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economistsview.typepad.com
Thomas Piketty on a theme I've been hammering lately, student debt is too damn high!:Student Loan Debt Is the Enemy of Meritocracy in the US: ...the amount of household debt and even more recently of student debt in the U.S. is something that is really troublesome and it reflects the very large rise in tuition in the U.S. a very large inequality in access to education. I think if we really want to promote more equal opportunity and redistribute chances in access to education we should do something about student debt. And it's not possible to have such a large group of the population entering the labor force with such a big debt behind them. This exemplifies a particular problem with inequality in the United States, which is very high inequality and access to higher education. So in other countries in the developed world you don't have such massive student debt because you have more public support to higher education. I think the plan that was proposed earlier this year in 2015 by President Obama to increase public funding to public universities and community college is exactly justified.This is really the key for higher growth in the future and also for a more equitable growth..., you have the official discourse about meritocracy, equal opportunity and mobility, and then you have the reality. And the gap between the two can be quite troublesome. So this is like you have a problem like this and there's a lot of hypocrisy about meritocracy in every country, not only in the U.S., but there is evidence suggesting that this has become particularly extreme in the United States. ... So this is a situation that is very troublesome and should rank very highly in the policy agenda in the future in the U.S.DrDick -> Jeff R Carter:
"college is heavily subsidized"
Bwahahahahahahaha! *gasp*
In 1980, the states subsidized 70% of the cost per student. Today it is less than 30% and the amount of grants and scholarships has likewise declined. Tax cuts for rich people and conservative hatred for education are the biggest problem.
cm -> to DrDick...
I don't know what Jeff meant, but "easy" student loans are a subsidy to colleges, don't you think? Subsidies don't have to be paid directly to the recipient. The people who are getting the student loans don't get to keep the money (but they do get to keep the debt).
DrDick -> to cm...
No I do not agree. If anything, they are a subsidy to the finance industry (since you cannot default on them). More basically, they do not make college more affordable or accessible (his point).
cm -> to DrDick...
Well, what is a subsidy? Most economic entities don't get to keep the money they receive, but it ends up with somebody else or circulates. If I run a business and somebody sends people with money my way (or pays me by customer served), that looks like a subsidy to me - even though I don't get to keep the money, much of it paid for operational expenses not to forget salaries and other perks.
Just because it is not prearranged and no-strings (?) funding doesn't mean it cannot be a subsidy.
The financial system is involved, and benefits, whenever money is sloshing around.
Pinkybum -> to cm...
I think DrDick has this the right way around. Surely one should think of subsidies as to who the payment is directly helping. Subsidies to students would lower the barrier of entry into college. Subsidies to colleges help colleges hire better professors, offer more classes, reduce the cost of classes etc. Student loans are no subsidy at all except to the finance industry because they cannot be defaulted on and even then some may never be paid back because of bankruptcies.
However, that is always the risk of doing business as a loan provider. It might be interesting to assess the return on student loans compared to other loan instruments.
mrrunangun -> to Jeff R Carter...
The cost of higher education has risen relative to the earning power of the student and/or the student's family unless that family is in the top 10-20% wealth or income groups.
50 years ago it was possible for a lower middle class student to pay all expenses for Northwestern University with his/her own earnings. Tuition was $1500 and room + board c $1000/year. The State of Illinois had a scholarship grant program and all you needed was a 28 or 29 on the ACT to qualify for a grant that paid 80% of that tuition. A male student could make $2000 in a summer construction job, such as were plentiful during those booming 60s. That plus a low wage job waiting tables, night security, work-study etc could cover the remaining tuition and expense burden.
The annual nut now is in excess of $40,000 at NU and not much outside the $40,000-50,000 range at other second tier or elite schools.
The state schools used to produce the bedrock educated upper middle class of business and professional people in most states west of the seaboard. Tuition there 50 years ago was about $1200/year and room and board about $600-800 here in the midwest. Again you could put yourself through college waiting tables part-time. It wasn't easy but it was possible.
No way a kid who doesn't already possess an education can make the tuition and expenses of a private school today. I don't know what the median annual family income was in 1965 but I feel confident that it was well above the annual nut for a private college. Now it's about equal to it.
mrrunangun -> to mrrunangun...
1965 median family income was $6900, more than 200% of the cost of a year at NU. Current median family income is about 75% of a year at NU.
anne -> to 400 ppm CO2...
Linking for:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Presentation-National-Debt.png
Click on "Share" under the graph that is initially constructed and copy the "Link" that appears:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=13Ew
March 22, 2015
Federal debt, 1966-2014
This allows a reader to understand how the graph was constructed and to work with the graph.
ilsm:
The US spends half the money the entire world spends on war, that is success!
Massive student debt, huge doses poverty, scores of thousands [of annual neglect related] deaths from the wretched health care system etc are not failure!
tew:
Poor education is the enemy of meritocracy. Costly, bloated administrations full of non-educators there to pamper and pander to every possible complaint and special interest - that is the enemy of meritocracy.
Convincing kids to simple "follow their dreams" regardless of education cost and career potential is the enemy of meritocracy. Allowing young adults to avoid challenging and uncomfortable and difficult subjects under the guise of compassion is the enemy of meritocracy. Financial illiteracy is the enemy of meritocracy.
Manageable student debt is no great enemy of meritocracy.
cm -> to tew...
This misses the point, aside frm the victim blaming. Few people embark on college degrees to "follow their dream", unless the dream is getting admission to the middle class job market.
When I was in elementary/middle school, the admonitions were of the sort "if you are not good in school you will end up sweeping streets" - from a generation who still saw street cleaning as manual labor, in my days it was already mechanized.
I estimate that about 15% or so of every cohort went to high school and then college, most went to a combined vocational/high school track, and some of those then later also went college, often from work.
This was before the big automation and globalization waves, when there were still enough jobs for everybody, and there was no pretense that you needed a fancy title to do standard issue work or as a social signal of some sort.
Richard H. Serlin:
Student loans and college get the bulk of the education inequality attention, and it's not nearly enough attention, but it's so much more. The early years are so crucial, as Nobel economist James Heckman has shown so well. Some children get no schooling or educational/developmental day care until almost age 6, when it should start in the first year, with preschool starting at 3. Others get high quality Montessori, and have had 3 years of it by the time they enter kindergarten, when others have had zero of any kind of education when they enter kindergarten.
Some children spend summers in high quality summer school and educational programs; others spend three months digressing and learning nothing. Some children get SAT prep programs costing thousands, and high end educational afterschool programs; others get nothing after school.
All these things should be available in high quality to any child; it's not 1810 anymore Republicans, the good old days of life expectancy in the 30s and dirt poverty for the vast majority. We need just a little more education in the modern world. But this also makes for hugely unequal opportunity.
Observer -> to Observer...
Data on degree by year ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States
Observer -> to Syaloch...
One needs to differentiate between costs (total dollars spent per student credit hour or degree, or whatever the appropriate metric is) and price (what fraction of the cost is allocated to the the end-user student).
Note that the level of state funding impacts price, not cost; that discussion is usually about cost shifting, not cost reduction.
I'd say that the rate of increase in costs is, more or less, independent of the percent of costs borne by the state. You can indeed see this in the increase in private schools, the state funding is small/nil (particularly in schools without material endowments, where actual annual fees (prices) must closely actual match annual costs). Price discounts and federal funding may both complicate this analysis.
I think much more effort should be spent on understanding and controlling costs. As with health care, just saying "spend more money" is probably not the wise or even sustainable path in the long term.
Costs were discussed at some length here a year(?) or so ago. There is at least one fairly comprehensive published analysis of higher education costs drivers. IIRC, their conclusion was that there were a number of drivers - its not just food courts or more administrators. Sorry, don't recall the link.
Syaloch -> to cm...
Actually for my first job out of college at BLS, I basically was hired for my "rounded personality" combined with a general understanding of economic principles, not for any specific job-related skills. I had no prior experience working with Laspeyres price indexes, those skills were acquired through on-the-job training. Similarly in software development there is no degree that can make you a qualified professional developer; the best a degree can do is to show you are somewhat literate in X development language and that you have a good understanding of general software development principles. Most of the specific skills you'll need to be effective will be learned on the job.
The problem is that employers increasingly want to avoid any responsibility for training and mentoring, and to shift this burden onto schools. These institutions respond by jettisoning courses in areas deemed unnecessary for short-term vocational purposes, even though what you learn in many of these courses is probably more valuable and durable in the long run than the skills obtained through job-specific training, which often have a remarkably short shelf-life. (How valuable to you now is all that COBOL training you had back in the day?)
I guess the question then is, is the sole purpose of higher education to provide people with entry-level job skills for some narrowly-defined job description which may not even exist in a decade? A lot of people these days seem to feel that way. But I believe that in the long run it's a recipe for disaster at both the individual and the societal level.
Richard H. Serlin -> to Observer...
"Observer"
The research is just not on you side, as Heckman has shown very well. Early education and development makes a huge difference, and at age 5-7 (kindergarten) children are much better off with more schooling than morning to noon. This is why educated parents who can afford it pay a lot of money for a full day -- with afterschool and weekened programs on top.
Yes, we're more educated than 1810, but I use 1810 because that's the kind of small government, little spending on education (you want your children educated you pay for it.) that the Republican Party would love to return us to if they thought they could get away with it. And we've become little more educated in the last 50 years even though the world has become much more technologically advanced.
anne:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=14T9
January 30, 2015
Student Loans Outstanding as a share of Gross Domestic Product, 2007-2014
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=14TaJanuary 30, 2015
Student Loans Outstanding, 2007-2014
(Percent change)
anne:
As to increasing college costs, would there be an analogy to healthcare costs?
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/why-markets-cant-cure-healthcare/
July 25, 2009
Why Markets Can't Cure Healthcare
By Paul KrugmanJudging both from comments on this blog and from some of my mail, a significant number of Americans believe that the answer to our health care problems - indeed, the only answer - is to rely on the free market. Quite a few seem to believe that this view reflects the lessons of economic theory.
Not so. One of the most influential economic papers of the postwar era was Kenneth Arrow's "Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Health Care," * which demonstrated - decisively, I and many others believe - that health care can't be marketed like bread or TVs. Let me offer my own version of Arrow's argument.
There are two strongly distinctive aspects of health care. One is that you don't know when or whether you'll need care - but if you do, the care can be extremely expensive. The big bucks are in triple coronary bypass surgery, not routine visits to the doctor's office; and very, very few people can afford to pay major medical costs out of pocket.
This tells you right away that health care can't be sold like bread. It must be largely paid for by some kind of insurance. And this in turn means that someone other than the patient ends up making decisions about what to buy. Consumer choice is nonsense when it comes to health care. And you can't just trust insurance companies either - they're not in business for their health, or yours.
This problem is made worse by the fact that actually paying for your health care is a loss from an insurers' point of view - they actually refer to it as "medical costs." This means both that insurers try to deny as many claims as possible, and that they try to avoid covering people who are actually likely to need care. Both of these strategies use a lot of resources, which is why private insurance has much higher administrative costs than single-payer systems. And since there's a widespread sense that our fellow citizens should get the care we need - not everyone agrees, but most do - this means that private insurance basically spends a lot of money on socially destructive activities.
The second thing about health care is that it's complicated, and you can't rely on experience or comparison shopping. ("I hear they've got a real deal on stents over at St. Mary's!") That's why doctors are supposed to follow an ethical code, why we expect more from them than from bakers or grocery store owners.
You could rely on a health maintenance organization to make the hard choices and do the cost management, and to some extent we do. But HMOs have been highly limited in their ability to achieve cost-effectiveness because people don't trust them - they're profit-making institutions, and your treatment is their cost.
Between those two factors, health care just doesn't work as a standard market story.
All of this doesn't necessarily mean that socialized medicine, or even single-payer, is the only way to go. There are a number of successful healthcare systems, at least as measured by pretty good care much cheaper than here, and they are quite different from each other. There are, however, no examples of successful health care based on the principles of the free market, for one simple reason: in health care, the free market just doesn't work. And people who say that the market is the answer are flying in the face of both theory and overwhelming evidence.
anne -> to anne...
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SEEB01?output_view=pct_12mths
January 30, 2015
College tuition and fees, 1980–2015
(Percentage change)
1980 ( 9.4)
1981 ( 12.4) Reagan
1982 ( 13.4)
1983 ( 10.4)
1984 ( 10.2)1985 ( 9.1)
1986 ( 8.1)
1987 ( 7.6)
1988 ( 7.6) Bush
1989 ( 7.9)1990 ( 8.1)
1991 ( 10.2)
1992 ( 10.7) Clinton
1993 ( 9.4)
1994 ( 7.0)1995 ( 6.0)
1996 ( 5.7)
1997 ( 5.1)
1998 ( 4.2)
1999 ( 4.0)2000 ( 4.1)
2001 ( 5.1) Bush
2002 ( 6.8)
2003 ( 8.4)
2004 ( 9.5)2005 ( 7.5)
2006 ( 6.7)
2007 ( 6.2)
2008 ( 6.2)
2009 ( 6.0) Obama2010 ( 5.2)
2011 ( 5.0)
2012 ( 4.8)
2013 ( 4.2)
2014 ( 3.7)January
2015 ( 3.6)
Syaloch -> to anne...I believe so, as I noted above. The specific market dynamics of health care expenditures are obviously different, but as categories of expenses they have some things in common. First, both are very expensive relative to most other household expenditures. Second, unlike consumer merchandise, neither lends itself very well to cost reduction via offshoring or automation. So in an economy where many consumer prices are held down through a corresponding suppression of real wage growth, they consume a correspondingly larger chunk of the household budget.
Another interesting feature of both health care and college education is that there are many proffered explanations as to why their cost is rising so much relative to other areas, but a surprising lack of a really authoritative explanation based on solid evidence.
anne -> to Syaloch...
Another interesting feature of both health care and college education is that there are many proffered explanations as to why their cost is rising so much relative to other areas, but a surprising lack of a really authoritative explanation based on solid evidence.
[ Look to the paper by Kenneth Arrow, which I cannot copy, for what is to me a convincing explanation as to the market defeating factors of healthcare. However, I have no proper explanation about education costs and am only speculating or looking for an analogy. ]
anne -> to Syaloch...
The specific market dynamics of health care expenditures are obviously different, but as categories of expenses they have some things in common. First, both are very expensive relative to most other household expenditures. Second, unlike consumer merchandise, neither lends itself very well to cost reduction via offshoring or automation. So in an economy where many consumer prices are held down through a corresponding suppression of real wage growth, they consume a correspondingly larger chunk of the household budget.
[ Nicely expressed. ]
Peter K. -> to anne...
"As to increasing college costs, would there be an analogy to healthcare costs?"
Yes, exactly. They aren't normal markets. There should be heavy government regulation.
Denis Drew:
JUST HAD AN IDEA THAT MIGHT LIMIT THE DAMAGE OF THESE PHONEY ONLINE COLLEGES (pardon shouting, but I think it's justified):
Only allow government guaranteed loans (and the accompanying you-can-never-get-out-of-paying) IF a built for that purpose government agency APPROVES said loan. What do you think?
Denis Drew -> to cm...
A big reason we had the real estate bubble was actually the mad Republican relaxation of loan requirements -- relying on the "free market." So, thanks for coming up with a good comparison.
By definition, for the most part, people taking out student loans are shall we say new to the world and more vulnerable to the pirates.
* * * * * * * * * *
[cut and paste from my comment on AB]
Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post.According to an article in the Huffington Post At Kaplan University, 'Guerrilla Registration' Leaves Students Deep In Debt, Kaplan Ed is among the worst of the worst of internet federal loan and grant sucking diploma mills. Going so far as to falsely pad bills $5000 or so dollars at diploma time - pay up immediately or you will never get your sheepskin; you wasted your time. No gov agency will act.
According to a lovely graph which I wish I could patch in here the Post may actually be currently be kept afloat only by purloined cash from Kaplan:
earnings before corporate overhead
2002 - Kaplan ed, $10 mil; Kaplan test prep, $45 mil: WaPo, $100 mil
2005 - Kaplan ed, $55 mil; Kaplan test prep, $100 mil; WaPo, $105 mil
2009 - Kaplan ed, $255 mil; Kaplan test prep, $5 mil; WaPo negative $175 milhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/22/kaplan-university-guerilla-registration_n_799741.html
Wonder if billionaire Bezos will reach out to make Kaplan Ed victims whole. Will he really continue to use Kaplan's pirated money to keep WaPo whole -- if that is what is going on?
