My own starting point for this is the belief that in the years just ahead any sociopolitical entity organized at the giant scale will flounder -- this includes everything from the federal government to global corporations to factory farms to centralized high schools to national retail chains. So even expecting Mr. Obama's government to act effectively may be asking too much in a situation that will require mostly local action.

      The meta-situation will be the overall decline of energy resources and the necessary downscaling of our activities. We are obviously in a transitional period between the old profligate energy economy and the new economy of relative scarcity. We have no idea how disorderly this transition will be, but there is certainly potential for tremendous instability in daily life.

      For a while, perhaps, the federal government may retain some ability to affect the way things go, or give the appearance of doing so. This raises the issue of what Mr. Obama and his team really know about our energy predicament. The president-elect has made some noises -- recently on the 60 Minutes show -- that he understands something about the current price dislocations in the oil markets resulting from the larger financial turmoil. He alluded to the public's erroneous notion that current low-ish oil prices mean the oil problem is over. But does the incoming president know some of the following details?

     For instance, does Mr. O know that global oil production appears to have peaked at around 85 million barrels a day, with poor prospects of ever getting beyond that? This single naked fact has broad ramifications, above all whether we can continue to think in terms of industrial "growth" as the benchmark for economic health. There are many interpretations of the current financial fiasco. Some of them are based on long-term technical wave theories. A more down-to-earth view suggests the shock of peak oil -- though it doesn't exclude wave theories.

     Does Mr. O know that world oil discovery has fallen to insignificant levels after peaking long ago in the 1960s. Does he know we are finding no more super-giant oil fields on the scale of Arabia's Ghawar or Mexico's Cantarell, which have supplied most of the world's oil for the past forty years and are now running down? Does he know that you can't produce oil that hasn't been discovered?  Does Mr. O know that virtually all the oil-producing nations have entered production decline. Surely someone has whispered in his ear about the IEA's projection that global oil production would fall 9.1 percent in the coming year.

      Does Mr. O know that oil exports have been trending to decline at a steeper rate than oil depletion? That is, the exporting nations are losing their ability to send oil to the importers (like us) at a rate mathematically greater than the run-down in their production.They are using more of their own oil even while their production is going down. For example, Mexico is depleting overall at more than 9 percent a year (with the Cantarell field alone running down at more than 15 percent annually). Does he know Mexico's net exports are crashing? Mexico has been our number three leading source of imports. In a very few years they will not be able to send us any oil. A deluded American public has no idea that this is happening. Will Mr. O explain it to them?

     Does Mr. O know that the "old major" oil companies (Exxon-Mobil, Texaco, Shell, et al) produce less than 10 percent of the world's oil now -- the other 90 percent coming from the foreign nationals -- and that blaming them for the situation is a waste of time. The foreign national companies are changing the landscape of the oil markets. They're making special contracts with "favored customers" rather than just putting their oil up for auction on the futures markets. One thing you can infer from this is that we're entering a period of national oil hoarding based on coming scarcity. The futures markets were based on relative abundance, and they will not operate very well in a climate of scarcity. Consider that the USA will probably not be among the "favored customers" for several oil producing nations. Figure that in with the coming loss of imports from Mexico (and Venezuela and Nigeria).

     Does Mr. O know that the current drop in oil prices (due to massive financial deleveraging) has resulted in the cancellation or postponment of the very oil production projects that were hoped to offset the coming depletions? It's not worth it for an oil enterprise (private or foreign) to drill in deepwater or venture into arctic regions when oil is priced at $50-a-barrel -- if it costs $80 to get the stuff out of the ground. It's not worth digging up tar sands in Canada at that price. This halt in activity is going to boomerang back on the US in a year or so, with depletions ongoing everywhere and no new oil to take its place. Does Mr. O know that we're just as likely to see shortages as a resuming rise in oil prices here in the US during his coming term?

     Does Mr. O know that the current re-inflation program being run by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve is so egregious that it may lead to loss of the dollar's legitimacy, to the renunciation of dollar holdings by other nations, to the down-rating of US Treasury debt instruments, and finally to an inability of the US to purchase foreign oil -- which comprises two-thirds of all the oil we use every day?

