The US Crash Spreading Like Wildfire...

[conspiracy analyst]

15,000 S.F. workers face layoffs, shorter weeks

Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer

More than 15,000 San Francisco city workers across all departments will receive layoff notices Friday, and most of them will have the option of being rehired to work a shorter week, Mayor Gavin Newsom said Tuesday.
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Newsom's controversial plan to help reduce the city's $522 million budget deficit for the 2010-11 fiscal year would shift the majority of the city's 26,000 workers from a 40-hour week to 37 1/2 hours, cutting their paychecks by 6.25 percent.

The plan is expected to save $100 million - half in the city's general operating fund and half in money-generating departments including the port and airport - but is being decried by unions and some supervisors as a slap at the rank and file.

They also pointed to the mayor's inability to promise that the move would spare future layoffs. Newsom said not all workers who receive layoff notices Friday will be rehired but refused to specify how many that may be.

The mayor insisted, though, that it's a smart way to spare several thousand layoffs and ensure that workers retain jobs as the city faces its biggest budget deficit. The move to a shortened workweek would not affect employees' health benefits, vacation or sick time.

"This is a pro-job alternative," Newsom said. "We can keep people employed and keep their health benefits."

He announced the idea last month and said he was open to cost-saving alternatives from unions. But Tuesday, he said he didn't receive any and needed to move forward because his budget proposal is due to the board on June 1.

"I have not gotten any better ideas, and so it is my intent to go forward this Friday," Newsom said.
Unions seek alternatives

Tim Paulson, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, said many city unions have joined to form a "public employees committee" to craft alternative cost-saving proposals, but declined to say what they were likely to include or when they'd be unveiled.

"We're going to do the right thing because we care about the city," he said. "The mayor's cookie-cutter method is not going to work."

The mayor's proposal would affect most job classifications including librarians, gardeners, secretaries, clerks, street cleaners, janitors and more. The vast majority would be rehired at the reduced schedule within 60 days and would continue working as normal in the meantime.

The plan wouldn't affect police officers, firefighters, deputy sheriffs, Muni operators or attorneys for a variety of reasons, including that some of those groups have mandatory staffing levels or work hours inscribed in their deals with the city.

Newsom stressed those groups would be asked to take 6.25 percent wage cuts, though that would require agreements from those unions.

Carlos Rivera, a spokesman for Service Employees International Union Local 1021, said union members are unlikely to see their actual workloads reduced - just their paychecks.

"Cutting down the time doesn't eliminate the work," he said.

Newsom said he didn't have sympathy for workers who complained about their workloads.

"Well, they have a job," he said. "Let's be adults. Let's deal with reality."

He added that he won't accept city-run operations opening their doors to the public a half-hour later or closing a half-hour earlier and that he'll rely on managers to stagger workers' schedules instead.
Avalos opposed

Newsom's plan doesn't need approval from the Board of Supervisors, but some members haven't shied away from publicly opposing the plan.

Supervisor John Avalos, chairman of the board's budget committee, said the plan hits the city's lowest-paid workers.

"It is not something that is equitable," he said. "The people who are making more could give up more."

Avalos suggested that the city look into declaring a fiscal emergency, which would allow city officials to make across-the-board wage reductions to preserve services and jobs.

Chronicle staff writer Rachel Gordon contributed to this report.

This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/03/03/BA471C9 UVR.DTL#ixzz0h8hPzPYR

[conspiracy analyst]

Where can you buy a house and get a burger meal and still get change from $5?

The USA of course...

[conspiracy analyst]

Up to 5,200 LA schools workers could face layoffs

* Story

By JACOB ADELMAN | Posted: March 2, 2010 5:25 pm | No Comments Posted | Print


The Los Angeles Unified School District's board voted Tuesday to send notices of possible layoffs to nearly 5,200 teachers and other workers while urging union leaders to negotiate concessions that could make some of the cuts unnecessary.

