Global Intelligence
08 October 2013 NEW YORK – When the US investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, triggering the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression, a broad consensus about what caused the crisis seemed to emerge. A bloated and dysfunctional financial system had misallocated capital and, rather than managing risk, had actually created it. […]
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Having recently showed the diverging “consumer comfort” between the haves and the have-nots, perhaps the following chart more than any other typifies the superficial society in the US today. The question is – what happened in 1999/2000 to break the “what’s good for Wall Street is good for Main Street” meme?
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David Stockman, author of The Great Deformation [79], summarizes the last quarter century thus: What has been growing is the wealth of the rich, the remit of the state, the girth of Wall Street, the debt burden of the people, the prosperity of the beltway and the sway of the three great branches of government […]
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“Everybody, sooner or later, sits down to a banquet of consequences.” Robert Louis Stevenson “They don’t have intelligence. They have what I call thintelligence. They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it ‘being focused.’ They don’t see the surroundings. They don’t see the consequences.” Michael Crichton The Fed is faced with […]
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s choice of coalition partner will play a key role in deciding how far the foreign-exchange market is burdened by a proposed financial-transactions tax in 11 European Union states. Merkel, who last year backed a European Commission plan for a broad-based tax on trades in stocks, bonds, derivatives and other assets, is […]
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The article below is the most comprehensive analysis available of “Obamacare” – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The author, a knowledgeable person who wishes to remain anonymous, explains how Obamacare works for the insurance companies but not for you. Obamacare was formulated on the concept of health care as a commercial commodity and […]
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Catastrophic Shocks Through Complex Socio-Economic Systems: A Pandemic Perspective David Korowicz Summary The globalised economy has become more complex (connectivity, interdependence, and speed), de-localized, with increasing concentration within critical systems. This has made us all more vulnerable to systemic shocks. This paper provides an overview of the effect of a major pandemic on the operation […]
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It’s Not an Accident … It’s Policy America is experiencing unprecedented inequality. And a who’s who of prominent economists (and investors) say that inequality is hurting the economy. Defenders of the status quo pretend that this inequality is something outside of our control … like a force of nature. They argue that it’s due to […]
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WASHINGTON (AP) — OK, gridlocked politicians we’re used to. But why padlock the Statue of Liberty? You don’t see other democracies shuttering landmarks and sending civil servants home just because their political parties can’t get along. Belgian civil servants, for example, carried on nicely for a year and a half while their politicians bickered over […]
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