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-- SPECIAL BULLETIN -- -- 26 September 2007 -- |
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HELP US KEEP YOU INFORMED Economist Milton Friedman was wrong in his theories, and terribly complicit in their horrific applications in countries like Chile, but he may be right about crises opening the door for change. We are in a crisis right now. And it’s a big one…and we want to continue to do what our media is not doing—inform you about what’s behind it and how we can fight back to insure our economic survival and social justice for all. We launched StopTheSqueeze.org to give you a place to turn for real information and ideas about what to do. We offer resources, the best articles from the press all over the world, not just in America, a blog and a weekly newsletter by IN DEBT WE TRUST director Danny Schechter, and a way to work together. StopTheSqueeze.org is now in financial trouble too. We can’t afford to continue this important service without your help. Please donate to the tax-exempt GLOBAL CENTER to keep StoptheSqueeze.org alive. We need to raise $25,000 to keep this work going.
For donations of $50, you’ll get:
Please make a tax deductible donation
The contribution is tax deductible to
the extent permitted by law. We can turn this crisis into an opening for real change, if we speak up and get together. We need StopTheSqueeze.org more than ever. And we need you to get involved. Please donate. |
Here’s a shorter
StopTheSqueeze.org newsletter---not because there is less news
about the debt situation but because we will be going into debt to
bring this newsletter to you unless readers chip in and contribute
to keep this educational effort going.
I AM TRYING TO GET THE WORD OUT I spent another week crusading—bringing my film In Debt We Trust to audiences around the city and the country. It’s an uphill and often discouraging battle that sometimes feels more like a downhill fight. So many people are so beleaguered by everything they have to do in their lives, and so distracted by all the media they consume, that its hard to focus on the news in front of them, even a threat to their own personal economic security, much less the deeper issues that I seem driven to try to explain. On the one hand I know that the issues of credit and debt are not going away anytime soon and nor is the Credit crisis. But will progressives every hear fire bell in the night and get engaged? These problems of debt and rip-offs by banks is not going away. ‘Fear’ is still affecting world financial markets, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in an interview released on Sunday. in which he also backed France’s candidate to head the IMF.The Wall Street Journal reported this weekend that it’s not getting better anytime soon. “It’s tempting to hope the worst is over,” was the commentary in a report called “NOT OUT OF THE WOODS YET. I know many of the people reading it in that paper can afford to stay in those woods. The Journal says: “It could take months to get back to normalcy.” “Normalcy?” Are these normal times? I don’t think so. (They use normalcy to mean a market that just goes up making the rich richer.) It hasn’t been “normal” for a long. long time. Last week, on Wednesday I did a small screening in Astoria Queens to a peace and justice group which showed the film at a social center for gay and transgender teens. It was an interesting mix but it seemed to resonate with everyone. On Thursday I was out in East New York, a far more depressed community where foreclosures are pervasive. The turnout was smaller suggesting to me that the organizers have not yet found a way to mainstream the issue, to get people to care about what’s happening to their neighbors and neighborhood. To see how serious this problem is in New York—and how criminal—check out this investigative article and the shocking chart that accompanies it from the NY Daily News: On Friday morning, I was part of a “credit-card” summit with Robert “Credit Card Nation” Manning at the Church Center in New York (aka “The God Box”) where money managers for various religious denominations were very impressed, bought DVDs, but there was no money forthcoming to keep our outreach campaign going and growing. Sadly, may be at the end of the road with our campaign at the very moment when the story and issue are poised to explode into public awareness. Now we are appealing for donations to sustain the StopTheSqueeze.org website. Please help. Does anyone believe in organizing any more–or is politics only to be done online or via media ads? What has to happen before more people recognize the gravity of the situation? Do we have to have a full-fledged depression? In the last week, the dollar hit new lows while everyone knows that the interest rate cut will send prices up? Tens of thousands lost their jobs in the finance industry.. Foreclosures are at record levels. And, yet, most of the media still downplays it, and most of the progressive community ignores it. Yikes. BACK IN MICHIGAN And speaking of media, on Saturday I spoke at the Michigan chapter or the National Academy of TV Arts and Sciences, the people who give the Emmy Awards. I was on a News Ethics Panel and spoke about the way economic issues are covered on local news, mostly not at al. Yes there are “tips” on financial planning but not much more and some in the room admitted that this is a bit of a lapse in Michigan, a key Capitol of Foreclosures in America. These folks were not defending the status quo. In fact, you could sense the unease beneath the surface. Also on the panel was
the assistant News Director of the ABC affiliate in Flint which
recently lost a law suit for showing something they shouldn’t have.
Flint, is of course, Michael Moore’s hometown. I asked her if she
had seen “Roger and Me.” Yes, she responded, “part of it.” I asked
if her colleagues hated him. “Yes they do,” she replied. That was haunting—and prescient in light of what is happening today in Michigan. The Detroit Free Press reported last week: “Michigan ranked sixth nationwide with 15,565 properties in some stage of the foreclosure process in August. That’s an 11% increase over July figures and a 126% jump from August 2006, according to RealtyTrac, an Irvine, Calif.-based foreclosure web site.” WILL THERE BE MORE INFLATION? Many experts say the Fed rate cut will lead to more inflation—ie everyting costing more. But Ben Stein who poo-pooed the subprime problem before it happened on CNBC told his NY Times readers we just don’t know. Here is his stunning effort to have it both ways: “…we really don’t know what causes inflation. We do know that if the Fed starts printing money, Weimar style, and dropping it from helicopters, Bernanke style, we will probably have big inflation. Or maybe not.” Get That? Last week this economic genius minimized the problem but then,true to form, admitted it was serious. Reading him is like playing ping pong, on the one hand, on the other:
Yadda. Yadda. Yadda. FROM SUSA BOSKEY: ALTERNATIVE FINANCIAL NOW The recent 120 billion
plus "liquidity injection" by the Fed and the lower prime interest
rate are simply the latest Band-Aid measures to prop up a broken
system. How many ways can they rearrange the chairs on the deck of
the Titanic? All this is done in an attempt to avoid a crisis of
consumer confidence. We are told such measures are for our own good
in that they will insure that the "credit flow" is not disrupted. FROM INFO SHOP
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