Johannes Y O Highness:
"theme I've been hammering lately, student debt is too damn high!: "
Too damn high
but why?Because! Because every event in today's economy is the wish of the wealthy. Do you see why they suddenly wish to deeply educate the proles?
Opportunity cost! The burden of the intelligentsia, the brain work can by carried by robots or humans. Choice of the wealthy? Humans, hands down. Can you see the historical background?Railroad was the first robot. According to Devon's Paradox, it was overused because of its increment of efficiency. Later, excessive roadbeds were disassembled. Rails were sold as scrap.
The new robots are not heavy lifters. New robots are there to do the work of the brain trust. As first robots replaced lower caste jokers, so shall new robots replace upper caste jokers. Do you see the fear developing inside the huddle of high rollers? Rollers now calling the play?
High rollers plan to educate small time hoods to do the work of the new robots, then kill the new robots before the newbie 'bot discovers how to kill the wealthy, to kill, to replace them forever.
Terrifying fear
strikesObserver:
Good bit of data on education costs here
http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/
This chart shows state spending per student and tuition ...
" overall perhaps the best description of the data is something along the lines of "sometimes state appropriations go up and sometimes they go down, but tuition always goes up." "
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economistsview.typepad.com
Thomas Piketty on a theme I've been hammering lately, student debt is too damn high!:Student Loan Debt Is the Enemy of Meritocracy in the US: ...the amount of household debt and even more recently of student debt in the U.S. is something that is really troublesome and it reflects the very large rise in tuition in the U.S. a very large inequality in access to education. I think if we really want to promote more equal opportunity and redistribute chances in access to education we should do something about student debt. And it's not possible to have such a large group of the population entering the labor force with such a big debt behind them. This exemplifies a particular problem with inequality in the United States, which is very high inequality and access to higher education. So in other countries in the developed world you don't have such massive student debt because you have more public support to higher education. I think the plan that was proposed earlier this year in 2015 by President Obama to increase public funding to public universities and community college is exactly justified.This is really the key for higher growth in the future and also for a more equitable growth..., you have the official discourse about meritocracy, equal opportunity and mobility, and then you have the reality. And the gap between the two can be quite troublesome. So this is like you have a problem like this and there's a lot of hypocrisy about meritocracy in every country, not only in the U.S., but there is evidence suggesting that this has become particularly extreme in the United States. ... So this is a situation that is very troublesome and should rank very highly in the policy agenda in the future in the U.S.DrDick -> Jeff R Carter:
"college is heavily subsidized"
Bwahahahahahahaha! *gasp*
In 1980, the states subsidized 70% of the cost per student. Today it is less than 30% and the amount of grants and scholarships has likewise declined. Tax cuts for rich people and conservative hatred for education are the biggest problem.
cm -> to DrDick...
I don't know what Jeff meant, but "easy" student loans are a subsidy to colleges, don't you think? Subsidies don't have to be paid directly to the recipient. The people who are getting the student loans don't get to keep the money (but they do get to keep the debt).
DrDick -> to cm...
No I do not agree. If anything, they are a subsidy to the finance industry (since you cannot default on them). More basically, they do not make college more affordable or accessible (his point).
cm -> to DrDick...
Well, what is a subsidy? Most economic entities don't get to keep the money they receive, but it ends up with somebody else or circulates. If I run a business and somebody sends people with money my way (or pays me by customer served), that looks like a subsidy to me - even though I don't get to keep the money, much of it paid for operational expenses not to forget salaries and other perks.
Just because it is not prearranged and no-strings (?) funding doesn't mean it cannot be a subsidy.
The financial system is involved, and benefits, whenever money is sloshing around.
Pinkybum -> to cm...
I think DrDick has this the right way around. Surely one should think of subsidies as to who the payment is directly helping. Subsidies to students would lower the barrier of entry into college. Subsidies to colleges help colleges hire better professors, offer more classes, reduce the cost of classes etc. Student loans are no subsidy at all except to the finance industry because they cannot be defaulted on and even then some may never be paid back because of bankruptcies.
However, that is always the risk of doing business as a loan provider. It might be interesting to assess the return on student loans compared to other loan instruments.
mrrunangun -> to Jeff R Carter...
The cost of higher education has risen relative to the earning power of the student and/or the student's family unless that family is in the top 10-20% wealth or income groups.
50 years ago it was possible for a lower middle class student to pay all expenses for Northwestern University with his/her own earnings. Tuition was $1500 and room + board c $1000/year. The State of Illinois had a scholarship grant program and all you needed was a 28 or 29 on the ACT to qualify for a grant that paid 80% of that tuition. A male student could make $2000 in a summer construction job, such as were plentiful during those booming 60s. That plus a low wage job waiting tables, night security, work-study etc could cover the remaining tuition and expense burden.
The annual nut now is in excess of $40,000 at NU and not much outside the $40,000-50,000 range at other second tier or elite schools.
The state schools used to produce the bedrock educated upper middle class of business and professional people in most states west of the seaboard. Tuition there 50 years ago was about $1200/year and room and board about $600-800 here in the midwest. Again you could put yourself through college waiting tables part-time. It wasn't easy but it was possible.
No way a kid who doesn't already possess an education can make the tuition and expenses of a private school today. I don't know what the median annual family income was in 1965 but I feel confident that it was well above the annual nut for a private college. Now it's about equal to it.
mrrunangun -> to mrrunangun...
1965 median family income was $6900, more than 200% of the cost of a year at NU. Current median family income is about 75% of a year at NU.
anne -> to 400 ppm CO2...
Linking for:
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Presentation-National-Debt.png
Click on "Share" under the graph that is initially constructed and copy the "Link" that appears:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=13Ew
March 22, 2015
Federal debt, 1966-2014
This allows a reader to understand how the graph was constructed and to work with the graph.
ilsm:
The US spends half the money the entire world spends on war, that is success!
Massive student debt, huge doses poverty, scores of thousands [of annual neglect related] deaths from the wretched health care system etc are not failure!
tew:
Poor education is the enemy of meritocracy. Costly, bloated administrations full of non-educators there to pamper and pander to every possible complaint and special interest - that is the enemy of meritocracy.
Convincing kids to simple "follow their dreams" regardless of education cost and career potential is the enemy of meritocracy. Allowing young adults to avoid challenging and uncomfortable and difficult subjects under the guise of compassion is the enemy of meritocracy. Financial illiteracy is the enemy of meritocracy.
Manageable student debt is no great enemy of meritocracy.
cm -> to tew...
This misses the point, aside frm the victim blaming. Few people embark on college degrees to "follow their dream", unless the dream is getting admission to the middle class job market.
When I was in elementary/middle school, the admonitions were of the sort "if you are not good in school you will end up sweeping streets" - from a generation who still saw street cleaning as manual labor, in my days it was already mechanized.
I estimate that about 15% or so of every cohort went to high school and then college, most went to a combined vocational/high school track, and some of those then later also went college, often from work.
This was before the big automation and globalization waves, when there were still enough jobs for everybody, and there was no pretense that you needed a fancy title to do standard issue work or as a social signal of some sort.
Richard H. Serlin:
Student loans and college get the bulk of the education inequality attention, and it's not nearly enough attention, but it's so much more. The early years are so crucial, as Nobel economist James Heckman has shown so well. Some children get no schooling or educational/developmental day care until almost age 6, when it should start in the first year, with preschool starting at 3. Others get high quality Montessori, and have had 3 years of it by the time they enter kindergarten, when others have had zero of any kind of education when they enter kindergarten.
Some children spend summers in high quality summer school and educational programs; others spend three months digressing and learning nothing. Some children get SAT prep programs costing thousands, and high end educational afterschool programs; others get nothing after school.
All these things should be available in high quality to any child; it's not 1810 anymore Republicans, the good old days of life expectancy in the 30s and dirt poverty for the vast majority. We need just a little more education in the modern world. But this also makes for hugely unequal opportunity.
Observer -> to Observer...
Data on degree by year ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States
Observer -> to Syaloch...
One needs to differentiate between costs (total dollars spent per student credit hour or degree, or whatever the appropriate metric is) and price (what fraction of the cost is allocated to the the end-user student).
Note that the level of state funding impacts price, not cost; that discussion is usually about cost shifting, not cost reduction.
I'd say that the rate of increase in costs is, more or less, independent of the percent of costs borne by the state. You can indeed see this in the increase in private schools, the state funding is small/nil (particularly in schools without material endowments, where actual annual fees (prices) must closely actual match annual costs). Price discounts and federal funding may both complicate this analysis.
I think much more effort should be spent on understanding and controlling costs. As with health care, just saying "spend more money" is probably not the wise or even sustainable path in the long term.
Costs were discussed at some length here a year(?) or so ago. There is at least one fairly comprehensive published analysis of higher education costs drivers. IIRC, their conclusion was that there were a number of drivers - its not just food courts or more administrators. Sorry, don't recall the link.
Syaloch -> to cm...
Actually for my first job out of college at BLS, I basically was hired for my "rounded personality" combined with a general understanding of economic principles, not for any specific job-related skills. I had no prior experience working with Laspeyres price indexes, those skills were acquired through on-the-job training. Similarly in software development there is no degree that can make you a qualified professional developer; the best a degree can do is to show you are somewhat literate in X development language and that you have a good understanding of general software development principles. Most of the specific skills you'll need to be effective will be learned on the job.
The problem is that employers increasingly want to avoid any responsibility for training and mentoring, and to shift this burden onto schools. These institutions respond by jettisoning courses in areas deemed unnecessary for short-term vocational purposes, even though what you learn in many of these courses is probably more valuable and durable in the long run than the skills obtained through job-specific training, which often have a remarkably short shelf-life. (How valuable to you now is all that COBOL training you had back in the day?)
I guess the question then is, is the sole purpose of higher education to provide people with entry-level job skills for some narrowly-defined job description which may not even exist in a decade? A lot of people these days seem to feel that way. But I believe that in the long run it's a recipe for disaster at both the individual and the societal level.
Richard H. Serlin -> to Observer...
"Observer"
The research is just not on you side, as Heckman has shown very well. Early education and development makes a huge difference, and at age 5-7 (kindergarten) children are much better off with more schooling than morning to noon. This is why educated parents who can afford it pay a lot of money for a full day -- with afterschool and weekened programs on top.
Yes, we're more educated than 1810, but I use 1810 because that's the kind of small government, little spending on education (you want your children educated you pay for it.) that the Republican Party would love to return us to if they thought they could get away with it. And we've become little more educated in the last 50 years even though the world has become much more technologically advanced.
anne:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=14T9
January 30, 2015
Student Loans Outstanding as a share of Gross Domestic Product, 2007-2014
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=14TaJanuary 30, 2015
Student Loans Outstanding, 2007-2014
(Percent change)
anne:
As to increasing college costs, would there be an analogy to healthcare costs?
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/why-markets-cant-cure-healthcare/
July 25, 2009
Why Markets Can't Cure Healthcare
By Paul KrugmanJudging both from comments on this blog and from some of my mail, a significant number of Americans believe that the answer to our health care problems - indeed, the only answer - is to rely on the free market. Quite a few seem to believe that this view reflects the lessons of economic theory.
Not so. One of the most influential economic papers of the postwar era was Kenneth Arrow's "Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Health Care," * which demonstrated - decisively, I and many others believe - that health care can't be marketed like bread or TVs. Let me offer my own version of Arrow's argument.
There are two strongly distinctive aspects of health care. One is that you don't know when or whether you'll need care - but if you do, the care can be extremely expensive. The big bucks are in triple coronary bypass surgery, not routine visits to the doctor's office; and very, very few people can afford to pay major medical costs out of pocket.
This tells you right away that health care can't be sold like bread. It must be largely paid for by some kind of insurance. And this in turn means that someone other than the patient ends up making decisions about what to buy. Consumer choice is nonsense when it comes to health care. And you can't just trust insurance companies either - they're not in business for their health, or yours.
This problem is made worse by the fact that actually paying for your health care is a loss from an insurers' point of view - they actually refer to it as "medical costs." This means both that insurers try to deny as many claims as possible, and that they try to avoid covering people who are actually likely to need care. Both of these strategies use a lot of resources, which is why private insurance has much higher administrative costs than single-payer systems. And since there's a widespread sense that our fellow citizens should get the care we need - not everyone agrees, but most do - this means that private insurance basically spends a lot of money on socially destructive activities.
The second thing about health care is that it's complicated, and you can't rely on experience or comparison shopping. ("I hear they've got a real deal on stents over at St. Mary's!") That's why doctors are supposed to follow an ethical code, why we expect more from them than from bakers or grocery store owners.
You could rely on a health maintenance organization to make the hard choices and do the cost management, and to some extent we do. But HMOs have been highly limited in their ability to achieve cost-effectiveness because people don't trust them - they're profit-making institutions, and your treatment is their cost.
Between those two factors, health care just doesn't work as a standard market story.
All of this doesn't necessarily mean that socialized medicine, or even single-payer, is the only way to go. There are a number of successful healthcare systems, at least as measured by pretty good care much cheaper than here, and they are quite different from each other. There are, however, no examples of successful health care based on the principles of the free market, for one simple reason: in health care, the free market just doesn't work. And people who say that the market is the answer are flying in the face of both theory and overwhelming evidence.
anne -> to anne...
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SEEB01?output_view=pct_12mths
January 30, 2015
College tuition and fees, 1980–2015
(Percentage change)
1980 ( 9.4)
1981 ( 12.4) Reagan
1982 ( 13.4)
1983 ( 10.4)
1984 ( 10.2)1985 ( 9.1)
1986 ( 8.1)
1987 ( 7.6)
1988 ( 7.6) Bush
1989 ( 7.9)1990 ( 8.1)
1991 ( 10.2)
1992 ( 10.7) Clinton
1993 ( 9.4)
1994 ( 7.0)1995 ( 6.0)
1996 ( 5.7)
1997 ( 5.1)
1998 ( 4.2)
1999 ( 4.0)2000 ( 4.1)
2001 ( 5.1) Bush
2002 ( 6.8)
2003 ( 8.4)
2004 ( 9.5)2005 ( 7.5)
2006 ( 6.7)
2007 ( 6.2)
2008 ( 6.2)
2009 ( 6.0) Obama2010 ( 5.2)
2011 ( 5.0)
2012 ( 4.8)
2013 ( 4.2)
2014 ( 3.7)January
2015 ( 3.6)
Syaloch -> to anne...I believe so, as I noted above. The specific market dynamics of health care expenditures are obviously different, but as categories of expenses they have some things in common. First, both are very expensive relative to most other household expenditures. Second, unlike consumer merchandise, neither lends itself very well to cost reduction via offshoring or automation. So in an economy where many consumer prices are held down through a corresponding suppression of real wage growth, they consume a correspondingly larger chunk of the household budget.
Another interesting feature of both health care and college education is that there are many proffered explanations as to why their cost is rising so much relative to other areas, but a surprising lack of a really authoritative explanation based on solid evidence.
anne -> to Syaloch...
Another interesting feature of both health care and college education is that there are many proffered explanations as to why their cost is rising so much relative to other areas, but a surprising lack of a really authoritative explanation based on solid evidence.
[ Look to the paper by Kenneth Arrow, which I cannot copy, for what is to me a convincing explanation as to the market defeating factors of healthcare. However, I have no proper explanation about education costs and am only speculating or looking for an analogy. ]
anne -> to Syaloch...
The specific market dynamics of health care expenditures are obviously different, but as categories of expenses they have some things in common. First, both are very expensive relative to most other household expenditures. Second, unlike consumer merchandise, neither lends itself very well to cost reduction via offshoring or automation. So in an economy where many consumer prices are held down through a corresponding suppression of real wage growth, they consume a correspondingly larger chunk of the household budget.
[ Nicely expressed. ]
Peter K. -> to anne...
"As to increasing college costs, would there be an analogy to healthcare costs?"
Yes, exactly. They aren't normal markets. There should be heavy government regulation.
