UPCOMING GROUNDBREAKING NEW FILM: Zeitgeist III - Moving Forward

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, by director Peter Joseph, is a feature length documentary work which will present a case for a needed transition out of the current socioeconomic monetary paradigm which governs the entire world society. This subject matter will transcend the issues of cultural relativism and traditional ideology and move to relate the core, empirical "life ground" attributes of human and social survival, extrapolating those immutable natural laws into a new sustainable social paradigm called a "Resource-Based Economy".

Zeitgeist Moving Forward will make its first internet release on 25th January 2011. Stay tune.

Official Site: Zeitgeist: Moving Forward

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward | Official Trailer - [ Extended ]


Zeitgeist: Moving Forward - Teaser | Online Jan 25th

UN wants new global currency to replace dollar

The dollar should be replaced with a global currency, the United Nations has said, proposing the biggest overhaul of the world's monetary system since the Second World War.

In a radical report, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has said the system of currencies and capital rules which binds the world economy is not working properly, and was largely responsible for the financial and economic crises.

It added that the present system, under which the dollar acts as the world's reserve currency , should be subject to a wholesale reconsideration.

Although a number of countries, including China and Russia, have suggested replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency, the UNCTAD report is the first time a major multinational institution has posited such a suggestion.

In essence, the report calls for a new Bretton Woods-style system of managed international exchange rates, meaning central banks would be forced to intervene and either support or push down their currencies depending on how the rest of the world economy is behaving.

The proposals would also imply that surplus nations such as China and Germany should stimulate their economies further in order to cut their own imbalances, rather than, as in the present system, deficit nations such as the UK and US having to take the main burden of readjustment.

"Replacing the dollar with an artificial currency would solve some of the problems related to the potential of countries running large deficits and would help stability," said Detlef Kotte, one of the report's authors. "But you will also need a system of managed exchange rates. Countries should keep real exchange rates [adjusted for inflation] stable. Central banks would have to intervene and if not they would have to be told to do so by a multilateral institution such as the International Monetary Fund."

The proposals, included in UNCTAD's annual Trade and Development Report , amount to the most radical suggestions for redesigning the global monetary system.

Although many economists have pointed out that the economic crisis owed more to the malfunctioning of the post-Bretton Woods system, until now no major institution, including the G20 , has come up with an alternative.

Continue reading - UN wants new global currency to replace dollar

World Economic Forum - Global Risks Report 2011

The financial crisis has drained the world’s capacity for dealing with shocks. The frequency and severity of risks to global stability have amplified, while the ability of global governance systems to deal with them has not.



Download - Global Risks Report 2011

Source: World Economic Forum - Global Risks Report 2011

Nigel Farage: Euro Empire Collapsing, Bailout River Dry

Another Eurozone country might need a financial bailout soon. Italy - which is the third largest economy that uses the Euro currency - has started plunging in the same direction as Greece and Ireland. It comes as fresh protests sweep across Europe - with people angry at facing tough cuts to pay for it all. RT talks to European Parliament member Nigel Farage, who's the leader of the UK Independence Party.

Nigel Farage: Euro Empire Collapsing, Bailout River Dry

NIA Economic News Update

NIA Economic News Update

Riots rage in Chile as gas price hike fuels flames of anger

Riots are raging in southern Chile with two women killed and four others injured. Protesters are out in anger at gas price increases, which are reportedly due to troubles experienced by the state-owned petroleum company. 21 people have been arrested. With gas one of the country's main imports, the price rise counters promises made by the country's President Pinera.

Riots rage in Chile as gas price hike fuels flames of anger

Global economic growth to slow in 2011, says World Bank

The global economy will slow this year, with developing countries such as India and China providing a greater share of growth, the World Bank has predicted.

The bank estimates that global GDP growth will be 3.3% this year against 3.9% in 2010, with emerging markets growing by 6%.

But these rates would not be enough to reduce unemployment in the hardest-hit economies, it said.

The bank warned that "serious tensions and pitfalls" persist.

