Economy/Economics

A key dispute in the TPP negotiations is the patents on pharmaceutical drugs and medical procedures.  Long patents inflate the profits of the pharmaceutical industry by not allowing less expensive generic drugs on the market. This means that people around the world will not be able to afford critical, often life-saving, drugs and medical procedures.  It also means that countries like Japan, Australia and New Zealand that have national health care systems will see the cost of healthcare rise to a breaking point, undermining some of the best health systems in the world.

Economic, financial and social commentators from all directions and of all persuasions are obsessed with the prospect of recovery. The world remains mired in a deep, prolonged crisis, and the key question seems to be how to get out of it.
There is, however, a prior question that few if any bother to ask: Do capitalists want a recovery in the first place? Can they afford it?

Friday midtown.  Friday payday.
“CEO Tobacconists.” Quality, overpriced cigars. Walk-in humidor. Air-conditioned smoking room. Customers relax. Smoke.  Watch wide-screen TV.  Recite the Smoker’s Ode:
green gone
brown dead
resurrection fire
leaf life
tumors bloom
like tulips
or teeth
oh wet pink lungs

Episode 519 of the Max Keiser show was aired on British TV screens on 5th November. Mr Keiser’s background and experience is in economics in general and financial services in particular. The first half of his show is invariably given over to kicking banksters and their political enablers with his interlocutor and co-host, Stacy Herbert.

Staff meeting. Topiary Techniques Auditorium. Horticultural Technicians, green-and-yellow t-shirts. Back row, Friday evening, work day done, go home.  Now.  Run.
Victor commandeered the small stage. Stack of papers width of several phone books dramatically dropped loud. Thud. Heads up. Tirade. Paper replacement forms processed last financial quarter, over $250,000.
“That’s $250,000 lifted from Topiary Techniques,” said Victor.

The following is a little teaser to some of the ideas, approach and perspective being pursued through the research and writing of the first volume of The People’s Book Project, The Empire of Poverty.

Revelations about the long-term global, intrusive spying by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and other allied intelligence apparatuses have provoked widespread protests and indignation and threatened ties between erstwhile imperial allies.
Allied regimes have uniformly condemned NSA espionage as a violation of trust and sovereignty, a threat to their national and economic security and to their citizens’ privacy.

… and a Guaranteed Profit for the Corporations and Bankers regardless of the opinions or outcomes of public protests.
A Tale of Milk and Honey from the UK/EU Homeland
Did you read the one by George on the TTIP negotiations?
Yep, so did I.
Worried?
Me too.

Annually, a near-ritual unfolds in the Fall Session of the United Nations General Assembly: the assembled states and governments dutifully, in near-unanimous consensus, vote in favor of a Resolution on the “Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial, and Financial Embargo by the United States of America Against Cuba.”

Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan wrote another excellent academic paper, Can Capitalists Afford Recovery?: