Tag Archives: Inequility

Roughly half of global aid—is “phantom aid”

28 Tuesday Apr 2015

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Many in the first world imagine the amount of money spent on aid to developing countries is massive.

In fact, it amounts to only 0.3% of GNP of the industrialized nations.

Most wealthy nations spend far more on military than development.  Northern countries exhibiting mercantilist, or monopoly capitalist principles, rather than free market capitalism, even though that is what is preached to the rest of the world.

Aid Amounts are dwarfed By Effects Of First World Subsidies, Third World Debt, Unequal Trade, Etc.  Aid does not aid the recipient, it aids the donor.

There are numerous forms of aid, from humanitarian emergency assistance, to food aid, military assistance, etc. Development aid has long been recognized as crucial to help poor developing nations grow out of poverty. In 1970, the world’s rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their GNI (Gross National Income) as official international development aid, annually.

This year it is estimated that $37 billion—roughly half of global aid—is “phantom aid”  

Year after year almost all rich nations have constantly failed to reach their agreed obligations of the 0.7% target.  Instead of 0.7%, the amount of aid has been around 0.2 to 0.4%, some $150 billion short each year.

Considering the typical aid amount at around 0.25 to 0.4% of GNI for over 40 years, the total shortfall is a substantial and staggering amount: just under $5 trillion aid shortfall at 2012 prices:

And you wonder why we have problems in the world. 

Rich nations have rarely met their actual promised targets. Recent increases [in foreign aid] do not tell the whole truth about rich countries’ generosity, or the lack of it. Moreover, development assistance is often of dubious quality.

For example, the US is often the largest donor in dollar terms, but ranks amongst the lowest in terms of meeting the stated 0.7% target.

Most aid does not actually go to the poorest who would need it the most.

For example,

  • The US recently increased its military budget by some $100 billion dollars alone
  • Europe subsidizes its agriculture to the tune of some $35-40 billion per year, even while it demands other nations to liberalize their markets to foreign competition.
  • The US also introduced a $190 billion dollar subsidy to its farms through the US Farm Bill, also criticized as a protectionist measure.
  • While aid amounts to around $70 to 100 billion per year, the poor countries pay some $200 billion to the rich each year.

Some of the largest benefactors of European agricultural subsidies include the Queen of England and other royalties in Europe. 

Furthermore, aid has often come with a price of its own for the developing nations:

Sub-Saharan Africa is a massive $272 billion worse off because of ” free” trade policies forced on them as a condition of receiving aid and debt relief.

Aid amounts are also dwarfed by rich country protectionism that denies market access for poor country products, while rich nations use aid as a lever to open poor country markets to their products.

Aid systems based on the interests of donors instead of the needs of recipients’ make development assistance inefficient.

  • In effect then, there is more aid to the rich than to the poor.
  • The US, Europe and Japan spend $350 billion each year on agricultural subsidies (seven times as much as global aid to poor countries)
  • These subsidies are crippling Africa’s chance to export its way out of poverty.

Rich countries might be going through some tough times but that doesn’t change the fact that they owe the rest of the world. Rich countries need to switch from traditional forms of aid-giving to supporting global goods in new ways.

The UK gave not £10, not £1, but 56p ($0.91) in overseas aid for every £100 ($163) we earned as a country. On average, since 1990, we have given even less, 35p ($0.57).

Being truly generous requires rich countries to undergo fairly profound changes in the way they have lived for the last few decades.

We are creating is hugely unequal societies that will in the long run bite our hands off.

To suggest that we should seek to help the poorest at home by withdrawing support from people abroad who are much poorer, while the rich make off with their millions, is surely morally indefensible in any philosophy. It will take a long time to carry out the radical reform needed to bring aid to something verging on sanity and fairness.

Rich countries need to be more generous not less and, they should be proud when they stand in solidarity with the worse off. For the OECD countries to meet their obligations for aid to the poorer countries is not an economic problem.

It is a political one.

Just look at the most recent EU plans to allow only 5,000 refugees for resettlement by asylum seekers in response to the Mediterranean refugee crisis.

Wow I can’t say but I am impressed.

If they offered 5,000 places to persons qualifying for protection. That would be one 30th of the number of immigrants who reached Europe in 2014. This year more than 36,000 of them have arrived in countries like Italy, Malta and Greece.

https://soundcloud.com/rttv/worse-boat-capsizing

They need to make a commitment to resettle all the refugees who get over to Europe immediately as a basic humanitarian gesture, and then they need to get onto the problem of providing the resources and the funds to countries that have been decimated by Western foreign policy over the last 10-15 years. That would cost again a fraction of the amount of money that was spent on occupying Afghanistan, bombing Iraq; the amount of money that is pumped into Israel to ensure that they clamp down and repress the Palestinian people.

Western powers need to end their war policy in the Middle East, recognize the responsibility for the catastrophe in the region, and pump billions of pounds of emergency aid into the destroyed countries.

With the recent Earth Quakes in Nepal the eyes of the world will once again focus for a few weeks on the disaster and Aid. There will be the usual outpouring of support and offers of aid.

Every country’s foreign aid is a tool of foreign policy.

For example you would wonder why when Hurricane Katrina hit the richest country in the world.

  • Bangladesh offered $1 million and a disaster management team. The monetary aid was accepted, but the disaster management team was ultimately turned down on September 14, 2005.
  • “Pakistan offered doctors and paramedics, and $1 million to the American Red Cross, tents, sheets and pillows. The monetary aid was accepted, but the material aid was turned down on September 14, 2005.
  • “Honduras offered experts on flooding, sanitation and rescue personnel. This aid was turned down on October 6, 2005.
  • The government of Kuwait made the largest offer, with $100 million in cash and $400 million in oil. Because of the delay in accepting this aid, Kuwait eventually gave its monetary support to two private groups in order to support relief indirectly.

Not forgetting the most embarrassing diplomatic snafu during Hurricane Katrina involved the donation of nearly 400,000 Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) from the United Kingdom, which the U.S. government gladly accepted in September of 2005. That acceptance, however, had to be rescinded shortly thereafter when it was learned that the British MREs contained beef, which the U.S. still banned at that time due to the outbreak of mad-cow disease in the UK in the mid-1990s.

Furthermore, while $854 million was pledged, not all of this money reached the U.S.

My point here is-  if the USA could not handle the assistance on offer so what hope had the Philippines and now Nepal.

It begs the question as to why in this age of technology there is no software package to coordinator and track the Aid on offer.

It appears that the sheer number of donations from foreign countries only help complicate matters.

Take the Philippines currently suffering from Typhoon Hagupit. The country was donated by the US more than $37 million worth of food and relief goods to those who were affected by the typhoon. Whether it was ever delivered no one knows.

