they didnt invent this process, they probably didnt even materially spread it - it had been industry standard for at least a decade - a high school student could have learned that process in a morning and made that seminar - most of immigration lawyer work is actually very unskilled and extremely repetative

the only thing they really did, was being dumb and sloppy enough to film it and make it public on their website. and when exposed, they only claimed that it was 'taken out of context' (yeah, right), and 'used without permission'. they have never to my knowledge, denied it was them or claimed it was falsified

I knew about that prccess for more than a decade. But because of Cohen & Grigsby (and the Programmers guild grabbing the ball and slamming it though the hoop for a score, nice job PG), now no one with an ounce of integrity can look at that short video and still claim that 'no american workers are hurt by guest workers'.

Of course, an awful lot of people lack even a single ounce of integrity, so the lies continue. But at least no one can *honestly* believe it. This video was an incredible victory for the truth

But the video did remove the 'benefit of the doubt' for anyone who sees it. If you see it, and still claim Americans arent hurt, you're not 'deceived', you're a liar

At this joyous Christmas season, the government can tell blacks and Hispanics that discrimination against them in the housing market will not be tolerated, at least not after the fact. Meanwhile, the Obama reelection campaign can tell Wall Street donors not to worry - no one is going to jail, the bonuses for the 1% will not be clawed back, and the shareholders are not going to suffer any noticeable losses from illegal behavior. Which means the illegal behavior can continue again and again, and at worst the industry will have to pay small parking fines if caught.

This is not opinion. These are facts.

- The H-1B guest worker visa program was started in 1990 with an annual cap of 65,000 visas.

- The L-1 visa program was started in the 1970s and was designed for intracompany transfers only. It has since been abused to bring in foreign nationals for services companies and then place them at their clients - which is illegal.

- From 1978 to 1998 - including the 90's boom - the demographic in the IT industry was 98% white American males. The U.S. economy was booming in 1998.

- In late 1998, India (and the rest of the world) sat up and took notice of the huge amount of wealth America's tech workers were generating. India decided they wanted to take over what Americans had created and get the $ for themselves. But how? Answer: Public Relations of course! So India's IT lobby, NASSCOM, hired D.C. PR/lobbying firm Hill & Knowlton to plant fake "worker shortage" stories in the U.S. media in 1998. While most Americans were busy enjoying the fruits of their labors, India was plotting how to invade and take over America. This barrage of news alleging a worker shortage story was the vehicle by which India, Inc. convinced America to permit the next step:

- In late 1998 and early 2000, the H-1B visa caps were raised from 65,000 a year to 115,000 per year and 195,00 per year, respectively. Then-president Bill Clinton - not George Bush - signed the increases. Tech workers from India didn't begin arriving in the U.S. in large numbers until late 1998. How could they have created the 90's tech boom when they weren't even here? The tech boom was created by Americans. Now that Americans have been driven out by the imported workers, the Silicon Valley and U.S. economies are a disaster.

- As a result of the 1998 & 2000 increases, 1.1 million foreign guest workers came into the U.S. from October 1998 to October 2003. According to the U.S. Dept. of Labor, 90% of those H-1B visas went to people from India. These people promptly took over America's tech jobs and drove Americans out of them.

- A unknown number more came in during the same time period on the L-1 intracompany transfer visa, which has been heavily abused by Indian outsourcing companies such as Wipro, InfoSys, and Tata. The number of L-1s who came in from 1998-2003 is at least 1 million, maybe 2 million.

- There is no yearly cap on L-1 visas.

- The H-1B visa cap reverted back to 65,000 per year in Oct. 2003. Despite this, over a million foreign guest workers continue to come into the U.S. every single year - even during periods of record unemployment, such as today.

- The U.S. economy went from booming to collapse the same year of the 2nd H-1B increase - proof that the foreign guest workers did not perform as promised.

- In fact, the U.S. economy has been in decline since 2000 or 2001. The government tried to offset the decline by making huge amounts of cheap credit available to make up for lost jobs and lower wages caused by the flood of cheap labor from the developing world. The credit ran out in 2008 and the real economy now is the result.

- There has been no real economic growth in the U.S. since the 2000-2001 collapse.

- Since the millions of guest workers arrived in 1998 and 2000, 14-16 million white collar American jobs have been destroyed. Approximately 1-2 million of those have been offshored - the rest have been destroyed. Promises by guest workers to help the U.S. economy in 1998 have never materialized. The opposite has happened.

- Despite common myths, there is no legal requirement in the H-1B laws which requires an employer to look for and hire an American worker instead of a foreign worker.

