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The Case of the Missing Recovery
By Paul Craig Roberts | Dissident Voice | January 4, 2014
Have you seen the economic recovery? I haven’t either. But it is bound to be around here somewhere, because the National Bureau of Economic Research spotted it in June 2009, four and one-half years ago.
It is a shy and reclusive recovery, like the “New Economy” and all those promised new economy jobs. I haven’t seen them either, but we know they are here, somewhere, because the economists said so.
Congress must have seen all those jobs before they went home for Christmas, because our representatives let extended unemployment benefits expire for 1.3 million unemployed Americans, who have not yet met up with those new economy jobs, or even with an old economy job for that matter.
By letting extended unemployment benefits expire, Congress figures that they saved 1.3 million Americans from becoming lifelong bums of the nanny state and living off the public purse. After all, who do those unemployed Americans think they are? A bank too big to fail? The military-security complex? Israel?
What the unemployed need to do is to form a lobby organization and make campaign contributions.
Just as economists don’t recognize facts that are inconsistent with corporate grants, career ambitions, and being on the speaking circuit, our representatives don’t recognize facts inconsistent with campaign contributions.
For example, our representative in the White House tells us that ObamaCare is a worthy program even though those who are supposed to be helped by it aren’t because of large deductibles, copays, and Medicaid estate recovery. The cost of this non-help is a doubling of the policy premiums on those insured Americans who did not need ObamaCare and the reclassification by employers of workers’ jobs from full-time to part-time in order to avoid medical insurance costs. All it took was campaign contributions from the insurance industry to turn a policy that hurts most and helps none into a worthy program. Worthy, of course, for the insurance companies.
Keep in mind that it is the people who could not afford medical insurance who have to come up with their part of the premium or pay a penalty. How do people who have no discretionary income come up with what are to them large sums of money? Are they going to eat less, drive less, dress less? If so, what happens to people employed in those industries when demand falls? Apparently, this was too big a thought for the White House occupant, his economists, and our representatives in Congress.
According to the official wage statistics for 2012, forty percent of the US work force earned less than $20,000, fifty-three percent earned less than $30,000, and seventy-three percent earned less than $50,000. The median wage or salary was $27,519. The amounts are in current dollars and they are compensation amounts subject to state and federal income taxes and to Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. In other words, the take home pay is less.
To put these incomes into some perspective, the poverty threshold for a family of four in 2013 was $23,550.
In recent years, the only incomes that have been growing in real terms are those few at the top of the income distribution. Those at the top have benefitted from “performance bonuses,” often acquired by laying off workers or by replacing US workers with cheaper foreign labor, and from the rise in stock and bond prices caused by the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing. Everyone else has experienced a decline in real income and wealth.
As only slightly more than one percent of Americans make more than $200,000 annually and less than four-tenths of one percent make $1,000,000 or more annually, there are not enough people with discretionary income to drive the economy with consumer spending. When real median family income and real per capita income ceased to grow and began falling, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan substituted a credit expansion to take the place of the missing growth in income. However, as consumers became loaded with debt, it was no longer possible to expand consumer spending with credit expansion.
World War II left the US economy the only undamaged industrial and manufacturing center. Prosperity ensued. But by the 1970s the Keynesian demand management economic policy had produced stagflation. Reagan’s supply-side policy was able to give the US economy another 20 years. But the collapse of the Soviet Union brought an era of jobs offshoring to large Asian economies that formerly were closed to Western capital. Once corporate executives realized that they could earn multi-million dollar performance bonuses by moving US jobs abroad and once they were threatened by Wall Street and shareholder advocates with takeovers if they did not, American capitalism began giving the US economy to other countries, mainly located in Asia. As high productivity manufacturing and professional service jobs (such as software engineering) moved offshore, US incomes stagnated and fell.
As real income growth stagnated, wives entered the work force to compensate. Children were educated by refinancing the home mortgage and using the equity in the family home or with student loans that they do not earn enough to repay. Since the December 2007 downturn, Americans have used up their coping mechanisms. Homes have been refinanced. IRAs raided. Savings drawn down. Grown children, now adults, are back home with parents. The falling labor force participation rate signals that the economy can no longer provide jobs for the workforce. In such a situation, economic recovery is impossible.
