John Feffer - The Next Marx

Lenin graces the cover of a recent issue of The Economist. The Financial Times is running an entire series on the “crisis in capitalism.” Francis Fukuyama, a recovering neoconservative,makes a plea in Foreign Affairs for the left to get its intellectual act together. And that noted class warrior Newt Gingrich has been assailing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for being a ruthless moneybags.

Excuse me? Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing? What parallel universe did we all just stumble into? It’s not the first time, of course, that the political spectrum has become all jumbled. Ten years ago, the 9/11 attacks sent some liberals scurrying rightward in support of the Bush administration’s extended response. The disastrous aftermath of the Iraq War then pushed even some leading neoconservative lights, like Fukuyama, in the other direction. The aftershocks of this upheaval can still be felt in the debate around the Libya intervention and the “right to protect” doctrine.

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http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/the_next_marx

Peter Schroeder - Disputed rule intended to shame CEOs

Business groups and unions are sparring over a little-known provision in the Dodd-Frank reform law that supporters concede is an effort to shame the nation’s highest-paid CEOs. The rule, which predates the Occupy Wall Street movement but channels it in spirit, requires companies to disclose the difference in pay between their chief executives and average employees. “It’s really a political talking point that’s managed its way into legislation,” said Tom Quaadman, vice president of the capital markets center for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Critics of the provision are at work trying to repeal it. The House Financial Services Committee approved legislation sponsored by Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.) that would do away with the disclosure requirement. But the repeal movement is unlikely to make headway in the Senate, where Democrats are lining up behind President Obama’s election-year message of working to “level the playing field” for workers and reduce income inequality.

With repeal unlikely for now, industry groups are encouraging regulators to take their time implementing the provision, and to solicit plenty of business input along the way. Labor groups and other critics of Wall Street, meanwhile, are urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to move swiftly to put the requirement in place, and dismiss arguments that it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

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http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/208161-disputed-rule-intended-to-shame-ceos

Bob Chapman - In the Wake of Davos -- The Fed overshadow's the European Central Bank

On Friday from the Bilderberg conclave at Davos, appointed European Central Bank President, Mario Draghi proclaimed that Europe had averted financial disaster and cited the improvement in euro zone markets in recent weeks. He said it was the ECB’s duty to guard against deflation as well as inflation. The fact of the matter is that he and his friends at the Fed arranged a currency swap of $1 trillion of which the ECB dispersed $660 billion to 523 EU banks, at 1% interest for three years. He also cut interest rates twice and extended loans for 1 to 3 years. Mr. Draghi could be expected to take the easy Anglo-American way out. He is fully Illuminati trained and that is where his orders emanate from.

He continued about how the conclusion of a fiscal pact, the ESM, the European Stabilization Mechanism, where budgets and fiscal spending policies would be determined by unelected, Treasury appointees, who have been officially immunized by the EU government. Mr. Draghi makes no note of these qualifications and forgets to let us know that in this new ESM pact all the nations lose their sovereignty.

As yet, after a month, there is no evidence that the funds had reached the real economy. The banks that just received the funds at 1% interest have been depositing them at ¼% interest with the ECB. They have not lent to each other because bankers say they do not trust each other. What a sad state of affairs. In addition to the above the ECB now accepts loan collateral of much lower quality than previously was approved. As you can see there were a lot of facts Mr. Draghi deliberately left out.

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29011

We Can Now See the True Cost of Globalization

When Karl Marx called for the workers of the world to unite, it seems unlikely he had in mind an iPhone boycott. But suggestions for just such a campaign in the US have thrown the spotlight on possible abuses at firms producing goods for hi-tech giant Apple, urging the public to think again about what happens at the other end of the production pipeline that leads to its swish, minimalist stores. Stung by the criticisms, Apple boss Tim Cook told his staff last week: "We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain," and the company is now inspecting scores of factories, providing the latest evidence that the public is no longer willing to ignore the dark underbelly of world capitalism.

Before the Great Crash, critics of globalization were isolated on the loony fringe: tear-gassed in Seattle and whacked with truncheons in Prague, as the west's leaders gathered to congratulate themselves on reaping the benefits of unfettered world trade. When the Asian financial crises of the 1990s toppled governments and forced one desperate country after another into mass impoverishment and emergency bailouts by the International Monetary Fund, the west's leaders – even many on the left – explained it away as a result of shoddy governance or poor economic management, instead of a devastating side-effect of globalization.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/29/observer-editorial-global-capitalism-bad

Chris Hedges - Corporations Have No Use for Borders

What happened to Canada? It used to be the country we would flee to if life in the United States became unpalatable. No nuclear weapons. No huge military-industrial complex. Universal health care. Funding for the arts. A good record on the environment.

But that was the old Canada. I was in Montreal on Friday and Saturday and saw the familiar and disturbing tentacles of the security and surveillance state. Canada has withdrawn from the Kyoto Accords so it can dig up the Alberta tar sands in an orgy of environmental degradation. It carried out the largest mass arrests of demonstrators in Canadian history at 2010’s G-8 and G-20 meetings, rounding up more than 1,000 people. It sends undercover police into indigenous communities and activist groups and is handing out stiff prison terms to dissenters. And Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a diminished version of George W. Bush. He champions the rabid right wing in Israel, bows to the whims of global financiers and is a Christian fundamentalist.

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/corporations_have_no_use_for_borders_20120130/