Too little aid reaches countries that most desperately need it;  All too often, aid is wasted on overpriced goods and services from donor countries.

'Total aid from all development assistance committee countries at a Glance, 2011-2012' from the OECD

Some aid money that is pledged often involves double accounting of sorts. Sometimes offers have even been reneged or just not delivered.

Aid tied with conditions cut the value of aid to recipient countries by some 25-40 percent, because it obliges them to purchase uncompetitive priced imports from the richer nations.

European and American farm subsidies “are crippling Africa’s chance to export its way out of poverty. It kicks away the ladder by which Africa could eventually climbed out of poverty. It purpose is to deprive others of the means of climbing up the ladder.

And to top it all we are now looking at the privatization of water and water services where the poor often can no longer access clear drinking water.

I suppose we have to grateful for the aid that does reach where it is needed whether it is privately donated or otherwise. As we all know when in need you get to know your friends.

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Democracy is clearly suffering from serious structural problems.

02 Thursday Apr 2015

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Welcome to a world where the bottom line trumps the common good and government takes a back seat to big business.

I have addressed this subject before. We all have our opinions on Capitalism and Democracy or Capitalism V Democracy.

Capitalism’s role is to increase the economic pie, nothing more.

While Democracy, at its best, enables citizens to debate collectively how the slices of the pie should be divided and to determine which rules apply to private goods and which to public goods.

If we are to restructure the relationship we could not start at a better place than by Putting Ownership Back into Democracy.

Our Governments are paying the penalty for the years they allowed corporations and elites buoyed by runaway economic success to undermine the government’s capacity to respond to citizens’ concerns which has lead to:  A sense of political powerlessness which is on the rise among citizens in Europe and the USA.

Today, the tasks of re balancing is increasingly being left to the market.

Companies have shed their loyalties to communities with CEOs who take home exorbitant paychecks from industries that often wreak havoc on the environment. They have morph into global supply chains of great power plundering the world for Profit.

Much of labor inequality comes because high earners getting paid through stock options and capital ownership.

Relative poverty, what we are now calling inequality cannot be viewed in isolation from the larger economy. We must take disparities in the way the benefits of growth and productivity are distributed into account. We haven’t really begun to tackle this problem.

The result is an arms race for political influence that is drowning out the voices of average citizens.

If the Labor Party in the UK were to adopted Putting Ownership Back into Democracy such a policy which would return it to its core values would win them the forthcoming election.

While corporations are increasingly writing their own rules, they are also being entrusted with a kind of social responsibility or morality which of course does not exist as Corporate executives are not authorized by anyone — least of all by their investors — to balance profits against the public good.

Shareholders do not invest in firms expecting the money to be used for charitable purposes. They invest to earn high returns.

Now it the time to create Tax breaks for any privately owned company that offer participating of employees in a share of their profits or losses through stock options. Such a course of action should be encouraged – so that workers can supplement their wages with significant capital ownership stakes and meaningful capital income and profit shares.”

In other words, let’s turn everyone into a capitalist.

The purpose of democracy is to accomplish ends we cannot achieve as individuals.

But democracy cannot fulfill this role when companies use politics to advance or maintain their competitive standing, or when they appear to take on social responsibilities that they have no real capacity or authority to fulfill.

That leaves societies unable to address the trade offs between economic growth and social problems such as job insecurity, widening inequality, and climate change. As a result, consumer and investor interests almost invariably trump common concerns

It is worth contemplating for a moment Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

Indeed if any Political party were to recognizes that the worsening inequality is an inevitable outcome of free market capitalism it would be large a step in the right direction.

Entrepreneurs are become increasingly dominant over those who own only their own labor. For instance Zero Hour Contracts or for a better word Modern day slavery.

Politicians are surrendered more and more power to trade, to global markets and to what I call supranational bodies like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the world trade organisation, the EU.

The question is, what is the point in electing any one when globalization is changing national politics and our states are activity selling your countries resources to privatization for short-term profit.

Fresh Water, Clean Air, Power, Rail Transport, Medical Care and Education should be state-owned.  Run by the Nation for the Nation not for the GDP.  

We are on a path toward a degree of inequality that will reach levels likely to cause severe social disruption. I don’t have to tell you where to look.

Politicians forget about the constant small changes which make up the whole economic picture and spend their time fighting between the past and future, between inherited entitlements and future investment. They put too much emphasis on elections and too little the other essential features of democracy.

It’s no wonder that politicians have to lie all the time.

There was a time that people elected representatives who pulled the levers of national power for a fixed period.

You don’t have to have a crystal ball when looking at the world to realize that economic growth worldwide is very likely to be stuck at 1 to 1.5 percent through the rest of this century.

And that the digital revolution it turning democracy’s institutions into out of date institutions that are handing more powers to special interests turning politics into the struggle of who gets what, when, how.

Technological changes and discontinuities (or globalization) have created a surge in inequality, where online hyper democracy rules and will continue to do so.

The Internet makes it easier to organise and agitate, in a world where people are voting daily in reality TV or supporting a petition with the click of a mouse. They only vote for Government every five years.

Political power changing is also a major contributor to the rise in inequality in advanced economies.

If we are honest with ourselves today, we will acknowledge that the ideal of Democracy has never failed, but that we haven’t carried it out, and in our lack of faith we have debased the human being who must have a chance to live if Democracy is to be successful.

The Moral Basis of Democracy (1940)

When the Clean Air Act was passed in the United States, the joke in Tokyo and Osaka was that while Ford and General Motors called in their lawyers, Toyota and Nissan called in their engineers.

Here is what going wrong.

If political power exactly followed economic power there is little hope for Democracy.

We all know that it is not possible to please all the people all of the time.

The problem is that democracy and capitalism are not bed partners.

Traditional liberal government policies on spending, taxation and regulation will fail to diminish inequality. The higher” the rate of return on capital is in comparison to the rate of growth of the economy. The higher this ratio is, the greater inequality is.

It all starting roughly with the onset of World War I.

The owners of capital – those at the top of the pyramid of wealth and income – absorbed a series of devastating blows. These included the loss of credibility and authority as markets crashed; physical destruction of capital throughout Europe in both World War I and World War II; the raising of tax rates, especially on high incomes, to finance the wars; high rates of inflation that eroded the assets of creditors; the nationalization of major industries in both England and France; and the appropriation of industries and property in post-colonial countries.

In Eisenhower’s words, “Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear from that party again in our political history.”

Leaving us with a belief that the economy is the be all and the end all to keep the masses happy.

However personal income distribution is getting more unequal — which indeed is what we have witnessed in the past 30 years. Zero Hour Contracts, no security, higher and higher Vat.