Denis Drew:
JUST HAD AN IDEA THAT MIGHT LIMIT THE DAMAGE OF THESE PHONEY ONLINE COLLEGES (pardon shouting, but I think it's justified):
Only allow government guaranteed loans (and the accompanying you-can-never-get-out-of-paying) IF a built for that purpose government agency APPROVES said loan. What do you think?
Denis Drew -> to cm...
A big reason we had the real estate bubble was actually the mad Republican relaxation of loan requirements -- relying on the "free market." So, thanks for coming up with a good comparison.
By definition, for the most part, people taking out student loans are shall we say new to the world and more vulnerable to the pirates.
* * * * * * * * * *
[cut and paste from my comment on AB]
Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post.According to an article in the Huffington Post At Kaplan University, 'Guerrilla Registration' Leaves Students Deep In Debt, Kaplan Ed is among the worst of the worst of internet federal loan and grant sucking diploma mills. Going so far as to falsely pad bills $5000 or so dollars at diploma time - pay up immediately or you will never get your sheepskin; you wasted your time. No gov agency will act.
According to a lovely graph which I wish I could patch in here the Post may actually be currently be kept afloat only by purloined cash from Kaplan:
earnings before corporate overhead
2002 - Kaplan ed, $10 mil; Kaplan test prep, $45 mil: WaPo, $100 mil
2005 - Kaplan ed, $55 mil; Kaplan test prep, $100 mil; WaPo, $105 mil
2009 - Kaplan ed, $255 mil; Kaplan test prep, $5 mil; WaPo negative $175 milhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/22/kaplan-university-guerilla-registration_n_799741.html
Wonder if billionaire Bezos will reach out to make Kaplan Ed victims whole. Will he really continue to use Kaplan's pirated money to keep WaPo whole -- if that is what is going on?
Johannes Y O Highness:
"theme I've been hammering lately, student debt is too damn high!: "
Too damn high
but why?Because! Because every event in today's economy is the wish of the wealthy. Do you see why they suddenly wish to deeply educate the proles?
Opportunity cost! The burden of the intelligentsia, the brain work can by carried by robots or humans. Choice of the wealthy? Humans, hands down. Can you see the historical background?Railroad was the first robot. According to Devon's Paradox, it was overused because of its increment of efficiency. Later, excessive roadbeds were disassembled. Rails were sold as scrap.
The new robots are not heavy lifters. New robots are there to do the work of the brain trust. As first robots replaced lower caste jokers, so shall new robots replace upper caste jokers. Do you see the fear developing inside the huddle of high rollers? Rollers now calling the play?
High rollers plan to educate small time hoods to do the work of the new robots, then kill the new robots before the newbie 'bot discovers how to kill the wealthy, to kill, to replace them forever.
Terrifying fear
strikesObserver:
Good bit of data on education costs here
http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/
This chart shows state spending per student and tuition ...
" overall perhaps the best description of the data is something along the lines of "sometimes state appropriations go up and sometimes they go down, but tuition always goes up." "
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March 18, 2015 | The American Conservative
A phony populism is denying Americans the joys of serious thought.
... ... ...
Universities, too, were at fault. They had colonized critics by holding careers hostage to academic specialization, requiring them to master the arcane tongues of ever-narrower disciplines, forcing them to forsake a larger public. Compared to the Arcadian past, the present, in this view, was a wasteland.
It didn't have to be this way. In the postwar era, a vast project of cultural uplift sought to bring the best that had been thought and said to the wider public. Robert M. Hutchins of the University of Chicago and Mortimer J. Adler were among its more prominent avatars. This effort, which tried to deepen literacy under the sign of the "middlebrow," and thus to strengthen the idea that an informed citizenry was indispensable for a healthy democracy, was, for a time, hugely successful. The general level of cultural sophistication rose as a growing middle class shed its provincialism in exchange for a certain worldliness that was one legacy of American triumphalism and ambition after World War II. College enrollment boomed, and the percentage of Americans attending the performing arts rose dramatically. Regional stage and opera companies blossomed, new concert halls were built, and interest in the arts was widespread. TV hosts Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, and Dick Cavett frequently featured serious writers as guests. Paperback publishers made classic works of history, literature, and criticism available to ordinary readers whose appetite for such works seemed insatiable.
Mass circulation newspapers and magazines, too, expanded their coverage of books, movies, music, dance, and theater. Criticism was no longer confined to such small but influential journals of opinion as Partisan Review, The Nation, and The New Republic. Esquire embraced the irascible Dwight Macdonald as its movie critic, despite his well-known contempt for "middlebrow" culture. The New Yorker threw a lifeline to Pauline Kael, rescuing her from the ghetto of film quarterlies and the art houses of Berkeley. Strong critics like David Riesman, Daniel Bell, and Leslie Fiedler, among others, would write with insight and pugilistic zeal books that often found enough readers to propel their works onto bestseller lists. Intellectuals such as Susan Sontag were featured in the glossy pages of magazines like Vogue. Her controversial "Notes on Camp," first published in 1964 in Partisan Review, exploded into public view when Time championed her work. Eggheads were suddenly sexy, almost on a par with star athletes and Hollywood celebrities. Gore Vidal was a regular on Johnny Carson. William F. Buckley Jr.'s "Firing Line" hosted vigorous debates that often were models of how to think, how to argue, and, at their best, told us that ideas mattered.
As Scott Timberg, a former arts reporter for the Los Angeles Times, puts it in his recent book Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class, the idea, embraced by increasing numbers of Americans, was thatdrama, poetry, music, and art were not just a way to pass the time, or advertise one's might, but a path to truth and enlightenment. At its best, this was what the middlebrow consensus promised. Middlebrow said that culture was accessible to a wide strat[um] of society, that people needed some but not much training to appreciate it, that there was a canon worth knowing, that art was not the same as entertainment, that the study of the liberal arts deepens you, and that those who make, assess, and disseminate the arts were somehow valuable for our society regardless of their impact on GDP.
So what if culture was increasingly just another product to be bought and sold, used and discarded, like so many tubes of toothpaste? Even Los Angeles, long derided as a cultural desert, would by the turn of the century boast a flourishing and internationally respected opera company, a thriving archipelago of museums with world-class collections, and dozens of bookstores selling in some years more books per capita than were sold in the greater New York area. The middlebrow's triumph was all but assured.
The arrival of the Internet by century's end promised to make that victory complete. As the Wall Street Journal reported in a front-page story in 1998, America was "increasingly wealthy, worldly, and wired." Notions of elitism and snobbery seemed to be collapsing upon the palpable catholicity of a public whose curiosities were ever more diverse and eclectic and whose ability to satisfy them had suddenly and miraculously expanded. We stood, it appeared, on the verge of a munificent new world-a world in which technology was rapidly democratizing the means of cultural production while providing an easy way for millions of ordinary citizens, previously excluded from the precincts of the higher conversation, to join the dialogue. The digital revolution was predicted to empower those authors whose writings had been marginalized, shut out of mainstream publishing, to overthrow the old monastic self-selecting order of cultural gatekeepers (meaning professional critics). Thus would critical faculties be sharpened and democratized. Digital platforms would crack open the cloistered and solipsistic world of academe, bypass the old presses and performing-arts spaces, and unleash a new era of cultural commerce. With smart machines there would be smarter people.
Harvard's Robert Darnton, a sober and learned historian of reading and the book, agreed. He argued that the implications for writing and reading, for publishing and bookselling-indeed, for cultural literacy and criticism itself-were profound. For, as he gushed in The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future, we now had the ability to make "all book learning available to all people, or at least those privileged enough to have access to the World Wide Web. It promises to be the ultimate stage in the democratization of knowledge set in motion by the invention of writing, the codex, movable type, and the Internet." In this view, echoed by innumerable worshippers of the New Information Age, we were living at one of history's hinge moments, a great evolutionary leap in the human mind. And, in truth, it was hard not to believe that we had arrived at the apotheosis of our culture. Never before in history had more good literature and cultural works been available at such low cost to so many. The future was radiant.
Others, such as the critics Evgeny Morozov and Jaron Lanier, were more skeptical. They worried that whatever advantages might accrue to consumers and the culture at large from the emergence of such behemoths as Amazon, not only would proven methods of cultural production and distribution be made obsolete, but we were in danger of being enrolled, whether we liked it or not, in an overwhelmingly fast and visually furious culture that, as numerous studies have shown, renders serious reading and cultural criticism increasingly irrelevant, hollowing out habits of attention indispensable for absorbing long-form narrative and sustained argument. Indeed, they feared that the digital tsunami now engulfing us may even signal an irrevocable trivialization of the word. Or, at the least, a sense that the enterprise of making distinctions between bad, good, and best was a mug's game that had no place in a democracy that worships at the altar of mass appeal and counts its receipts at the almighty box office.
... ... ...
...Today, America's traditional organs of popular criticism-newspapers, magazines, journals of opinion-have been all but overwhelmed by the digital onslaught: their circulations plummeting, their confidence eroded, their survival in doubt. Newspaper review sections in particular have suffered: jobs have been slashed, and cultural coverage vastly diminished. Both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post have abandoned their stand-alone book sections, leaving the New York Times as the only major American newspaper still publishing a significant separate section devoted to reviewing books.
Such sections, of course, were always few. Only a handful of America's papers ever deemed book coverage important enough to dedicate an entire Sunday section to it. Now even that handful is threatened with extinction, and thus is a widespread cultural illiteracy abetted, for at their best the editors of those sections tried to establish the idea that serious criticism was possible in a mass culture. In the 19th century, Margaret Fuller, literary editor of the New York Tribune and the country's first full-time book reviewer, understood this well. She saw books as "a medium for viewing all humanity, a core around which all knowledge, all experience, all science, all the ideal as well as all the practical in our nature could gather." She sought, she said, to tell "the whole truth, as well as nothing but the truth."
The arrival of the Internet has proved no panacea. The vast canvas afforded by the Internet has done little to encourage thoughtful and serious criticism. Mostly it has provided a vast Democracy Wall on which any crackpot can post his or her manifesto. Bloggers bloviate and insults abound. Discourse coarsens. Information is abundant, wisdom scarce. It is a striking irony, as Leon Wieseltier has noted, that with the arrival of the Internet, "a medium of communication with no limitations of physical space, everything on it has to be in six hundred words." The Internet, he said, is the first means of communication invented by humankind that privileges one's first thoughts as one's best thoughts. And he rightly observed that if "value is a function of scarcity," then "what is most scarce in our culture is long, thoughtful, patient, deliberate analysis of questions that do not have obvious or easy answers." Time is required to think through difficult questions. Patience is a condition of genuine intellection. The thinking mind, the creating mind, said Wieseltier, should not be rushed. "And where the mind is rushed and made frenetic, neither thought nor creativity will ensue. What you will most likely get is conformity and banality. Writing is not typed talking."
The fundamental idea at stake in the criticism of culture generally is the self-image of society: how it reasons with itself, describes itself, imagines itself. Nothing in the excitements made possible by the digital revolution banishes the need for the rigor such self-reckoning requires. It is, as Wieseltier says, the obligation of cultural criticism to bear down on what matters.
♦♦♦
Where is such criticism to be found today? We inhabit a remarkably arid cultural landscape, especially when compared with the ambitions of postwar America, ambitions which, to be sure, were often mocked by some of the country's more prominent intellectuals. Yes, Dwight Macdonald famously excoriated the enfeeblements of "mass cult and midcult," and Irving Howe regretted "This Age of Conformity," but from today's perspective, when we look back at the offerings of the Book-of-the-Month Club and projects such as the Great Books of the Western World, their scorn looks misplaced. The fact that their complaints circulated widely in the very midcult worlds Macdonald condemned was proof that trenchant criticism had found a place within the organs of mass culture. One is almost tempted to say that the middlebrow culture of yesteryear was a high-water mark.
The reality, of course, was never as rosy as much of it looks in retrospect. Cultural criticism in most American newspapers, even at its best, was almost always confined to a ghetto. You were lucky at most papers to get a column or a half-page devoted to arts and culture. Editors encouraged reporters, reviewers, and critics to win readers and improve circulation by pandering to the faux populism of the marketplace. Only the review that might immediately be understood by the greatest number of readers would be permitted to see the light of day. Anything else smacked of "elitism"-a sin to be avoided at almost any cost.
This was a coarse and pernicious notion, one that lay at the center of the country's longstanding anti-intellectual tradition. From the start of the republic, Americans have had a profoundly ambivalent relationship to class and culture, as Richard Hofstadter famously observed. He was neither the first nor the last to notice this self-inflicted wound. As even the vastly popular science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov understood, "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"
... ... ...
When did "difficulty" become suspect in American culture, widely derided as anti-democratic and contemptuously dismissed as evidence of so-called elitism? If a work of art isn't somehow immediately "understood" or "accessible" by and to large numbers of people, it is often ridiculed as "esoteric," "obtuse," or even somehow un-American. We should mark such an argument's cognitive consequences. A culture filled with smooth and familiar consumptions produces in people rigid mental habits and stultified conceptions. They know what they know, and they expect to find it reinforced when they turn a page or click on a screen. Difficulty annoys them, and, having become accustomed to so much pabulum served up by a pandering and invertebrate media, they experience difficulty not just as "difficult," but as insult. Struggling to understand, say, Faulkner's stream-of-consciousness masterpiece The Sound and the Fury or Alain Resnais's Rubik's Cube of a movie "Last Year at Marienbad" needn't be done. The mind may skip trying to solve such cognitive puzzles, even though the truth is they strengthen it as a workout tones the muscles.
Sometimes it feels as if the world is divided into two classes: one very large class spurns difficulty, while the other very much smaller delights in it. There are readers who, when encountering an unfamiliar word, instead of reaching for a dictionary, choose to regard it as a sign of the author's contempt or pretension, a deliberate refusal to speak in a language ordinary people can understand. Others, encountering the same word, happily seize on it as a chance to learn something new, to broaden their horizons. They eagerly seek a literature that upends assumptions, challenges prejudices, turns them inside out and forces them to see the world through new eyes.
The second group is an endangered species. One reason is that the ambitions of mainstream media that, however fitfully, once sought to expose them to the life of the mind and to the contest of ideas, have themselves shrunk. We have gone from the heyday of television intellection which boasted shows hosted by, among others, David Susskind and David Frost, men that, whatever their self-absorptions, were nonetheless possessed of an admirable highmindedness, to the pygmy sound-bite rants of Sean Hannity and the inanities of clowns like Stephen Colbert. Once upon a time, the ideal of seriousness may not have been a common one, but it was acknowledged as one worth striving for. It didn't have to do what it has to today, that is, fight for respect, legitimate itself before asserting itself. The class that is allergic to difficulty now feels justified in condemning the other as "elitist" and anti-democratic. The exercise of cultural authority and artistic or literary or aesthetic discrimination is seen as evidence of snobbery, entitlement and privilege lording it over ordinary folks. A perverse populism increasingly deforms our culture, consigning some works of art to a realm somehow more rarified and less accessible to a broad public. Thus is choice constrained and the tyranny of mass appeal deepened in the name of democracy.
... ... ...Steve Wasserman, former literary editor of the Los Angeles Times, is editor-at-large for Yale University Press.
This essay is adapted with permission from his chapter in the forthcoming The State of the American Mind: Sixteen Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism, edited by Adam Bellow and Mark Bauerlein, to be published by Templeton Press in May 2015.
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May 19, 2015 | http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/05/17/why-this-ukrainian-revolution-may-be-doomed-too/
At home, there is the possibility of more protests, a paralyzed government, and the rise of politicians seeking accommodation with Putin. "Slow and unsuccessful reforms are a bigger existential threat than the Russian aggression," said Oleksiy Melnyk, a security expert at Kiev's Razumkov Center. Even if Ukrainians don't return to the street, they'll get a chance to voice their discontent at the ballot box. Local elections are due in the fall - and the governing coalition between Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk is so shaky that nobody can rule out an early parliamentary vote.
In its international relations, Ukraine is living on borrowed time - and money. A dispute over restructuring $23 billion in debt broke into the open last week with the Finance Ministry accusing foreign creditors of not negotiating in good faith ahead of a June deadline. An EU summit this week is likely to end in more disappointment, as Western European countries are reluctant to grant Ukrainians visa-free travel.