- Protections for American workers are provided in Federal law under Title 8, Section 1182, which defines who is an inadmissible alien, but those laws are being ignored and are not enforced.

- Most H-1Bs that enter the U.S. from developing countries such as India and China are not skilled as claimed - they are being trained by Americans when they get here - which makes both the applicant and hiring company guilty of fraud, which is a felony.

- American companies are using the H-1B and other work visa programs as a way to displace and bypass American workers in favor of cheaper foreign labor.

- Most foreign imported workers who come to the U.S. to work on work visas make less than their American counterparts. Companies love imported workers because companies think they increase profits by cutting costs. Cost-cutting is a sign of a company in trouble. In reality, long-term cheaper foreign workers harm American profits because long-term increased profits rely on innovation, not lower costs - and countries like India and China have terrible track records in innovation.

- Due to historical and ideological factors, most of the foreign workers we are brining to the U.S. are deliberately keeping skilled Americans out of the workforce by denying them jobs. The foreign workers claim Americans are too stupid, but Americans created the IT industry. The real reason Americans are being kept out of the workforce is because of racism, hypernationalism, communists in corporations who hate capitalism and hate America, and because of historical resentments by the guest workers themselves. Britain invaded and colonized India 150 years ago. Indians think the evil white man stole all their wealth. Hence Indians think they are entitled to break the law and deny jobs to Americans. It's payback time. Britain colonized China by taking control of Hong Kong from 1898 to 1997. The Opium Wars enslaved China and weakened it. Hence most Chinese resent hate white people. The Chinese are also deeply jealous that the U.S. has far surpassed them in just 250 years and China has been around for 6000 years.

- Both China and India resent America because both countries are communist or socialist and hence the U.S. would not trade with them for 50 years - from the end of World War 2 until globalization began in 1997. Most Chinese and Indians believe that they were kept out of the world economy by America and hence they want to do the same to us. Mexicans hate Americans because NAFTA disrupted the local Mexican economy when it was flooded with American goods by greedy American executives who wanted to find new consumers to sell to.

- Foreign guest workers are conducting a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing - cleansing Americans from jobs in their own country. The reasons why are covered above.

- China is all about "saving face". America's success makes China look bad. The Chinese are jealous of us. Many imported guest workers from China will deny jobs to brilliant Americans simply because they are Americans - even to the point of making companies fail by staffing them with incompetent foreign guest workers who can't do the jobs. Can't hire Americans you know - that increases the prestige of Americans and decreases the prestige of Chinese. What do they care what they do to Americans? As long as the can fake it long enough to grift out VC-funded companies and send the money home, it's ok - after all, the evil white man oppressed China and hence China is entitled to America's money - even without performing as advertised. The cleanout of American VC-funded tech companies by fraudulent foreign workers is one of the prime causes of both the "credit crisis" (money going overseas when foreign workers send their paychecks home), and high unemployment (foreign workers not doing the jobs, and cusing companies to fail, thus reducing the number of jobs in the economy). It's not just how many people are working that matters, it's who is working. Workers from developing countries not only want our money, they want to see our economy fail - after all, that lowers U.S. prestige in the world and makes the other countries who can't compete look relatively better. If you can't beat your competition, just attack them instead, take their money, but collapse all their companies while you are at it.

- The U.S. currently exports $45 billion a year in wages to India alone and over $70 bllion a year to Mexico. Wonder where the capital in our banks is going? It's not being used to create jobs in America or being spent into the American economy - it's being shipped overseas by guest workers here.

- India wants to be known as the IT capital of the world - despite the fact that India is incapable of creating it own operating system. Name one software application that comes from India. Name one Indian software company anyone has heard of - not services companies like Wipro, Tata, etc - Indian companies that actually produce software they sell - none exist.

- More software comes from Scandanavia than from India.

- The average Indian IQ is 81. The average American IQ is 98. The average Japanese IQ is 107. The average German IQ is 100. Why aren't we importing a million workers a year from Japan and Germany? Why only from 3rd world countries? Answer: people from 3rd world countries are not the best and the brightest - they are the opposite - we are importing them for International Socialism - so that they can enjoy the fruits of the labor of productive countries like the U.S.

- Name one new industry or invention to come out of India or China in 250 years. Auto industry - America. TV & radio industries - America. Aerospace industries - America. Light bulbs, integrated circuits, computers, the internet, software - all of it comes from America, invented and created by Americans. Modern manufacturing, assembly line process - American. Now name one new industry or invention to come from India or China in 250 years - there are none. America doesn't need these workers.