What the Treasury and Federal Reserve have done, with the complicity of the White House, Congress, economists, and the media, is to focus on rescuing a half dozen banks “too big to fail.” The consequence of focusing economic policy on saving the banks is rigged financial markets and massive stock and bond market bubbles. To protect the dollar’s exchange value from quantitative easing, the price of gold has been forced down in the paper futures market, with the consequence that physical gold is shipped to Asia where it is unavailable as a refuge for Americans faced with currency depreciation.
At a time when most Americans are running out of coping mechanisms, the US faces a possible financial collapse and a high rate of inflation from dollar depreciation as the Fed pours out newly created money in an effort to support the rigged financial markets.
It remains to be seen whether the chickens can be kept from coming home to roost for another year.
~
Paul Craig Roberts is an American economist, author, columnist, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and former editor and columnist for corporate media publications. He is the author of The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism.
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Argentina to summon Israeli ex-envoy over AMIA comments
Press TV – January 4, 2014
Argentina is to summon former Israeli envoy to Buenos Aires to explain his recent comments that the Tel Aviv regime has killed most of the perpetrators behind the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in the Latin American country in the 1990s.
In an interview with Buenos Aires-based Jewish News Agency (Agencia Judía de Noticias) on Thursday, Itzhak Aviran, who was the Israeli ambassador to Argentina from 1993 to 2000, said Israeli security agents operating abroad have “killed most of those who had carried out the attacks.” Aviran also accused the Argentinean government of not doing enough “to get to the bottom” of the incident.
AMIA case special prosecutor Alberto Nisman said on Friday that “I am surprised at his statements. I have ordered a testimonial statement. I would like to know how he is sure about it, who were these people and which proof he has.”
“What he is saying is that the perpetrators of the attacks are identified by name and surname,” Nisman said, adding that the process to query the Israeli ex-envoy should not take longer “than a month, or a month and half.”
Israel has dismissed Aviran’s comments as “complete nonsense.”
Under intense political pressure imposed by the US and Israel, Argentina formally accused Iran of having carried out the 1994 bombing attack on the AMIA building that killed 85 people.
AMIA stands for the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina or the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association.
The Islamic Republic has categorically and consistently denied any involvement in the terrorist bombing.
Tehran and Buenos Aires signed a memorandum of understanding in January, 2013, to jointly probe the 1994 bombing.
The Israeli regime reacted angrily to the deal a day after it was signed. “We are stunned by this news item and we will want to receive from the Argentine government a complete picture as to what was agreed upon because this entire affair affects Israel directly,” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor said on January 28.
On January 30, however, Argentina said Israel’s demand for explanation over the “historic” agreement is an “improper action that is strongly rejected.”

French public support for intervention in the Central African Republic waning
Press TV – January 4, 2014
A new survey shows that France is rapidly losing public support for its military intervention in the Central African Republic (CAR), nearly one month after Paris deployed troops to the country.
A recent poll by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) showed on Saturday that only 41 percent of the respondents are in favor of France’s military operation in the CAR, down by 10 percent compared to a previous poll conducted right after France’s military intervention.
Some 1,000 people were questioned in the latest IFOP survey, which was conducted from December 27 to January 2.
France invaded its former colony on December 5, 2013, after the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution giving Paris and the African Union the go-ahead to send troops to the CAR. Paris has 1,600 troops in the violence-stricken country.
The deployment of the French and African Union peacekeepers has done little to end the ongoing violence between ethnic communities in the CAR.
The Central African Republic spiraled into chaos in March last year when Seleka fighters overthrew President Francois Bozize and brought Michel Djotodia to power. Bozize fled the country after his ouster.
The mission in the CAR is France’s second military intervention in Africa in 2013. In January, Paris dispatched more than 4,000 troops to Mali, launching a fierce war against the militants in the country.

The Guardian Laments Sharon
By Gilad Atzmon | January 4, 2014
In a uniquely dishonest piece, The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland paid a tribute today to Israel’s veteran PM Ariel Sharon.
According to Freedland, Sharon, “as one of Israel’s founders… had the credibility to give up occupied territory – and even to face the demons of 1948”. Freedland speculates also that “Sharon’s final mission might well have been peace.” This is indeed a big statement, but how does Freedland support his creative historical account?