The Board of Education members who spoke at the hearing stressed they were unanimously authorizing the notices to meet a state deadline and hoped many of the cuts to the nation's second-largest school district's work force could be avoided.

http://www.nctimes.com/news/state-and-regional/article_43f5aa7d-74b8-5 0b9-a608-9e7530635f97.html

[conspiracy analyst]

IMF "Economic Medicine" Comes to America

by Ellen Brown


Global Research, March 2, 2010
Web of Debt - 2010-02-28

In addition to mandatory private health insurance premiums, we may soon be hit with a “mandatory savings” tax and other belt-tightening measures urged by the President’s new budget task force. These radical austerity measures are not only unnecessary, however, but will actually make matters worse. The push for “fiscal responsibility” is based on bad economics.



When billionaires pledge a billion dollars to educate people to the evils of something, it is always good to peer closely at what they are up to. Hedge fund magnate Peter G. Peterson was formerly Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and head of the New York Federal Reserve. He is now senior chairman of Blackstone Group, which is in charge of dispersing government funds in the controversial AIG bailout, widely criticized as a government giveaway to banks. Peterson is also founder of the Peter Peterson Foundation, which has adopted the cause of imposing “fiscal responsibility” on Congress. He hired David M. Walker, former head of the Government Accounting Office, to spearhead a massive campaign to reduce the runaway federal debt, which the Peterson/Walker team blames on reckless government and consumer spending. The Foundation funded the movie “I.O.U.S.A.” to amass popular support for their cause, which largely revolves around dismantling Social Security and Medicare benefits as a way to cut costs and return to “fiscal responsibility.”



The Peterson-Pew Commission on Budget Reform has pushed heavily for action to stem the federal debt. Bills for a budget task force were sponsored in both houses of Congress. The Senate bill was narrowly defeated, and the House bill was tabled; but that was not the end of it. In Obama’s State of the Union speech on January 27, he said he would be creating a presidential budget task force by executive order to address the federal government’s deficit and debt crisis, and that the task force would be modeled on the bills Congress had failed to pass. If Congress would not impose “fiscal responsibility” on the nation, the President would. “It keeps me awake at night, looking at all that red ink,” he said. The Executive Order was signed on February 17.



What the President seems to have missed is that all of our money except coins now comes into the world as “red ink,” or debt. It is all created on the books of private banks and lent into the economy. If there is no debt, there is no money; and private debt has collapsed. This year to date, U.S. lending has been contracting at the fastest rate in recorded history. A credit freeze has struck globally; and when credit shrinks, the money supply shrinks with it. That means there is insufficient money to buy goods, so workers get laid off and factories get shut down, perpetuating a vicious spiral of economic collapse and depression. To reverse that cycle, credit needs to be restored; and when the banks can’t do it, the government needs to step in and start “monetizing” debt itself, or turning debt into dollars.



Although lending remains far below earlier levels, banks say they are making as many loans as they are allowed to make under existing banking rules. The real bottleneck is with the “shadow lenders” – those investors who, until late 2007, bought massive amounts of bank loans bundled up as “securities,” taking those loans off the banks’ books, making room for yet more loans to be originated out of the banks’ capital and deposit bases. Because of the surging defaults on subprime mortgages, investors have now shied away from buying the loans, forcing banks and Wall Street firms to hold them on their books and take the losses. In the boom years, the shadow lending market was estimated at $10 trillion. That market has now collapsed, leaving a massive crater in the money supply. That hole needs to be filled, and only the government is in a position to do it. Paying down the federal debt when money is already scarce just makes matters worse. When the deficit has been reduced historically, the money supply has been reduced along with it, throwing the economy into recession.



Another Look at the Budget Reform Agenda



That raises the question, are the advocates of “fiscal responsibility” merely misguided? Or are they up to something more devious? The President’s Executive Order is vague about the sorts of budget decisions being entertained, but we can get a sense of what is on the table by looking at the earlier agenda of Peterson’s Commission on Budget Reform. The Peterson/Walker plan would have slashed social security entitlements, at a time when Wall Street has destroyed the home equity and private retirement accounts of potential retirees. Worse, it would have increased the social security tax, disguised as a “mandatory savings tax.” This added tax would be automatically withdrawn from your paycheck and deposited to a “Guaranteed Retirement Account” managed by the Social Security Administration. Since the savings would be “mandatory,” you could not withdraw your money without stiff penalties; and rather than enjoying an earlier retirement paid out of your increased savings, a later retirement date was being called for. In the meantime, your “mandatory savings” would just be fattening the investment pool of the Wall Street bankers managing the funds.



And that may be what really underlies the big push to educate the public to the dangers of the federal debt. Political analyst Jim Capo discusses a slide show presentation given by David M. Walker after the “I.O.U.S.A.” premier, in which a mandatory savings plan was proposed that would be modeled on the Federal Thrift Savings Plan (FSP). Capo comments:

“The FSP, available for federal employees like congressional staff workers, has over $200 billion of assets (on paper anyway). About half these assets are in special non-negotiable US Treasury notes issued especially for the FSP scheme. The other half are invested in stocks, bonds and other securities. . . . The nearly $100 billion in [this] half of the plan is managed by Blackrock Financial. And, yes, shock, Blackrock Financial is a creation of Mr. Peterson's Blackstone Group. In fact, the FSP and Blackstone were birthed almost as a matched set. It's tough to fail when you form an investment management company at the same time you can gain the contract that directs a percentage of the Federal government payroll into your hands.”

What “Fiscal Responsibility” Really Means



All of this puts “fiscal responsibility” in a different light. Rather than saving the future for our grandchildren, as the President himself seems to think it means, it appears to be a code word for delivering public monies into private hands and raising taxes on the already-squeezed middle class. In the parlance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), these are called “austerity measures,” and they are the sorts of things that people are taking to the streets in Greece, Iceland and Latvia to protest. Americans are not taking to the streets only because nobody has told us that is what is being planned.



We have been deluded into thinking that “fiscal responsibility” (read “austerity”) is something for our benefit, something we actually need in order to save the country from bankruptcy. In the massive campaign to educate us to the perils of the federal debt, we have been repeatedly warned that the debt is disastrously large; that when foreign lenders decide to pull the plug on it, the U.S. will have to declare bankruptcy; and that all this is the fault of the citizenry for borrowing and spending too much. We are admonished to tighten our belts and save more; and since we can’t seem to impose that discipline on ourselves, the government will have to do it for us with a “mandatory savings” plan. The American people, who are already suffering massive unemployment and cutbacks in government services, will have to sacrifice more and pay the piper more, just as in those debt-strapped countries forced into austerity measures by the IMF.



Fortunately for us, however, there is a major difference between our debt and the debts of Greece, Latvia and Iceland. Our debt is owed in our own currency – U.S. dollars. Our government has the power to fix its solvency problems itself, by simply issuing the money it needs to pay off or refinance its debt. That time-tested solution goes back to the colonial scrip of the American colonists and the “Greenbacks” issued by Abraham Lincoln to avoid paying 24-36% interest rates.



Economic Fearmongering



What invariably kills any discussion of this sensible solution is another myth long perpetrated by the financial elite -- that allowing the government to increase the money supply would lead to hyperinflation. Rather than exercising its sovereign right to create the liquidity the nation needs, the government is told that it must borrow. Borrow from whom? From the bankers, of course. And where do bankers get the money they lend? They create it on their books, just as the government would have done. The difference is that when bankers create it, it comes with a hefty fee attached in the form of interest.



Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has been trying to increase the money supply; and rather than producing hyperinflation, we continue to suffer from deflation. Frantically pushing money at the banks has not gotten money into the real economy. Rather than lending it to businesses and individuals, the larger banks have been speculating with it or buying up smaller banks, land, farms, and productive capacity, while the credit freeze continues on Main Street. Only the government can reverse this vicious syndrome, by spending money directly on projects that will create jobs, provide services, and stimulate productivity. Increasing the money supply is not inflationary if the money is used to increase goods and services. Inflation results when “demand” (money) exceeds “supply” (goods and services). When supply and demand increase together, prices remain stable.