     Does Mr. O know that we are not going to run the US automobile and truck fleet on any combination of alt.fuels? Continuing it by other means is a fantasy that will only disappoint us. The motoring era is coming to an end. Heroic investments in highway infrastructure to create jobs will be a tragic waste of our dwindling capital. The pressure for Mr. O to make these misinvestments will be enormous, perhaps insurmountable. There are probably not a thousand people in the US who agree with what I am saying -- meaning the consensus to keep the cars running at all costs overwhelms reality at the moment. Does Mr. O's concept of "change" include the possibility that we may have to live very differently in this society?

     Chances are, if Mr. O knows any of these things he might be crucified in the polls and the media by acknowledging them. The only "change" that America really wants to hear about is evicting George Bush from the White House. They're sick of him and all the disturbance he has caused in their financial affairs. But beyond that, the American public is deathly afraid of the kind of changes we actually face -- such as, the end of consumer culture, the gross loss of value in suburban real estate (which forms the bulk of the middle class's private wealth), the prospect of food and fuel scarcities, the need to re-localize our lives, the need to physically shape up to stop the costly and unnecessary drain on our medical resources, to grow more of our own food, to work harder at things that actually matter, and to save whatever we can for a difficult future.

     If Mr. O introduces any of these themes into the national discourse, the public and the media and the bloggers will all dump on him for failing to prop up the wild party that American life became in recent decades.  . . read more

[via Rolling Stone]  . . read more

If John Kerry had been elected in 2004, he would have continued the Bush Administration’s policies just as Obama is doing now. But Kerry may have had a chance at a second term. The banks and Wall Street, in 2004, hadn’t yet folded. But would Kerry have been bright, or brave enough, to see the coming catastrophe and intercede in time to at least cushion the crash? Would Kerry have acted boldly to reverse the Bush Administration’s policy of open war? Would Kerry have had the courage to raise taxes, and begin the arduous process involved in addressing the ocean of red ink that Bush left behind? Would Kerry have had the spine to stand up to the republicans? A definitive no to all of the above. Kerry would have tempered any effort aimed at improving the lot of ordinary Americans with the promises he made to his corporate bosses.

Kerry, unable to assert himself, would have been a one term president, just as Obama will be. Obama’s base was essentially suckered into voting for him. All his talk of openness and accountability were only election gambits. Obama, occupying what is arguably the most powerful position on the planet, while enjoying democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress, doesn’t have the spine to make a discernable difference in the lives of Americans. This is exponentially derelict after eight years of a dull witted, and morally bereft, fraud. But as the luck of drunks and fools will have it, Bush will escape accountability. Obama, unfortunately for him, will be deserving of his abbreviated presidency, and his frightened legacy will be but another contradiction of the Founder’s intent. Progressive ideology will have taken another step back, perhaps its last.

Progressives may as well get used to the idea that, in four years, the presidency will go back to the republicans. The Democratic Congressional Majorities, if not replaced, will be reduced. It doesn‘t matter because the majorities are paralyzed anyway. House Speaker Pelosi, checkmated by her own involvement as a cheerleader for torture, is worse than useless. Voters are impressed with strong, assertive leadership, whether it is right or wrong. The republicans, never ones to let an opportunity, real or construed go by, have wasted no time in resting the blame for the economic collapse squarely on Obama’s unresisting shoulders. The question begs. Why would a man devote his entire adult life to politics, then rise to the highest level of his profession, only to cower before the advance of a weakened and outnumbered enemy? Cowardice leaps to mind, but Obama’s agenda is probably more servile than simple cowardice allows.

 [Full article at OpEd News] . . read more

What do Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain have to say about our current reality of financial crisis and recession, and the generation-long stagnation in average living standards that has preceded the crisis of the moment? There aren't significant distinctions between Obama and Clinton in terms of their campaign platforms, while both Democratic contenders share huge differences with McCain. But the most important question is not where these candidates stand during the campaign; it's what they would actually do while in office. And this is more a matter of political power - which social groups can exert pressure within a new administration - than of economic philosophy...

