derivatives

"Demonstrations against austerity measures in Greece claimed their first fatalities on Wednesday with three people reported to have died inside a bank building set ablaze by protesters." That's the framing that you'll be hearing all week as U.S. media cover the first deaths in the conflict between striking Greek workers and a government seeking to impose stiff new taxes and cuts to stave off economic collapse. But when it comes to who claimed what in terms of fatalities, it's worth remembering what lies in the background of this picture. To begin, the international financial community sees opportunity in Greece's demise and has placed its bets there, which drives up the cost of borrowing if you're Greek. Just as here, Wall Street bets against state and local bonds have raised the cost of running city services. Like in the U.S., since 1981 Greek wages have been essentially flat, a fundamental problem no one's been solving. Cutting state jobs won't help and already around 20 percent of Greeks live in poverty. Over half a million households pay more than half their income on debt. Even prior to today's insolvency, surveys have shown that a "third world" was being created inside Greece. Now, cue the angry protests. Now consider what claimed their first fatalities Wednesday: . . demonstrations by the strapped? Or decades of decision making that wrote off inequality, poverty, and debt as just collateral damage. Oh, and Portugal's just been downgraded by Moody's. And oh yes, The European commission's forecasting that the UK budget deficit this year will hit 12% of GDP – the highest in the European Union, even worse than Greece. So when we say long hot European summer, we mean it! The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Support us by signing up for our podcast, and follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com. Distributed by Tubemogul.

Democrats in D.C. are going about this regulation thing all wrong. Want to get Republican buy-in? Give Republicans the kind of regulation they like. As usual in U.S. politics, the states provide the road map. Take Arizona. There, the party of small government's just released police to stop people on suspicion. Want to break GOP resistance to financial regulation? Release the SEC to spot-check Wall Street. Anyone who looks suspiciously likely to be hawking synthetic derivatives? Slap ‘em in detention until their lawyers can prove they're innocent. It’s all in the interests of crime prevention. Oklahoma's state legislature just overrode the governor's veto of two laws related to pregnancy and abortion. Personal privacy's nice but even good people sometimes make bad decisions, said legislators. Now women who'd like to terminate a pregnancy will be subjected to mandatory vaginal scans and forced to view fetal porn videos. Want to reduce credit default swaps? Before they make another risky bet, let’s force traders to slap on a gown, step in those stirrups, and subject themselves to a mandatory scan of their stock portfolios, while watching American Casino or Plunder or listening to the live, panicked heartbeat of manipulated mortgage owners. Regulators need to remember that even the die-hardest conservative's OK with some regulation. If it's good enough for the women of Oklahoma, it's good enough for Wall Street. Right? The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Support us by signing up for our podcast, and follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com. Distributed by Tubemogul.

Armistice Day reminds us that when wars end, the winners and losers are supposed to make peace. But this week also marked the ten-year anniversary of a different kind of war -- a war on Americans' assets and the poor. Ten years later, while the winners and losers are obvious, there's no armistice in sight. On November 12, 1999, after decades of banking deregulation, congress repealed the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which up until that point had kept Main Street banks and commercial financial speculation apart. Glass-Steagall's repeal unleashed a wave of derivative marketing that rewarded shameless loan sharks for selling the most vulnerable Americans into a bubble of debt. The bubble having burst, now the stock market is up. Companies are reporting strong earnings and Wall Street's clearly at peace. But this week's news also brought US double-digit unemployment and regardless of those good earnings, the layoffs just don't stop; Sprint says it's cutting another 2,500 jobs; Pfizer, 2,000 jobs; even supposedly new and growing parts of the economy aren't growing -- software developer Adobe's cutting 6 percent of its workforce, game-maker Electronic Arts is cutting 1,500 jobs. And that's just this week. Winners and losers? You betcha.