The notion that the federal debt is too large to be repaid and that we are imposing that monster burden on our grandchildren is another red herring. The federal debt has not been paid off since the days of Andrew Jackson, and it does not need to be paid off. It is just rolled over from year to year, providing the “full faith and credit” that alone backs the money supply of the nation. The only real danger posed by a growing federal debt is an exponentially growing interest burden; but so far, that danger has not materialized either. Interest on the federal debt has actually gone down since 2006 -- from $406 billion to $383 billion -- because interest rates have been lowered by the Fed to very low levels.



They can’t be lowered much further, however, so the interest burden will increase if the federal debt continues to grow. But there is a solution to that too. The government can just mandate that the Federal Reserve buy the government’s debt, and that the Fed not sell the bonds to private lenders. The Federal Reserve states on its website that it rebates its profits to the government after deducting its costs, making the money nearly interest-free.



All the fear-mongering about the economy collapsing when the Chinese and other investors stop buying our debt is yet another red herring. The Fed can buy the debt itself – as it has been stealthily doing. That is actually a better alternative than selling the debt to foreigners, since it means we really will owe the debt only to ourselves, as Roosevelt was assured by his advisors when he agreed to the deficit approach in the 1930s; and this debt-turned-into-dollars will be nearly interest-free.



Better yet would be to either nationalize or abolish the Fed and fund the government directly with Greenbacks as President Lincoln did. What the Fed does the Treasury Department can do, for the cost of administration. There would be no shareholders or bondholders to siphon earnings, which could be recycled into public accounts to fund national, state and local budgets at zero or near-zero interest rates. Eliminating debt service payments would allow state and federal income taxes to be slashed; and the public managers of this money, rather than hiding behind a veil of secrecy, would be opening their books for all to see.



A final red herring is the threatened bankruptcy of Social Security. Social Security cannot actually go bankrupt, because it is a pay-as-you-go system. Today’s social security taxes pay today’s recipients; and if necessary, the tax can be raised. As Washington economist Dean Baker wrote when President Bush unleashed the campaign to privatize Social Security in 2005:

“The most recent projections show that the program, with no changes whatsoever, can pay all benefits through the year 2042. Even after 2042, Social Security would always be able to pay a higher benefit (adjusted for inflation) than what current retirees receive, although the payment would only be about 73 percent of scheduled benefits.”

Today incomes over $97,000 escape the tax, disproportionately imposing it on lower income brackets. Projections over the next 75 years show that just removing that cap could eliminate the forecasted deficit. When the Democratic presidential candidates were debating in the fall of 2007, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were the only candidates willing to seriously consider this reasonable alternative. President Obama just needs to follow through with the solutions he espoused when campaigning.



The Mass Education Campaign We Really Need



What is really going on behind the scenes may have been revealed by Prof. Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown University. An insider groomed by the international bankers, Dr. Quigley wrote in Tragedy and Hope in 1966:

“[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.”

If that is indeed the plan, it is virtually complete. Unless we wake up to what is going on and take action, the “powers of financial capitalism” will have their way. Rather than taking to the streets, we need to take to the courts, bring voter initiatives, and wake up our legislators to the urgent need to take the power to create money back from the private banking elite that has hijacked it from the American people. And that includes waking up the President, who has been losing sleep over the wrong threat.





Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature’s Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are webofdebt.com, ellenbrown.com, and public-banking.com.

Ellen Brown is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Ellen Brown

[conspiracy analyst]

Ron Paul-Crash will get worse over the next period...

http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=10542

[conspiracy analyst]

LANSING – Michigan public schools will lay off thousands of employees and more than 100 districts could be insolvent if the state doesn’t find a way to plug a $400-per-pupil funding shortfall in funding next year.

Quantcast



That assessment comes today from a coalition of education groups that urged the Legislature to resolve what they call a school funding crisis by July 1, the start of a new fiscal year for schools.