There is no point in creating millions of modern-day slavery jobs. They are worthless in galvanizing a nation’s wealth. Pride of ownership is what produces productivity and happiness. It’s not rocket science.

On a world scale to halt inequality there are a few options:

Create a World Aid Fund which feeds of Profit by placing a world aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions ( over $20,000) on all Foreign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. (see previous Posts)

Or

Impose a global progressive tax on wealth – global in order to prevent (among other things) the transfer of assets to countries without such levies. A global tax, in this scheme, would restrict the concentration of wealth and limit the income flowing to capital.

Or

Impose an annual graduated tax on stocks and bonds, property and other assets that are customarily not taxed until they are sold.

The very infeasibility of establishing a global wealth tax serves to reinforce the argument concerning the inevitability of increasing inequality.

The International Labor Organization, an agency of the United Nations, reported recently that the number of unemployed grew by 5 million from 2012 to 2013, reaching nearly 202 million by the end of last year. It is projected to grow to 215 million by 2018.

No country can deal with Climate Change, and the forthcoming shortage of fresh water, never mind tax evasion.

The political economy is such that the political power to enact those taxes also requires a mobilized citizenry and institutional power, such as a robust labor movement.  When in fact all that people want is equal opportunity.

I am no Karl Marx but the capitalist economic system is in its present state undermining the democratic system by compromising the very values that democracy was founded upon.

It is imperative to remember that we are also citizens who have it in our power to reduce social costs, making the true price of the goods and services we purchase as low as possible for all.

Conclusion:

Since capitalism means the rule of a small elite in the economy, and democracy means the rule of all people, the option of capitalism as the base for democracy is questionable regardless of the wishes of the workers or the community.
Are there any authentic democratic institutions left.  No.
Lets hope Capitalism as we know it is obsolete well before machines do everything.
The contradictions between democracy and capitalism will be on full display in the UK elections if you are interested over the coming weeks.
https://youtu.be/9uNYsbOKIFw
https://youtu.be/iFDe5kUUyT0

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THE FUTURE OF TAXATION.

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

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Tax Due Warning - A single, angled spotlight reveals a...

A common thief does not typically act with greater force or stealth.

I would guess like me you have tried to get your head around the taxes you pay without much success.

With the rising inequality concerns maybe it time you did as taxation has a future that will affect you and your love ones.

But where, and in what guise? Let’s have a look.

Slow population growth is depressing income growth, which leads to higher taxes.

Virtually every government could pay off its debts by taxing wealth.

Luckily for the rich such taxes are often politically unacceptable.

In other words, fiscal problems are best regarded as problems of dysfunctional governance by governments that are selling off state assets into Privatization until there will not be enough national wealth to pay off any debts.

Anyway for the purpose of this post it is essential that we try to appreciate the difference between real taxes and current (or nominal) taxes.

The real tax over any significant period is the level of government spending in relation to national output. The higher public spending as a percentage of GDP, the higher the real tax. That amount must in time be transferred from private to public hands—be it now or later.

The current tax, for its part, is the amount actually paid to a government in any given period, and is almost never equal to the real tax.

Got it. No. Shame on you. Try again.

A current tax lower than the real tax (that is, a public deficit) implies higher current taxes in the future, while a current tax higher than the real
tax (a public surplus—a phenomenon observable in only three of the past 50 years) implies lower current taxes in the future.

Now. You have.

So the stated political orientation of the administration presiding over a gap between current and real taxation—be it social democratic or of the supply side right—does not matter.

Because deferred taxes are simply claims against the public.

There are two ways to meet these claims:

1) higher current taxes in some future period or 2) inflating the claims away.

Inflation, which generally induces a shift of wealth from private to public hands, is the functional equivalent of a tax increase. These relations do not follow from any policy or ideology, but are purely matters of arithmetic.

Any clearer.? It’s of no matter.

Because what appears on the surface to be public debate over the appropriate level of taxation—and this goes on all the time—is in fact political maneuver by interested constituencies to get out of the line of fire of inevitable tax increases while deflecting the higher taxes onto someone else.

Now you have.

Different taxes do have different allocative effects.

Future taxes will perpetuate or even compound the misallocative effects of the present tax system.

Taxes in the next ten years, even though considerably higher than today’s, will nonetheless be insufficient, in all likelihood, to fill the revenue gap that opened wide during the last ten.

Inflation is all that remains to look forward to.

For a governments it will be like letting go to the pull of gravity.

Most wealth has already been subjected to income and other taxes, perhaps multiple times. It doesn’t seem fair to the holders of that wealth to suddenly pay additional taxes on assets that they thought were in the clear, and such taxes would signal that previous policy has failed.

It seems to me that on both ends of the political spectrum there is remarkably little concern with the allocative effects of taxation in its various forms.

However it matters how you tax if we are to halt the growing inequality in our life styles as over the next 10 to 15 years current taxes will increase mightily. Why?  Because our own consumption, fueled by debt, outstripped our incomes in recent years, while foreign savers, predominantly from Asia/China/and the Far East financed the bulk of new investment in our economies.

Why aren’t foreign savers put off by double tax on capital income?

The answer is that they would be, if they paid it. But they don’t.

Another reason it that the massive fiscal stimulus that have been pumped into our economies by Quantitative easing and the selling off of state Assets (To Sovereign Wealth Funds, see previous posts) will in their wake pull up current taxes or spread inflation, another form of higher taxation —whether consumers or savers, suppliers of capital or suppliers of labor, or both in a maelstrom of inflation.

When income from labor is saved rather than consumed, the income from that saving (now capital income, in economic terms) is taxed again.

This “second” tax on saving makes the tax cost of capital income greater than that of labor income spent on immediate consumption. The two separate layers of income tax imposed on corporate earnings and then again on dividends distributed to shareholders actually imply a third tax on corporate profits. This goes far toward explaining why we don’t save.

What can be done:

What is needed is a shift in the burden of taxation away from capital income and onto consumption.  In short, some form of consumption tax should be the predominant national tax.

The problem with a value-added tax is that people can to a considerable extent earn their incomes in one tax environment and spend them (either at retail on vacation or wholesale in retirement) in a different (and VAT-free) environment, so that ultimately both their incomes and their consumption are untaxed.

Value-added taxes and payroll taxes are analogous to an income tax that is imposed territorialy, whereas a tax on consumed income is imposed on worldwide income, minus the component of saving, and is therefore a tax on the worldwide consumption of a taxpayer.

(Turnover-type taxes such as sales taxes and value-added taxes are widely and correctly understood as consumption taxes. So is any tax that does not reach capital income.)

A tax on consumed income is an income tax in which personal saving is deducible from taxable income, thus excluding capital income and leaving only the amount of income that is consumed subject to current taxation.