“Sharon’s final act” says Freedland, “was to dismantle some of the very settlements he had sponsored. In 2005 he ordered Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, seized in the 1967 war in which Sharon had been a crucial, if maverick, commander.”
Let alone the fact that Freedland comes short of reminding his readers about Sharon’s colossal war crimes, he actually completely distorts the political narrative that led Sharon to the 2005 unilateral disengagement.
Did Sharon have a plan to reconcile with the Palestinians and to address their plight or their right to return to their land? Not at all, we do not have any evidence of Sharon’s remorse. The logic behind Sharon’s disengagement is simple on the verge of banal. Sharon knew very well that if Israel insisted to maintain itself as the ‘Jewish State’, it would have to rid itself immediately of Arabs. Late Sharon was becoming aware of the possible implications of the ‘Palestinian demographic bomb’. The Palestinians were becoming a majority in areas controlled by Israel.
Ridding Israel of the highly populated Gaza strip was a perfect start. In a single political and territorial move, Sharon freed Israel of 1.5 million Palestinians and liberated Israel of growing complex security issues. Sharon was a pragmatist politician, he’s always been one and his disengagement wasn’t at all an attempt to “face the demons of 1948” as Freedland suggests: It was a Judeo-centric attempt to maintain the Jewishness of the Jewish State.
Freedland’s biased inclinations continue till the end of today’s piece: “an intriguing habit of Sharon’s was to refer to places in Israel by their original, Arabic names – thereby acknowledging the truth that usually lies buried beneath the soil.” Is this right? Did Sharon really pay tribute to the eradicated Palestinian civilisation by uttering some words in Arabic? Not at all: Sharon was born in the British Mandate of Palestine. He was raised in a country scattered with Palestinian villages and cities. Sharon and Israelis of his generation tended to pepper their Hebrew with a few Arabic words because such an act filled their existence with an authentic sense of belonging and a bond to an imaginary soil. I hope in that context, the laughable Freedland doesn’t also think when Israelis eat Falafel they try to express empathy towards 6 million Palestinian refugees: After all, Falafel also belongs to Palestine.
Freedland probably waited for Ariel Sharon to die in order to spread his laughable reading of history, just to make sure that the ‘immortal Sharon’ would not bounce back and dismiss this gross interpretation as complete nonsense.
The only question that is still left open is why The Guardian, once a respected paper, is publishing such low quality Hasbara drivel? Is it really The Guardian of the truth or has it become The Guardian of Zion?

Israel Anti-Missile Defense Playing Russian Roulette With Israeli Lives
By Richard Silverstein · Tikun Olam · January 4, 2014
In the past, I’ve featured the skeptical reporting of Reuven Pedatzur and research of Prof. Ted Postol about the efficacy of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense. Pedatzur reported on Postol’s findings that the anti-missile succeeded in hitting less than 10% of its targets during the last major Gaza offensive, instead of the 85% success rate offered by the IDF. Postol published his findings in collaboration with two other Israeli rocket engineers.
Now, Yossi Melman offers an even more widely critical (Hebrew) appraisal of Israel’s entire missile defense strategy from another Israeli aeronautical engineer, Dr. Nathan Farber, who taught at the Technion and is a former chief scientist in the Israeli defense industry. Farber finds that the likelihood that Israel could experience a coordinated attack from several enemies firing up to 1,000 rockets in a single day, would lead to a disastrous failure of the missile defense system. The Israeli scientist estimates that up to a third would be destroyed by the IDF, a third would fail either to launch or due to mechanical failure, and a third will successfully approach their target. These are the ones the missile-defense system would need to shoot down. Due to the precision of the tactical missiles that would be launched, most of them would strike their targets in Israel unless intercepted. Farber also confirms that these are figures accepted by the IDF and Israeli intelligence. Farber has written an extended presentation of his views here (Hebrew).
In the course of an extended military engagement, Iron Dome might have to deal with up to 30,000 rockets. He further notes that in order to shoot down 400 ballistic missiles that would be fired at Israel, it would need at least 800 interceptors. Each Arrow missile costs upward of $3-million. The total cost of such weaponry might run up to $3-billion. Similarly, to intercept all the tactical missiles targeted at Israel would cost around $1-2 billion. To defend against short-range missiles would require up to 60,000 Iron Dome projectiles, each one of which costs about $100,000, for a total of $6-billion. None of this includes the cost of manufacturing the missile batteries that would fire them.