Save Our Students (SOS), a coalition of 17 associations that represent school and school officials statewide, released results of a survey of 300 of the state’s 540 school districts that paints a bleak picture of 4,000 additional layoffs statewide next year, school closures and elimination of programs.

The survey indicates 47 school districts could deplete their fund reserves this year, and another 60 to 80 could do so next year, said David Martell, executive director of Michigan School Business Officials. Emptying reserves could result in insolvency, Martell said.

Tom White, SOS chairman, gave 50-50 odds that the Legislature will tackle the school funding issue in a timely manner.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing nothing is going to happen because it’s an election year. The ship is sinking,” White said, adding, “It offends me.”

White said schools need to curb major costs such as health care and retirement, but said additional state revenue is needed.

“If it’s important enough, people are willing to dig a little deeper and pay a little bit more,” White said. “Not a lot more.”

SOS supports Gov. Jennifer Granholm proposal to reduce the sales tax from 6% to 5.5% and expand it to some 150 consumer services that are not now taxed.

At least $410 million from the additional revenue would be earmarked for schools.

In return, the state would reduce business taxes.

Granholm also proposed incentives to retire some 30,000 public school employees and convert new hires to a different, less costly pension system, and allowing school districts to join a less expensive statewide health insurance plan.

School districts absorbed a $165-per-pupil reduction in state aid this fiscal year. But they face much deeper cuts next year under a weak economy, with falling sales tax revenue that account for most of school funding.

That includes the rising cost of school employee retirements, which will increase from the current 16.9% of school districts’ payrolls to 19.4%. Schools must pay that cost out of the basic operating money they receive from the state.

[conspiracy analyst]

Cash-strapped LA County courts to begin layoffs
The Associated Press
Posted: 03/08/2010 01:23:03 PM PST
Updated: 03/08/2010 01:23:03 PM PST

LOS ANGELES—The Los Angeles County Superior Court is laying off 329 staff members next month and officials say more than 1,000 others may go in the next two years because of budget cuts.

A memo from Court Executive Officer John Clarke to employees says the first layoffs will begin on April 1.

Clarke says an additional 500 layoffs are planned for September followed by 530 in fall 2011. The court currently has 5,400 employees.

Clarke says civil rather than criminal cases will be hardest hit.

Clark says the court system's budget deficit is expected to reach $140 million by the 2011-12 fiscal year that begins in July.

Presiding Judge Charles McCoy has said he's looking at plans to close up to 180 courtrooms and lay off about a third of the staff.

[conspiracy analyst]

Barton Biggs: Stock A Safe Haven With Food And Firearms To Protect Against Doomsday Pillagers
Print
Courtney Comstock | Jan. 6, 2010, 9:56 AM | 12,861 | comment 38
Tags: Wall Street, Economy


A lot recommend buying farmland. Here are the gloomiest:

Former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson warns:

"We're running out of time ... to prevent a true depression." He says unless we break Wall Street's "stranglehold" we will be unable prevent the Great Depression 2.

Morgan Stanley research guru turned hedge fund manager Barton Biggs (pictured), who called the market rally, advises that you buy a farm a good distance away from a city and, he advises, make sure that your doomsday safe-haven:

* Be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food
* Be well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc

And get a gun, he says, because "a few rounds over the approaching brigands' heads would probably be a compelling persuader that there are easier farms to pillage."

Mark "Gloom Boom Doom" Faber also recommends buying farmland. Our society has peaked and is on the decline, he says:

"Once a society becomes successful it becomes arrogant, righteous, overconfident, corrupt, and decadent ... overspends ... costly wars ... wealth inequity and social tensions increase; and society enters a secular decline."

