New York Times, Twitter hacked by Syrian group

By Gerry Shih and Joseph Menn

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Media companies, including the New York Times, Twitter and the Huffington Post, lost control of some of their websites Tuesday after hackers supporting the Syrian government breached the Australian Internet company that manages many major site addresses.
The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a hacker group that has attacked media organizations it considers hostile to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, claimed credit for the Twitter and Huffington Post hacks in a series of Twitter messages.
Security experts said electronic records showed that NYTimes.com, the only site with an hours-long outage, redirected visitors to a server controlled by the Syrian group before it went dark.
New York Times Co spokeswoman Eileen Murphy tweeted the "issue is most likely the result of a malicious external attack", based on an initial assessment.
The Huffington Post attack was limited to the blogging platform's British web address. Twitter said the hack led to availability issues for 90 minutes but that no user information was compromised.
The attacks came as the Obama administration considers taking military action against the Syrian government, engaged in a civil war against rebels for more than two years.
In August, hackers promoting the Syrian Electronic Army targeted websites belonging to CNN, Time and the Washington Post by breaching a third party service used by those sites.
The SEA managed to gain control of the sites by penetrating MelbourneIT, an Australian Internet service provider that sells and manages domain names including Twitter.com and NYTimes.
The New York Times, which identified MelbourneIT as its domain name registrar and the main hacking victim, told employees not to send sensitive emails from corporate accounts.
MelbourneIT tracked the breach to an Indian Internet service provider, saying two staff members from one of their resellers opened a fake email seeking login details.
"The SEA went after the company specifically to create a high-profile event," CEO Theo Hnarakis told Reuters. "This was quite a sophisticated attack."
One staff member was the direct manager of the NYTimes domain, along with other media companies and had the login and password information of the company in his email, which the hackers accessed.
Hnarakis confirmed that other media organizations were also attacked, but this proved unsuccessful as their customers used a secondary security measure known as a registry lock.
MelbourneIT said it restored the correct domain name settings, changed the password on the compromised account, and locked the records to prevent further alterations.
Twitter did not respond to requests for comment. In a blog post, the company said "it appears DNS (domain name system) records for various organizations were modified, including one of Twitter's domains used for image serving, Twimg.com. Viewing of images and photos was sporadically impacted."
HACKERS LIMITED TARGETS, SAY EXPERTS
Jaeson Schultz, a Cisco Systems researcher, said that in the authoritative records known as WHOIS the Syrian Electronic Army listed itself as the contact for all of Twitter.com, which would have given it the power to take the site offline or place its own content there.
"It seems that their message is redirecting people back to their own website for news about the SEA or about Syria," Schultz said. "They don't seem to be interested in infecting end users, which is a good thing."
Hackers who successfully break into MelbourneIT's systems could potentially redirect and intercept emails sent to addresses under certain domains, researchers said. And users of sites that do not begin with "https" could have been fooled into entering passwords that could have been captured, said Jaime Blasco, a researcher with security firm AlienVault.
Because MelbourneIT serves as the registrar for some of the best known domain names on the Internet, including Microsoft.com and Yahoo.com, Tuesday's breach could have had potentially catastrophic consequences.
"This could've been one of the biggest attacks we've ever seen, if they were more subtle and more efficient about it," said HD Moore, the chief research officer at Rapid7, a cyber security firm. "They changed just a few sites, but if they had actually gone all out, they could've had most of the Internet watching them run the show."
Media companies, largely ignored by hackers until 2011, have since been targeted by pranksters and suspected Chinese agents, as well as partisans in the Middle East.

(Additional reporting by Michael Sin in SYDNEY; Editing by Michael Perry, Eric Walsh and Ron Popeski)

50 Years After March on Washington Many Americans Are Still Falling Behind: Urban League President

When Martin Luther King Jr. led the March on Washington 50 years ago, the unemployment rate for African-Americans was about twice that of whites—10% vs. 5%—and 74% of African-American children attended segregated schools. Those ratios haven’t changed much since then, but there has been progress.