So Israel’s missile defense strategy is faulty from two perspectives: economic and operational. The cost would be upward of $10-billion. Immediately after hostilities ended, Israel would be forced to expend a similar sum to replenish its missile inventory. Such a process would take years.
Operationally, Farber says that Israel simply has, to date, no satisfactory defense against Iran’s ballistic missiles. He adds that Iran has approximately 800 of such weapons. Even if we assume that a large number will fail in flight or be destroyed in some other fashion, that leaves a ton of them that will get through. In other words, Israel simply has no guaranteed defense against them, regardless of the affirmations offered by Israeli leaders and generals that the homeland is safe from attack should Israel go to war against Iran. It simply isn’t. Which makes Bibi’s martial threats an exercise either in lunacy or national suicide.
As an official admitted when questioned on the subject in this Haaretz report:
The Israeli official… was circumspect on how Israel’s three-tier shield would function in a major missile exchange…
“You need to pass this test – of a few dozen of them landing, in real time – to be able to speak about it with more certainty,” the official said.
Sure makes Israeli civilians seem like guinea pigs to me with their military rocketeers playing Russian roulette with their lives.
On a related matter, in its wisdom the U.S. undertook development of the Arrow anti-missile system with Israel. Originally, it was projected to cost $1.6-billion. As of 2007, that figure had already reached $2.4-billion. We are now developing the third generation of Arrows (Arrow 3s) and there is no end in sight. It’s estimated that the U.S. is footing up to 80% of the cost.
You remember that one Congressional wag compared approving a bill to making sausage. Well, funding Arrow involved a whole lot of sausage. And a lot of political suasion. But that wasn’t difficult because Aipac is Israel’s political lobby and members of Congress dutifully carry water for the 51st state (Israel). One of the greatest of all the water-carriers was Sen. Daniel Inouye, from the unlikely (for an Israeli ally) state of Hawaii. Inouye was a key figure in military appropriations and was instrumental in greasing any funding request involving weapons for Israel.
In fact, he was such a trusty ally that former Aipac chair, Robert Ascher persuaded Bibi Netanyahu to name Israel’s new Arrow base in Inouye’s memory. Israeli announced a new joint Israel-U.S. test of the Arrow 3 today. Though the Jerusalem Post described the base’s location as “secret,” it isn’t any longer. According to my Israeli source it is at Sdot Micha, also the site of Israel’s Jericho ballistic missile fleet. The U.S. observes the polite fiction that Israel has no nuclear weapons, so it cannot by law participate in the Jericho project. But as the Washington Post reported, the U.S. has bid out hundreds of millions in construction contracts for the Arrow facility at Sdot Micha. I’ve blogged about this here.
The Post, of course, wrote about the memorial to Inouye as if it was deeply touching, as indeed it would be to Aipac or Israel or Inouye’s family. But let me play the contrarian: why should a U.S. senator be immortalized at a military base of a foreign country? Put his name on a battleship at Pearl Harbor, by all means. But on an Israeli missile base? Who was he working for? His constituents or Israel? And don’t anyone dare say there’s no difference. No doubt the people of Hawaii didn’t expect him to have Israel’s best interests at heart.
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Israeli Border Police start fire, destroy family’s home with tear gas grenade
CPTnet | January 3, 2014
The ruins after the fire was extinguished
AL-KHALIL (HEBRON) – On 26 December 2013, while CPTers were doing their routine monitoring of the school patrol at the Qitoun checkpoint, schoolboys threw several volleys of stones at the checkpoint for about a minute. Border police responded by throwing a sound bomb and then firing a teargas grenade.
The grenade entered the second-story window of the Al-Karaky family’s three-room apartment. They were drinking coffee when it landed in their living room and fled the house. The canister started a fire inside the house after the family left.
Everything in the small apartment—including numerous books, among them holy books such as the Qur’an—was burned or ruined by water from Hebron’s Municipal Fire Department, which arrived promptly to put the blaze out.
This incident is not the first time objects have come through the window of the Al-Karaky home, when boys have thrown stones at the checkpoint and border police have responded by firing back. “We’re always trapped between the stones and what the soldiers shoot,” a family member told a CPTer. They never expected, however, that these almost routine exchanges would result in the four people who lived there losing everything.
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