In stead of contemplating such a tax in many EU Member States we got political, academic and public debate on wealth taxation which always gains traction in times of strained public finances.

The question is who ultimately bears the burden of wealth taxation (tax incidence)

The existence of a blurry frontier between capital and labor, income for the high-income earners, the role of transparency and automatic exchange of information in facilitating tax compliance and the serious political economy constraints makes any form of wealth tax unworkable.

Just imagine the difficulty to evaluate one’s wealth and the administrative costs along with the risks of tax evasion and capital flight.

Many people have become distressed about their taxes because they have been led to believe that the property they acquired would not he taxed to the extent that it has been. Accordingly, they have paid prices for the property that have reflected those expectations. They may be the reasons they are “mad as hell” simply because they feel that they have been misled by their government and that they not only have had to give up taxes but also have had to give up wealth in terms of reduced market prices for their property.

Economics have performed the heroic task of measuring wealth for eight leading economies: the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Australia.

Their estimates reveal some striking trends. For instance, wealth accumulation in these eight countries has risen relative to yearly production.

Wealth-to-income ratios in these nations climbed from a range of 200 to 300 percent in 1970 to a range of 400 to 600 percent in 2010. Behind the changing ratios is some bad news, namely that slow productivity growth and but also some good news — that relative peace and capital gains have preserved wealth up to now.

Virtual economies pose a real-world tax compliance risk, even if citizens aren’t purposefully shielding their money.

No one has a clue on how to manage the Planet. The only way forward is a consumption tax regime.

 

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Sovereign Wealth Funds. Alarm.

30 Sunday Nov 2014

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<img alt=”” src=”http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/04/79/29/e0/1728.jpg”/>
This photo of 1728 is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Its back to my hobby-horse the ongoing Privatization of the World.

It is of course is happening in a clever way, with very careful paperwork, so we have the option of pretending that it’s not actually happening, right up until the bitter end.

I often wonder is it just me. You barley hear a mummer about it from any other quarter. Other than Ireland where the population has woken up to the Privatization of water.

Perhaps it’s that no one gives a tosser.

That our Governments are systematically divesting themselves of bits and pieces of their own sovereignty, by transfer of assets and service functions from public to private hands.

It’s taking place all over the world without really anyone noticing it happening — often not even the people are asked to vote formerly on the issue.

It is my contention that it is the quality of the state rather than the fact that assets are owned by the state that matters more. In developing countries with extensive market and information failures the state should play an important role in promoting equitable development over the long run not sell of their assets to the highest buyers.

At the political level privatization has been challenged by workers affected by attendant retrenchments and the restructuring of internal and external labor markets consequent upon privatization that has resulted in increased worker vulnerability, and by consumers who have often been negatively affected by increased prices based on cost recovery pricing regimes instituted as a consequence of privatization, or by reduction in service provision arising from “efficiency enhancing” measures as a consequence of privatization.

No one knows precisely how much money is held by SWFs but it is estimated that they currently own $3.5 trillion in assets, and within one decade they could balloon to $10–15 trillion. (equivalent to America’s gross domestic product, an amount larger than the current global stock of foreign reserves of the USA which is about $5 trillion.)

Imagine the biggest and most aggressive hedge fund on Wall Street, then imagine that same fund is fifty or sixty times bigger and outside the reach of any other major regulatory authority, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what an SWF is.

The rise of sovereign wealth funds (SWF) as new power brokers in the world economy can no longer be looked at as a singular phenomenon but rather as part of what can be defined a new economic world order.

This new order has been enabled by several mega trends which operate in a self-reinforcing manner, among them the meteoric rise of developing Asia, accelerated globalization, the rapid flow of information and the sharp increase in the price of oil by a delta of over $100 per barrel in just six years which is enabling Russia and OPEC members to accumulate unprecedented wealth and elevate themselves to the position of supreme economic powers.

It will not be long before transactions involving investment by sovereign wealth funds, as with other types of foreign investment, may raise legitimate national security concerns.

Concerns are growing that the purpose of the investments might be to secure control of strategically important industries for political rather than financial gain.

They on the other hand see themselves as passive, long-term investors, driven solely by the need to make a good return on their country’s surplus cash.

There is a degree of looking through the wrong end of the telescope to all this.

Sovereign wealth funds have with total assets estimated at $5.4tn as of October 2013. The funds have gained more than $750bn in additional assets since 2012 of which only $60 billion has gone to recent bank bailouts.

They are rapidly becoming owners of big chunks of American,the UK and Europe infrastructures.

Unlike the central banks of most Western countries, whose main function is to accumulate reserves in an attempt to stabilize the domestic currency, most SWFs have a mission to invest aggressively and generate huge long-term returns.

The origin of these SWFs is not even relevant, necessarily.

What is relevant is that these funds are foreign.

They are state-owned investment pools that thanks to a remarkable series of events in the middle part of the last decade they are buying up your governments services such as water treatment, parking meters, toll highways, rail links, ports, public infrastructure projects, commercial real estate all delivering a lot of cash into the coffers of sovereign wealth funds like the Qatar Investment Authority, the Libyan Investment Authority, Saudi Arabia’s SAMA Foreign Holdings, and the UAE’s Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Some recent activity:

(The first was the announcement that the Qatari royal family is planning a large investment in the controversial £50billion HS2 rail link, focused on a major new station and housing scheme in central Birmingham.

Qatar Investment Authority, one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, is soon to table a new bid to take over Songbird Estates which owns the iconic Canary Wharf tower in east London, one of the best-known modern symbols of British capitalism.  

Libya’s sovereign wealth fund is suing French bank Societe Generale in a British court for $1.5 billion for allegedly channeling bribes to allies of the son of slain dictator Muammar Qaddafi.  

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday the country’s sovereign wealth fund could reach $55 billion by March next year if oil prices kept high.

Iran earned $100 billion in oil revenue in 2011. Iran is both the world leader in Shariah Compliant Finance and the world’s most active state sponsor of Jihadist terrorism.

Deutsche Bahn Seeks Sovereign Funds for the state-owned railway, is seeking to sell shares to sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia during the initial public offering. )

What is more to the point, is we’re being colonized/Privatized.

Industry today may not be regarded as such an industry tomorrow, and vice versa.  Just look at the explosion of energy prices — thanks to a bubble that Western banks and perhaps some foreign SWFs had a big hand in creating.

Out side any regulation these funds are free to plunder the earth in the form of Hedge Funds( (which they have a bunch) with out anyone knowing who the funds investors are.

The point here is if these funds.

Are not regulated by the relevant international bodies determining which kinds of information about their balance sheets, management structures, investment objectives, portfolio breakdowns, and so forth should be supplied by sovereign wealth funds. The European Union could then put curbs on funds failing to comply with the standards for the publication of such information.