These included the eurozone debt crisis and the risk of large amounts of capital flowing from low-interest developed economies to higher-interest emerging markets, which could affect currencies.

It also said it was "very concerned about rising food prices".

Continue reading - BBC - Global economic growth to slow in 2011, says World Bank

Currency Crisis: Brussels Plans Bigger Euro Rescue Package

The 750 billion euros earmarked for a rescue fund for Europe's common currency appears to be insufficient. European Currency Commissioner Rehn says he wants to consider "all options" for expanding the rescue fund. Meanwhile, Portugal succeeded in issuing 1.2 billion euros in bonds on Wednesday.

The European currency crisis threatened to worsen on Wednesday. Reports in a handful of newspapers stated that leaders of European Union member states are now making plans to expand the euro rescue fund.

In early 2010, the EU member states agreed to a rescue fund with cash and guarantees worth €750 billion. EU leaders set up the fund in order to protect member states from the threat of bankruptcy. Member states do not pay any money directly into the fund, but they do provide up to €440 billion in guarantees. The European Union also contributed a special credit line of €60 billion together with an additional €250 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

A report in Germany's Die Welt newspaper states that officials in Brussels are considering raising the amount of money available for loans in the fund -- either through increasing the current €440 billion sum of credit available or through technical changes to the fund. "We have a deceptive calm right now, a credible political signal of decisiveness needs to be delivered to the markets," the paper cited a diplomat as saying.

EU Currency Commissioner Olli Rehn also spoke out on Wednesday in support of expanding the rescue fund. He said the euro zone, the 17 countries that have adopted the euro including latest member Estonia, must consider additional steps. "We need to review all options for the size and scope of our financial backstops -- not only the current ones but also for the permanent European stability mechanism, too," he wrote in a guest column in the Financial Times.

Nervous Markets

News agency Reuters also reported that EU member states, in light of the continuing sovereign debt crisis, want to increase the size of loans available in the rescue fund. The issue is expected to be discussed at a meeting of EU finance ministers next Monday, a source with knowledge of the developments stated.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that European governments are considering an expansion of the euro rescue fund. The report states they want to increase the size of the current €440 billion in guarantees. They are also considering allowing the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to intervene in bond markets. In other words, in the future, EFSF would be able to directly purchase government bonds from crisis-plagued countries. So far, it has only guaranteed repayment of those bonds.

Officials in Brussels say that no decision has been made. But the Wall Street Journal reports that they are urgently needed in order to quiet markets that have again become extremely nervous. Following the crisis in Greece and Ireland, concerns are now growing about Portugal.

The situation is very tight for the European country, which is being forced to pay ever-higher interest rates on its bonds. On Monday, the interest rate for long-term Portuguese loans rose to a record level of 7.3 percent.

Meanwhile, a poll released by Ernst and Young of leading German bankers undercored the gravity of the situation: Around half of those surveyed said they believed at least one European country may soon face insolvency.

Continue reading - Currency Crisis: Brussels Plans Bigger Euro Rescue Package

Chinese Inflation Rises, Threatening Higher Consumer Prices

As China’s booming economy has made its citizens more prosperous, prices for many items, from food to clothing to new cars, have been rising.

BEIJING — When garment buyers from New York show up next month at China’s annual trade shows to bargain over next autumn’s fashions, many will face sticker shock.

They’re going to go home with 35 percent less product than for the same dollars as last year,” particularly for fur coats and cotton sportswear, said Bennett Model, chief executive of Cassin, a Manhattan-based line of designer clothing. “The consumer will definitely see the price rise.”

Inflation has arrived in China. And after Tuesday’s release of crucial financial statistics by China’s central bank, few economists expect Beijing officials to be able to tame rising prices any time soon.

While American importers of Chinese goods will feel the squeeze, the effect on American consumers may be more subtle and the overall impact on United States inflation may be minimal.

