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Economic Recovery

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The mission of this working group is to explore the issues regarding economic downturn and recovery. It will discuss the impact on American and their communities domestically and overseas. It will also explore social crises associated with economic downturn and the impact on vulnerable populations globally.

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This working group is focused on the economic downturn and recovery.
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admin Albert Gomez ChrisAllen JockGill jranck loguest

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Trump signs pandemic aid and spending bill, averting government shutdown

PALM BEACH, Fla./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday signed into law a $2.3 trillion pandemic aid and spending package, officials said, restoring unemployment benefits to millions of Americans and averting a partial federal government shutdown.

Trump, who leaves office on Jan. 20 after losing November’s election, backed down from his threat to block the bill, which was approved Congress last week, after he came under intense pressure from lawmakers on both sides.

The Republican president, who golfed on Sunday and remained out of public view even as the potential government shutdown loomed, had demanded that Congress change the bill to increase the size of stimulus checks for struggling Americans to $2,000 from $600.

It was not immediately clear why Trump changed his mind as his resistance to the massive legislative package promised a chaotic final stretch of his presidency.

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China Is Headed for a Debt Meltdown Like the U.S. in 2008 - But Worse

               

Empty apartment developments stand in the city of Ordos, Inner Mongolia on September 12, 2011. MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images) | MARK RALSTON via Getty Images

huffingtonpost.com - by Robert Hockett - January 8, 2016

World attention has focused in recent months on an acute refugee crisis occasioned by the mass migration to Europe of hundreds of thousands now fleeing the Syrian civil war. Less noticed has been another refugee crisis at least as ominous as that underway in the Middle East and Europe -- the fleeing of money from China.

What's going on, and why is it ominous? . . .

. . . where Chinese money is going -- to U.S. real estate and other asset markets. . . .

. . . First, it is fueling new real estate bubbles in the U.S. . . .

. . . Second, the shift of investment flows from Chinese to American assets is placing downward pressure on Chinese currency values, and will place upward pressure on the dollar -- yet again. This will ultimately worsen America's trade balance with China, harming America's own economic recovery and fueling mutual Chinese-American resentments -- possibly culminating in financially destabilizing competitive currency devaluations, trade war, or both. . . .

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IMF Chief Says Banks Haven't Changed Since Financial Crisis

      

Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF, presents her address to the Inclusive Capitalism Conference. Photograph: John Stillwell/AP

Christine Lagarde tells London conference banking sector is still resisting reform and taking excessive risks

theguardian.com - by Angela Monaghan - May 27, 2014

The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that a persistent violation of ethics among bankers and rising inequality pose a major threat to growth and financial stability.

Christine Lagarde told an audience in London that six years on from the deep financial crisis that engulfed the global economy, banks were resisting reform and still too focused on excessive risk taking to secure their bonuses at the expense of public trust.

She said: "The behaviour of the financial sector has not changed fundamentally in a number of dimensions since the crisis.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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Opinion - Off the Pedestal: Creating a New Vision of Economic Growth

by James Gustave Speth - e360.yale.edu - May 31, 2011

The idea of economic growth as an unquestioned force for good is ingrained in the American psyche. But a longtime environmental leader argues it’s time for the U.S. to reinvent its economy into one that focuses on sustaining communities, family life, and the natural world.

Is anything in America more faithfully followed than economic growth? Its movements are constantly watched, measured to the decimal place, deplored or praised, diagnosed as weak or judged healthy and vigorous. Newspapers, magazines, and cable channels report endlessly on it. Promoting growth may be the most widely shared and robust cause in the United States today.

If the growth imperative dominates U.S. political and economic life, what happens when growth hits some serious stumbling blocks?

When I was in school in England, the dean of my college told us when we first arrived that we could walk on the grass in the courtyard — but not across it. That helped me love the English and their language. Here is another creative use of prepositions: there are limits to growth, and there are limits of growth.

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Robert Kuttner: Can Europe Be Spared Cascading Collapse?

The failure of the European authorities to arrest the speculative run on Greek bonds and the sense of inevitable wider collapse reminds me of the diplomatic failures that led to World War I.

In the summer of 1914, myopic bluffing by Europe's key leaders produced a catastrophe that nobody wanted. It began in Serbia, a small nationalistic province of a decaying Austro-Hungarian empire, but the conflagration soon spread to all of Europe like a chain of firecrackers. No leader was farsighted enough to grasp the wider common stakes and head off disaster. Each pursued only narrow self-interest.

Jeremy Rifkin: The Third Industrial Revolution: Toward a New Economic Paradigm

 

Our industrial civilization is at a crossroads. Oil and the other fossil fuel energies that make up the industrial way of life are sunsetting, and the technologies made from and propelled by these energies are antiquated. The entire industrial infrastructure built off of fossil fuels is aging and in disrepair. The result is that unemployment is rising to dangerous levels all over the world. Governments, businesses and consumers are awash in debt and living standards are plummeting everywhere. A record one billion human beings--nearly one seventh of the human race--face hunger and starvation.

By 2030 China's Economy Could Loom as Large as America's in the 1970s

The Economist - September 9, 2011

Global Economic Dominance - Spheres of Influence

       

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Video - The Israëli Awakening?!

submitted by Theresa Bernardo

YouTube - uploaded by jeaunkes - August 3, 2011

An Israeli girl starts a peaceful protest of the high cost of living, with Facebook and a tent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Yj-Uo5mpAD0

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