The number of black families earning at least $100,000 annually and the number of blacks with college degrees have each grown fivefold, and the poverty rate, though near double that of white Americans, has declined from over 40% to under 30%.
But the wealth gap between black and white Americans is growing. White families have six times the wealth of black and Hispanic families, even though the income gap is only twice as large, according to the Urban League.
Related: Economic Mobility Explained with M&M's
Its president, Marc Morial, tells The Daily Ticker: “We’ve had a widening of the economic gap between the wealthiest American and everyone else, and that’s even more severe when we look at people of color.”
One big reason for the growing gap: the lower rate of home ownership for African Americans—about 28% lower, according to a recent Brandeis study. The homeownership rate for blacks is now 43%, little changed from the 41.6% that prevailed in in 1970, when those numbers were first collected. And when the housing bubble burst in the mid to late 2000s, it reduced black families' median wealth by 53%.
“The recession depressed home ownership [for all] and even more among African-Americans and Latinos,” says Morial. Between 2000 and 2011, the black median household income fell from 64% to 58%, making it even harder to buy a home.
The official title of the march on the national mall 50 years ago was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and one one of its key demands was a minimum living wage of $2 an hour for all Americans. That doesn’t sound like much but adjusted for inflation it’s equivalent to $14.80 today—more than double the current $7.25 minimum wage. The minimum wage then was $1.25, which is equivalent to about $9.25 now.
“Many Americans are stuck…and being left behind,” says Morial. “We need a new political consensus to confront the deep economic challenges we face.” Instead, he says, we have budget cuts and sequestration that have reduced growth and cut jobs.
On the bright side Morial sees entrepreneurship rising in the black community as more unemployed workers start their own businesses in order to survive. Such new businesses are ‘“one of the most powerful signs” in today's economy but they employ few workers, says Morial. “We need to unleash the power of those businesses to grow and create jobs.” Watch the video above to learn more about what's changed and what's stayed the same for many Americans since the March on Washington.
Tell Us What You Think!

Markets and U.S. economy ” still ” look like hell!

Stocks declined broadly in early Tuesday trading as investors feared that the possibility of a U.S. military intervention in Syria could become a reality.
The Dow Jones industrial average lost 86 points, or 0.6 percent, to 14,858 as of 10:15 a.m. EDT, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 13 points, or 0.8 percent, to 1,644. The Nasdaq composite dropped 31 points, or 0.9 percent, to 3,626.
Investors have fretted about the possibility of U.S.-led military action against the regime of President Bashar Assad since U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that it was “undeniable” that the Syrian government used chemical weapons.
“The law of unintended consequences and the history of previous military interventions in the region is not a recipe for political and economic stability,” said Neil MacKinnon, global macro strategist at VTB Capital.
http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=20068886&ref=https://www.google.com/
Syria debacle getting the blame for global stock slide!
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100990015
Dow Futures Fall As Investors Fear Syria Strike
http://www.fool.co.uk/news/investing/2013/08/27/dow-futures-fall-as-investors-fear-syria-strike.aspx?source=uptyholnk3030001
New poll: Syria intervention even less popular than Congress – The Washington Post
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll has finally found something that Americans like even less than Congress: the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Syria. Only 9 percent of respondents said that the Obama administration should intervene militarily in Syria; aRealClearPolitics poll average finds Congress has a 15 percent approval rating, making the country’s most hated political body almost twice as popular.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/26/new-poll-syria-intervention-even-less-popular-than-congress/
Just 9 % say we should act in Syria , I’m surprised its that high!
Dow down triple digits now!
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/DJIA
Yield is down this morning, PM’s are up…flight to safety.
Did see a story where Japan is getting close to having a melt down…the interest payment on their debt has gone up some 14%, and they have A LOT of debt!!!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-27/japans-2014-debt-interest-rise-record-257-same-singapore-gdp
GT500