Kiev has become an accidental, burdensome ally to the West. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization only paid lip service to future Ukrainian membership, while the EU, which never had any intention of taking in Ukraine, pushed an association agreement out of bureaucratic habit more than strategic vision.
... ... ...
The least charitably inclined claim that Poroshenko prosecuted the war in eastern Ukraine as a way of delaying reform. What's undeniable is that the shaky ceasefire leaves the Kiev government at the mercy of Putin and his proxies. Should anything start going right for Poroshenko, the fighting could flare back up at any moment.
Ukrainian security officials say that the enemy forces gathering in the separatist regions are at their highest capability yet. The most alarming observation is that the once ragtag band of rebels - backed up by regular Russian troops in critical battles - is increasingly looking like a real army thanks to weapons and training provided by Russia.
... ... ...
Everybody in Kiev understands that there's no way of reconquering lost territory by force. Ukrainian politicians publicly pledge to win back breakaway regions through reform and economic success. What they hope for is that sanctions will cause enough problems inside Russia that the Kremlin will run out of resources to sabotage Ukraine. Wishful thinking won't replace the painful reforms ahead.
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Jun 22, 2015 | rt.com
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has told reporters that the military will sponsor a major research of coups conducted through mass protest – so called 'color revolutions' – to prevent the situations that Russia faced in 1991 and 1993.
"Some people say that the military should not be involved in political processes, some say the direct opposite. We will order a study on the phenomenon of color revolutions and the military's role in their prevention,"
Shoigu told the participants of the Army-2015 political forum Friday.
"We have no right to allow the repetitions of the collapses of 1991 and 1993," he said. "How to do it is another story, but it is clear that we must deal with the situation. We must understand how to prevent this and how to teach the younger generation so that it supported the calm and gradual development of our country."
The minister added that the consequences of color revolutions can be now observed in many Arab nations and also in Serbia. He also said that the Ukrainian crisis that started in 2014 also was "a major tragedy in the row of color revolutions."
In March this year the head of Russia's Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev promised that this body would develop a detailed plan of action aimed at preventing color revolutions or any other attempts of forceful change of lawfully elected authorities through mass street protest. He also said that the Security Council had prepared a list of proposed measures that could negate the possible threat, including some steps against "network protest activities" and propaganda work against "romantic revolutionary stereotype."
Also in March, President Vladimir Putin addressed the dangers of color revolutions in his speech to the Interior Ministry.
"The extremists' actions become more complicated," he said. "We are facing attempts to use the so called 'color technologies' in organizing illegal street protests to open propaganda of hatred and strife on social networks."
In the same month, the Interior Ministry drafted a bill containing amendments to the law on rallies that covered car protests and sit-ins. The ministry experts said that the move would circumvent legal ambiguity in the interest of society as a whole.
In November, Putin blasted color revolutions as a main tool used by destructive forces in the geopolitical struggle.
"In the modern world, extremism is used as a geopolitical tool for redistribution of spheres of interest. We can see the tragic consequences of the wave of the so-called color revolutions, the shock experienced by people in the countries that went through the irresponsible experiments of hidden, or sometimes brute and direct interference with their lives,"
the Russian leader said.
In January, a group of Russian conservative activists, uniting war veterans, nationalist bikers and pro-Christian politicians launched an "anti-Maidan" political movement in Moscow to oppose any attempts to thwart the stable development of the country. Its first rallies were held on the same days as some anti-government protests and according to law enforcers the conservatives outnumbered the pro-revolution activists by almost 10-fold.
Read more
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Lyttenburgh, July 21, 2015 at 2:39 amThatJ, July 21, 2015 at 2:50 amI've found this little gem 2 days ago and I'm still… "overjoyed" by it.
Despite Manichean claims of the Free and Independent ™ Western Media that in Russia "there are no free press", that everything is controlled by Kremlin and Putin, and only [Radio] Ekho Moskvy, Novaya Gazeta [Newspaper] and Dozhd [TV] are the few remaining honest sources of truth and independent journalism ™, there are still a lot of "handshakable" outlets created for kreakls by kreakls.
In one such handshakeble paper, the "Snob" [well, at least they are honest with themselves and their readers] recently was published this interview with another extremely handshakable, ah, "person", who used to be the Chief Editor of the "KommmersantЪ" paper in it's [even more] handshakable heyday. This particular excerpt seems especially "meaty" (translation is mine):
Snob: And when do you think the era of the "rich cooperators'" of the 90s came to an end?
AV: I think it happened when they arrested Khodorkovsky. Then not only the era of cooperators came to an end, the society in this country was finished also.
Snob: Why is society so easily reconciled with this and it's own end?
AV: And because it could not be otherwise! Because there are no such country – Russia! This is a huge geopolitical mistake … I do not know whose, Lord God's or Darwin's. This country never existed, don't exist now and never will be. This country is bad.
Snob: Even if it is so bad, it does not mean that it doesn't exist.
AV: Well, fuck with it! Here's my answer. Fuck with it, that it exists! I wish it to be healthy! But this is not interesting for me. It is a cancer on the body of the world! What, should I fight with it? I'm not a professor Pirogov, I will not cut out this tumor, I just do not know how. Honestly, I don't know how.
Snob: What are the symptoms of this cancer?
AV: There are two evidences of this cancer. Never in my life Russia and its people had any other national ideas then "we are surrounded by enemies" and "Russia for the Russians!". With such two fundamental attributes there can't be country. This is just savagery. Can you give me somw other Russian national ideas?
Snob: Empire from sea to sea.
AV: This is just "We are surrounded by enemies" and "Russia for the Russians!" in other words. It's just combined in a beautiful word "empire". Nothing else! And with such fundamental principles country of course, some country might even exist, but who needs it? I do not! It is necessary to those inside.
Needless to say, Andrey Vasiliev now is a proud and free emigre.
So, after reading this little interview I got a proverbial train of thoughts going in my head at a top speed,finally arriving to it's destination. Now I can say that I "understand" (as in "understand what makes them tic") all of them – liberasts, Byelarussian zmagars, Ukrainian svidomites, pint-sized Baltic patriots, sausage emigrants forming Brighton Beach Bitching Brigade etc.
But that's the topic for another post
Does Andrey Vasiliev live in Brighton Beach now?
yalensis, July 21, 2015 at 3:24 am
No, Vasiliev lives in Geneva, Switzerland.
And, no, he is not Jewish, in case that's what you are trying to get at.
He is of Russian ethnicity.
yalensis, July 21, 2015 at 3:27 am
Moscow Exile, July 21, 2015 at 3:35 amDear Lyttenburgh:
Thanks for this find.
These Fifth Columnists are all the same, aren't they?
For them, the true litmus test was, and always has been, Khodorkovsky.
They longed for a world in which Khodorkovsky owned every single thing in Russia that wasn't nailed down; and everybody else, including these kreakls, just getting crumbs from his table.
But the kreakls receiving bigger crumbs, plus an honored place at the master's side.
I regularly ask Russians – ordinary work-a-day Russians, be they of the working or the professional classes – if they could imagine leaving Russia forever, if they could consider emigrating, never intending to return. They all say they couldn't. They say they'd like to travel, but they always feel they would want to come "home".Pavlo Svolochenko, July 21, 2015 at 3:46 amI have never yet met one Russian person who speaks as does Vasiliev, no one who says "I hate this place and my fellow countrymen so much: it's a shithole; it's a dump; it's full of morons etc., etc….", though I often hear them speaking loudly and clearly in that way from afar through the bullhorn of the Western mass media.
I ask my children regularly if they would like to live in England. I get a resounding "No!" off them. They speak English fluently now (except the youngest) and say they like visiting the place, that it's "cool" and, curiously enough, all their pals think it's "cool" that they are "half-English". My children do as well, not least because I suspect they can already sense the great advantage that their bilingualism has given them – but they categorically state they are Russian and that Russia is their Motherland, their rodina, the land that "bore" them, their "Mother Russia".
My wife is the same.
None of them are nationalistic, but they are very, very patriotic.
People such as Vasiliev are a small yet vociferous minority that, I suspect, suffers from some psychological aberration.
I am so glad that many of them leap at the first opportunity to fuck off away from here.
The type is not unique to Russia.yalensis, July 21, 2015 at 3:55 amAmerica has a whole university set aside for people who hate America. A sort of open-air loonybin.
Your Russian anti-patriots can be corralled and stowed out of sight in the same way, if you wish. Market it right, and they'll do it entirely of their own accord.
Dear Pavlo: Which open-air university is that? Berkeley?? :)Pavlo Svolochenko, July 21, 2015 at 4:11 amNaturally.Moscow Exile, July 21, 2015 at 4:19 amWhy is Berkeley "open-air"?Pavlo Svolochenko, July 21, 2015 at 4:23 amIn that nothing prevents the inmates from escaping but fear of employment.Moscow Exile , July 21, 2015 at 4:28 amI should add that I know many who have chosen to leave Russia in search of fame and fortune, education, a better standard of living etc., but none of them left because they loathe the land and its people.I also have over the years come across a few who have returned: some because, having achieved success, they preferred to live out the rest of their lives in their Mother Russia; others because they could not adapt to an alien culture ("No 'soul' in the USA!" I have often heard such folk say; and others simply because they were homesick.
Interestingly, and unbeknownst to me, my sister emailed my wife last week when I was in the UK and told her that I was clearly "homesick".
I was: for Russia and my wife and children
Home is where the heart is.
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marknesop.wordpress.com
Northern Star, December 30, 2015 at 3:11 pmhttp://www.ndtv.com/world-news/moscow-demands-arrest-of-rebel-for-murder-of-russian-warplane-pilot-1260805yalensis , December 30, 2015 at 5:53 pm"Revenge is the most natural right," Celik said in the interview, while refraining from claiming the pilot's death"
Absolutely Mr. Celik Absolutely! ..
Ooo, this explains a mystery to me. I noticed on my own blog today there was an unusual spike of views for an older story, from November 29, which happened to be about this particular guy, Alparslan Çelik.
People must have googled his name, and maybe my story came up in the search results.
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marknesop.wordpress.com
Northern Star, December 30, 2015 at 3:11 pmhttp://www.ndtv.com/world-news/moscow-demands-arrest-of-rebel-for-murder-of-russian-warplane-pilot-1260805yalensis , December 30, 2015 at 5:53 pm"Revenge is the most natural right," Celik said in the interview, while refraining from claiming the pilot's death"
Absolutely Mr. Celik Absolutely! ..
Ooo, this explains a mystery to me. I noticed on my own blog today there was an unusual spike of views for an older story, from November 29, which happened to be about this particular guy, Alparslan Çelik.
People must have googled his name, and maybe my story came up in the search results.
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marknesop.wordpress.com
Northern Star, December 30, 2015 at 3:11 pmhttp://www.ndtv.com/world-news/moscow-demands-arrest-of-rebel-for-murder-of-russian-warplane-pilot-1260805yalensis , December 30, 2015 at 5:53 pm"Revenge is the most natural right," Celik said in the interview, while refraining from claiming the pilot's death"
Absolutely Mr. Celik Absolutely! ..
Ooo, this explains a mystery to me. I noticed on my own blog today there was an unusual spike of views for an older story, from November 29, which happened to be about this particular guy, Alparslan Çelik.
People must have googled his name, and maybe my story came up in the search results.
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marknesop.wordpress.com
Northern Star, December 30, 2015 at 3:11 pmhttp://www.ndtv.com/world-news/moscow-demands-arrest-of-rebel-for-murder-of-russian-warplane-pilot-1260805yalensis , December 30, 2015 at 5:53 pm"Revenge is the most natural right," Celik said in the interview, while refraining from claiming the pilot's death"
Absolutely Mr. Celik Absolutely! ..
Ooo, this explains a mystery to me. I noticed on my own blog today there was an unusual spike of views for an older story, from November 29, which happened to be about this particular guy, Alparslan Çelik.
People must have googled his name, and maybe my story came up in the search results.
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marknesop.wordpress.com
Northern Star, December 30, 2015 at 3:11 pmhttp://www.ndtv.com/world-news/moscow-demands-arrest-of-rebel-for-murder-of-russian-warplane-pilot-1260805yalensis , December 30, 2015 at 5:53 pm"Revenge is the most natural right," Celik said in the interview, while refraining from claiming the pilot's death"
Absolutely Mr. Celik…Absolutely!……..
Ooo, this explains a mystery to me. I noticed on my own blog today there was an unusual spike of views for an older story, from November 29, which happened to be about this particular guy, Alparslan Çelik.
People must have googled his name, and maybe my story came up in the search results.
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izvestia.ru
Exports of goods and services of Ukrainian production in 2015 will fall by about a third. And this is not surprising: as a result of "reforms" in the country almost died the industry lost its main Russian market, where Ukraine has supplied products with high added value. The cumulative figure of industrial production YTD is approximately -15%. The main export product of Ukraine for the first time since the pre-industrial era were products of agriculture. In the first place - corn.
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izvestia.ru
Exports of goods and services of Ukrainian production in 2015 will fall by about a third. And this is not surprising: as a result of "reforms" in the country almost died the industry lost its main Russian market, where Ukraine has supplied products with high added value. The cumulative figure of industrial production YTD is approximately -15%. The main export product of Ukraine for the first time since the pre-industrial era were products of agriculture. In the first place - corn.
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izvestia.ru
Exports of goods and services of Ukrainian production in 2015 will fall by about a third. And this is not surprising: as a result of "reforms" in the country almost died the industry lost its main Russian market, where Ukraine has supplied products with high added value. The cumulative figure of industrial production YTD is approximately -15%. The main export product of Ukraine for the first time since the pre-industrial era were products of agriculture. In the first place - corn.
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news.yahoo.com
Stockpiles hit record highs at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery hub for U.S. crude's West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures. Gasoline and heating oil also posted larger-than-expected stock builds.
"In all the years I have been doing this, I have never seen builds in the last week of December," said Tariq Zahir, crude futures trader at Tyche Capital Advisors in Long Island, New York.
"At least for tax consequence reasons, refiners always ramp up runs at the year-end, and there's a draw. This is a first for me."
Ali al-Naimi, oil minister of OPEC leader Saudi Arabia, said the kingdom will not limit production, the Wall Street Journal reported.
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news.yahoo.com
Rebels still control large parts of the region, that also borders Israel, but have been largely on the defensive since their failed offensive in June to take the government-controlled part of Deraa city.Vladimir
Here's the latest from Russia's General Staff, with some interesting info about the US Air Force activities.In the course of last two days, since December 28, aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces in the Syrian Arab Republic have performed 121 combat sorties engaging 424 terrorists' objects
In the course of last two days, since December 28, aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces in the Syrian Arab Republic have performed 121 combat sorties engaging 424 terrorists' objects in the Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, Hama, Homs, Damascus, Daraa, Raqqah and Deir ez-Zor provinces.
Near Mahin (Homs province), Russian Su-34 performed a strike on a large terrorists' base of the ISIS. A hangar with military hardware, depots with weapons, materiel and munitions of terrorists were destroyed. Five off-road vehicles equipped with large-caliber machine guns, an infantry fighting vehicle, and four trucks loaded with munitions were eliminated.
Near Shawarighat al-Arz (Aleppo province), Russian Su-25 destroyed a terrorists' strong point. Direct hits caused elimination of a tank and three off-road vehicles equipped with large-caliber machine guns.
Near Lahaya (Hama province), a Su-25 of the Russian Aerospace Forces eliminated two artillery guns and an ammunition depot.
In suburbs of al-Khadr (Latakia province), Su-25 carried out a strike on a large strong point of terrorists and eliminated 2 pieces of hardware.
Command staff of the Russian aviation group continues receiving information about objects of the ISIS and other terrorist groups active in Syria from representatives of patriotic opposition forces.
Therefore, on Monday, Russian party received information from representatives of one of the Syrian opposition detachments active in northeastern Syria concerning a planned meeting of the ISIS field commanders in the suburbs of Raqqah.
The Russian Defence Ministry organized a day-and-night air observation of the object. After receiving confirmation on arriving of militants' leaders to the assigned point, Russian Su-34 bomber performed a strike on the building, where the meeting was taking place. As a result of direct hit with guided missile, the building was destroyed with all its contents.