There are simply too many other markups along the way — from transportation to salesclerks’ wages — that affect the American retail prices of Chinese-made products. Excluding those markups, imports from China are equal to little more than 2 percent of the overall American economy.

The bigger consumer impact is in China itself. As China’s booming economy enables more of its own citizens to buy the goods pouring out of its factories, Chinese consumers are feeling inflation directly. And Beijing is increasingly worried about the social unrest that could result.

In China, consumer prices were 5.1 percent higher in November than a year earlier, according to official government data. And many economists say the official figures actually understate the rate of inflation, which might in reality be twice as high.

“Four percent, China can bear it — beyond 5 percent, people will complain a lot,” said Huo Jianguo, president of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation here.

Higher global commodity prices, as well as rising wages in China, play roles in the increasing cost of Chinese goods. But economists say the main reason for the inflation now is China’s foreign exchange reserves, which surged by a record amount in the fourth quarter.

In China, there is little question that the consumer price index understates the true extent of inflation.

Continue reading - NY Times - Chinese Inflation Rises, Threatening Higher Consumer Prices

Thomas Sowell: Federal Reserve a 'Cancer'

Economist Thomas Sowell explains why he supports Ron Paul's stance on abolishing the Federal Reserve. When asked by Peter Robinson what should replace the Fed, Sowell replies: "When someone removes a cancer, what do you replace it with?"

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Thomas Sowell has studied and taught economics, intellectual history, and social policy at institutions that include Cornell University, UCLA, and Amherst College. Now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Sowell has published more than a dozen books, the latest of which is a revised and updated edition of his classic volume, Basic Economics.

"Through its various editions," Sowell writes, "the fundamental idea behind Basic Economics remains the same: Learning economics should be as uncomplicated as it is informative."

Here, Sowell seeks to uncomplicate some of the economic issues confronting the country today, from the financial crisis and the role of the Fed to the economics of health care and trade imbalances. - Hoover Institution

Thomas Sowell is an American economist, political writer, and commentator. He is currently a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1990, he won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute. In 2002 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science.

Peter M. Robinson is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he writes about business and politics, edits Hoover's quarterly journal, the Hoover Digest, and hosts Hoover's television program, Uncommon Knowledge.

Thomas Sowell: Federal Reserve a 'Cancer'

Spanish Bank Protested By Flash Mob Of Flamenco Dancers - Rumba Rave "banquero" en el Banco de Santander

A new form of bank protest?

Rumba Rave "banquero" en el Santander

UPDATE: President Quits, More deaths in Tunisia violence over high unemployment and surging cost of living

The Tunisian government has said it will listen to protesters, after weeks of unrest over high unemployment and the cost of living left dozens of people dead and raised the tensions.

Samir al-Obaidy, the country's communications minister, told Al Jazeera that the government was responding to the unrest.

"The message has been received by the government and all political channels," he said.

"With the backing of the president, we have already put in place urgent measures and allocated $5bn for the development of various areas."

Government officials reported that 14 people were killed since Saturday in clashes between the security forces and protesters in the towns of Thala, Kasserine and Regueb.

However, Tunisian union sources said that the number was at least 20.

In a statement, several political parties and movements, including the Progressive Democratic Party and the Renewal Movement, called on the government to stop the violence.

They called for "a ceasefire and the return of all military and security forces to their compounds", as well as the "release of all detainees including political ones".

The opposition also demanded more freedoms and asked the government to respect the political will of the people.

Continue reading - Tunisia 'to respond' to protests

Massive Protests in Tunisia Push President to Flee


More deaths in Tunisia violence


Tunisia jobless protests rage


VIOLENT PROTESTS IN TUNISIA

BANGLADESH RIOT - Stock market plunge sparks violent protests

Bangladesh suspended trading at its main stock exchange in the capital Dhaka on Monday, and security officials used batons to disperse thousands of angry investors upset over a market plunge. After the protesters began gathering on Monday morning, authorities used batons to try to break up the crowds, according to police officials. But protesters continued to demonstrate at several busy intersections in Dhaka's Motijheel commercial district, where the stock exchange is located, smashing vehicles, burning tyres and chanting anti-government slogans.