22 Reasons Why Starting World War 3 In The Middle East Is A Really Bad Idea

By Michael Snyder

While most of the country is obsessing overMiley Cyrus, the Obama administration is preparing a military attack against Syria which has the potential of starting World War 3.  In fact, it is being reported that cruise missile strikes could begin “as early as Thursday“.  The Obama administration is pledging that the strikes will be “limited”, but what happens when the Syrians fight back?  What happens if they sink a U.S. naval vessel or they have agents start hitting targets inside the United States?  Then we would have a full-blown war on our hands.  And what happens if the Syrians decide to retaliate by hitting Israel?  If Syrian missiles start raining down on Tel Aviv, Israel will be extremely tempted to absolutely flatten Damascus, and they are more than capable of doing precisely that.  And of course Hezbollah and Iran are not likely to just sit idly by as their close ally Syria is battered into oblivion.  We are looking at a scenario where the entire Middle East could be set aflame, and that might only be just the beginning.  Russia and China are sternly warning the U.S. government not to get involved in Syria, and by starting a war with Syria we will do an extraordinary amount of damage to our relationships with those two global superpowers.  Could this be the beginning of a chain of events that could eventually lead to a massive global conflict with Russia and China on one side and the United States on the other?  Of course it will not happen immediately, but I fear that what is happening now is setting the stage for some really bad things.  The following are 22 reasons why starting World War 3 in the Middle East is a really bad idea…
#1 The American people are overwhelmingly against going to war with Syria…

Americans strongly oppose U.S. intervention in Syria’s civil war and believe Washington should stay out of the conflict even if reports that Syria’s government used deadly chemicals to attack civilians are confirmed, a Reuters/Ipsos poll says.
About 60 percent of Americans surveyed said the United States should not intervene in Syria’s civil war, while just 9 percent thought President Barack Obama should act.

#2 At this point, a war in Syria is even more unpopular with the American people than Congress is.
#3 The Obama administration has not gotten approval to go to war with Syria from Congress as the U.S. Constitution requires.
#4 The United States does not have the approval of the United Nations to attack Syria and it is not going to be getting it.
#5 Syria has said that it will use ”all means available” to defend itself if the United States attacks.  Would that include terror attacks in the United States itself?
#6 Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem made the following statementon Tuesday…

“We have two options: either to surrender, or to defend ourselves with the means at our disposal. The second choice is the best: we will defend ourselves”

#7 Russia has just sent their most advanced anti-ship missiles to Syria.  What do you think would happen if images of sinking U.S. naval vessels were to come flashing across our television screens?
#8 When the United States attacks Syria, there is a very good chance that Syria will attack Israel.  Just check out what one Syrian official said recently…

A member of the Syrian Ba’ath national council Halef al-Muftah, until recently the Syrian propaganda minister’s aide, said on Monday that Damascus views Israel as “behind the aggression and therefore it will come under fire” should Syria be attacked by the United States.
In an interview for the American radio station Sawa in Arabic, President Bashar Assad’s fellow party member said: “We have strategic weapons and we can retaliate. Essentially, the strategic weapons are aimed at Israel.”
Al-Muftah stressed that the US’s threats will not influence the Syrain regime and added that “If the US or Israel err through aggression and exploit the chemical issue, the region will go up in endless flames, affecting not only the area’s security, but the world’s.”

#9 If Syria attacks Israel, the consequences could be absolutely catastrophic.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promising that any attack will be responded to “forcefully“…

“We are not a party to this civil war in Syria but if we identify any attempt to attack us we will respond and we will respond forcefully”

#10 Hezbollah will likely do whatever it can to fight for the survival of the Assad regime.  That could include striking targets inside both the United States and Israel.
#11 Iran’s closest ally is Syria.  Will Iran sit idly by as their closest ally is removed from the chessboard?
#12 Starting a war with Syria will cause significant damage to our relationship with Russia.  On Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said that the West is acting like a “monkey with a hand grenade“.
#13 Starting a war with Syria will cause significant damage to our relationship with China.  And what will happen if the Chinese decide to start dumping the massive amount of U.S. debt that it is holding?  Interest rates would absolutely skyrocket and we would rapidly be facinga nightmare scenario.
#14 Dr. Jerome Corsi and Walid Shoebat have compiled some startling evidence that it was actually the Syrian rebels that the U.S. is supporting that were responsible for the chemical weapons attack that is being used as justification to go to war with Syria…

With the assistance of former PLO member and native Arabic-speaker Walid Shoebat, WND has assembled evidence from various Middle Eastern sources that cast doubt on Obama administration claims the Assad government is responsible for last week’s attack.

You can examine the evidence for yourself right here.
#15 As Pat Buchanan recently noted, it would have made absolutely no sense for the Assad regime to use chemical weapons on defenseless women and children.  The only people who would benefit from such an attack would be the rebels…

The basic question that needs to be asked about this horrific attack on civilians, which appears to be gas related, is: Cui bono?
To whose benefit would the use of nerve gas on Syrian women and children redound? Certainly not Assad’s, as we can see from the furor and threats against him that the use of gas has produced.
The sole beneficiary of this apparent use of poison gas against civilians in rebel-held territory appears to be the rebels, who have long sought to have us come in and fight their war.