Several days ago, representatives of a patriotic opposition formation active in the Idlib province presented information to the Russian Defence Ministry about location of a large ammunition depot of the Jabhat al-Nusra near al-Zerba.
After making research on the aerial photographs of the region and checking reconnaissance data, Russian Su-24M hit the target. Objective monitoring data confirmed elimination of the object.
Means of intelligence detected a hidden reinforced concrete shelter of the AD complex Osa. A Su-34 bomber received an order to liquidate the target. Direct hits of BETAB-500 air bombs caused destruction of the building with all its contents.
In the course of actions aimed to cut terrorists' sources of income, the Russian aircraft eliminate large number of oil production, storing and transportation facilities on the ISIS-controlled territories in Syria.
In the course of last two days, the Russian aviation group destroyed six objects of oil trafficking in the Deir ez-Zor and Aleppo provinces.
In the course of the aerial intelligence operation near Kafr Nabl (Idlib province), the Russian aircraft detected concentration of oil tankers moving to the Syrian-Turkish borders. They were escorted by off-roaders equipped with anti-aircraft systems.
Russian Su-34 bomber performed a strike on the target and eliminated more than 20 oil trucks, which had been used by the ISIS for illegal oil transportation, two off-roaders equipped with ZU-23 AD systems.
***
It is necessary to pay attention to the statement made by representative of the US State Department. Time is changed. Situation is changed. Representatives of the State Department are changed. However, speech writers are not.
All these impersonal claims without evidences about performing strikes on civilian objects by allegedly Russian aviation in Syria close resemble performances held by hypnotists or chapiteau.
It is about absurd: there are serious accusations referring to some "reputable non-governmental organizations". However, there is no information about the exact name of these organizations and who they are reputable for.
All this is happening while actions and, the most important, results of the US air bombardment in this region are keeping absolute silent.
However, every day aircraft and strike UAV's of the US Air Force carry out from six to twenty combat sorties with performing missile and bomb strikes on ground targets.
Therefore, all the public community learns information about effectiveness of operations held by the US Air Force, when their "flights" had caused mass killing. It is impossible to be hide or shift responsibility to any party.
kingn500Russia carpet bombing is winning the war for the Syrian military that is a strong army that was losing due to lack of air force power and lack of cities war fare experience needed during the attack and defense of Syrian cities, Syrian military was not trained for guerrilla warfare inside the cities but with Russia carpet bombing and Russia retraining the Syrian military in cities warfare they begin to regain Syrian cities and defeating these terrorist rebels If this continue the Syrian military will regain control of all Syrian cities and all these terrorist islamic groups supported by foreign countries will be defeated and expelled from Syria. Good for the Syrian people that most of them don't want an islamic state in Syria. Go Russia go .
smlslk
Rebels from another mainstream anti-Assad armed opposition alongside some Islamist groups"
Well thats interesting. A "mainstream anti Assa armed group", yet they go through all that without actually revealing the name.
Is there any question now that the WH was simply letting Syria get demolished in the hopes Assad would fall?
Theres a lot of people that support Assad. The WH knows this. The WH stated that Assad hasent a chance in hell of getting re elected. Well if thats the case, why does the WH refuse to see his name on a ballot.
So lets get this strait. All the people that now back Assad including all the people that would now vote for him would then become the terrorist if the WH appointed one of these nameless "armed mainstream anti Assad terrorist groups". They are "Islamist" and the Christian genocide would continue on and on and on. Dont forget, not one of these guys came to power without holding on to a gun. Does that sound like someone you would vote for?
Ramsis
hilarious, while this silly article says the syrin army is making gains only after the Russian bombing. They slipped an wrote that the terrorists lost in June against the syrian army!! The russians only got involved in october!! propaganda always has its draw back....the truth!!
stefan
Until DC provides the list of Moderate Rebels that don't have any Islamic reference they ALL will be viewed as Islamic Terrorists Organizations. And until that list is provided let the Russians bomb the Hell out of them.
J M
Let's get this straight... IS militants are all TERRORISTS. Any rebel groups that are fighting alongside with the IS group are also part of the terrorist group. And if those so-called rebel groups are supported by the US or NATO or Turkey, it means that those nations are directly or indirectly supporting the ISIS or TERRORISTS.
DAVID
The Syrian Army announced minutes ago that its troops alongside the popular forces drove the militant groups back from the entire districts of the key town of Sheikh Meskeen North of Dara'a after killing, wounding and capturing a large number of the terrorists. "Sheikh Meskeen is now under the full control of the Syrian government forces," the army said.
"The militant groups have suffered a heavy death toll. Most of the militants in the town have been killed or wounded. In addition, a large number of the militants have surrendered, while the rest preferred to flee the war zone," the army added.
"The Syrian army is fortifying its positions in the town now," it went on to say.
"Pro-government troops are patrolling the town to find the rest of the militants," the army added.
"The Syrian soldiers are transferring the captured and injured militants to safer areas behind the frontline," the army went on to say.
"The engineering units of the army are defusing the Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) planted by the terrorists groups across the government buildings," the army said.
Reports said earlier that the Syrian government forces' rapid advances in the town of Sheikh Meskeen have forced the militant groups to start pulling back forces and fleeing the battlefield to evade more casualties.
"The Syrian army and the National Defense Forces (NDF) have continued to push back the militant groups from different districts of the town, including the residential area of the military forces and one of the main roundabouts of the strategic town," the army said.
"The militant groups, who have witnessed the heavy attacks of the Syria forces and the collapse of their defense lines in the Northeastern, Northern and Eastern parts of the city, have started to withdraw from more districts," the sources said.
"In the meantime, large groups of militants are fleeing the town in order to evade more casualties," the sources added.
"The militant groups have sustained a heavy death toll and are hopeless. The terrorists' commanders have called for fresh militants but have received no response from their comrades in other parts of the province thus far," the sources said.
"The government forces have completed their control over the Eastern part of the town, Pharmacy Street, al-Ra'esi Roundabout in the middle of the town, and Jame'a al-Omari and are advancing against the militants' strongholds," the sources said.
"The Syria forces also have surrounded the militant group of al-Wila Seif al-Sham in the city and are hunting them one by one," the sources said.
Reports said that the Russian and Syrian Air Forces' joint combat sorties over the militant groups' positions in Sheikh Meskeen North of Dara'a claimed the lives of large groups of terrorists and destroyed their military grid.
"The Russian and Syrian fighter jets, in over 25 sorties, massively bombed the militant positions in Sheikh Meskeen, which left many terrorists dead or wounded," the army sources said.
"The aerial coverage created by the Russian and Syrian fighter jets in Sheikh Meskeen battlefield was one the most important causes of the Syrian ground forces' advances against the militant groups on Tuesday," the army added.
The Syrian army and its allies have been significantly advancing against the militant groups in the province in the recent weeks, particularly in Sheikh Meskeen.
Army announced on Tuesday that its troops and their popular allies advanced in the Northern battlefronts of Sheikh Meskeen rapidly and pushed the militants back from more positions.
"Following the capture of Battalion 82 base and Tal al-Hish, the Syrian government forces captured the Sheikh Meskeen's Pool Facility, killing over 15 enemy combatants from the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the army said.
"The Syrian army, the National Defense Forces and other popular fighters are on a roll in the Dara'a province after launching a massive assault on the strategic town of Sheikh Meskeen over 72 hours ago," the army added.
Sheikh Meskeen is vital and strategic due to its location along the second most important highway in the Dara'a province; it is also the key to the cities of Nawa and Jassim.
Bill
MY FELLOW AMERICANS, the first "War on Terror" was during Jefferson's presidency. For nearly fifteen centuries the world has faced the disease of Islam, but our nation faced it head on when Thomas Jefferson, serving as the ambassador to France, and John Adams, servicing as the ambassador to Britain, went to London to meet with Ambassador Abdrahaman, the Dey of Tripoli's ambassador to Britain. Of course they met with Abdrahaman to negotiate a peace treaty, but keep in mind that in Islam, the only peace is submission to Islam.
After independence, however, pirates often captured U.S. merchant ships, pillaged cargoes and enslaved or held crew members for ransom. Jefferson had opposed paying tribute to the Barbary States since as far back as 1785, and in 1801, he authorized a U.S. Navy fleet under Commodore Richard Dale to make a show of force in the Mediterranean, the first American naval squadron to cross the Atlantic ...this lead to the "First Barbary Wars".
America, though this victory proved only temporary, according to Wood, "many Americans celebrated it as a vindication of their policy of spreading free trade around the world and as a great victory for liberty over tyranny." My fellow Americans, I am a veteran, I have fought against terror for over a decade (2001 to 2011). These radicalists have been like this from generation to generation to as far back as the 7th century. I'm concerned on what we will leave behind for our next generation and the future of this great nation! So I say onto you, my fellow Americans, LET NO ONE -AND I MEAN NO ONE- COME INTO OUR HOUSE AND PUSH US AROUND!
Paul
The Russians are doing this right, get rid of all terrorist groups including the one Israel and the U.S. are supporting, funding and arming.
TheTerrorists are no longer terrorists but are now called rebels? That would mean the Paris slaughter was done by rebels.
Kevin
Somebody please tell to these so called moderate rebels and their brothers in ISIS that their heydays are over. Run while you can.
Detritus of Sloth
Wonder what the US response would be to Russian airdropping thousands of RPG's and millions of rifles and ammunition to the #$%$, Aryan Nation, Nation of Islam and various militia group in the US who feel they are being oppressed?
Vicious
Since there wasn't a single mention of ISIS in this article, then the emphasis should have been Obama's Syrian "rebel" allies are getting the krap kicked out of them by the Russians.
But Reuters, being an Obama support group would only mention them as "backed by Western Powers".
RT
insurgents on the ground told Reuters........you mean Terrorists don't you? This is a constant source of the media information, the terrorists themselves. We know what color pajamas the Jihadists wear to bed at night, and every move they make, and why, but our military seems to have missed this.......
Does anyone see the connection between the terrorists, who are backed by the West, and the outright Lies the media tries to pass off as the truth. One other note here, they keep recycling parts of this article which appear almost verbatim in several other reports on Yahoo about Syria.
jane
Who know, maybe in 2016 all "Sunni moderate rebels" and ISIS will be expelled. Then Syria will see peace and its refugees can return home. But I bet the blood-thirsty US Snake Department and the CIA probably will prefer continued bloodshed.
Peetie
The US is guilty of arming rebels against a government with representation at the United Nations. That is a crime.
Hezbollah:
Let's look at so-called "moderate rebels" supported by American taxpayers. Example: Jeysh Al-Islam:
- It means "Army of Islam"
- Its leader called for extermination of all minorities in Damascus
- Its leader called Alawites "more infidel than Jews and Christians"
- Is directly financed by Saudis
- Has clearly shown its support for Islamic Caliphate and vehemently opposes democracy
- Been involved in series of tortures, beheadings, murders and disappearancesYep, "moderate rebels" all right.
J. de Molay
The two super powers, China and Russia, maneuvered on the global stage for supremacy while the US citizens politically in-fight with no clear future oriented goals or plans. Sadly, the US is slowly dissolving away from what is was supposed to be that was framed by the founders a mere 235+ years ago. All the US resources are wasted on misguided and ill-convince military adventures that support corporations than its own citizens.
Davin
Just like in the north of Syria....ALL the "rebel" groups in the south fight under Al-Nusra's umbrella and command structure. Al-Nusra plans ALL of their offensives, as well as ALL of their defense. You can call them moderate if you want. but ALL the "rebel" groups in Syria work hand-in-hand with the Salafist and Takfiri.
Relja
Seems 'the rebels' are regular troops from jordan and turkey. President Asad lost large teritorry because of turkish, joprdan and saudi 'rebels' loved by west/Us.
Reyter
Personally I think it's heartwarming the way Western governments and the 'free' press has lined up behind the radical Islamists against Russia and the secular regime in Syria where women can do such evil things as go outside without a sheet over their heads and men can drink beer and etc! This is madness! Russia is evil!
CRL
"Rebels from another mainstream anti-Assad armed opposition alongside some Islamist groups said they shelled the city of Izraa, a main government held town"
How many innocent civilians were killed? Did not see the number in the press.
Ramsis
stop this nonsense, no one believes it ny more... moderate rebels, barrel bombs ...they are all islamic terorrists, and very well funded and equipped by saudi arabia and qater and trained and supplied by turkey and the u.s. clear as day light ,they are all sunni muslim terrorists!
Mark
There is a news report "Christmas and New Year carnival in Damascus- Video" on SANA news website. I seriously doubt the "moderate" rebels would approve of anything Christmas-related. Assad looks a lot more moderate to me than the US-backed "moderates".
TruthMonger
Why our media is viewing Syrian events from the terrorists' perspective, never from the legitimate government's??
Scott
That GGAADDAAMMMM IDIOT BUSH & The AFFLUENZA Party (Republican Party) are 100% to Blame......for Creating ISIS....and The Whole Mess in Middle East.......Says RAND PAUL & TED CRUZ........92% of Americans Agree
analogy
I keep on reading "rebels , freedom fighters, moderates" that this means the Paris attackers and the ones that brought down the towers are one of the above?
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news.yahoo.com
Moscow (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin fired off an angry tirade against Turkey on Thursday, ruling out any reconciliation with its leaders and accusing Ankara of shooting down a Russian warplane to impress the United States.
In comments littered with crude language, Putin dismissed the possibility that the downing of the warplane over the Turkey-Syria border last month was an accident, calling it a "hostile act".
"We find it difficult if not impossible to come to an agreement with the current leadership of Turkey," the Kremlin strongman said at his annual news conference.
"On the state level, I don't see any prospects of improving relations with the Turkish leadership," he said of Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Ties between Russia and the NATO member have hit rock bottom since the November 24 incident, which led to deaths of two Russian military officers.
Turkey has said the Russian jet strayed into its airspace and ignored repeated warnings, but Moscow insists it never left Syrian territory.
Putin said he did not rule out that Ankara was acting with tacit approval from Washington, possibly so that the United States would look the other way to let Turkey "go onto Iraqi territory and occupy part of it".
"I don't know if there was such a trade-off, maybe there was," Putin said.
"If somebody in the Turkish leadership decided to lick the Americans in one place... I don't know, if they did the right thing," he added.
"Did they think we would run away now? Russia is not that kind of country," Putin said, speaking of Moscow's increased military presence in Syria.
"If Turkey flew there all the time before, breaching Syrian airspace, well, let's see how they fly now."
Turkey has voiced concern about Russian air raids in northern Syria because of the Turkmen minority in the area, a Turkic-speaking people who have had an uneasy relationship with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
But Putin declared: "I've never heard anything about these so-called Turkmen.
"I know that there are our Turkmen, living in Turkmenistan," he said, referring to the ex-Soviet Central Asian country.
Putin also accused Turkey's leaders of overseeing a "creeping Islamisation" of the country "which would probably cause (modern Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal) Ataturk to turn in his grave."
- Not an 'enemy state' -
Putin and Erdogan have been locked in a war of words since the plane downing, and Moscow has even accused Erdogan's family of engaging in oil smuggling operations with Islamic State jihadists.
On Thursday, Putin went as far as to say that the Islamic State group was a "secondary issue" in Syria as it was created as "cannon fodder under Islamist slogans" to protect economic interests of other players, although he did not name Turkey.
However, he said he does not consider Turkey an enemy state. "They committed an enemy act against our aviation, but to say that we view Turkey as enemy state -- that is not the case."
Russia has imposed a number of sanctions on Turkey but Putin brushed aside questions from journalists about raids against Turkish firms and expulsions of Turkish students from Russian universities.
Putin said that had the downing of the plane been an accident, Turkish leaders should have tried to "pick up the phone and explain themselves".
Erdogan attempted to call Putin on the day of the incident, but the Kremlin ignored his request to speak to the Russian leader.
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news.yahoo.com
Moscow (AFP) - Moscow on Wednesday called for Ankara to arrest a rebel it claims killed the pilot of the Russian jet downed by Turkey last month on the Syrian border.
"We demand that the Turkish authorities take immediate steps to apprehend Alparslan Celik and his accomplices and bring them to justice for the murder of the Russian pilot," foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.
