By: Frank Scott

Our heads are filled with stories about the danger of trillions of dollars in debt and deficits with little if any mention of the real problem they represent. It is not the debt but what we are indebted for that threatens the future of our nation. If we owed hundreds of trillions of dollars – which may soon be the case – and every American was employed, housed, educated, cared for without question in time of ill health or economic need and safe from warfare and violence from inside the nation or out, such debt would not be any problem at all.
Borrowing today and paying back tomorrow shouldn’t mean we lavishly spend most of the borrowed money on weapons, waste, cosmetics and pets, causing us to scrimp on health, education and social life while complaining that we have too much debt. We have to control our spending on things only a minority of us actually want or really need, and begin changing priorities to satisfy the shared needs and wants of the great majority. This can’t happen under the domain of forces that mislead us into social divisions that exaggerate differences and minimize similarities to protect a perverse commodity culture and a degenerate political order that defines minority rule as democracy.
The present renewal of the drive to dismantle Social Security and turn it over to private profiteers is one among many of the lies and distortions offered as solutions for our problems which will only make them much worse. Increasing budgets for inhuman war and decreasing budgets for human service only make sense to anti-social forces which profit from divide and conquer policies. These reduce Americans, especially the working majority, to special interest and identity groups whose common cause is sacrificed to private competition while ruling minorities practice a lucrative socialism at their expense.
Our imposed common condition of privately shaped ignorance needs to become a liberated common cause of social democracy in order to transform our economy before it transforms us into a totally failed society.
All people need housing, safe communities, health care, education, transportation and the free time necessary to pursue interests other than simply working to maintain those needs. But we are socialized to accept a lack of any and all of those things for far too many of our number, believing that those who don’t have them are simply undeserving. This divisive condition is part of the political economy that replaces citizenship with consumerism and substitutes anti-social competition for social cooperation.
When people seek community in religious gatherings where they worship deities that call for solidarity and love among humanity, and leave those places to practice competitive individualism and economic warfare amongst themselves, the society in which they practice this split personality is suffering more than a collective mental disorder. That disorder is part of the economic foundation that is taught to us as a natural order of what is called god’s universe, except when god is being communed with at church, ashram, temple or other place of worship of the beautiful immaterial ideal in order to escape the ugly material reality. This fractured dualism makes it possible for a society to be in great debt in order to make war, create poverty and destroy the natural environment, while lacking the material and spiritual sustenance of life for a majority of the human community.
If we are all god’s children, as many believe, we need to stop treating some of our kin folk like excrement. The human family is dysfunctional under profit and loss rules in which values that sound good in words about love, compassion and brotherhood turn out to be deeds of hate, waste and mass murder. We cannot be ethical people practicing high minded morals in the midst of a collectively immoral economy that trashes ethical behavior with murderous attack on humans and all other parts of the natural environment.
The earth is treated as a profit making commodity and we see it erupting in gushers of oil that threaten far more than the profit margin of one petroleum company. Humans are treated as nothing more than commodities by the same system, and it cannot and should not be blamed on individual corporate CEOs or political and media gas bags who simply follow the systemic dictates of creating profit for some at the expense of all. That is the religion of the market under private control, creating benefit for a minority at enormous cost for the great majority. That cost is being reflected in greater numbers of personal lives as this economy suffers what is called a recession, but even more telling signs are revealed in the rapid breakdowns in life support systems that can no longer withstand the ravages of being treated like marketable commodities rather than what they are; the substance of our lives.
Nature is our nature and not some product which we can simply market and sell for profit at the mall. When we incur colossal debts in order to create massive destruction of nature, we are destroying the very substance of ourselves. That cannot go on and will only be changed by a motivated and informed public that demands service to humanity – itself – before service to a private commodity market. The growing numbers who profess that another world is possible are voicing the necessity, not just the possibility. We will have that other world or we will not have any world at all. And creating that future organism is worth going into far more debt than any we have incurred for generating this present grotesque antihuman and rapidly failing mechanism.

By: The Associated Press

Reduce your debt by 60%! Stop collection calls! Be debt-free in 12 months!

 The siren song of debt-settlement services is getting harder to ignore these days, especially if your finances are out of control or creditors are knocking at the door. Read the full story

By Christopher Leonard, AP Business Writer

Courtesy of the Associated Press

In a brutal job market, here’s a task that might sound easy: Fill jobs in nursing, engineering and energy research that pay $55,000 to $60,000, plus benefits. Read the full story

By William Khury
Staff Writer

With today’s increasingly difficult job market, more and more people are finding themselves out of work and out of options. Adults with years of experience and loyalty in their field and company are losing their jobs. Now you have hundreds of thousands of newly graduated college students, eager to work and start their lives looking at the same unemployed and job ads.

“Go to school so you can get a good job” – this is what we’ve heard since childhood, but does it still apply these days? Is a Bachelor’s really just B.S.?

Well, think about this: Every year, hundreds of thousands of eager, motivated, newly educated college students are unleashed into the job market hoping and expecting to work. With today’s job market being so bad, where are all these grads going to find work?

Modern day grads find themselves in a difficult position. They’ve been raised in an “instant gratification” society, where whatever they could possibly imagine or desire is readily available within reach. Food, jobs, fun, travel, education – it’s all right at their fingertips. Furthermore, they’ve seen some of the most Read the full story

Courtesy of The Associated Press

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — The federal government wrongly froze the assets of an Ohio-based charity it suspected of having ties to the militant Islamic group Hamas because it acted without giving the organization any warning, a federal judge ruled.