#16 If the Saudis really want to topple the Assad regime, they should do it themselves.  They should not expect the United States to do their dirty work for them.
#17 A former commander of U.S. Central Command has said that a U.S. attack on Syria would result in “a full-throated, very, very serious war“.
#18 A war in the Middle East will be bad for the financial markets.  The Dow was down about 170 points today and concern about war with Syria was the primary reason.
#19 A war in the Middle East will cause the price of oil to go up.  On Tuesday, the price of U.S. oil rose to about $109 a barrel.
#20 There is no way in the world that the U.S. government should be backing the Syrian rebels.  As I discussed a few days ago, the rebels have pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda, they have beheaded numerous Christians and they have massacred entire Christian villages.  If the U.S. government helps these lunatics take power in Syria it will be a complete and utter disaster.
#21 A lot of innocent civilians inside Syria will end up getting killed.  Already, a lot of Syrians are expressing concern about what “foreign intervention” will mean for them and their families…

“I’ve always been a supporter of foreign intervention, but now that it seems like a reality, I’ve been worrying that my family could be hurt or killed,” said one woman, Zaina, who opposes Assad. “I’m afraid of a military strike now.”
“The big fear is that they’ll make the same mistakes they made in Libya and Iraq,” said Ziyad, a man in his 50s. “They’ll hit civilian targets, and then they’ll cry that it was by mistake, but we’ll get killed in the thousands.”

#22 If the U.S. government insists on going to war with Syria without the approval of the American people, the U.S. Congress or the United Nations, we are going to lose a lot of friends and a lot of credibility around the globe.  It truly is a sad day when Russia looks like “the good guys” and we look like “the bad guys”.
What good could possibly come out of getting involved in Syria?  As I wrote about the other day, the “rebels” that Obama is backing are rabidly anti-Christian, rabidly anti-Israel and rabidly anti-western.  If they take control of Syria, that nation will be far more unstable and far more of a hotbed for terrorism than it is now.
And the downside of getting involved in Syria is absolutely enormous.  Syria, Iran and Hezbollah all have agents inside this country, and if they decide to start blowing stuff up that will wake up the American people to the horror of war really quick.  And by attacking Syria, the United States could cause a major regional war to erupt in the Middle East which could eventually lead to World War 3.
I don’t know about you, but I think that starting World War 3 in the Middle East is a really bad idea.
Let us hope that cooler heads prevail before things spin totally out of control.

Payday lender Western Sky Financial to stop funding loans on Sept. 3.