A new Democratic administration may well offer possibilities for a dramatic shift in U.S. economic policy, even if some of the same old Bill Clinton crowd is brought back in as advisors. But if such a major policy shift does occur, it will not be primarily because a Democrat-either Hillary Clinton or Obama-will be sitting in the White House. It will rather be because the people who put one of them there will have gathered sufficient political strength to make them stick to their campaign promises. [More] . . read more

After reviewing the contents of this Citibank-friendly new law called the Financial Modernization Act, I asked him: "Do you think the big banks have too much power"?

He paused for a few seconds and replied: "Not Yet." Intrigued by his two word answer, I noted the rejection of modest pro-consumer provisions, adding that now that the banks had had their round, wasn't it time for the consumers to have their own round soon?

He allowed that such an expectation was not unreasonable and that he was willing to meet with some seasoned consumer advocates and go over such an agenda. We sent him an agenda, and met with Mr. Summers and his staff. Unfortunately, neither his boss, Bill Clinton, nor the Congress were in any mood to revisit this heavily lobbied federal deregulation law and reconsider the blocked consumer rights.

The rest is unfolding, tragic history. The law abolished the Glass-Steagall Act which separated commercial banking from investment banking. This opened the floodgates for unwise mergers, acquisitions and other unregulated risky financial instruments. Laced with limitless greed, casino capitalism ran wild, tanking economies here and abroad.

One champion of this market fundamentalism was Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve. Last October before a House Committee, Greenspan admitted he was mistaken and expressed astonishment at how corporations could not even safeguard their own self-interest from going over steep speculative cliffs.

Greenspan and Summers were deemed "brilliant" by the press and most of Congress. Summers' predecessor at Treasury, Robert Rubin, was also a charter member of the Oracles--those larger-than-life men who just knew that the unfettered market and giant financial conglomerates would be the one-stop shopping mart consumers were assumed to be craving.

Now the world knows that these men belong to the "oops oligarchy" that bails itself out while it lets the companies collapse into the handcuffed arms of Uncle Sam and bridled taxpayers who have to pay for unconditional megabailouts. Instead of the Wall Street crooks being convicted and imprisoned, they have fled the jurisdiction with their self-determined compensation. Corporate crime pays, while pensions and mutual fund savings evaporate.

Now comes the next stage of the Washington rescue effort in a variety of stimulus packages which every vendor group imaginable wants a piece of these days. When trillions are offered, many come running.

As the public focus is on how much, when and where all this money should be spent, there are very serious consequences to be foreseen and forestalled. First, consider how much more concentrated corporate power is occurring. Forced or willing mergers, acquisitions and panic takeovers of big banks by bigger banks along with bankruptcies of companies further reduce what is left of quality competition for consumer benefit.

Remember the anti-trust laws. Obama needs to be their champion. The fallout from the Wall Street binge is likely to lead to a country run by an even smaller handful of monopolistic global goliaths.

In the stampede for stimulus legislation, there is a foreboding feeling on Capitol Hill that there is no proposal on the table to pay for it other than by the children and grandchildren. Just the opposite is raining down on them. Everybody including the private equity gamblers, Las Vegas casinos and Hollywood studios along with the banks and auto companies are looking for tax breaks.

So with the economy deteriorating and taxes being cut, where is the enormous money coming from? From borrowing and from printing money. So look out for big time inflation and decline in the dollar?s value vis-à-vis other currencies.

In all the hundreds of pages of stimulus bills, there is nothing that would facilitate the banding together of consumers and investors into strong advocacy groups. We have long proposed Financial Consumer Associations, privately and voluntarily funded through inserts in the monthly statements of financial firms.

If this bailout-stimulus-Wall Street funny money waste, fraud and abuse sounds confusing, that is because it is. A brand new paperback "Why Wall Street Can't Be Fixed and How to Replace It: Agenda For a New Economy" by long-time corporate critic, David C. Korten will explain some of the wheeling and dealing.

You don't have to agree with all or many of Korten?s nostrums. Just read Part II: the Case For Eliminating Wall Street. He considers three central questions:

First, do Wall Street Institutions do anything so vital for the national interest that they justify trillions of dollars to save them from the consequences of their own excess?

Second, is it possible that the whole Wall Street edifice is built on an illusion of phantom wealth that carries deadly economic, social, and environmental consequences for the larger society?

Third, are there other ways to provide needed financial services with greater results and at lesser cost?

