Commentary

Greg Smith resigned as executive director of Goldman Sach’s European, the Middle East and Africa equity derivatives business, declaring his employer “morally bankrupt”. “…if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence…persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit… get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit...

Read more »

The American government’s potential bail out package is now at $7 trillion and rising. It will be the most expensive single expenditure in American history, more expensive than WWII ($3.6 trillion in today’s dollars, and greater than the Marshall plan, the Louisiana purchase, the Korean War, the Vietnam war, and the entire budget of NASA to date (including the moon landing) together, all in today’s dollars(globalnetnews-summary@lists.riseup.net). You have to wonder how a government that can’t solve poverty, homelessness, and health care for its citizens can access theses prodigious sums. Just like 1939 when a decade of deprivation for the...

Read more »

The Associated Press reported this week that in 1989, bridge inspectors had warned that pigeon droppings were accumulating on the steel beams of the I-35W bridge connecting Minneapolis and St. Paul. Apparently, the ammonia and acids in the droppings, the inspectors said nearly a decade ago, could corrode the beams. This span collapsed August 1st of this year, killing 13 people and injuring more than 100. It is not yet clear if the bird droppings had been the cause of the terrible accident last month, but this story illustrates how terribly accident-prone is the capitalist system. Such a system...

Read more »

The United Nations is sixty-two years old, but should have been pensioned off years ago. Those present at the birth were naive in the extreme for thinking that in signing the charter they would come within light years of saving “succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Surely, even an historian such as Simon Sebag Montefiore can appreciate that there have been many more wars since 1945 than he has fingers and toes! Socialists knew at the birth of the UN, or rather its earlier incarnation, the League of Nations, shortly after the ‘war to end all wars’, that...

Read more »

The demand to keep smiling – or, in fancier language, to maintain a “positive outlook” – is pervasive in American culture. Song lyrics and gurus drum the demand into our heads, and we echo them, telling ourselves things like “Mustn’t complain!” and “Must look on the bright side!” The philosophy of the compulsory smile goes back at least to 1936, when Dale Carnegie’s classic How to Win Friends and Influence People appeared. His first two pieces of advice are “don’t criticize, condemn or complain” and “give honest and sincere appreciation.” How you can always be honest and sincere if...

Read more »