One way or the other they should be Capped ( See previous posts)

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We don’t live in a digital world – the washing machine has changed lives more than the internet.

23 Sunday Nov 2014

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We do however live in a Capitalist World.

Capitalism is woven into nearly every aspect of our lives, yet it’s rarely subject to substantive conversation.

If we’re to move forward as a society, capitalism needs to be up for serious discussion, honest evaluation and, ultimately, systemic change. Capitalism is often discussed—even dismantled—in academia, but not in terms that make sense to non-specialists.

If there is a problem with capitalism, it is with the greedy few who occasionally foul up the system for the rest of us. The 85 richest people in the world hold as much wealth as today’s “other half”—3.5 billion of the world’s 7 billion humans. Who thinks that’s a fair system? How can it be acceptable that anyone, let alone 2.4 billion people, lives on less than $2 a day?

With more free time, we could build a more robust democracy by engaging with the political issues that affect our lives and organizing more participatory structures to make decisions in our communities. If there’s anything threatening to capitalism, it’s that!

It’s convenient for capitalists to have everyone else thinking they don’t work hard enough and that any ill fortune is their own fault.

How well can capitalism be working when so many say it doesn’t? Capitalism can’t work for everyone. If it did, it wouldn’t be capitalism.”why do we settle for a system that fails so many?

So here is a hypothetical question.

If you were asked to explain Capitalism to an individual who had never experienced or heard of Capitalism what would you say it is.

Here are a few Quotes to get you started then have a look below at what I think.

Gustave Flaubert

“As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky.” ― Gustave Flaubert

Carl Sagan

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of thebamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. Thebamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

Edward Abbey

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” ― Edward Abbey, The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West

Michael Parenti

“The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.” ― Michael Parenti,  Against Empire

Napoleon

“The hand that gives is among the hand that takes. Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain.” ― Napoleon

George Carlin

“Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.” ― George Carlin

Gustave Flaubert

“As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will there be for virtue? When Nature has been so subjugated that she has lost all her original forms, where will that leave the plastic arts? And so on. In the mean time, things are going to get very murky.” ― Gustave Flaubert

Philip Slater

“Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.” ― Philip Slater

Russell Brand

“Perhaps if we could popularise through the techniques of branding and consumerism, a different idea, a different narrative, perhaps the world can change. After all it changes constantly and incessantly, it’s just the perceptions that we have are governed by people with self-interest and are not in alignment with the health and safety of us as individuals or as a planet.” ― Russell Brand

Jonathan Sacks

“To whom is an international corporation answerable? Often they do not employ workers. They outsource manufacturing to places far away. If wages rise in one place, they can, almost instantly, transfer production to somewhere else. If a tax regime in one country becomes burdensome, they can relocate to another. To whom, then, are they accountable? By whom are they controllable? For whom are they responsible? To which group of people other than shareholders do they owe loyalty? The extreme mobility, not only of capital but also of manufacturing and servicing, is in danger of creating institutions that have power without responsibility, as well as a social class, the global elite, that has no organic connection with any group except itself.” ― Jonathan Sacks

Daniel Pinchbeck

“The capitalist mind perceives the world purely in terms of material resources to be used for its benefit, to increase productivity and profit without thought of long-term consequence. If there is still a vague and oppressive sense of guilt, of wrongness and imbalance, this gnawing guilt spurs capitalism on to greater acts of consumption, more …  more violent attempts to subjugate nature, more totalizing efforts to create distractions. To the “rational materialist” mind, death is the end of everything; this thought feeds its rage against nature, which has placed it in this position of despair.” ― Daniel Pinchbeck

Barry Unsworth

“Money is sacred as everyone knows… So then must be the hunger for it and the means we use to obtain it. Once a man is in debt he becomes a flesh and blood form of money, a walking investment. You can do what you like with him, you can work him to death or you can sell him. This cannot be called cruelty or greed because we are seeking only to recover our investment and that is a sacred duty.” ― Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger

Chris Hedges

“Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself.” ― Chris Hedges, The Death of the Liberal Class

My Thoughts:

In fact, the term capitalist, is a remnant of sloppy, hysterical, anti-commerce, 19th Century thinking that survives to this day.

I guess it all depends on what kind of capitalism we are talking about and the problem with capitalism is that it is rarely practiced in its entirely.

You might say it is a rat race for the worker who must live a life in which there is a real possibility that changes in consumer demand or in technology will eliminate his/her livelihood and in which his/her ability to find a new job is conditioned by his/her “ability to compete”.

There is not a single day that passes that I don’t hear some complaint about the state of capitalism. “What is wrong with capitalism today?” is dependent on who you ask.

Modern market capitalism has shifted recently with the emerging supremacy of money markets and the financial system over the actual trade of goods. The new capitalism” is based on mathematics rather than trade and its currently practiced is simply not sustainable.

We do not have global organizations capable of managing these tension points nor are societies willing to curb growth and consumerism.

Under capitalism insensitivity to human needs has developed. One of the fundamental faults of capitalism is the basic axiom that if everybody tries to accumulate as much property/money as possible the general interest of the people will be served.

For years now I have watched the gradual drift in the minds of the average person from an understanding of our political economic reality and the need for corrective actions.

The reality is fear and greed are part of the human condition and Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

The mass media is becoming more and more an opiate, an aid for living the unexamined life.

The current world tensions are a result of a struggle for spheres of influence and trade—the socialist markets are essential not open to trade from capitalist countries.

So if I were to explain to days Capitalism I would tempted to say that the essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many.

But no economic order to date has so obviously displayed such an enormous productive capacity as has capitalism.  However whether it aids the poor in escaping their poverty or abets the forces that perpetrate that poverty is still to be seen as Capitalism is inherently exploitative in that it forces people to be “competitive” rather than “cooperative”.

As long as Capitalism exists, there will always be people who will be rich and those that are too poor. One longs for a kind of economic “peaceable kingdom”; such cannot exist under an economic system in which competition plays such a large role as it does in capitalism. For the most part, capitalism can be viewed as complex system based on inequality and monopoly.

In a true Capitalist market economy, we would not price fix, bail out banks, give subsidies, etc.

Peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.

In what they call the third world we have glittering mansion overlooking a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force. Let nothing interfere with economic growth, even though that growth is castrating truth, poisoning beauty, turning a continent into a shit-heap and riving an entire civilization insane.

The hand that gives is among the hand that takes.

Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain.

