"The military, prison, and financial policies of the U.S. government are interrelated, creating a social system that is repressive and offensive to human dignity for people who experience it, especially the marginalized, the poor, the 'Third World'. The poor in America are filling the prisons and the 'Third World' are the fodder on the other end of the bombs in America's wars. In categorizing the abuse of power that is undertaken by institutions operating 'above the law' or through State privilege, the deprival of life by government policies through war and the deprival of liberty to individuals through imprisonment are particularly fundamental problems that relate to the basic human rights every person should enjoy equally. Capitalism is being used as a justification for these actions historically by American policies, leadership, and their rhetoric... When you discuss what the alternatives to the 'corruption' that favors the 1% or represents only a fraction of the 1% who are permitted an active or consequential role in politics, it seems that #ows is suggesting an alternative of direct, active, particpative democracy that is also interested in a reform of policy according to moral standards." + Understanding #ows - Noam Chomsky Interview

Economics News:

"The Welfare Costs of Tariffs, Monopolies, and Theft”
Solutions to Rent-Seeking
New Institutional Economics (NIE) Reform Movements - Submitted by: Miguel Hernandez

To understand New Institutional Economics (NIE) and what makes it unique from traditional economics and other schools of thought, three main characteristics of distinction can be used to define the theory and methodology behind its practice academically. The first is that NIE is based in a structural analysis of society, and views institutions as fundamental in their role of arranging economic relations nationally and internationally. Secondly, NIE is expansive in methodology in comparison to strictly statistical schools of economics, and it includes a broader range of analysis by including value-based judgments and criticism along with statistical analysis. Third, NIE is reform oriented, seeking to change the institutions that it studies and through them the greate...

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Economics News:

Advocates for the Bill of Rights to the Constitution
The Anti-Federalist Critique
Reclaiming the Ideals of Civil Liberty - Submitted by: Tech Streets

The Anti-Federalists in American history opposed aspects of the U.S. Constitution that they believed that would lead to centralized power, representation of minority interests over popular will, corruption and tyranny in government over the natural rights of citizens. A compromise in was reached in the negotiation the fundamental social contract of the nation. The ‘Founding Fathers’ agreed to support the Constitution as it is structured in the Articles of Organization only if the 10 Amendments subsequently known as the “Bill of Rights” were included in the contract, thus fundamentally guaranteeing the natural rights of all citizens against infringement or abrogation by the State. “Gridlock” as it is experienced in Washington D.C....

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Economics News:

Total US exposure to the PIGS Sovereign Debt
Global Bailout Plans
The European Sovereign Debt crisis during 2010-2011 - Submitted by: Miguel Hernandez

The European Sovereign Debt Crisis has been a main factor in stock market performance in the years 2010 – 2011, primarily because of the large potential exposure that global banking conglomerates (TBTF) are expected to have to capital losses in Greek, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and other bonds from countries who face an increasing risk of defaulting on their debt. Banks typically seek to earn income on funds that they are required to keep as capital reserves for loans through low risk investments such as governmental treasury bonds and other sovereign debt instruments that are rated favorably by bond traders and regulatory firms for management of large deposits, but the current economic climate suggests some sovereign nations could actually default in the E...

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"In sarvodaya, ethics and economics are intertwined. The aim is an improved quality of life, and this means that increasing the material standard of living should not be at the expense of social and spiritual values."
+ Sarvodaya - Gandhian Economics

‎‎"In economics, rent-seeking is an attempt to obtain economic rent by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by creating new wealth. For example, spending money on political lobbying in order to be given a share of wealth that has already been created. A famous example of rent-seeking is the limiting of access to lucrative occupations, as by medieval guilds or modern state certifications and licensures... The simplest definition of rent-seeking is the expenditure of resources attempting to enrich oneself by increasing one's share of a fixed amount of wealth rather than trying to create wealth. Since resources are expended but no new wealth is created, the net effect of rent-seeking is to reduce the sum of social wealth. Rent-seeking generally implies the extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity. The origin of the term refers to the gaining control of land or other pre-existing natural resources. In the modern economy, a more common example of rent-seeking is political lobbying to receive a government transfer payment, or to impose burdensome regulations on one's competitors in order to increase one's market share. Studies of rent-seeking focus on efforts to capture special monopoly privileges such as government regulation of free enterprise competition."
+ Definition of Rent-Seeking