Stock market plunge sparks violent protests in Bangladesh

MUST READ - Inflation’s Moral Hazard

Runaway inflation in Germany, which turned money into wallpaper, undermined the Weimar Republic and led to Hitler’s rise.

"An age of loose money not only destroys savings; it corrodes character."

Information from the most diverse sources sometimes coalesces and provokes reflection on a subject to which one has not previously given sufficient thought. This happened to me recently with regard to the effect of monetary inflation on human character. With many observers predicting a substantial rise in inflation as a result of various government spending programs undertaken to reverse the current global downturn, the topic is anything but academic.

During the sixties and seventies, the sums of money of which everyone spoke increased, first by a little and then by a lot (and how nonchalantly we now speak of trillions of dollars or euros!). All that had seemed solid, to paraphrase Marx, melted into air.

Inflation has overturned centuries of economic wisdom, or at least prejudice. When Polonius conferred his parting platitudes on Laertes, one was to “neither a lender nor a borrower be,” and this because a “loan oft loses both itself and friend.” A quarter of a millennium later, Mr. Micawber famously asserted that the secret of happiness was to live within one’s means; and while credit is obviously essential for economic growth, an intuitive difference exists between borrowing to consume beyond one’s means and borrowing to increase one’s means.

Inflation has blurred that intuitive difference. Many times I have received advice, from friends and banks, to borrow as much as I could so that I might buy the best and most expensive house possible. And for many years it seemed good advice, for what could be more advantageous than to buy an appreciating asset with depreciating currency, especially when my income was likely to appreciate faster than the currency depreciated? It was a painless way to become rich.

I did not take the advice—not entirely, anyway. I remained sufficiently a child of the regime of constant prices that I found it difficult to imagine how a sum that seemed vast now would seem trifling in just a few years: caution seemed wiser. Even so, I borrowed within what I thought to be my means, and thereby accumulated assets of a value that I could not have obtained by the steady buildup of savings. The curious result has been that at no point in my career could I have afforded to buy the real estate that I now own, whose value—even now, after a precipitate post-financial-crisis decline—greatly exceeds my cumulative income over the years. If my borrowing had been bolder, the value would exceed my earnings even more.

My situation is no different from that of millions of others, of course. And since we are all richer than we should otherwise be, is there anything, really, to complain about? The problem is that this “richer” represents a curious kind of wealth. I must live somewhere, after all, and everywhere else has appreciated in value, too. I don’t live any better in my house than I did before simply because it is worth three times what I paid for it. Its increase in value is thus of no use to me, unless I want to sell it to live in a less valuable house and invest the difference. An increase in the value of one’s house is therefore a bit like fool’s gold.

During those fat years, a man could sit at home watching television and imagine that he was growing richer thereby. I remember an eminent professor’s telling me, with a barely concealed exultation, that he was making nearly $1,000 per day, week after week, merely by owning a very large house in a fashionable area: an amount that, needless to say, dwarfed any savings he might salt away from his salary. The government could not have been better pleased, for the majority of the population, who owned their own homes, felt prosperous as never before and attributed their affluence to the government’s wise economic guidance.

But asset inflation—ultimately, the debasement of the currency—as the principal source of wealth corrodes the character of people. It not only undermines the traditional bourgeois virtues but makes them ridiculous and even reverses them. Prudence becomes imprudence, thrift becomes improvidence, sobriety becomes mean-spiritedness, modesty becomes lack of ambition, self-control becomes betrayal of the inner self, patience becomes lack of foresight, steadiness becomes inflexibility: all that was wisdom becomes foolishness. And circumstances force almost everyone to join in the dance.

Continue reading - Inflation’s Moral Hazard by Theodore Dalrymple

The American Dream

The AMERICAN DREAM is a 30 minute animated film that shows you how you've been scammed by the most basic elements of our government system. Pretty entertaining but true.

The American Dream