Our political problems have deepened with the demise of unions as an effective political force, the continued growth in the belief in the desirability of pyramid economics and class structure (which has been sold by a media controlled by those at the top of the pyramid), and the dependence of our two-party system upon those at the top of the pyramid for funds to cover their election expenses.
Here’s no such thing as a ‘free’ market.
Globalisation isn’t making the world richer.
Poor countries are more entrepreneurial than rich ones.

Higher paid managers don’t produce better results.

We are quickly reaching the tipping point where growth in GDP in any particular country comes at the expense of growth in GDP of another.

What would replace it (capitalism)?

It’s too late to replaced it by any other system and extremely difficult to prompt any-other system but not too late to rectify its glaring weaknesses.

It’s not to late to suggest/generate ideas to create a better society where everybody is properly fed, clothed, and housed; where everyone worked and received a fair return for their work with none receiving too much; where intellectual development for all is encouraged; where businesses are the servant to man; where the production of war materials end; where the ending of all exploitation, including one region by another or one class by another; where and the ending of a press which is controlled by those who make up the ruling class.

To find the world that could exist after capitalism, we must look to the worlds already being created in the countless cracks of capitalist domination.

Switzerland is to debate the introduction of a living income for all its citizen’s rather than a living wage and social welfare. Perhaps the first step in the right direction. In the meantime Capitalism is still alive and well.

All we can do is to keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us.

Today’s economy profitability is important, but there are also a plethora of external and internal factors involved which determine the type of model that exists today.

(See Previous Posts. Create a World Aid Fund by capping Greed/profit with a Commission of 0.05%)

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What is prevents us from collaborating in a global effort to solve the climate crisis?

02 Sunday Nov 2014

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The expression, not a hope in hell comes to mind when you consider the likelihood of human beings working together. Human beings are deeply divided by nationality, and sectarian belief and the environmental crises.

Most Societies that have perished have done so through neglect and self delusion; they have failed to rise to the challenges they faced.

It is much more difficult to understand human history than to understand problems in the field of science. But do we see the historical of human societies shaping the modern world?

No.

Instead the great majority of us are passive robots helplessly programmed by  the Media, must have advertising, short-term memory, and the capitalist mantra I am all right Jack.

Why?

If we were serious about caring for the world, about people living in the misery of poverty, now and about future generations we should be mobilizing resources to develop sustainable technologies with the single mind determination seen when countries prepare for war.

So riddle me this; While it is with you, it is with me. It flies without wings.

While it flies, our out of date World Organisations struggling to function in a quagmire of power struggles all disguised by the cloaked language of Foreign Policies.

While our Capitalistic Societies is encouraged to consume 24/7 in order to drive our economies of the sake of vast profit made by computer algorithms.

While our real values are being privatized by Sovereignty Wealth Funds.

While mass immigration will be the result of ignoring Climate change.

While population growth is unstoppable.

While inequality is leading to conflicts.

While the effects of antibiotics are becoming diluted.

While Social media is distorting the truth.

While extinction of animal life accelerates.

While we spend trillions on space exploration.

While we watch our finite resources diminish.

While we all see are the pictures of the world below,

.     JAN GOLDSTEIN    

Is it not time to do something before Inequity and Greed the two elements that contribute the most to the Worlds problems, destroy us all long before Climate Change.  We can talk till the cows come home, but all our Political ideologies will fail till the distribution of wealth gains traction, which can only be achieved by Capping Greed.

Conventional wisdom’s seldom collapse on their own. They collapse only when challenged, only when advocates for change trust forward initiatives that expose the bankruptcy of the conventionally wise.

(See previous posts. What 0.05% Aid Commission could achieve)

Feel free to add to the while lists, perhaps someone in a while might read it before time runs out.

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Quantitative Easing – enough money to stretch from earth to the moon.

31 Friday Oct 2014

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Popular media’s definition of quantitative easing focuses on the concept of central banks increasing the size of their balance sheets to increase the amount of credit available to borrowers.

Theoretically, this leads to increased spending results in increased consumption, which increases the demand for goods and services, fosters job creation and, ultimately, creates economic vitality. (a simple explanation)

The idea is that by making it easier to obtain loans, interest rates will drop and consumers and businesses will borrow and spend.

So why are we most of us still struggling to make a living?

What in fact is happening is that a flood of cash has encouraged reckless financial behavior and directed a fire-hose of money to emerging economies that cannot manage the cash.

As I understand it the sole purpose of money is as a stable measure of value that facilitates the exchange of goods and investment. Quantitative easing, by its very name, involves the corruption of money’s sole purpose as a stable medium of exchange.

If only life were so simple.

By destabilizing the value of money, Quantitative easing works against the very investment that would drive economic growth. It’s supporting the very government spending and housing consumption that got us into trouble to begin with. It is the horribly obtuse notion that central banks can produce real economic growth through their monetary machinations.

It is financing the ongoing economic hardship through its expanded borrowing of bank reserves. invest in emerging markets, commodity-based economies, commodities themselves, and non-local opportunities rather than to lend to local businesses that are having difficulty getting loans.

Quantitative easing policies have benefited mainly the wealthy. For example 40% of those gains went to the richest 5% of British households.

Quantitative easing cash ends up overwhelmingly in profits, thereby exacerbating income inequality. The consequent social tensions that arise from it, is fundamentally a regressive redistribution program that has been boosting wealth for those already engaged in the financial sector or those who already own homes, but passing little along to the rest of the economy.

It is a primary driver of income inequality.

It might well have been better saved if insolvent firms, institutions like Banks had been allowed to restructure through bankruptcy, and our central banks had provided credit only to sound banks on a short-term basis.

What we have now is central banks selling the assets they have accumulated and it wont be long before interest rates start to climb, choking off what they call the recovery.

Technically, a central bank could become insolvent ( although its liabilities are essentially costless) in a manner similar to a commercial bank. In practice, the situation is very different because a central bank’s assets and liabilities are different from those of a commercial bank, and because the central bank can issue money to meet its obligations. In effect, they can bail themselves out by printing money.

I am no financial ingenious guru but the evidence of Quantitative easing seems to me to be a devaluation of buying power of your money. A good first step in avoiding such a lack of confidence would be to start unwinding the QE policies.

When we look back it might have been better to have put a million in the bank account of ever citizen, which they could have drawn down over twenty to twenty-five years provided they cleared their mortgage, took out health and old age insurance. This would have stimulate the economy for all.

As I said I’m no financial adviser and I’m certainly not “rich, my advice to anyone reading this post  ”Rather than settling for a wage (and be “owned” by bosses), you should be come owners.

Have a look at the below. All comments welcome.

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Because the Fed’s—it does not pay interest on Federal Reserve Notes and typically pays no interest on reserves—it almost always remits money to the Treasury.