U.S. District Judge James Carr said Tuesday the government has an obligation to tell an organization why it is freezing its assets and to give it a chance to respond.

Attorneys for KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development sued the government after it refused to say why the charity was essentially shut down three years ago.

The U.S. Treasury Department in 2006 ordered U.S. banks to freeze the Toledo charity’s assets, saying it was funneling money to a terrorist organization. KindHearts officials have denied being Read the full story

By Philip Brewer of Wisebread

Courtesy of DivineCaroline

It used to be that spotting a “good” counterfeit bill was impossible for ordinary people. If it was good enough to pass the “look and feel” test, then it was going to take an ultra-violet light or a magnetic ink detector. But for the past ten years, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing has been making bills that are easy to check.

The amount of counterfeit money in the US is low enough that most people feel safe taking money with barely a minimal check for counterfeits. Does it look and feel like money? Then it probably is. But have you ever gotten a bill where something-either the bank note or the person giving it to you-seemed a little off? Ever wished you could quickly check to see if it was good? Well, here’s how.

Step 1) Look and Feel

This is as far as most people go, and it’s good enough most of the time. US bank notes are printed on special paper that’s 75 percent cotton and 25 percent linen. The linen gives it an extra stiffness that’s distinctive. There are also red and blue fibers imbedded in the paper. Bank notes are printed with a Read the full story

By Frank Scott

Staff Writer

“Things seem to be getting worse more slowly. There’s some reason to think we’re stabilizing.” Paul Krugman said.

Economists say the recession is getting better, was never all that bad, will end soon, or is already over. Yes, and the corpse is only slightly dead. Our economy seems like an organism nearing the end of life, with medical salesmen insisting youthful health will return with just one more exorbitantly expensive injection of an imaginary drug.

As consumer shopping becomes less a spending spree on useless waste and more a serious search for the needs of survival, that’s good for humanity, but it’s bad for this economy.  The malls look lonely with only bargain stores and thrift shops showing signs of life in a downward trend still relatively slight here, by comparison to the suffering being experienced elsewhere. But even if we are truly nearing an end of one in a series of recessions, it will still be a time of great hardship for millions without credit, jobs or savings. And many members of the upscale class are likely to see a serious downscale in their buying power and life styles.

The collapse of our financial market casino and its forced rescue by taxpayers was a result Read the full story

By Carl Gutierrez

Courtesy of Forbes.com

May 28, 2009

There’s a long and treacherous road ahead for the U.S. real estate market and financials.

On Wednesday, the National Associ-ation of Realtors reported sales of existing homes rose 2.9% in April, to an annual rate of 4.7 million, compared with a downwardly revised pace of 4.6 million in March.

The report comes a day after the S&P Case-Shiller 20-city Home Price Index fell 18.7% in March over the last 12 months, slightly wider than the 18.4% decline economists expected and larger than the 18.6% drop in the year ended February. The 10-city HPI was down 18.6% over the last year.

Continuing declines in the first three months of 2009 led to a 19.1% decline in the first quarter compared with last year’s corresponding period, which is the largest quarterly decline in the 21-year history of the series. Average home prices in March 2009 are the same as they were in fourth Read the full story

By Sarah Morgan

Courtesy of SmartMoney.com

Home buyers looking for a bottom in the real estate market may have been encouraged by housing data released earlier this week. Sales of existing homes rose 2.4% in May, according to the National Association of Realtors. The increase was a little less than most analysts had expected, but it represented the second straight month of improvement. Meanwhile, sales of new homes dipped 0.6% in May, continuing a trend of fairly flat months so far this year, according to data released by the Commerce Department.

Don’t get too excited – it’s still too early to say the housing market bottomed out, analysts and economists say. Distressed properties still account for about a third of all sales, and 29% of sales were to first-time home buyers, who are currently benefiting from an $8,000 tax credit.

The sales trends are telling. “You’re not really seeing a lot of move-up buying,” says Richard F. Moody, chief economist and director of research at Forward Capital, LLC. “There are so many vacant homes and so many foreclosures that [there's] not the normal trade-up pattern that you would have traditionally seen,” Moody says.

Housing prices fell nationwide during the first quarter, according to Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Index. The decline appears to be slowing: in February and March, the annual rate of decline did not set a new record, but home owners should take little solace in those numbers. “Based on the March data… we see no Read the full story

By Victoria R.

Courtesy of www.ehow.com

Introduction

Do you ever find yourself wondering where you spent all your paycheck? You are not alone. For so many of us it seems that no matter how much we make we still don’t have enough money left at the end of the month to put away towards our retirement, emergency savings or even a well deserved vacation! This article will teach you how to finally break that viscous cycle, budget your money and save.

Things You’ll Need

Three sheets of paper, a calculator, last three months of bills and bank statements, open mind, creativity

Step One: Using the information from your monthly bills and bank statements, make a list of all of your monthly fixed expenses. Fixed expenses include your utility costs, rent or mortgage payment and food costs. These should be items that you need-not those items that you can do without like your cable television bill.

Step Two: On a second piece of paper, make a list of your debts including how much Read the full story