In an interview published Sunday in Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, Celik -- a Turkmen rebel and citizen of Turkey -- said that his "conscience cannot be bothered by a person who threw bombs at Turkmen civilians every day," referring to the slain Russian pilot.
Both pilots aboard the downed Su-24 jet ejected and parachuted to the ground on the Syrian side of the border, one of whom was killed by gun fire from the ground.
"Revenge is the most natural right," Celik said in the interview, while refraining from claiming the pilot's death.
Moscow and Ankara have been locked in a bitter spat over the downing of the Su-24 jet on November 24, with the Kremlin imposing a raft of economic sanctions against Turkey.
Zakharova said that the publication of Celik's comments in a major Turkish newspaper had angered and surprised Moscow, and accused the media outlet of being a "platform where terrorists and murderers brag about their crimes and spread hate of Russia and the Russian people through nationalist ideology."
She added that Celik's comments constituted an admission of his "direct involvement in the murder of the Russian pilot".
Turkish authorities have accused Russia of "ethnic cleansing" in Syria, targeting Turkmen and Sunni population that oppose the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Moscow's long-time ally.
Turkey says the Russian jet strayed into its airspace and ignored repeated warnings, while Moscow insisted it did not cross over from Syria and accused Ankara of a planned provocation.
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The Guardian
Words That Change the World is a 400-page compilation of Vladimir Putin's most notable speeches, and has been sent out to all Russian MPs and other political figures as a gift from the presidential administration ahead of the country's new year holiday.
Anton Volodin of the pro-Kremlin youth group Network, which published the book, told the Guardian: "A year ago we noticed when reading one of his early speeches that it was exactly right in its predictions, so we decided to check all of his other speeches. And it turns out basically everything he said has either already come true or is in the process of coming true at this very moment."
There are 19 articles and speeches collected in the book, starting from 2003 and ending with Putin's speech to the UN general assembly earlier this year. Volodin said: "If you read through them all, you can see a clear pattern in his rhetoric and thoughts. A lot of people say he's unpredictable or untruthful, but actually everything he says is transparent, clear and fully formed."
Alderbaran -> Popeyes 28 Dec 2015 16:21
China's GDP is roughly five times that of Russia and China is already leasing land in Russia's east. I'm also assuming it is getting a pretty good deal on oil at the moment too - Don't expect an equal partnership
Russia needs the West, just as the West needs Russia. Do you agree?
Laurence Johnson 28 Dec 2015 16:19
For all his sins you have to admire Putin. He is a man of conviction that actually believes in something that is worth saving, and will stop at nothing to achieve it.
Battling against hostility from the West Putin has reformed the nations economy, and continues to work on behalf of his peoples interests. Its hard to imagine how Russia could ever replace Putin, or indeed what the new Russia would even look like without Putin at the helm. But for now the people are clearly grateful to have a strong decisive leader, as indeed are many other leaders across the globe who find Putin's honesty and conviction a breath of fresh air in a world of deception and double dealing. I guess with Putin you get what it says on the tin.
KoreyD -> dyst1111 28 Dec 2015 16:19
Russian military requested by Assad to assist him in protecting his government. All others including America, British, French, Australian,Canadian, etc are there in contravention of International law
Popeyes 28 Dec 2015 16:18
"If those who had been present at the UN general assembly had listened to Putin's words, the world would be a very different place. Hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive and Europe would not be full of refugees from the middle east."
Of course he was right but of course he wasn't the only one saying these things at the time. Such a shame our witless leaders didn't listen and perhaps we wouldn't be in the mess we are now.Popeyes 28 Dec 2015 15:54
Russia is slowly moving out of the dollar system and Western sanctions will eventually have little impact on the Russian economy. Russia and China can easily survive and prosper without the dollar. Unfortunately Europe will lose out massively due to Russia's response to the sanctions and will continue banning imports from the EU, agricultural produce, as well as manufactured goods, leaving hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk. Just think what Putin has done even before he started bombing ISIS. He protects his country, his management of Russia's economy despite international sanctions are feats that are to be admired. Is it any wonder he is hated and feared by the West.
Fallowfield -> MTavernier 28 Dec 2015 16:16
I'm trying to work this out. Come on, you're not really saying that we have a free press in the west are you?
I believe it happened once, Watergate and all that. Murdoch and Thatcher as a model of the free press?
No, you're taking the piss. I'll stop there.
Fallowfield -> Alderbaran 28 Dec 2015 16:10
The people I know were 'the younger generation'. Their illusions about the west were quickly shattered. Different mafias, you see.
Putin's message? How very unlike our own dear Queen's Speech.Alderbaran -> SHappens 28 Dec 2015 16:03
A very fair point but you have to admit that a forum saturated with meaningless posts is frustrating for those who actually want to discuss the article. I feel compelled to challenge a number of these posters.
Personally I feel that Russia started on a very different track following Putin's return as president in 2012 and following the Bolotnaya square demonstrations - He was shaken by this!
I see a cult of personality blinding many Russians, including many of the commentators on this forum and it seems that in Russia what is important is not the facts but nationalism and a shared identity. This helps to protect Putin from criticism ans shores up his position but it is worrying when a government relies so much on one man and that there is nothing to indicate that Putin intends to change this. The publication of a book of speeches by "Network" is yet another indication of the reliance on this personality cult and to be very frank, it disturbs and saddens me.
Does any of this concern you too, or do you think that this is the best that Russia should hope for at the moment?
Equidom 28 Dec 2015 16:02
The Guardian and its puppet-masters hate the Russian people don't they? But they can't bring themselves to say that, so it's Putin they attempt to ridicule.
Rantalot 28 Dec 2015 15:42
Give me one Putin over a hundred Cameron's any day of the week. I've listened to a couple of those speeches, they are excellent, I don't bother listening to Mr Cameron.
Fallowfield 28 Dec 2015 15:29
I know a few 'Russians' who have lived in the 'west' for 15/20 years. They had no illusions about their soviet upbringing, but knew the qualities of life - health care, education, housing - that it brought. They are generally agreed that the wonderland that was supposed to exist beyond their borders was an illusion. But they're hard working people, and they do OK.
They support Putin. Why? KGB indoctrination? Far from it, these are the people who wanted to get away. And they - just like you - love their homeland. And who protects their homeland? The President of the USA? The PM of the UK? You must be joking.
Putin. Nobody else.SHappens -> apacheman 28 Dec 2015 15:26
Russia has been able, in just 20 years, without wars and other troubles, to go from a semi-colony up to a world stage recognized leader. All Putin's risk-taking decisions have been successes or are still playing out and have good potential for ending in success.
All this, quietly and imperceptibly, without tanks or strategic aviation, has been achieved by the Russian diplomacy, directed in a difficult confrontation with the block of the most powerful militarily and economically countries, while starting from a much lower position.
This is part of Putin, and Lavrov's great achievements. Might be worth for you to read this book after all, you might be learning something.
Alderbaran -> WalterCronkiteBot 28 Dec 2015 15:20Who said you were Russian and why did you suggest that you might be if Putin has a lot of support outside the country?
What surprised me is your apparently unsupportable notion that Putin is trying to make Russia look amicable. Your post also brought up topics far from the bounds of this article, yet you state that you don't know what to believe in.
If you are sincere in wanting to understand Russia better, David Remnick's excellent book on Russia is a great start - see Lenin's Tomb. Chrystia freeland's 'Sale of the Century' brilliantly describes the Yeltsin years and the power struggles taking place following the fall of the wall. I'd also recommend listing to Mark Galeotti on the sublect of Russia, and he is a regular conrtibutor to both RT and RFERL.
Peter Evans -> Alderbaran 28 Dec 2015 15:10
Crimea would never have happened without the illegal coup backed by the west. We could choose to believe the western media's opinion on the state of Russia, or we could listen to the people who live there.
Fallowfield -> CoinBiter 28 Dec 2015 15:09
After the USA, UK and other allied countries had invaded Russia in 1919 the eventual Soviet Republic did what it could to protect itself I suppose. And Russia still does. Ask where the USA bases are, and compare their distribution to those of Russia.
The USA didn't fancy one in Cuba, did they? A perfectly lawful international agreement. They threatened nuclear destruction as an ultimatum.
WalterCronkiteBot -> Alderbaran 28 Dec 2015 15:04
Yes I'm an evil Russian. I can't possibly be from the west.
To answer your question though, I don't know what to believe hence me stating "What I don't get with Putin is...". I don't understand the actual situation because I don't have inside knowledge.
I'm saying on the face of it he appears to speak for those in the west against war in the ME, which is good, but we shouldnt trust him entirely.
If that makes me a Kremlin shill so be it.
Not4TheFaintOfHeart 28 Dec 2015 14:59
Can somebody please tell Shaun to come in from the cold... It's over Shaun: Syria saved from a Libya/Iraq fate x2, ISIS degraded very nicely, thank you, Crimea voted to be part of the RF, Mistrals now sold to Egept, BRICS bank created, colour revolution in Georgia thwarted...
What's that Shaun?.. Someone's publishing a book of Putin quotes?.. I've got a similar book by that other respected world leader and statesman.. You know.. Short, fat, speech impediment, drunk most of the time ... what's his name?..oh yeah, Churchill.
Fallowfield -> Metronome151 28 Dec 2015 14:49Well we certainly jailed members of the WSPU for wanting to vote. 14 Northern Irish civil rights protest marchers, legal and unarmed, were shot dead on the street by British troops in 1972, as I remember. Striking workers have been jailed, and many more have had cases against them dropped in court for 'lack of evidence', ie when the police evidence presented was so obviously falsified. I wonder where the KGB got their ideas from?
apacheman -> Fallowfield 28 Dec 2015 14:48
And the Soviet people could thank the West for the Lend-Lease supplies that allowed them to withstand the Nazi juggernaut, without which they would have collapsed.
WalterCronkiteBot 28 Dec 2015 14:46
"Putin was correct to predict chaos in international affairs if the UN and other institutions of international law are ignored."
This is what many in the west said too. Putin is just one of the few people with serious power to publically state the same. Western officials including Tony Blair admit that IS arose out of the chaos in Iraq. Its not even up for debate. The abomination that is IS is the chaos he warned us of.
In 2013 Putin accused Kerry of lying when he told a senate hearing that AQ are not in Syria and as such pose no threat in that region. He warned us but noone listened. Now we have Syria overran by AQ affiliated groups toting US made weaponry.
What I don't get with Putin is the apparent naivety. As his speeches show he is well aware of the machinations of the western powers, yet puts faith in them time and time again. Hes either very naive or just wants to ensure that Russia look as amicable as possible in the history books.
Peter Evans 28 Dec 2015 14:34The US loved Yeltsin, a weak leader, they do not like a strong Russian leader who does the best for his country.
mgeary -> rcil2003 28 Dec 2015 14:33Oh, the results in the USA are the same as in Russia, the only difference being that they have a ruling elite there, who promote different faces every election for the Presidency.
This and the fact that, in contrast to Russia, they are being subtle about it...
Chuckman 28 Dec 2015 14:25The most able leader of our generation. Simply a remarkable man.
Readers may enjoy:
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/vladimir-putin-the-worlds-last-true-statesman/
presstheredbutton 28 Dec 2015 14:14
This got me pondering on what an equivalent publication for George W Bush would contain. Chapter One - reading "My Pet Goat".
However, in the USA, Presidents tend to have Library Centers to archive their words of wisdom. Bush Junior's is located on the campus of Southern Methodist University (SMU) in University Park, Texas, opened on April 25, 2013. The janitor wasn't best pleased; he had to find a new broom cupboard...
rcil2003 -> euphoniumbrioche 28 Dec 2015 14:16
western leaders are nothing but interchangeable game show hosts. Behind them is the real power, wielded in secret by utterly evil characters like Dick Cheney, who would have been right at home in the Third Reich.
presstheredbutton -> nonanon1 28 Dec 2015 14:15
Interesting how all the trolling comments, such as yours, seem to be against Putin...
Parangaricurimicuaro -> Metronome151 28 Dec 2015 14:20
Now you are giving me the reason. The MSM has brainwashed the western world and they don't know anything else but what they are fed.
Parangaricurimicuaro -> hermionegingold 28 Dec 2015 14:01
If you understand that the leader's image is so important for the well-being of the population you wouldn't be criticizing him. After the drunken years of Yeltsin the Russians needed a different role model. There is a reason for Obama (a heavy smoker) not to do it ( at least not in front of the cameras)
greatapedescendant -> Strummered 28 Dec 2015 13:46
They might have added his habit of speaking the truth. Best chance of finding out what's actually going on in Syria + the Middle East generally is to listen to Putin.
ID7586903 28 Dec 2015 13:45
Putin is the savior of Europe, and its culture
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Dec 27, 2015 | The Guardian
marketingexpert -> HorseCart 27 Dec 2015 14:38
lingyai -> SrdeAth 27 Dec 2015 14:25If the big borrower nations like GB and USA were honest, it would be electoral suicide because all they could promise is massive reduction in living standards back to a level we can afford
And that will happen either by progressive erosion or catastrophic bubble burst and economiccollapse.
But It is so much easier Lefty fashion to promise jam today for everyone, and invent bogus bogeymen to pay for it all, or pretend you can borrow or print to prosperity. Anyone north of a five year old can see through such nonsense from the day they trade mars bars for marbles,
Buy gold, or farmland.
KillerMarmot -> Lafcadio1944 27 Dec 2015 14:25that's what the US has all those military bases around the world for.. can't have the world reserve currency being threatened...
Marjallche -> gilesjuk 27 Dec 2015 13:02Neoliberalism is going to provide prosperity when clear-eyed analysis shows Neoliberalism to be little more than subjugation to oligarch rule and the most egregious inequity the world has ever known.
Actually the world is more prosperous than it has ever been. Over the last few decades, billions of people have been lifted out of abject poverty into something resembling a modern lifestyle. Infant mortality has been falling steadily. Life expectancy has been raising steadily. It is resounding triumph, but one that is little recognized,
Marjallche -> JudiHoskyn885 27 Dec 2015 12:57Yes I actually think it is, as dependencies breed fear of being exploited, breeds distrust as to whether the other side does or does not threaten with blackmail etc. I got the idea from Keynes, who saw stability in self-reliance of nations and instability in population import, which threw the balance in favour of big capital.
Iconoclastick 27 Dec 2015 12:54WW I happened after 20 yrs during which the the superpower Britain had been blatantly replacing their dwindling economic influence by demonstrations of military powers. Now which nation today is siphoning off by ever more military means the products and raw materials of others, while not even caring a bit about welfare for the majority of their own citizens?
But it's so much easier to make propaganda against Mr Putin's public appearances than seriously address the point that this guy is genuinely popular at home precisely because he refuses his country to be a sellout to USA's 1O %. Another pre WWI parallel. PS it seems to be a very anglo-saxon notion that the upper 10% belong to a better and preferable breed of humans. The rest being granted the "freedom" to crawl in the dirt and die in the name of "freedom" for the preservation of their "democratic" 1%ers privilege.
Sammy Johnston -> gilesjuk 27 Dec 2015 12:41It was bad in 2012, it's got far worse.
as the chart below shows, if there is anything the global financial system needs, is for the rating agencies, bond vigilantes, and lastly, general public itself, to realize that the UK's consolidated debt (non-financial, financial, government and household) to GDP is... just under 1000%. That's right: the UK debt, when one adds to its more tenable sovereign debt tranche all the other debt carried on UK books (and thus making the transfer of private debt to the public balance sheet impossible), is nearly ten times greater than the country's GDP. To call that "game over" is an insult to game overs everywhere.
MancuMan -> eveofchange 27 Dec 2015 12:50All political parties follow the will of the banking families and corporate elites. The economy is in it's intended state, gearing up for the third world war, the formation of world government and the eventual digitalization of currency world wide.
To state that cameron has any control is naive. To say corbyn can be effective to oppose it is naive. We need to eliminate our current elite and start a new paradigm to have any sense of freedom again.
Aye, a few million people got murdered by the Communists but apart from that and the lack of joy in life for the survivors it all went very well indeed and we should give it another go.
ldopas -> eveofchange 27 Dec 2015 12:37
eveofchange -> jonsnow92 27 Dec 2015 12:25I see you have been studying the socialist comics again.