[Disco_Destroyer]

In the UK um um get some 'fava beans and a nice chianti'

[conspiracy analyst]

As this show will be hitting the road soon in Europe, not too be missed only because of the importance of Detroit within US history.
They were the pioneers in mass production, shopping malls, urban riots, etc.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/10/detroit-motor-city-urban-de cline



Detroit: the last days

Detroit is a city in terminal decline. When film director Julien Temple arrived in town, he was shocked by what he found – but he also uncovered reasons for hope

*

* Julien Temple
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 10 March 2010 20.00 GMT
* Article history

An abandoned car wash in Detroit

Vegetation engulfs an abandoned car wash in Detroit. Photograph: Films of Record

When the film- maker Roger Graef approached me last year to make a film about the rise and fall of Detroit I had very few preconceptions about the place. Like everyone else, I knew it as the Motor City, one of the great epicentres of 20th-century music, and home of the American automobile. Only when I arrived in the city itself did the full-frontal cultural car crash that is 21st-century Detroit became blindingly apparent.

Leaving behind the gift shops of the "Big Three" car manufacturers, the Motown merchandise and the bizarre ejaculating fountains of the now-notorious international airport, things become stranger and stranger. The drive along eerily empty ghost freeways into the ruins of inner-city Detroit is an Alice-like journey into a severely dystopian future. Passing the giant rubber tyre that dwarfs the nonexistent traffic in ironic testament to the busted hubris of Motown's auto-makers, the city's ripped backside begins to glide past outside the windows.

Like The Passenger, it's hard to believe what we're seeing. The vast, rusting hulks of abandoned car plants, (some of the largest structures ever built and far too expensive to pull down), beached amid a shining sea of grass. The blackened corpses of hundreds of burned-out houses, pulled back to earth by the green tentacles of nature. Only the drunken rows of telegraph poles marching away across acres of wildflowers and prairie give any clue as to where teeming city streets might once have been.

Approaching the derelict shell of downtown Detroit, we see full-grown trees sprouting from the tops of deserted skyscrapers. In their shadows, the glazed eyes of the street zombies slide into view, stumbling in front of the car. Our excitement at driving into what feels like a man-made hurricane Katrina is matched only by sheer disbelief that what was once the fourth-largest city in the US could actually be in the process of disappearing from the face of the earth. The statistics are staggering – 40sq miles of the 139sq mile inner city have already been reclaimed by nature.

One in five houses now stand empty. Property prices have fallen 80% or more in Detroit over the last three years. A three-bedroom house on Albany Street is still on the market for $1.

Unemployment has reached 30%; 33.8% of Detroit's population and 48.5% of its children live below the poverty line. Forty-seven per cent of adults in Detroit are functionally illiterate; 29 Detroit schools closed in 2009 alone.

But statistics tell only one part of the story. The reality of Detroit is far more visceral. My producer, George Hencken, and I drove around recce-ing our film, getting out of the car and photographing extraordinary places to film with mad-dog enthusiasm – everywhere demands to be filmed – but were greeted with appalled concern by Bradley, our friendly manager, on our return to the hotel. "Never get out of the car in that area – people have been car-jacked and shot."

Law and order has completely broken down in the inner city, drugs and prostitution are rampant and unless you actually murder someone the police will leave you alone. This makes it great for filming – park where you like, film what you like – but not so good if you actually live there. The abandoned houses make great crack dens and provide cover for appalling sex crimes and child abduction. The only growth industry is the gangs of armed scrappers, who plunder copper and steel from the ruins. Rabid dogs patrol the streets. All the national supermarket chains have pulled out of the inner city. People have virtually nowhere to buy fresh produce. Starbucks? Forget it.

What makes all this so hard to understand is that Detroit was the frontier city of the American Dream – not just the automobile, but pretty much everything we associate with 20th-century western civilisation came from there. Mass production; assembly lines; stop lights; freeways; shopping malls; suburbs and an emerging middle-class workforce: all these things were pioneered in Detroit.

But the seeds of the Motor City's downfall were sown a long time ago. The blind belief of the Big Three in the automobile as an inexhaustible golden goose, guaranteeing endless streams of cash, resulted in the city becoming reliant on a single industry. Its destiny fatally entwined with that of the car. The greed-fuelled willingness of the auto barons to siphon up black workers from the American south to man their Metropolis-like assembly lines and then treat them as subhuman citizens, running the city along virtually apartheid lines, created a racial tinderbox. The black riots of 1943 and 1967 gave Detroit the dubious distinction of being the only American city to twice call in the might of the US army to suppress insurrection on its own streets and led directly to the disastrous so-called white flight of the 50s, 60s and 70s.