Since 2008, however, the Fed has sold off virtually all of its short-term Treasury securities and acquired instead longer-term Treasuries and the debt and MBS issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

These securities are riskier relative to those normally held by the Fed for two reasons.whether a central bank can become insolvent, therefore, centers on what it can do to cause the public to lose confidence in its currency. A good first step in avoiding such a lack of confidence would be to start unwinding the QE policies.

 

 

Even the invention of quantitative easing is shrouded in it did raise economic activity a bit. controversy. that central banks have the capacity to keep inflation in check if the money they have created begins circulating more rapidly.

Are we now just beginning to reap the dark side of the Industrial Revolution

17 Friday Oct 2014

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The Historiography of the first World War bear witness to destruction and death made possible by the Industrial revolution.

The present day turmoil that we see in the world has its roots created by man during this period.

So has the Industrial Revolution improved life or not? Is the world a better place? A safer place? Do most people have more material wealth than they did two centuries ago? Are we healthier? Are we happier? Is the world more socially and economically just? Is the world headed in the right direction?

It’s not possible to answer all these questions without an in-depth examination of the Industrial Revolution and its effects. There is no definitive answer, other than in short, we cannot hope to understand the modern world without understanding the Industrial Revolution as it resulted in the most profound, far-reaching changes in the history of humanity.

Perhaps it is adequate to say that its influence continues to sweep through our lives today. Just look at the last 250 years of industrialization.

It has altered our lives more than any event or development in the past 12,000 years: in where we live, how we work, what we wear, what we eat, what we do for fun, how we are educated, how long we live and how many children we have.

It greatest failure is that it has not spread wealth evenly across the globe, and the consequences have often been unjust.

For example, to-day in developing countries, where 85% of people in the world live, 16,000 children die each day from hunger-related causes—that’s one child every five seconds.

It did provided the countries that first adopted it with the technological and economic advantages necessary to eventually rule most of the world. In short, the Industrial Revolution is the “game changer” of modern world history. More than anything else, it’s what makes the modern world, well, “modern.”

But how has it come about that 10% of the world’s wealthiest people controlled 85% of the world’s wealth? Mostly because they were born into wealth that was made during the Industrial revolution.

So what exactly is the Industrial Revolution?

An Industrial Revolution at its core occurs when a society shifts from using tools to make products to using new sources of energy, such as coal, to power machines in factories, oil, electricity. nuclear power.

It began at the end of the 18th century, but it has yet to end.

It has transformed into much more complex global phenomena recently. Multi-national corporations design, build, and assemble products using resources and labor from around the world.

Proponents of the benefits of industrialization point to amazing inventions, technological advances, and increased global wealth. Global GDP per capita—the most common measurement of national wealth—has increased 800% over the past 200 years.

I would say to them that it also developed into a global economic system that seems exploitative and unsustainable, fueling unbridled capitalism that has led to exploitation of the weakest and most vulnerable on a global scale.

Giving Birth to multinational corporations that owe their loyalty not to any nation but to the profit motive.

So what happens in a country when free-market capitalism has no constraints.

The record of the last five thousand years of history clearly suggests that every single preceding civilization has perished, no matter where or how long it has been able to flourish, as a result of its sustained assault on the environment, usually ending in soil loss, flooding, and starvation, and a successive distension of all social strata, usually ending in rebellion, warfare, and dissolution.

They all seem unable to appreciate scale or limits, and in their growth and turgidity were unable maintain balance within or without.

Our Industrial civilization is no different only in that it is now much larger and more powerful than any known before, by geometric differences in all dimensions, and its collapse will be far more extensive and thorough going, far more calamitous.

We are now in the technology age and you might say that The Industrial age is water under the bridge.

No matter how you look at it we are staring down the barrel of a gun with many different bullets. Climate change,  Killer virus, World conflicts due to unadulterated Greed/ Rampant Inequality, Technology deserts and disfunctional non resourced World Organisations.

While demand for depleting resources are skyrocketing ,water, clear air and energy. By any biological gauge we moving beyond sustainability.

So is it time to abandon the concept of sustainability? altogether, or can we find an accurate way to measure it.  If so, how can we achieve it? And if not, how can we best prepare for the coming ecological decline?

The most important resources that drive current industrialization are finite. If billions of people replicate the same level of consumption, they will hasten? ecological and economical disaster.

So who or what will keep us from creating pollution or exploiting weak, desperate countries?

Who will stop global resource depletion?

Is there any point to the Technology Revolution, other than brain work instead of muscle work, if history is only going to repeating itself.

Now you don’t have to be a raw prawn to know that most of our all-powerful politicians and world organisations live in what I call a reactivate state.

By the time they have called a conference and blabbered on for days it’s too late. Now many times have you witnessed the pathetic sight of the UN and its world Organisations pleading for funds, equipment. Just look at the current Ebola outbreak. Growing the economy at all costs and keeping Wall Street happy seems to be their solution to all or woes.

Here are a few things that could be done.

Restore meaning to sustainability as more than just a marketing tool.

Share knowledge, share capital, and investments around the world.

Remove the Veto in the United nations and give all nations an equal standing.

Remove Carbon Credits. Set trading admission penalties for pollution.

And Make Greed contribute by,

Place a world Aid Commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over £20,000, and Foreign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. This would create a perpetual fund removing the need to beg for funds every time there is a disaster. The funds could replace the World bank, the IMF, Save the Children, fund Conservation, and make enormous inroads into Inequality the scourge of our Technology Age.

For me there has be a greater willingness by our politicians to question conventional measures of economic growth in favor of more sustainable models with a greater emphasis on well-being.

Before you bombard me with all the good things the have come out of the Industrial Revolution I refer you to the title of this post.

Yes we would not have the Internet, Landed on the moon, developed drugs, and invented this and that, but there is no point in relying on all the answers coming from Google than experiencing it in reality.

IF WE DON’T WANT THE LEGACY of the Industrial Revolution to be a divided world due to Inequality we must conquer Greed by harnessing it to contribute to all or there will be nothing left to be greedy about.

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As anticipated – Our World Leaders Excelled themselves once more.

24 Wednesday Sep 2014

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oil refinery moon

They say that Sarcasm is the lowest for of wit.

Well if so, we should all be showering large doses of it on the recent UN Climate Change Summit in New York the first such meeting on climate in five years.

The World leaders held back on making new commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions or to give significant climate finance to developing countries, leaving it to business, cities and campaign groups to produce the real action on climate.

Why?

Because our world leaders who were present at the Summit once again showed their in dept knowledge of the Defining problem facing the world. Climate Change.

Those who were not present obviously had more pressing engagements.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi India and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the heads of the world’s two most populous nations. In empirical terms, it’s hard to think of two more important leaders in the world right now: Together they lead more than 2.5 billion people, more than a third of the world’s population. They also were the first- and third-biggest producers of carbon dioxide emissions (the United States holds the No. 2 spot).