Evidence tells us, evidence, that capitalism has problems. Lots of them. But it does work for the most part, and the model of capitalism also when there is a disruption mostly recovers like a cut in the skin that heals. Socialism wherever tried ALWAYS has produced poor if not catastrophic results, and once a downward spiral is established there is nothing to stop it, no mechanism in place to heal it like capitalism.
So my money, pun intended, is with capitalism.
Look if you are fed up of our capitalist first world services, infrastructure and healthcare there are still a few deluded places where some sort of socialism exists; Cuba for example where everyone is equal in poverty and their infrastructure is non existent, perhaps N Korea?
Ask yourself this. when a country that is poor and gets the chance for democracy, why do they always go more capitalistic?
jonsnow92 -> eveofchange 27 Dec 2015 12:17I have told you what would happen if capitalism continues.
I opposed Stalin and his ilk, and his corruption of socialism. But under even he, Russia escaped the economic collapse of the thirties, and was invaded by a country that had been ravaged by capitalism's collapse . Russia even emerged stronger.
The nationalised economy worked perfectly, and defeated capitalist Germany (although Hitler himself,introduced aspects of socialism--as did the UK and US). But without a workers and working class democracy, nationalisation will not work for any length of time .
eveofchange 27 Dec 2015 12:02unless consciously overthrown by a working class takeover for socialism, would still carry on. What do you want?
It didn't work in USSR did it? The working class took over and it didn't end up in milk and honey on the streets. Same for East Germany - apart from the genius of Trabant not much else going on until the people started voting with their feet jumping walls and going to capitalism. And I didn't mention Albania, Cuba, North Korea and other great success stories from socialism.
BTW - in socialist countries you couldn't have a strike as the working class was in power and as Stalin said: "why would the working class strike if they are in power?"
> newsfreak 27 Dec 2015 13:33The problem is capitalism, as Marx correctly pointed out and analysed. One "solution" always leads to a worse problem---and it cannot be resolved,or solved Eventually there is either a major war, between desperate capitalist states fighting over shrinking markets, or there is a gigantic crash.--or both.This literally wipes out productive capacity, and thus the problem of "overproduction" is temporarily "solved". The same cycle is then repeated, to it's inevitable conclusion--again.
Millions, throughout the world, even in the UK, are made destitute by this, or even die--but capitalism, unless consciously overthrown by a working class takeover for socialism, would still carry on. What do you want?ID7829806 27 Dec 2015 11:58The ambiguity of economic and financial forecasters tend to reach proverbial limits. They make a living out of ambiguity and what later end up being frustrated expectations: "2016 will be a year of living dangerously for the global economy" yet "there will be no explosion in 2016, but a fuse will be lit." How dangerous is a lit fuse? The whole financial world system is a sham based on printing currencies with no backing standard. At some point there will be a wake up call, a reality check, and a devastating free fall.
Dan_de_Macy 27 Dec 2015 11:58Economic forecasting is a mug's game.
But a lot of people get paid a lot of money to do it. Forecasting is of course, at best, an inexact and purely speculative effort (I nearly wrote 'an inexact science', but there is nothing scientific about it, at all).
Those who have the confidence/cheek/arrogance to predict, tend to stick close to the average of an (emerging) consensus, if there is one. Commentators keep looking around and over their shoulders - no one wants to look silly - and so feed-on and affirm each other. Few stick their necks out - but then, if they do, they are likely unknown or a maverick, and does anyone therefore notice, or care?
A broken clock is right twice a day, but who wants to predict that the clock will fall off the wall (unless they have inside knowledge)?
Larry, you may be right. Or you may be wrong. 2016 is an Election Year in the US, which suggests 'nothing to see here' for the next 12 months. But then again, it didn't stop the last crash happening.
But the feeling in your water could be right, precisely because we are in unknown and unprecedented territory. The historic economic 'rule-book' hasn't so much been torn-up in recent years, rather - quietly - put back on the shelve, and self-consciously ignored.
These are unprecedented times. So: who knows what might happen? An unprecedented economic implosion round about 2017 is possible. Or not. But on a balance of probabilities: something without precedent is likely to happen (for good or ill): and none of us will have predicted it.
Iconoclastick 27 Dec 2015 11:50Prediction:
Going South: Why Britain will have a Third World Economy by 2014 Paperback – 14 Jun 2012
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Going-South-Britain-Third-Economy/dp/0230392547
Reality:
Other stuff building up a storm on the horizon...
Forget About Junk Bonds, This Is the New Credit-Equity Disconnect Investors Should Be Watching
Can contagion spread to stocks?This Junk Bond Derivative Index Is Saying Something Scary About Defaults. Markit's CDX index is pricing in a 2008-like selloff.
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Dec 27, 2015 | naked capitalism
An excellent column by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, where he is the lead economics editor. Starting with principles put forward by Ben Bernanke in his recent speech on income inequality, Wolf concludes that America cannot do without some form of a welfare state, specifically improved training, education, and universal health care.
James Levy, December 26, 2015 at 4:32 pm
I have no idea if Marx was right, in the long run, or wrong–the verdict is still out on the long-term viability of industrial capitalism, which is less than 250 years old and creaking mightily as I write this. It may be that when Rosa Luxemburg said that the choice was between Socialism and Barbarism, she underestimated how likely barbarism was. What I do know is that capitalism today isn't just too ugly to tolerate, it is downright murderous. Its imperatives are driving the despoliation of the planet. It's love of profit over all else is cutting corners and creating externalities that are lethal. But it has made a few percent of the global population comfortable and powerful, and they are holding onto that comfort and that power come hell or high water (and, ironically, if things continue apace both are on the menu).
Our problem is that we are asking for concessions that are beyond the acceptable limit for elites in any historical epoch. We're asking the powerful and the rich to give up their money and power for the greater good of all mankind. This is not likely to happen unless a powerful enough segment of the elite comes to the inescapable conclusion that they're literally dead meat if they don't and therefore opts for survival over position. I am not enthusiastic that this will happen before it is way too late to save more than a fraction of the current world population, and send those people back to the lifestyles and thought patterns of 30 Year's War Europe.
Its a generational thing. Right after WW2, many of the elite had just that epiphany that unless they have the common people behind them, they are toast. But now they are dead or dying, and their grandkids are basically once more thinking that they can go it alone. This because they have not had the required experiences that help develop the wisdom.
What Marx saw long ago, we can see today, and without relegating ourselves to his analysis, come to our own conclusions. Contradictions, summed up well by Lincoln as a house divided against itself cannot stand is just as true today. Millions of guns to protect the citizenry from tyranny have only resulted in a 1/4 million murders and 5 times as many shootings since Jan 1, 2000, some placing people in wheel chairs and other crippling gunshot afflictions, and more and more institutionalized state oppression, economic exploitation and miserable lives propped up in an alcoholic haze until the liver or brain gives out. We have more food than we know what to do with so we throw away almost as much as we eat. And we have eaten ourselves into morbid obesity, diabetes and heart disease. The contradictions abound from the kitchen table to the kitchen cabinet of the White House where there seems to be nothing passed so freely as bad advice.
The Welfare State arose from the sacrifices of the population in giving their sweat, blood and tears to defend their nation during war, to be rewarded for their sacrifices, rewards which were demands for power sharing and more in the paycheck, more benefits and more time to enjoy the life spent in a more prosperous world. It seems to me that Obamacare is not simply in death spiral all of its own making, but even more so, because it is the best attempt capitalism can produce in an America that is the most capitalist of societies down to the marrow its bones. Little competition from the Church or the social relations between nobles and subjects set for in the laws that were disestablished to free markets for commodification and money making. Money making enterprises structured the laws from slavery, to the voting franchise with little from the state to cushion any of the hardships of life in America.
Health care is the largest industry we have. It is approaching 20% of the GNP. I remember the great national freak out in the late 1970s when congress realized it was approaching 10%. Nothing seems to be stopping the costs from spiraling upward and onward. No risk of deflation here where nothing is spared to save a life, operate on some poor little afflicted child, or buy a piece of equipment the size of an office building that shoots a proton beam at cancer, one cancer cell at a time.
When Obama Care becomes a clear burden to even the democrats who can point to it now as some sort of accomplishment, and it is an accomplishment for the people who finally get to see a doctor, get into a hospital, get that operation or diagnosis that saves their lives, when even those accomplishments number in the millions, it will be part of a health care industry for which $Trillions of dollars can no longer be justified or even funded. As that financial collapse approaches, it would be better for politicians to declare the defeat of a program better rolled into one universal single payer system currently operating as Medicare, than try to reform, shore up or the old tried and true public lie, get rid of its waste and corruption.
Declare victory with Medicare as the solution and put everyone into it. The only paper work left should be each person's medical history with diagnosis and healing as the happy ending to the story.
There is a fundamental error in perception in the Western world that is so pervasive that people can't even see it. As a most basic component of a healthy society people need to be able to survive at a local community level without outside support. Only after that is taken care of should people concern themselves with luxuries, inter-community and international relations.
Welfare–not to mention other government services–can appear to have positive impacts if one only looks at their effects in isolation, however I think there is a devastating and pernicious impact on people's ability to form community bonds and have local resilience with things like welfare.
Also, let's also not forget that Americans consume far more of the earth's precious resources than any other group in the world. Welfare etc are social services that can only be funded through the world-wide looting operation of the American empire. Do these recipients of empire benefits have a moral right to share in the loot of empire? Perhaps instead of domestic welfare it would be more ethical for the American empire to provide social benefits for the indigenous peoples who are forced from their lands to work like slaves for the empire's benefit. Although admittedly if the American empire used it's loot for the benefit of the foreign peoples whose lives it destroyed then there'd probably be nothing left to spread around to the military, or to pacify and police the domestic population. So I suppose that's not a serious proposal.
Welfare etc are social services that can only be funded through the world-wide looting operation of the American empire
This is obviously not true. Unless every social democratic country in the world is considered as a piece of the American empire. And even then, I would argue that we can easily afford a generous welfare state with a small shift in priorities away from (globally destabilizing) defense spending to social productive spending on human development.
Obvious to who? America lavishes so much money on its military not only because of corruption, but also because it has the world reserve currency and is a guarantor of the safety of international shipping. These facts are inextricably linked to the America's status as the world hegemon. The empire provides order and structure, and enforces the extraction of resources from the periphery to the center. The bread and circuses are inextricably linked to the empire's military activities and trying to tease them apart will only lead to collapse of the entire system sooner than it will otherwise happen.
"Social Democratic"–now that's an interesting phrase. Did you know that Syria is a democracy, and was an extremely prosperous and well-education nation prior to 2011?
Here's a telling paragraph from the Wikipedia article about Syria:
[Dec 27, 2015] The Sneaky Way Austerity Got Sold to the Public Like Snake Oil
Notable quotes:
"... When children don't get good educations, the production of knowledge falls into private control. Power gets consolidated. The official theoretical frameworks that benefit the most powerful get locked in. ..."
"... Not only were the politicians worried about votes but also the welfare state was a way to head off a left wing revolution. ..."
"... the change began in 1976 with the election of Rockefeller-funded Jimmy Carter, who immediately launched an austerity program. Support for Keynesian economics was further eroded by the 70's stagflation which we now know was caused by Mid East oil but at the time the "left" were like deer in the headlights, with no clue what to do. ..."
"... The final nail in the coffin was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR, discrediting communism. After that, "there was no alternative" to corporate capitalism. Or more accurately, the left was slow to formulate an alternative and to this day is still struggling with an alternative as we have observed with Syriza. It's not enough to oppose austerity, you have to have a constructive plan to fix things. ..."
[Dec 24, 2015] The Fed Has Created A Monster And Just Made A Dangerous Mistake, Stephen Roach Warns
[Dec 24, 2015] Israeli-made air-to-air missile may have downed MH17
Notable quotes:
"... "fragments of the pilots' cockpit have suffered specific damages in the form of localized puncture holes and surface dents typical for hypervelocity impacts with compact and hard objects," ..."
"... "intricate shape" ..."
"... "most probably incorrect." ..."
[Dec 24, 2015] Is The Russian-Turkish Standoff An Opportunity For The West
Notable quotes:
"... apparently, two USAF F-15C Eagle air superiority fighters (which had been deployed to Incirlik Air Force Base, Turkey, in November 2015) were in the air as back-up to the Türk Hava Kuvvetleri (Turkish Air Force: THK) F-16s, one of which shot down the Su-24. ..."
"... At best, Russia may now move to cover its tactical operations in northern Syria more effectively by offering its own deterrence of top cover by advanced fighters while the ground attack aircraft, such as the Su-24s, do their job. It is also clear that any further Turkish incursions into Syrian airspace were now at-risk, but the Turks already knew that. ..."
[Dec 23, 2015] The antipathy the Russian kreakly bear toward Matthew Lee
Notable quotes:
"... the antipathy the Russian kreakly ..."
"... the Russian intelligentsia ..."
[Dec 23, 2015] How America Lost the Rest of the World
Notable quotes:
"... I'm still trying to think through the implications but they are certainly disquieting. Without trying to hard I'd summarize that "the masks are coming off." ..."
"... The question then is, what happens after "the masks come off?" ..."
"... Short-sighted western pundits will still be penning deadline copy headlined "How Putin lost Ukraine" while those with real vision will be putting the finishing touches on "How America Lost the Rest of the World" ..."
[Dec 23, 2015] The Big Short Every American Should See This Movie
Notable quotes:
"... Enjoyed the movie, but in typical Hollywood fashion, the role of the Federal Reserve and government in pushing housing down to those unable to afford it was not even mentioned once. ..."
[Dec 23, 2015] The antipathy the Russian kreakly bear toward Matthew Lee
Notable quotes:
"... the antipathy the Russian kreakly ..."
"... the Russian intelligentsia ..."
[Dec 22, 2015] Destruction of the financial system of Ukraine is complete
Essentially it got "below junk" rating...
Notable quotes:
"... How could Ukraine's government deficit only be 4.1% when its currency has crashed, it has lost most of its sources of income and it has just defaulted on its debt? What the fuck are they talking about? ..."
"... First, there is no way on God's green earth that there is a negative difference of only 4.1% between Ukraine's annual revenues and its annual expenditures, especially since it has almost no revenues except from taxation. ..."
[Dec 22, 2015] Americas Double Standard on Trade
[Dec 22, 2015] Orwells Nightmare Is Here - China Just Gamified Obedience To The State (And Soon Itll Be Mandatory)
That's something new and pretty Orwelian : computerized score of "political correctness" made similar for FICO score and based on data about you in social media.
Notable quotes:
"... Among the things that will hurt a citizen's score are posting political opinions without prior permission, or posting information that the regime does not like, such as about the Tiananmen Square massacre that the government carried out to hold on to power, or the Shanghai stock market collapse. ..."
"... "Imagine the social pressure against disobedience or dissent that this will create." ..."
"... "very ambitious in scope, including scrutinizing individual behavior and what books people read. It's Amazon's consumer tracking with an Orwellian political twist." ..."
"... "Coming soon to a New World Order near you: social credit! Earn points by behaving like the government wants you to behave! Get penalized if you don't act like a doubleplusgood citizen! What could be more fun?" ..."
"... Applying for a passport? Buy my book and learn how to boost your patriotism score by 400 points in 6 months! We can even give you a spambot to do the work for you! ..."
"... At this point, any good developer can write a program that reads Twitter/Facebook/Renren/WeChat feeds, gives the posts to IBM's Watson (or some simpler algorithm), and have the program spit out a score. And this program would take at most a month to make. I know, I write similar stuff ;) ..."
"... What scares me is how the initial assumptions that go into querying data can give you radically different results at the end, and these intelligence agencies do not exactly explain what methods they are using to determine who is a 'bad guy.' ..."
"... Patriot Points. ..."
"... The article has taken some real, some proposed and some imaginary credit tracking programs and smushed them into one 'terrifying', freedom-destroying blob. In other words, it's irresponsible b.s. intended to make the Chinese government look even more diabolical and oppressive than our own. ..."
"... The underlying cultural truth, though, is that Chinese are willing to cooperate with – and trust – their government much more than we are. They've always respected and looked up to their national leaders and expected those leaders to actually lead – morally and practically. It works for them, as we see. ..."