By Danielle Douglas

Western Sky Financial, a prominent online lender that offers short-term loans at triple-digit interest rates, said it will stop funding loans on Sept. 3 amid mounting legal battles with authorities in several states, including Maryland.
The decision arrives as state and federal regulators are clamping down on payday lending, a burgeoning industry that operates under a patchwork of laws. These loans carry high interest rates and balloon payments that can trap Americans in a cycle of debt, critics say. Industry groups say payday lenders are being persecuted and argue that they serve a need that is not being met by traditional banks.
Officials at Western Sky did not respond to requests for comment, but the firm explicitly said on its Web site that it will no longer provide loans as of September.
Western Sky has been the subject of several lawsuits challenging its lending in states with strict usury laws that cap interest rates on loans. The company is owned by a Cheyenne River Sioux tribal member and operates on the tribe’s South Dakota reservation. It claims that the tribe’s sovereign immunity makes the company exempt from following state law.
This month, New York state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, sued the company, alleging that it violated state licensing and usury laws that cap interest rates on loans at 25 percent.
Schneiderman accused the company of charging New Yorkers annual interest rates upward of 355 percent. The lawsuit aims to stop Western Sky from engaging in lending in the state and to void the loans it has already made. The attorney general’s office said the case will go forward despite the company’s decision to stop lending.
Similar actions have been taken against the firm in Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota and Maryland. In 2011, the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation issued a cease-and-desist order against Western Sky after receiving a barrage of consumer complaints.
“There has been significant expansion of online lenders, and the driver is technology,” said Mark Kaufman, Maryland’s commissioner of financial regulation. “There is no doubt that the economics of the business change when you can sit behind a computer and make thousands of loans, versus sitting behind a desk and make a few in a day.”
Advocacy groups have long been concerned about the ability of payday lenders to circumvent state laws. Once states began introducing interest rate caps, some lenders migrated online or moved their operations offshore to sidestep laws. Other lenders began forging relationships with Native American groups to take advantage of their sovereign-nation status.
State authorities have stepped up efforts to go after the lenders, especially those operating under Native American sovereignty, with more enforcement actions and lawsuits.
Benjamin M. Lawsky, head of the agency that regulates banks in New York state, this month ordered 35 online and Native American lenders to stop providing online payday loans in the state. In response, two Native American groups filed lawsuits against the state last week, saying its actions violated their federal status.
As states redouble their efforts to police payday lenders, consumer and industry groups are waiting to see what steps the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will take to enhance federal oversight.
The bureau has supervisory and enforcement authority over storefront, online and bank payday lenders. In April, it took a step closer to imposing rules to govern the industry with a research report on the payday-lending landscape. In one key finding, the report said the average borrower took out 10 payday loans in a year and paid $458 in fees.
Peter Barden, a spokesman for the Online Lenders Alliance trade group, said the backlash against payday lenders could deprive millions of Americans of access to small-dollar loans.
“If regulators pressure banks to stop processing these legal payments, it would cut off an important credit choice for millions of underserved consumers,” he said. “It could also send a chilling message to banks who are legally processing these and other transactions.”
Uriah King, vice president of state policy at the Center for Responsible Lending, contends that community banks and credit unions offer small-dollar loans at better rates than payday lenders. Payday loans, he added, are often used to cover recurring expenses, which can trap consumers in unsustainable loans.
“A two-week balloon loan priced at 400 percent is just inherently unsuitable for people who are in the red every month with their basic expenses,” King said.

Treasury chief: U.S. to hit debt ceiling in mid-October

Topics: Congress ♦ Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew

 

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The US will hit its statutory debt ceiling in mid-October, raising the chance that the government will be forced to default on its debts, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Monday.
In a letter to Congress, Lew urged legislators to raise the limit from the current $16.7 trillion, saying to not do so “would cause irreparable harm to the American economy.”
The Treasury has been operating under the ceiling since it reached that level on May 17, helped by “extraordinary measures” to manage expenditures, and a surge in tax receipts above forecasts.
However, Lew said, the latest estimates point to that breathing room being exhausted around the middle of October.
“At that point, the United States will have reached the limit of its borrowing authority, and Treasury would be left to fund the government with only the cash we have on hand on any given day.”
That “would place the United States in an unacceptable position,” Lew said, unable to serve rising commitments to issue payments for health and retirement needs and not able to pay the required salaries.
Moreover, he warned, if investor demand for US government debt declines, the country could face an immediate cash shortfall.
“Indeed, such a scenario could undermine financial markets and result in significant disruptions to our economy.”
Lew said it was not possible to pinpoint the exact day Treasury commitments would exceed its funds.
But, he said, “Under any circumstance… Congress must act before the middle of October.”
Lew’s comments were in a letter addressed to John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives.
It came as the White House and both parties in Congress gird for yet another battle over spending that will conflate the debt ceiling and the US budget.
In repeated battles over the past two years Republicans have stalled increases in the debt ceiling to extract commitments to cut spending from President Barack Obama’s Democrats.
The fight in July-August 2011 took the country to the brink, poised between defaulting on obligations to US citizens or defaulting on foreign debt.
While that fate was averted in a last-minute deal, the budget fight was not resolved and Standard & Poor’s dealt the country the first-ever downgrade of its top-flight debt rating.
Lew evoked that scenario again in his letter to Boehner.
Protecting the full faith and credit of the United States is the responsibility of Congress because only Congress can extend the nation’s borrowing authority,” he said.
“Congress should act as soon as possible to protect America’s good credit by extending normal borrowing authority well before any risk of default becomes imminent.”

