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Paul Craig Roberts – The Social Cost of Capitalism

Few, if any, corporations absorb the full cost of their operations. Corporations shove many of their costs onto the environment, the public sector, and distant third parties. For example, currently 3 million gallons of toxic waste water from a Colorado mine has escaped and is working its way down two rivers into Utah and Lake Powell. At least seven city …

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Pam and Russ Martens – How U.S. Achieves a 5.3% Unemployment Rate: If You Earn No Money, You Can Still Be Counted as Employed

Last Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report of 215,000 new jobs in July with its attendant announcement of an unemployment rate of 5.3 percent drew mostly yawns from the media. That wasn’t the case on February 3 of this year when Jim Clifton, CEO of the polling company, Gallup, wrote a stunning opinion piece on the company’s web site calling the U.S. …

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Pam Martens & Russ Martens – New York Times Pushes False Narrative on the Wall Street Crash of 2008

William D. Cohan has joined Paul Krugman and Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times in pushing the patently false narrative that the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 had next to nothing to do with the epic Wall Street collapse of 2008 and the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression. (See related articles on Krugman and …

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Robert Reich – The Revolt Against the Ruling Class

“He can’t possibly win the nomination,” is the phrase heard most often when Washington insiders mention either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders. Yet as enthusiasm for the bombastic billionaire and the socialist senior continues to build within each party, the political establishment is mystified. Political insiders don’t see that the biggest political phenomenon in America today is a revolt against the …

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Pete Dolack – Speculators Circling Puerto Rico Latest Mode of Colonialism

Puerto Rico’s governor may have said the commonwealth’s debt is unpayable, but that doesn’t mean Puerto Ricans aren’t going to pay for it. Vulture capitalists are circling the island, ready to extract still more wealth from the impoverished island. You already know the drill: Capital is sucked out by corporate interests that pay little in taxes, budget deficits grow and …

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Joshua Frank – The Wheels Fell Off the Bernie Sanders Bandwagon

A few weeks back I wrote a piece that was pretty rough on Bernie Sanders. I admit it. I pulled him through the mud by his loafers and smeared his good name. I had the audacity to point out his rubber-stamping of various wars, his silent support for Israel’s assault on Palestine, and his crude vote during Bill Clinton’s presidency that peeled …

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Rory Hall – Something Is Broken In The Gold And Silver Markets

Earlier today I was speaking with Dave Kranzler and we fell into a discussion regarding the current state of gold and silver. This is how I described everything to Dave as we talked: Beginning in December, as Dave pointed out in Is The Global Financial System On The Brink Of Collapse?, something happened in the derivatives market and I believe …

Hedging on Wall Street: Clinton’s Finance Reforms Reek of Weak-Kneed Populism – Jon Queally

As Bernie Sanders continues to draw record crowds and appears to be winning the battle for small-donor contributions, the campaign of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton—even as the former senator and secretary of state attempts to strike a more populist tone—continues to show it knows where the deep pockets are: Wall Street. And as the Associated Press reports on Wednesday morning, the campaign’s strategic approach is rather easily …

How Goldman Sachs Profited from the Greek Debt Crisis – ROBERT REICH

The Greek debt crisis offers another illustration of Wall Street’s powers of persuasion and predation, although the Street is missing from most accounts. The crisis was exacerbated years ago by a deal with Goldman Sachs, engineered by Goldman’s current CEO, Lloyd Blankfein. Blankfein and his Goldman team helped Greece hide the true extent of its debt, and in the process …

What’s Really Behind Goldman Sach’s Bullish Stance on China Stocks? By Pam Martens and Russ Martens

Goldman Sachs is raising eyebrows on Wall Street with its unchecked bullish stance on the stock markets in China, as other major Wall Street firms issue investor cautions or take outright negative outlooks. Communist government intervention in Chinese markets is reaching unprecedented levels of meddling. Companies have been allowed to simply stop trading their shares to halt further price declines; …