The population of Detroit is now 81.6% African-American and almost two-thirds down on its overall peak in the early 50s. The city has lost its tax base and cannot afford to cut the grass or light its streets, let alone educate or feed its citizens. The rest of the US is in denial about the economic catastrophe that has engulfed Detroit, terrified that this man-made contagion may yet spread to other US cities. But somehow one cannot imagine the same fate befalling a city with a predominantly white population.

On many levels Detroit seems to be an insoluble disaster with urgent warnings for the rest of the industrialised world. But as George and I made our film we discovered, to our surprise, an irrepressible positivity in the city. Unable to buy fresh food for their children, people are now growing their own, turning the demolished neighbourhood blocks into urban farms and kick-starting what is now the fastest-growing movement across the US. Although the city is still haemorrhaging population, young people from all over the country are also flooding into Detroit – artists, musicians and social pioneers, all keen to make use of the abandoned urban spaces and create new ways of living together.

With the breakdown of 20th-century civilisation, many Detroiters have discovered an exhilarating sense of starting over, building together a new cross-racial community sense of doing things, discarding the bankrupt rules of the past and taking direct control of their own lives. Still at the forefront of the American Dream, Detroit is fast becoming the first "post-American" city. And amid the ruins of the Motor City it is possible to find a first pioneer's map to the post-industrial future that awaits us all.

So perhaps Detroit can avoid the fate of the lost cities of the Maya and rise again like the phoenix that sits, appropriately, on its municipal crest. That is why George and I decided to call our film Requiem for Detroit? – with a big question mark at the end.

Requiem for Detroit? is on BBC2 on Saturday 13 March at 9pm

[conspiracy analyst]

When an ex-editor of the Wall Street journal writes the stuff below we know the system is on its way out...


The Off-Shored Economy: The Ruins of Detroit

by Paul Craig Roberts


Global Research, March 20, 2010
Counterpunch - 2010-03-17

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In the 20th century, Detroit, Michigan, symbolized American industrial might. Today it symbolizes the offshored economy.



Detroit’s population has declined by half. A quarter of the city--35 square miles--is desolate with only a few houses still standing on largely abandoned streets. If the local government can get the money from Washington, urban planners are going to shrink the city and establish rural areas or green zones where neighborhoods used to be.



President Obama and economists provide platitudes about recovery. But how does an economy recover when its economic leaders have spent more than a decade moving high productivity, high value-added middle class jobs offshore along with the Gross Domestic Product associated with them?



Some very discouraging reports have been issued this month from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There have been record declines in both jobs and hours worked. At the end of last year, the U.S. economy had fewer jobs than at the end of 1997, 12 years ago. Hours worked at the end of last year were less than at the end of 1995, 14 years ago.



The average work week is falling and currently stands at 33.1 hours for non-supervisory workers.



In a major problem for economic theory, labor productivity or output per man hour and labor compensation have diverged markedly over the last decade. Wages are not rising with productivity. Perhaps the explanation lies in the productivity data. Susan Houseman found that U.S. labor productivity statistics might actually be reflecting the low wages paid to offshored labor. An American company with production in the U.S. and China, for example, produces aggregate results in labor output and labor compensation. The productivity statistics thus measure the labor productivity of global corporations, not that of U.S. labor.



Charles McMillion has pointed out that unit labor costs actually fell during 2009, but that non-labor costs have been rising throughout the decade. The rise in non-labor costs perhaps reflects the decline in the dollar’s foreign exchange value and the increased dependence on imported factors of production.



Economists and policymakers tend to blame auto management and unions for Detroit’s fall. However, American manufacturing has declined across the board. Evergreen Solar recently announced that it is shifting its production of solar fabrication and assembly from Massachusetts to China.