Wanted Poster.

 President Vladimir Putin the veto man. Russia is the 10th-most-populous country in the world and the fourth-largest producers of carbon dioxide emissions.

Wanted Poster.

 Both Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, two leaders known for their relative skepticism about climate change not in attendance.

Wanted Poster.

              

So what happened in response to thousands of world citizens marching. Not much according to reports I have read.

The oceans which cover 73% of the planet’s surface, was not on the agenda.

China, which has surpassed the US as the world’s biggest emitter, said it would also do its bit, by curbing emissions “as soon as possible”

The UK prime minister, David Cameron, also touted his government’s environmental policies. “As prime minister I pledged to lead the greenest government ever and I believe we have kept that promise.”

The president of France  François Hollande, who obviously need to go to speck savers told an investors’ event on the sidelines of the summit.

“We can’t just limit ourselves to words, expressions of regret and exercises in stock-taking,” “What will come out of Paris is a new economy,”

France went on to commit to providing $1bn to a climate change fund for poor countries – the first significant contribution since Germany threw in $1bn last July.

Sweden has also contributed.

South Korea and Switzerland went on to pledge $100m each.

Denmark pledged $70m.

Norway pledged $33m.

Mexico said it would give $10m.

But the total of $2.3bn pledged for the Green Climate Fund so far fell short of the $10bn to $15bn that UN officials and developing country said was needed to show rich countries were committed to acting on climate change.

It also was unclear whether Tuesday’s pledges represented new money. A lot of “climate financing” is just existing aid repackaged under a new name.

More than 400 companies from 60 countries all signed on to support putting a price on carbon.Some of the world’s biggest palm oil and paper producers committed to stop destructive logging by 2030, and restore an area of forest equivalent to the size of India.

But Brazil, despite its critical role protecting the Amazon rain forest, said it had been left out of the negotiations. It refused to sign an anti-deforestation pledge, dealing a blow to the Climate Change summit in New York.

“The lungs of the planet”

A number of campaign groups did not sign the agreement, saying it did not go far enough to protect the rights of indigenous people who rely on the forest, or to hold the big forestry companies to account.

So where are we?

This Summit was not a formal negotiation on climate change but an “extraordinary meeting to try to jump-start the whole thing and get it back on the rails.” to lay the groundwork ahead of a UN climate conference in Lima, Peru, this December.

Does that sound drearily familiar? It should. The world’s leaders have been hammering out various climate agreements for decades now.

There was the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The 2009 Copenhagen Accord.

But despite all these talks, global greenhouse-gas emissions have kept rising, putting the world on track for more warming in the years ahead.

So why should this newest round of climate diplomacy be any different?

UNDER THE 1992 CLIMATE TREATY, COUNTRIES AGREED TO TAKE ACTION — BUT NEVER SPECIFIED WHAT, EXACTLY.

They certainly haven’t achieved the goal of stabilizing greenhouse-gas emissions in the atmosphere. The world is burning more fossil fuels than ever, and carbon-dioxide emissions keep rising each year: THE CURRENT PLEDGES ARE INADEQUATE TO PREVENT 2°C OF WARMING.

THE US AND EUROPE HAVE HAD THEIR FOSSIL FUEL PARTY, NOW INDIA AND CHINA WANT THEIRS EMISSIONS.

Why are emissions FROM WEALTHY NATIONS DECLINING.

Because rich nations are “outsourcing” their carbon

By the end of 2015, they hope to hammer out an agreement with “legal force”

Believe that, you believe anything.

Here are two suggestions that would make a difference. One world wide the other Country wide.

1. If the earth is going to fry why not convert the sun-rich deserts of the world into energy producing and storage Units. 90 percent of the world’s population lives within 3,000 km of deserts.

Think of the employment it would create, not to mention the Energy and the resulting reduction in Co2.

2) Create tax cuts of the use of clean Energy.

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Capitalism vs The Climate: This Changes Nothing;

19 Friday Sep 2014

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You hear these day cry’s from lots of different quarter for the need of an ideological change if we are to tackle the numerous problems the world currently faces.

In Naomi Klein new book titled – This Changes Everything; Capitalism vs. the Climate. She advocates exactly this.  http://youtu.be/WPQI1Lui42c

While I admire her efforts with every thing these days we are bombarded with so much information that the hard facts disappear in a haze of communication resulting in a quagmire of confusion as to what is true or what is not true.

The bare fact is that if Humanity was faced with a Meteorite that was going to hit the earth and extinguish all known life we would not be able even if it wanted to change our ideology to save ourselves because of GREED.

There can be no Ideology change without equality of opportunity.

To create a world of equal opportunity for all requires unfortunately more than just aspirations.

It requires Money lots of money.

With the unbridled Privatization/ Consumerism of the world natural resources forging ahead unopposed for the sake of profit for profit sake by Sovereign Wealth Funds it’s no wonder that it is impossible to have any Ideology change that will make a difference.

The disillusion that we have some privileged position on earth are challenged every day.

ISIS is already in Europe, Alibaba is on the New York Stock Exchange, Climate change is already effecting world poverty, world economics, migration, and YOU.

” We can’t see the wood from the trees,” as the saying goes.

What we have done in the past gives has given rise to what is happening now.

There is only one solution:  The people of the world must find a way of getting Greed to contribute to the planets survival without greed’s awareness. ( See previous posts)

The planet will have 11bn people by 2100 according to a new study.

Traditional methods for fighting for change have proved fruitless. We must put people before Capitalism and Politics.

In short, there are so many cars in the world today that the fuel burnt on the world’s roads by those many cars emits 1.73 billion metric tons (equivalent to 3.81 trillion pounds) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. As of 2012, there are 1.1 billion automobiles on the earth. The 1.1 billion automobiles in 2012 already average a set of new tires about every 2 years, or 2.2 billion tires annually, and those 2.2 billion tires consume over half of the earth’s rubber production, which of course burns even more fuel.

The fight of our time has begun. The Scramble for Sustainability is still possible. Our immune systems need re-education. We need to heed the Language of Money.

If we want it we must pay for it.

There is no point in saving a Tiger, a forest, a river, or anything for that matter,even a child if they or it have no where to a full and sustainable live.

We must make the things we value more valuable than the things we don’t value by paying for them with money.

I agree with Naomi that Capitalism is on the way out but life exists in individual moments and it is up to us to make sure those moments are vital. Sharing wealth is the Mechanism. Cap Greed.

(See previous posts; 01/9/2014,23/08/2014.16/08/2014,14/08/2014, 22/07/2014, 03/07/2014)

Have a look at the below.