Countering media representations of the food crisis as unexpected, George Caffentzis argues that its essential role in thwarting resistance to neoliberalism's enclosures and austerity measures was thoroughly predictable

'South Korean companies are sending employees on "fake funeral" courses to help prevent suicide. The "well-dying craze" has become an integral part of training at Samsung, which has built its own fake funeral centre'

i guess the idea that 'negative' social energies can be redirected and inverted into perfecting the reigning negativity is nothing new (ie 'the apprentice' - both the tv series and the picaresque proletarian of yore - is always encouraged to turn class hatred back on his own class in order to ascend from it), but this marks a new level of assimilation even for graffiti.

In a time of credit crisis, small to medium bank branches are failing, forcing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to go in and clean up the mess. Coming in stealthily to avoid public panic and sudden withdrawal of all a bank’s funds, which would result in a sinking of the bank and possibly others in the area, the FDIC makes a quick job of taking over the bank.

Brian Marks seems to have rewritten George Caffentzis' 1980 'The Work/Energy Crisis & The Apocalypse' essay for our turbulent times, adding in a dose of fictitious capital a la David Harvey. But was/ is this analysis of (energy/capitalist) crisis accurate?

In particular the idea that the crisis imposes intensified looting (of workers) through inflation, transfering value back up to

Short article from Bahrain weekly 'The Gulf' in which the author of 'Super Imperialism' and 'Global Fracture' makes what is hardly the 'modest proposal' he pretends it is, and perhaps also gives a clue as to what he thought he was doing as 'economic adviser' to Denis Kucinich's presidential run. Hudson proposes that an unspecified bloc of 'Middle Eastern' state-capital should try to settle the dollar-standard blackmail once and for all by offering to buy the US out of the military infrastructure (i.e.

Thanks to Meltdown III stalwart Jon Amsden for finding and introducing this impressionistic but telling survey of what a dollar free-falling towards worthlessness ('Monopoly money', anyone?) means in terms of everyday survival in some parts of the world.

For those who may wish to take a break from the lofty abstractions of financial skullduggery and dollar decline, here's how it looks on the fishmarket floor and in other places where the dollar was once the basic currency of international trade but is now losing its former luster.

As the US subprime mortgage crisis plays out, the ‘dual morality’ of its victims' treatment becomes stark. But, Randy Martin explains, bailing-out the banks while leaving defaulters to rot is just the latest in a 30 year campaign of ripping off the American working class

re-posting from the [reclaim-spaces] list, originally in Black Agenda Report

Tear Down the Ghetto: The Price is Wrong
http://www.nathanielturner.com/teardownghettopriceiswrong.htm

What the misanthropic Jenkins calls a "small mental adjustment" is
actually a government-
subsidized economy of destruction -rather than production- divorced
totally from human needs but instead dictated by the demands of those
who deal in "moneyness."

By Glen Ford

The final crisis of capitalism is no longer looming: it has arrived with

Michael Hudson on the fiscal policy continuity from Reagan's supply side 'voodoo' through (Bill) Clinton-era government by Goldman Sachs bond traders (a tradition continued with Bush's appointment of Paulson) to the present crisis.

Resurrecting Greenspan
Hillary Joins the Vast, Rightwing Financial Conspiracy

By MICHAEL HUDSON

Further detailed coverage from Libcom (http://libcom.org) of the  class struggle that continues to rage in Bangladesh, focusing here on how the global 'food crisis' works concretely in this case. The effect of farming techniques imposed during Asia's 'Green Revolution' is addressed, although this needs to be put related to the world trade 'diplomacy' which since WW2 has made 'developing' countries dependent on food imports (see M.