A U.S. Department of Commerce study of the precision machine tool industry has found that the U.S. comes in last.The U.S. industry has a shrinking market share and the smallest increase in export value. The Commerce Department surveyed American end-users of precision machine tools and found that imports accounted for 70 percent of purchases. Some U.S. distributors of precision machine tools do not even carry U.S. brands.



The financial economy which was to replace the industrial economy is nowhere in sight. The U.S. has only 5 banks in the world’s top 50 by size of assets. The largest U.S. bank, JPMorgan Chase ranks seventh. Germany has 7 banks in the top 50, and the United Kingdom and France each have 6. Japan and China each have 5 banks in the top 50, and together the small countries of Switzerland and the Netherlands have six with combined assets $1.185 trillion more than the 5 largest U.S. banks.



Moreover, after the derivative fraud perpetrated on the world’s banks by the U.S. investment banks, there is no prospect of any country trusting American financial leadership.



The American economic and political leadership has used its power to serve its own interests at the expense of the American people and their economic prospects. By enriching themselves in the short-run, they have driven the U.S. economy into the ground. The U.S. is on a path to becoming a Third World economy.



Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Paul Craig Roberts

[satya]

with the passing of the medical bill. This will further mean the poor will get poorer as the government can control tax rises through health care.
Dont get me wrong providing health care in a corrupt medical system
is a good idea but not when your country is on its knees.

I believe they want to crash the market so they can bring in the amero.
Just doesnt make any financial sense to continually poor money into
stuff like this when their isnt any real money left.

[conspiracy analyst]

Fox News Poll: 79% Say U.S. Economy Could Collapse

By Dana Blanton

- FOXNews.com

The latest Fox News poll finds that 79 percent of voters think it’s possible the economy could collapse, including large majorities of Democrats (72 percent), Republicans (84 percent) and independents (80 percent).

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Most American voters believe it’s possible the nation’s economy could collapse, and majorities don’t think elected officials in Washington have ideas for fixing it.

The latest Fox News poll finds that 79 percent of voters think it’s possible the economy could collapse, including large majorities of Democrats (72 percent), Republicans (84 percent) and independents (80 percent).

Just 18 percent think the economy is "so big and strong it could never collapse."

Moreover, 78 percent of voters believe the federal government is "larger and more costly" than it has ever been before, and by nearly three-to-one more voters think the national debt (65 percent) is a greater potential threat to the country’s future than terrorism (23 percent).

Who has a plan for dealing with the economy?

Overall, 35 percent of voters think the Obama administration has a clear plan for fixing the economy, down from 42 percent last summer (July 21-22, 2009).

At the same time the number saying the White House doesn’t have a plan for the economy has increased from 53 percent in July to 62 percent in the new poll. That includes almost all Republicans (88 percent), two-thirds of independents (67 percent), as well as a third of Democrats (33 percent).

Even fewer people think Democrats in Congress (24 percent) and Republicans in Congress (16 percent) have clear plans to fix the economy.

There is a large gap in party support, as Democrats (46 percent) are significantly more likely than Republicans (25 percent) to think their party has a strategy for the economy.

The national telephone poll was conducted for Fox News by Opinion Dynamics Corp. among 900 registered voters from March 16 to March 17. For the total sample, the poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

"These results reveal a deep anxiety about the fragility of our economy, as voters face continued uncertainty about jobs and an expanding commitment to public sector spending," said Ernest Paicopolos, a principal of Opinion Dynamics.

Three in 10 American voters (30 percent) say they are comfortable with the size and role of the federal government right now, while 65 percent say the government has become too big and "is restricting American freedoms."

Sizable majorities of Republicans (84 percent) and independents (74 percent) think the government is too big, while just over half of Democrats (51 percent) are okay with the size of government.

[Disco_Destroyer]

Meltup
www.youtube.com
The beginning of a U.S. currency crisis and hyperinflation. Become a member of NIA for free at http://inflation.us

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb1n1X0Oqdw&playnext_from=TL&videos=qe0 71t4agRc


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