Economy

The Attention Economy: The Social Media duopoly that sells your Life

Social media giants brainwashed us all to live the lives of others. Social networks don’t exist to make us happy or to help us connect with friends, but to show us publicity and to illegally collect our personal information and metadata. Its massive machinery whose role is to show advertisements is what led to compromising episodes such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which showed that biased information was sent ...Read full article...

Metadata: Your Behavioural Footprint Online

Metadata is more valuable for large data mining companies than your name, address or telephone number. Your name doesn’t matter. The color of your hair is not important. Your way of walking, your accent or your perfume are useless. It is your internet presence what you should be worried about. “These data have less and less impact, where you were born does not matter for your work, or for ...Read full article...

Gold Reserves built by Russia, China and Turkey

Central banks in several regions of the World are building up their gold reserves. A large part of these Central Bank purchases of gold bullion are not disclosed. They are undertaken through third party contracting companies, with utmost discretion. The evidence amply suggests that US dollar holdings and US dollar denominated debt instruments are being traded in for gold, which in turn puts pressure on the US dollar. In ...Read full article...

With 4% GDP, what could possibly bring the economy down?

Anyone with a price book will agree that the cost of nearly everything has been steadily going up. Unfortunately, wages are not increasing at the same rate. And to quote Bachman-Turner Overdrive, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. There are three events happening in the economy right now that could, alone, cause the prices of everything from food to the materials to make replacement parts for your vehicle to skyrocket. ...Read full article...

Poverty is America’s leading growth industry

Poverty today is America’s leading growth industry because of bipartisan indifference to a largely unaddressed festering problem. During the best of earlier times, no war on poverty was ever waged in America, skirmishes alone, letting a problem demanding strong action fester. Michael Harrington’s 1962 book, titled “The Other America” exposed the nation’s dark underside enough for Jack Kennedy to address the issue, and for Lyndon Johnson to declare “unconditional ...Read full article...

Monstrous AT&T/Time Warner Merger

Federal courts are supremely pro-business, including the nation’s highest one throughout its history. The nation’s first Supreme Court chief justice John Jay arrogantly said America should be run by the people who own it. The nation’s second president John Adams said the rich, well born and able should rule. The Supreme Court’s 1886 ruling in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railway was arguably the most infamous one high ...Read full article...

Argentina is now owned by the IMF

Venezuela, Costa Rica and Argentina are three nations that suffer due to their massive debt with foreign banks. Countries all over Latin America are running out of time to curb, once and for all, their growing public debts and fiscal deficits, yet, none of those countries seem to know, or simply refuse to recognize, that the largest source of debt slavery is foreign loans from supranational banking cartels. Venezuela, Costa ...Read full article...

Trade Wars work: Trump and China begin Negotiations

Extreme Left Wing writer, Paul Krugman, begs to differ. He believes it’s all about China owning Trump. The US and China have decided to reduce the tension in the tariff front and, after two days of intense meetings in Washington, they have closed a principle of agreement. Beijing agrees to reduce the US trade deficit and both powers cancel the tariff increases that threatened to trigger a global trade ...Read full article...

The Mainstream media myth of low U.S. unemployment

Media propaganda maintains the myth of low unemployment, including a NYT report in its latest edition, saying: An “unemployment rate (was achieved) below the 4 percent threshold,” the Times calling it a “milestone,” claiming it indicates a “tight…labor market…” Reality is polar opposite. Trump crowed about the phony Friday Labor Department (BLS) report tweeting: “JUST OUT: 3.9% Unemployment. 4% is Broken!” America’s privileged class never had things better. Unreported ...Read full article...

The New Oligopoly Data Economy is here to stay

You are now part of the new economic model of data exploitation. An electoral strategy consultancy firm exploited Facebook user data as a forma of market research. Users were not warned about it and their data became a precious tool to analyze political preferences in the last US election. Exploiting user data is not new. Social networks have gobbled, kept and used data from members for years. What is ...Read full article...

Drinking roasted coffee increases Cancer risk

Acrylamide, a by-product of roasted coffee, is the substance responsible for the increased risk of cancer for people who drink their cup of joe on a daily basis. A Los Angeles court ruled that Starbucks and other coffee brands are expected to include a warning about carcinogenic substances in their products in California. This decision resolves a lawsuit filed by a not-for-profit group in 2010 to toasters, distributors and ...Read full article...

11 Nations Sign Transpacific Partnership (TPP)

Signatory countries include Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam – America withdrew, China excluded. The Electronic Frontier Foundation earlier called TPP “a secretive, multinational trade agreement that threatened to extend restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite international rules on its enforcement.” It’s NAFTA on steroids, a stealth corporate coup d’etat, a giveaway to corporate predators, a neoliberal ripoff, a ...Read full article...

Amazon patents bracelet to control its workers

Amazon will use the bracelet to monitor workers’ movement in its storage facilities. Amazon, bracelet and control are three words that when used in the same sentence can give goosbumps to any of its workers. The company of Jeff Bezos has reaped a little grateful fame for its policy of personnel management and recent news about Amazon’s initiative to control its workers via a mandatory bracelet unleashed the alert ...Read full article...

Debt Bubble surpasses 300% of Global GDP

Both developed and developing nations collaborated to achieve a new record of debt, but developed nations are the biggest offenders with 142 billion euros while developing nations added almost 51 billion euros. The debt of households, companies, banks, and governments worldwide added up to a total of 193 billion euros at the end of 2017. The figure represents a new record after increasing by 13.7 billion euros in the first ...Read full article...

The Welfare State is the Warfare State

Have you ever heard the term ‘rent seeker’ before? I had never heard about it until last week. But as it turns out, those who wear that name tag have existed for a long, long time. According to Ross Ashcroft, the person who recently mentioned the term ‘rent seeker’ on a TV program, rent seekers are people who apportion someone else’s resources or wealth to then redistribute it to ...Read full article...