Ralph Nader is an American attorney, author, lecturer, political activist, and perennial candidate for presidency as an independent candidate. . . read more

What do words of peace and cooperation mean from us when we torture--yes, we still torture--only Muslims? What do these words mean when we sanction Israel's brutal air assaults on Lebanon and Gaza, assaults that demolished thousands of homes and left hundreds dead and injured? How does it look for Obama to call for democracy and human rights from Egypt, where we lavishly fund and support the despotic regime of Hosni Mubarak, one of the longest-reigning dictators in the Middle East?

We may thrill to Obama's rhetoric, but very few of the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world are as deluded. They grasp that nothing so far has changed for Muslims in the Middle East under the Obama administration. The wars of occupation go on or have been expanded. Israel continues to flout international law, gobbling up more Palestinian land and carrying out egregious war crimes in Gaza. Calcified, repressive regimes in countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are feted in Washington as allies.

The speech at Cairo University, which usually has trucks filled with riot police outside the university gates and a heavy security presence on campus to control the student body, is an example of the facade. Student political groups, as everyone who joined in the standing ovation for the president knew, are prohibited. Faculty deans are chosen by the administration, rather than elected by professors, "as a way to combat Islamist influence on campus," according to the U.S. State Department's latest human rights report. And, as The Washington Post pointed out, students who use the Internet "as an outlet for their political or social views are on notice: One Cairo University student blogger was jailed for two months last summer for "public agitation," and another was kicked out of university housing for criticizing the government."

The expanding imperial projects and tightening screws of repression lurch forward under Obama. We are not trying to end terror or promote democracy. We are ensuring that our corporate state has a steady supply of the cheap oil to which it is addicted. And the scarcer oil becomes, the more aggressive we become. This is the game playing out in the Muslim world.

The Bush White House openly tortured. The Obama White House tortures and pretends not to. Obama may have banned waterboarding, but as Luke Mitchell points out in next month's issue of Harper's magazine, torture, including isolation, sleep and sensory deprivation and force-feeding, continues to be used to break detainees. The president has promised to close Guantanamo, where only 1 percent of the prisoners held offshore by the United States are kept. And the Obama administration has sought to obscure the fate and condition of thousands of Muslims held in black holes around the globe. As Mitchell notes, the Obama White House "has sought to prevent detainees at Bagram prison in Afghanistan from gaining access to courts where they may reveal the circumstances of their imprisonment. It has sought to continue the practice of rendering prisoners to unknown and unknowable locations outside the United States, and sought to keep secret many (though not all) of the records regarding our treatment of those detainees."

Muslim rage is stoked because we station tens of thousands of American troops on Muslim soil, occupy two Muslim nations, make possible the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, support repressive Arab regimes and torture thousands of Muslims in offshore penal colonies where prisoners are stripped of their rights. We now have 22 times as many military personnel in the Muslim world as were deployed during the crusades in the 12th century. The rage comes because we have constructed massive military bases, some the size of small cities, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Kuwait, and established basing rights in the Gulf states of Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The rage comes because we have expanded our military empire into neighboring Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It comes because we station troops and special forces in Egypt, Algeria and Yemen. And this vast network of bases and military outposts looks suspiciously permanent.

The Muslim world fears, correctly, that we intend to dominate Middle East oil supplies and any Caspian Sea oil infrastructure. And it is interested not in our protestations of good will but in the elemental right of justice and freedom from foreign occupation. We would react, should the situation be reversed, no differently.

The brutal reality of expanding foreign occupation and harsher and harsher forms of control are the tinder of Islamic fundamentalism, insurgences and terrorism. We can blame the violence on a clash of civilizations. We can naively tell ourselves we are envied for our freedoms. We can point to the Koran. But these are fantasies that divert us from facing the central dispute between us and the Muslim world, from facing our own responsibility for the virus of chaos and violence spreading throughout the Middle East. We can have peace when we shut down our bases, stay the hand of the Israelis to create a Palestinian state, and go home, or we can have long, costly and ultimately futile regional war. We cannot have both.

Obama, whose embrace of American imperialism is as naive and destructive as that of George W. Bush, is the newest brand used to peddle the poison of permanent war. We may not see it. But those who bury the dead do.  . . read more