The Immense (and Needless) Human Misery Caused by Speculative Credit Bubbles

by Charles Hugh-Smith

Financialization and the Neocolonial Model of credit-based exploitation leave immense human suffering in their wake when speculative credit bubbles inevitably implode.
Discussions of the global financial crisis tend to be bloodless accounts of policy and “growth.” This detachment masks the immense and totally needless human misery created by financial engineering. A correspondent with first-hand knowledge of the situation in Cyprus filed this account:

“RE: the Cyprus economic crisis, the politicians are unbowed by the chaos they caused, still behaving as they have always done, preaching populist platitudes, corrupt as ever, unapologetic. A poll showed that 99% of Cypriots believe their government is corrupt.
Yesterday, the former president, Demetris Christofias, appeared before a tribunal investigating the causes of the economic collapse. He tried to force the tribunal to do what he told them, saying, “I am not just any witness, I was the President of the Republic for 5 years”. They told him where to get off and he stormed out.
Little hope for this country. Money leaving. Best talent leaving. Foreign investment in a planned energy hub has been hijacked by the politicians. Cyprus is returning back to what it always was: a tourist destination run by shopkeepers and farmers.Sad days. Most people feel betrayed by the politicians and big powers.”

This report highlights a key dynamic of speculative credit/banking bubbles: they require the complicity of central banks and the state. Speculative bubbles based solely on cash have very short lifespans, as the bubble bursts violently as soon as the gamblers’ cash has been sucked into the vortex.
Truly devastating speculative bubbles require a vast expansion of credit and the corruption of the political class that feeds off the state. As Credit is ultimately managed by the state, central banks and the banking cartel, no speculative credit bubble can arise without the complicity and collaboration of all three.
Speculative credit bubbles are the hallmark of parasitic financial systems and what I term the Neofeudal-Neocolonial Model of Financialization: In the neofeudal, neocolonial model, speculation by the parasitic Aristocracy is backstopped by the taxpayers–the perfection of moral hazard. The E.U., Neofeudalism and the Neocolonial-Financialization Model(May 24, 2012).
Future taxpayers are burdened with crushing mountains of debt taken on to fund corrupt state fiefdoms and politically sacrosanct cartels and constituencies.
Debt (that profits the parasitic financial Aristocracy) is heavily incentivized while saving capital (cash) is punished with negative yields.The incentives to accumulate cash capital and invest it productively rather than speculatively are systematically destroyed.
This is the essence of the neocolonial model: make money cheap, reward consumption and speculation in asset bubbles and draw once-prudent citizens into debt-serfdom. Those not ready for big-mortgage serfdom are snared with $100,000 student loans.

This is the same mechanism used to stripmine colonies with financialization: no coercion necessary. “They did it to themselves.”
This neocolonial model leads to neofeudalism: Once the asset bubble burst, your (phantom) wealth has vanished, but you still owe us the debt. In an economy based on debt, servicing that debt absorbs much of the income. So you need to borrow more to get by.
The destructive incentives, corruption and erosion of productive investment are masked by the rapidly rising phantom wealth created by the bubble in real estate and stocks. Something else happens when speculative credit bubbles inflate housing: rents also rise as the cost of buying homes skyrockets.
As a result, even those who prudently avoided buying into bubbles see their incomes siphoned off.
This is what speculative credit bubbles look like in household terms:
Productivity per worker keeps increasing:

As do financial profits per worker:

Financial profits as a share of the economy have soared:

But the share of a financialized neofeudal economy that flows to workers declines:

Adjusted for inflation, real household incomes stagnate even as the credit bubble boosts the value of assets owned by the financial Aristocracy:

The Neofeudal-Neocolonial Model is playing out everywhere as the home economies are ruthlessly pillaged in the financialized version of the old colonial exploitation model:
The Eurozone’s Three Fatal Flaws (September 21, 2011)

My definition of Neoliberal Capitalism differs significantly from the conventional view: markets are opened specifically to benefit the Central State and global corporations, and risk is masked by financialization and then ultimately passed onto the taxpayers. In this view, the essence of Neoliberal Capitalism is: profits are privatized but losses are socialized, i.e. passed on to the taxpayers via bailouts, sweetheart loans, State guarantees, the monetization of private losses as newly issued public debt, etc.

The consequences of this vast transfer of risk and the cleanup costs of the credit bubble to citizens and debt-serfs is human misery on an immense scale.
Are you in the New York City region? Meet other OfTwoMinds Like-Minded people(via Meetup) interested in building social capital and exploring the alternative ideas presented here. Check it out! (Thank you, Neil T. for establishing this Meetup.)