job issue: People aren’t retiring!  They can’t afford to because the economy is bad – that means there are even less job openings…   The pimply faced kid can’t get a job delivering pizza because his grandpa’s doing it.

There are some brilliant pundits who believe cutting retirement benefits will fix our economy.  How will that work exactly?  Pay old people less money, don’t cover their medical care and what happens?  Then they need money.  If they need money, they need to work and if they need to work they increase the supply of labor, which reduces wages and leaves all 308,367,109 of us with less money.  Oh sorry, not ALL 308,367,109 – just 308,337,109 – the top 30,000 (0.01%) own the business the other 308,337,109 work at and they will be raking it in because labor is roughly 1/3 of the cost of doing business in America and our great and powerful capitalists have already cut their manufacturing costs by shipping all those jobs overseas, where they pay as little as $1 a day for a human life so now, in order to increase their profits (because profits MUST be increased) they have now turned inward to see what they can shave off in America.

How does one decrease the cost of labor in America?  Well first, you have to bust the unions. Check.  Then you have to create a pressing need for people to work – perhaps give them easy access to credit and then get them to go so deeply into debt that they will have to work until they die to pay them off. Check.  It also helps if you push up the cost of living by manipulating commodity prices. Check.  Then, take away people’s retirement savings. Check.  Lower interest rates to make savings futile and interest income inadequate. Check.  And finally, threaten to take away the 12% a year that people have been saving for retirement by labeling Social Security an “entitlement” program – as if it wasn’t money Americans worked their whole lives to save and gave to the government in good faith. Check

from phil’s favorites…continue reading…

week ending July 17th

the review of the week ending July 17th has been completed and posted on the globalglassonion blog...it briefly summarizes and links to articles from MSM and the blogosphere, generally on the topics listed below and whatever else, with a heavy focus this week on monetary and fiscal policy, the likelihood of another downturn, deficits, foreclosures & unemployment

anyone who wants my weekly emailing of selected links, mostly from these GGO posts, contact me...

primary topics: : banks, budget, china, debt, deficit, double dip, energy, environment, Europe, financial regulation, fiscal policy, gulf oil spill, inflation, monetary policy, mortgage crisis, pensions, state budgets, taxes, the Fed, unemployment, world trade..

dispersant corexit makes oil more toxic

Toxicologists: Corexit “Ruptures Red Blood Cells, Causes Internal Bleeding”, "Allows Crude Oil To Penetrate “Into The Cells” and “Every Organ System"

(this is reposted from washingtons blog; despite being told by the EPA in may to stop using it, BP continues to use corexit…its a dispersant, the purpose of which is to break the oil up into droplets so small they cant be seen…it does not make the oil less dangerous to marine wildlife…so far, almost 2 million gallons of this dispersant have been applied, and concerns among toxicologists are mounting…see also our previous post about corexit: a hard rain’s gonna fall)

As I have previously noted, Corexit is toxic, is less effective than other dispersants, and is actually the damage caused by the oil spill.

Now, two toxicologists are saying that Corexit is much more harmful to human health and marine life than we’ve been told.

Specifically Gulf toxicologist Dr. Susan Shaw – Founder and Director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute – dove into the oil spill to examine the chemicals present.

Dr. Shaw told CNN:

If I can tell you what happens — because I was in the oil — to people…

Shrimpers throwing their nets into water… [then] water from the nets splashed on his skin. …

[He experienced a] headache that lasted 3 weeks… heart palpitations… muscle spasms… bleeding from the rectum…

And that’s what that Corexit does, it ruptures red blood cells, causes internal bleeding, and liver and kidney damage. …

This stuff is so toxic combined… not the oil or dispersants alone. …

Very, very toxic and goes right through skin.

***

The reason this is so toxic is because of these solvents [from dispersant] that penetrate the skin of anything that’s going through the dispersed oil takes the oil into the cells — takes the oil into the organs… and this stuff is toxic to every organ system in the body. …

Similarly, marine biologist and toxicologist Dr. Chris Pincetich – who has an extensive background in testing the affects of chemicals on fish – says that Corexit disrupts cell membranes.

He also explains that EPA toxicity testing for Corexit is woefully inadequate, since EPA testing for mortality usually only requires a 96-hour time frame. His doctoral research found that fish that were alive at 96 hours after exposure to pesticide were dead at two weeks, so the chemicals were considered non-lethal for the purposes of the test.

Drs. Shaw and Pincetich are wildlife conservationists. But even industry scientists working for Exxon and the manufacturer of Corexit itself admit that the stuff is toxic.

week ending July 10th

the review of the week ending July 10th has been completed and posted on the globalglassonion blog...it briefly summarizes and links to articles from MSM and the blogosphere, generally on the topics listed below and whatever else, with a heavy focus this week on monetary & fiscal policy, the likelihood of another downturn, unemployment, the oil spill in the gulf, and the ongoing crisis in the eurozone...

primary topics: : austerity, budget, china, climate change, commercial real estate, deficit, Europe, finreg, fiscal policy, gulf oil spill, monetary policy, mortgage crisis, peak oil, state budgets, stimulus, the Fed, unemployment

anyone who wants my weekly emailing of selected links, mostly from these GGO posts, contact me...

just get back to work, the $1200/mo gravy train is over

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
America's Got Nothing
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

ever wonder where jon stewart gets his ideas?  check out what he’s got hidden in his broom closet…

the paradox of freedom

its crap, and you should know its crap…

the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce's animated version of David Harvey's RSA speech "Crises of Capitalism."

David Harvey, pre-animation

David Harvey, a radical sociologist who heads CUNY's Center for Place, Culture & Politics, describes not just the failures that caused the ongoing fiasco, but the failure of how we've explained it.

"It's crap," he says. "You should know it's crap, and say it is. And we have a duty, it seems to me, those of us who are academics, and seriously involved in the world, to actually change our mode of thinking."

week ending July 3rd

the review of the week ending July 3rd has been completed and posted on the globalglassonion blog...it briefly summarizes and links to articles from MSM and the blogosphere, generally on the topics listed below and whatever else, with a heavy focus this week on fiscal policy, finreg, unemployment, the oil spill in the gulf, and the ongoing crisis in the eurozone...

primary topics: austerity, banks, budget, china, consumers, deficit, education, energy, environment, Europe, financial regulation, fiscal policy, G-20, gulf oil spill, monetary policy, mortgage crisis, pensions, state budgets, the Fed, unemployment

anyone who wants my weekly emailing of selected links, mostly from these GGO posts, contact me...

Warning To Gulf Volunteers: Almost Every Cleanup Worker From The 1989 Exxon Valdez Disaster Is Now Dead

Michael Snyder
Jun. 30, 2010, 12:20 PM

Are you sure that you want to help clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? In a previous article we documented a number of the health dangers from this oil spill that many scientists are warning us of, and now it has been reported on CNN that the vast majority of those who worked to clean up the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska are now dead. Yes, you read that correctly. Almost all of them are dead.

In fact, the expert that CNN had on said that the life expectancy for those who worked to clean up the Exxon Valdez oil spill is only about 51 years. Considering the fact that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is now many times worse than the Exxon Valdez disaster, are you sure you want to volunteer to be on a cleanup crew down there? After all, the American Dream is not to make big bucks for a few months helping BP clean up their mess and then drop dead 20 or 30 years early



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