"... Digital will end up being our worse nightmare and our undoing. It is the Perfect tool for the crazed sociopaths around us and the insane psychopaths that want to control our every breath (literally). ..."
"... The social networks are piped right into governments security complex. ..."
[Dec 21, 2015] Ignorance is Strength
Notable quotes:
"... " it's also a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries" ..."
"... It's okay to bullshit if the Culturally Superior Westerner ™ is dissing with libelious claims Inferior Non-Westerner. See, who needs any proof that "Putin kills journalists"? No one! Not even trump or their auditory – They Know It For Fact ™. ..."
[Dec 21, 2015] Journalists are really mouthpieces for political factions within their own government power structure but the best journalists choose faction that actually embraces reality
"... Regarding Patrick Lang, I noticed that he posted a quite vehement attack against conspiracy theorists postings on his blog who were – if I recall correctly – claiming that the military were involved in the subterfuge to arm extremists in Syria. (Probably cocked up the details but too tired to check.) It struck me as noteworthy as it suggested an internecine intra-Washington struggle between Military / CIA who was going to "own" the debacle in Syria at the very least. It is utterly reminiscent of the struggle between Dulles / CIA power structure (think: institutional group think) and the incoming JFK administration / New Frontiersman during and after the Cuban Missile Crisis. ..."
"... Of course it's worth noting that Hersh had to revert to publishing this "intimate" conversation between American power structures in a foreign publication. What does that tell you about the "freedom index"? Samizdat here we come! ..."
[Dec 21, 2015] Australians has doubts about Dutch safety board conclusion about the type of monitions that destroyed the aircraft
Notable quotes:
"... "initial information that the aircraft was shot down by a [Buk] surface to air missile" did not meet the Australian or international standard of evidence …." ..."
"... What will happen to the resolve of the holdouts if the narrative on MH17 begins to veer away from rock-solid Russian ownership of the tragedy? Because that was the whole backbone of the sanctions – Crimea was not enough to get Germany and France on board, and they still needed the little push that MH17 provided. If that rationale vanished, or even if serious doubt was introduced, the whole EU position on sanctions could fall apart. ..."
"... It's bigger than I thought – there is some sort of internal power struggle going on, and West refuses to change his findings – which still point to Russia for responsibility – in spite of Donoghoe's testimony. ..."
[Dec 21, 2015] Weak president, neoliberal Obama and housing bubble
Notable quotes:
"... The relationship between low interest rates and bubbles has nothing to do with the above. Low interest rates RAISE asset prices. Through the magic of low discount rates, the future earnings and cash flows are worth a lot higher today. This is why Bernanke cut rates and kept them low. Raising asset prices and the resultant higher net worth was supposed to lead to higher spending today. But outsized returns also attracts speculation. what is so difficult to understand? John Williams of SF Fed has shown how positive returns in asset markets raises the speculators expected returns. when this dynamic gets out of control, it is a bubble. ..."
"... That is exactly the point. Expected returns in stocks have nothing to do with earnings growth. http://www.frbsf.org/our-district/press/presidents-speeches/williams-speeches/2013/september/asset-price-bubbles-tomorrow-yesterday-never-today/ ..."
"... You think a rise in stock prices created by a fall in the cost of capital is a bubble. ..."
"... keeping the risk free rate at zero for 7 years is not a change in fundamentals. and if it is and it rises leading to a large fall in equity prices, you will be the first one crying uncle. so why put the economy through this? ..."
"... Rising stock prices allow corporations to raise debt, because the stock is put up as collateral. This makes funding easier, but it doesnt favor any particular purpose of the funding. It could be to buy back stock, for example. Said buy back can raise the stock price even more, which in turn can pay off the borrowing. Didnt cost a dime. ..."
"... It always seem to me that right wing economists credit businessmen with superhuman foresight and sophistication, except when it comes to the actions of the Fed and then something addles their brains and they become completely stupid. As I once put, it seems investors cant understand what the Fed is doing, even though they tell you. ..."
"... Thats it exactly. Markets are efficient, unless the government does anything, and then markets lose their minds and its the governments fault. ..."
"... Here is how they evaluate models: Good model; one that reaches the right good conclusions. Bad model; one that ends up saying stuff nobody should believe in. ..."
"... Obama could have at least made the investigations a high priority...but he let Holder, a Wall Street attorney, consign them to the lowest. ..."
"... Democrats filibuster-proof majority consisted of 58 Democrats and two independents who caucused with them. Only an inept President and Senate majority leader could have failed to take advantage of such a majority to implement significant parts of the party platform. ..."
"... Gullible folks like pgl and his coterie believe what these Democrats say and waste our time defending their neoliberal behavior. ..."
[Dec 20, 2015] Michael Hudson The IMF Changes its Rules to Isolate China and Russia
Notable quotes:
"... By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is ..."
"... KILLING THE HOST: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy ..."
"... What especially annoys U.S. financial strategists is that this loan by Russia's sovereign debt fund was protected by IMF lending practice, which at that time ensured collectability by withholding new credit from countries in default of foreign official debts (or at least, not bargaining in good faith to pay). To cap matters, the bonds are registered under London's creditor-oriented rules and courts. ..."
"... After the rules change, Aslund later noted, "the IMF can continue to give Ukraine loans regardless of what Ukraine does about its credit from Russia, which falls due on December 20. [8] ..."
"... The post-2010 loan packages to Greece are a notorious case in point. The IMF staff calculated that Greece could not possibly pay the balance that was set to bail out foreign banks and bondholders. Many Board members agreed (and subsequently have gone public with their whistle-blowing). Their protests didn't matter. Dominique Strauss-Kahn backed the US-ECB position (after President Barack Obama and Treasury secretary Tim Geithner pointed out that U.S. banks had written credit default swaps betting that Greece could pay, and would lose money if there were a debt writedown). In 2015, Christine Lagarde also backed the U.S.-European Central Bank hard line, against staff protests. [10] ..."
"... China and Russia harbored the fantasy that would be allowed redress in the Western Courts where international law is metered out. They are now no longer under that delusion. ..."
"... It's not Hudson but the US that has simplified the entire world situation into "good guys vs. bad guys", a policy enshrined in Rumsfeld's statement "you're either with us or you're against us". ..."
"... what is left unsaid is the choices Russia then faces once their legal options play out and the uneven playing field is fully exposed. Do they not then have a historically justifiable basis for declaring war? ..."
[Dec 20, 2015] Paul Krugman: The Big Short, Housing Bubbles and Retold Lies
Notable quotes:
"... I get the feeling that if doing a film review of The Force Awakens , most economists would be rooting for the Empire to win - after all the empire will bring free trade within its borders, like the EU. ..."
"... In market fundamentalist world, markets dont fail. They can only be failed. Though its still not clear how they think a little bit of government incentive for loans to low income borrowers caused the entire financial sector to lose its mind wrt CDOs. ..."
"... The distribution of the use of credit between pure financial speculation and productive investment is not a function of interest rates, but of things like bank culture, bank regulation and macro-economic and technological prospects. ..."
"... ....Supervising regulators need to look carefully at the ratio of credit used for financial trading compared to credit used for what weve called real-economy matters. They should adjust the level of monitoring based on this view while they also inform policy makers including those in the legislature. ..."
"... except that a significant chunk of institutional investors have sticky nominal targets for return thanks to the politics of return expectation setting (true for pension fund and endowments) -- low interest rates do encourage chasing phantoms or looking to extract some rents, for those subject to that kind of pressure ..."
"... The relationship between low interest rates and bubbles has nothing to do with the above. Low interest rates RAISE asset prices. Through the magic of low discount rates, the future earnings and cash flows are worth a lot higher today. This is why Bernanke cut rates and kept them low. Raising asset prices and the resultant higher net worth was supposed to lead to higher spending today. But outsized returns also attracts speculation. what is so difficult to understand? John Williams of SF Fed has shown how positive returns in asset markets raises the speculators expected returns. when this dynamic gets out of control, it is a bubble. ..."
"... Yes, indeed. And who do we have to blame for that? Obama and Holder, of course. They made the investigation of mortgage securities fraud DOJs lowest priority. Krugmans Democratic proclivities prevent him from stating the obvious. ..."
"... Fact is, Obama has intentionally been a lame duck ever since he took office. He was even clueless on how to capitalize on a filibuster-proof majority in the midst of an economic crisis...which brings us to Trump. Many are so desperate for leadership after Obamas hollow presidency that theyll even support a racist demagogue to avoid another empty White House. ..."
"... Yes you are correct. From 2001 into 2008 when all of the liar and ninja loans were being made, not one government official stepped forward to investigate the possibility of fraud, the predatory lending, the misrepresentation of loans taking place, the loans with teaser rates which later ballooned, the packing of loans with deceptive fees, the illegal kick backs, etc. Not one. To make matters worst, the administration from 2001-2008 aligned itself with the banks along with the maestro hisself Greenspan. ..."
"... When state AGs took on the burden of investigating the flagrant violations, the administration moves to block them saying they had no jurisdiction to do so. It did this through the OCC issuing rules preventing the states from prosecuting the banks. Besides blocking any investigation, the OCC failed in its mission to audit the banks for which it was by law to do. ..."
[Dec 19, 2015] Russia opens black box of jet downed by Turkey
Notable quotes:
"... I believe it was not there on patrol, but specifically to shoot the Russian plane down and come back ..."
"... Although I believe the Turkish map, I still think the Turks proved themselves on the side of the terrorists. ..."
"... Crossing that strip of Turkish territory by a friendly plane should not have been reason for shooting it down, only a PRETEXT. That may be the reason why the plane was shot down, because the Russians were not expecting the Turks to shoot at them. ..."
[Dec 19, 2015] Ukraine still committed to good faith debt talks with Russia Finance Ministry
Notable quotes:
"... Ukraine remains committed ... to negotiating in good faith a consensual restructuring of the December 2015 Eurobonds, Nonsense, they are nothing but thieves in suits; Fascist politicians stealing from the taxpayers in the USA, EU, Russia and the Ukraine. You supporters of modern Fascism are disgusting little NeoCon trolls, yes you are! ..."
"... Under this IMF restructuring deal with the Ukraine, the oligarchs mandated that Monsanto GMO comes in. Now the once fertile farms will grow poisoned food. ... They also mandated hydraulic fracking rights to Exxon and BP. Now the aquifers will be poisoned. ... Moreover, the IMF social chapter destroys family values and requires that corrosive gay propaganda be thrust into the children's minds. ... Welcome to the new Globalist Business Model. ..."
"... The Ukraine is like a dying carcass. ... The EU jackals are howling, the IMF vultures are circling, and the NATO hyenas are picking the flesh off of the bones. ..."
"... Ukraine's Finance Minister, who promised in the above Reuters article today Dec 18, 2015, to talk in good faith with the Russian Federation about their $3 Billion Loan due and payable on Dec 15, as of today is in Default on that $3 Billion Loan , and therefore isn't eligible to receive any Loan from the IMF, headed by Chief Lagarde who must now stand trial for an improper loan of $434 Million . ..."
"... Good faith? They actually mean bait and switch ..."
"... The deadbeat American lackeys in Kiev have no intention of paying their debts to Russia because Washington DC is run by thieves and immoral people. You know this is true. ..."
"... Meanwhile Ukraine has restricted air travel, cutoff Crimea, and fought efforts to grant autonomy to Russian-speaking regions. With unpaid debt, the country still stokes war with Russia after being warned by Mr. Kerry to stop. ..."
[Dec 19, 2015] The Enduring Relevance of "Manias, Panics, and Crashes"
Notable quotes:
"... Manias, Panics, and Crashes ..."
"... The New International Money Game ..."
"... Manias, Panics and Crashes ..."
"... Why Minsky Matters ..."
"... Manias, Panics and Crashes ..."
"... Manias, Panics and Crashes ..."
[Dec 19, 2015] Turkey Blasts Breakthrough UN Resolution On Syria It Lacks Perspective. Assad Must Go!
Notable quotes:
"... "Now, is there a way of us constructing a bridge, creating a political transition, that allows those who are allied with Assad right now, allows the Russians, allows the Iranians to ensure that their equities are respected, that minorities like the Alawites are not crushed or retribution is not the order of the day? I think that's going to be very important as well." ..."
"... Seymour Hersh Links Turkey to Benghazi, Syria and Sarin ..."
"... The assessment of the Defense Intelligence Agency is that the sarin was supplied by Turkey to elements in Ghouta with the intent of "push[ing] Obama over the red line. " Intercepted transmissions from Turkish operators in the aftermath of the attack are jubilant, and the success of their covert mission must have seemed well in hand. Obama's implicit call to war in the coming month was proof of that. ..."
[Dec 19, 2015] The Washington Post's Non-Political Fed Looks a Lot Like Wall Street's Fed
Notable quotes:
"... Any serious discussion of Fed policy would note that the banking industry appears to have a grossly disproportionate say in the country's monetary policy. ..."
[Dec 18, 2015] The Upward Redistribution of Income: Are Rents the Story?
Looks like growth of financial sector represents direct threat to the society
Notable quotes:
"... Perhaps the financialization of the economy and rising inequality leads to a corruption of the political process which leads to monetary, currency and fiscal policy such that labor markets are loose and inflation is low. ..."
"... Growth of the non-financial-sector == growth in productivity ..."
"... In complex subject matters, even the most competent person joining a company has to become familiar with the details of the products, the industry niche, the processes and professional/personal relationships in the company or industry, etc. All these are not really teachable and require between months and years in the job. This represents a significant sunk cost. Sometimes (actually rather often) experience within the niche/industry is in a degree portable between companies, but some company still had to employ enough people to build this experience, and it cannot be readily bought by bringing in however competent freshers. ..."
[Dec 18, 2015] How low can oil prices go? Opec and El Niño take a bite out of crudes cost
Oil is a valuable chemical resource that is now wasted because of low prices... "The obvious follow-up question is, how long will the sane people of the world continue to allow so much fossil-fuel combustion to continue? An exercise for readers."
Notable quotes:
"... Iran wont flood the market in 2016. Right now Iran is losing production. It takes time to reverse decline and make a difference. ..."
"... Those who predict very low prices dont understand the industry (I do). The low price environment reduces capital investment, which has to be there just to keep production flat (the decline is 3 to 5 million barrels of oil per day per year). At this time capacity is dropping everywhere except for a few select countries. The USA is losing capacity, and will never again reach this years peak unless prices double. Other countries are hopeless. From Norway to Indonesia to Colombia to Nigeria and Azerbaijan, peak oil has already taken place. ..."
"... If oil prices remain very low until 2025 itll either be because you are right or because the world went to hell. ..."
"... But Im with Carambaman - prices will go up again. Demand is and will still be there. The excess output will eventually end, and the prices stabilises. And then move up again. ..."
"... Time to examine the real question: how long can the Saudis maintain their current production rates? Theyre currently producing more than 10 Mbarrels/day, but lets take the latter figure as a lower bound. They apparently have (per US consulate via WikiLeaks--time for a followup?) at least 260 Gbarrels (though it seems no one outside Saudi really knows). You do the math: 260 Gbarrels / (10 Mbarrels/day) = 26 kdays ~= 70 years. @ 15 Mbarrels/day - 47.5 years. @ 20 Mbarrels/day - 35 years. ..."
"... The obvious follow-up question is, how long will the sane people of the world continue to allow so much fossil-fuel combustion to continue? An exercise for readers. ..."
"... Saudi Arabia, a US ally, using oil production and pricing to crush US oil shale industry? Did I read that correctly? ..."
"... Yeah, but I suspect it was *written* incorrectly. Im betting the Saudis real target is the Russians. ..."
"... In 1975 dollars, thats $8.31 / bbl (with a cumulative inflation factor of 342% over 40 years), or $.45 / gal for gas (assuming a current price of $2.00 / gal). ..."
"... I spent 30 years in the oil industry and experienced many cycles. When it is up people cannot believe it will go down and when it is down people cannot believe it will go up. It is all a matter of time ..."
[Dec 17, 2015] Please Don't Shut Down the Internet, Donald Trump
[Dec 17, 2015] Putin hails Donald Trump as bright and talented