"'Imagine if everything that could go wrong in the financial and geopolitical world did. That’s what the Council on Foreign Relations did in January, when it convened a group of 75 financial and political experts to play a War Game of the future. This one didn’t involve generals, superpowers and rogue nations. Rather, the key players were central bankers, Treasury secretaries and traders. But in simulating a collapse of the U.S. financial system, the New York-based group tapped into a new reality: that future threats to national security will be as much about economics and finance as they are about bombs and missiles.'
+ Sprott Report - The Visible Hand

Economics News:

GNH vs. GDP: Bhutanese King Jigme Singye Wangchuck
Gross National Happiness
Buddhist Ethical Foundations in Economics - Submitted by: Jeffrey Scott

Simon Kuznets, Harvard Economist and Nobel Prize winner, is credited historically with pioneering both the definition and calculation of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a method to measure economic growth, development, and patterns of activity within national economies. This has subsequently become the foundation of modern economic analysis, and is used in financing budgets, bond rates, international loans, and economic development plans of nations across the globe. The accuracy of these statistics is based in government record keeping and private accounting measures and includes the sum of all economic activity in the country generated by the various sectors of production and services as a guide to the economic activity of a nation.

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Economics News:

Jefferson opposed Standing Armies & Control by Banks
Jefferson on Banking
Charting the Evolution of Federal Finance Institutions - Submitted by: Walt Sonnabend

"I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." -Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. If we review the political landscape of America in 1816 in which Thomas Jefferson’s famous quote on banking and standing armies was taken, the main issues of the day were the Presidential Election of James Monroe (Democrat) vs. Rufus King (Federalist), the War of 1812 and its aftermath, Slavery, and the continuing debate in Washington on the creation of the Second Bank of the United States.

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Economics News:

Adam Smith’s System of Natural Liberty (Laissez Faire)
The Wealth of Nations (1776)
The Theoretical Foundation of Economics & Power - Submitted by: Jeffrey Scott

“The Wealth of Nations” (1776) by Adam Smith is considered canonical and of historical significance in Western Civilization, or increasingly, the globalized and standardized system of reviewed collective knowledge that is organized under scientific and academic principles in recognized higher education institutions, primarily because it is regarded as founding the modern tradition of economics as a discipline. “The Wealth of Nations” also accords with the natural law tradition and the Enlightenment era in European history narratives, which are established as the basis of the modern democratic State.

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History of Capitalism - The development of trade, money, & systems of exchange - Submitted by: Raymond Schach

In constructing a ‘history of capitalism,’ it is important to note that use of the term linguistically dates only to the 18th Century, where Adam Smith is credited with introducing the concept of capital in his classic text, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (1976). (Novara et al., 2003) Following this, historians recognize three figures as primary in defining capitalism philosophically: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx. Adam Smith wrote: "That part which, he expects, is...
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Raymond Schach
The Wall St. Bailout - Deflation as an existential risk to the entire system - Submitted by: David Marshall

Since the global economic collapse of 2008-9, the U.S. government has passed legislation based on Keynesian stimulus response to recessionary economic growth, and the Federal Reserve has acted in tandem by reducing interest rates to record lows, supporting market firms through direct purchases of financial assets, and promoting quantitative easing to increase money supply. The economic crisis itself, which some have called the “Great Recession,” can be viewed as having two stages related to the two political administrations in the U.S. and their responses...
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David Marshall
Sub-Prime Mortgage Meltdown - The Repeal of Glass-Steagall in Investment Banking - Submitted by: David Marshall

The sub-prime mortgage sector in America can be seen as one of the leading causes of the financial crisis that spread globally in the last decade, through the practice of collecting large numbers of mortgage contracts into derivative bonds that were sold internationally across the financial sector to banks, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and other groups as secure investment opportunities. (Krishnamurthy, 2008) Analysts recognize a weakness of lending standards particularly in the sub-prime mortgage market that led to a wider level of default than previously...
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David Marshall

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The ‘Double Coincidence of Wants’ Problem

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/david-graeber-on-the-invention-of-money-%E2%80%93-notes-on-sex-adventure-monomaniacal-sociopathy-and-the-true-function-of-economics.html -

"Anthropologists gradually began directly observing how economies where money was not used actually worked. They discovered a bewildering variety of arrangements, ranging from competitive gift-giving to communal stockpiling to places where economic relations centered on neighbors trying to guess each other’s dreams. What they never found was any place, anywhere, where economic relations between members of community took the form economists predicted."

 
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