Foreign-born founders and their contributions to America

- There has been much talk recently of the contributions of foreign-born founders to America. While it is true that there are some few rare exceptions, the reality is the vast majority of immigrants are here to take from us and send money home - as well as to acquire skills from Americans so they can be more like us.

- A few immigrants have made contributions to America - many of them from Europe. Many of them over 40 years ago. Einstein and von Braun come to mind. A few others more recently from non-European countries - Vinhod Kosla at Sun, the creator of Hotmail, or Amit Singh. But again, they are the rare exceptions, not the rule. The fact is, a decade of importing millions of foreign workers is not making the U.S. economy grow - it was growing in the 90's - before they got here, not now.

- For every one outstanding immigrant who does contribute, we are bringing in at least 10,000 destructive ones who are only here for our money and jobs. - immigrants who take and destroy as our economy is now proving.

- Let's talk companies and who founded them. As a rationale for why immigrants need to come help America, the immigrants themselves have been telling lies about who founded what companies. Let's set the record straight.

- Intel - Intel was not founded by immigrants. It was founded by 2 Americans - Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law fame).

- Yahoo! - Yahoo! was founded by one American - David Filo - and one immigrant - Jerry Yang. But Yang came to the U.S. at age 6 from Taiwan - a developed country. He was raised here and went to school here. He's more American than immigrant.

- Google - Google was founded by one American - Larry Page - and one immigrant - Sergei Brin. But Brin came from Russia, not India or China - and he came here at age 3 and grew up here and was educated here. He's more American than immigrant.

- Microsoft - Founded by two Americans - Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

- Apple - Founded by two Americans - Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Apple is booming today. Why? Apple CLOSED its R&D in India in 2006 and hires mostly Americans for all of its software development. 0% of Apple's software development is done offshore.

- Sun - Founded by 2 Americans, 1 German, and 1 Indian. Sun's CEO for the 1st 25 years was Scott McNeally - an American. Sun's operating system was architected by another American co-founder - Bill Joy. In 2001 Sun was taken over by legions of foreign guest workers from India and China - and Sun is now losing $150 million a quarter and is being sold off to Oracle to avoid the embarrassment of closing its doors with foreign guest workers running it.

Now let's go down the list of companies damaged or destroyed by foreign imported labor since 1998:

PeopleSoft - Taken over by imported Indian workers in 2000 - had to be sold off to Oracle to avoid embarrassment of closing.

Sun Micro - Dying. See above.

Bell Labs - Taken over by Indian-national Arun Netravalli in 2003. Bell Labs where the transistor, UNIX, and the C programming language were invented is now being turned into a shopping mall.

Quark - Taken over by Indian national Alukah Kamar - who laid off all the American developers and sent the work to India. The products became so bad that 60% of Quark's customer base defected to Adobe InDesign, never to return. Kamar was later fired but not before permanent harm was done to Quark.

Computer Associates' former CEO from India is now serving 12 years in federal prison for fraud.

MIT Media Lab Asia - Closed in 2006 due to faked invoices in India.

Intel Whitefield processor project - this project in India was cancelled when Intel discovered that many of the "engineers" had faked their resumes.

ComAir - ComAir's 100% Indian IT staff caused the nationwide 2005 Christmas day airport shutdown when they used a short int instead of a long int in the crew scheduling software they were working on. So much for the best and the brightest from overseas contributing to the American economy.

Boeing Dreamliner - Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner airplane has been delayed 5 times - in part because of failed software written by India's HCL Technologies - whose CEO once said "American grads are unemployable".

Lehman - This failed Wall St. institution had purchased Wipro's Spectramind software (which they in turn had bought from someone else and messed up) just before it went bankrupt. It also had hired large numbers of India, Inc. workers just before it went under.

Dell - Outsourced a lot of work to India over the past decade. Profits are now down 54%. Michael Dell once said "Stability is more important than growth".

United/Delta - Both companies brought their call centers back to the U.S. from India when they discovered that foreign call centers were harming their business.

HSBC - ATM software was taken over by India, Inc., ATMs began failing in 2006.

AIG - Signed outsourcing deal in 2007 in Europe with Accenture, collapsed in 2009.

Vodaphone - UK's top cell phone vendor has gone into major decline - in part because its CEO from India didn't do the job and walked out with over $41 million in compensation for doing nothing.

World Bank - Indian, Inc. fraudsters including Wipro were BANNED for 3 years because they stole data.

The verdict is in: Whatever else immigrants and foreign-born founders are doing to America, on balance, they are causing net harm to the U.S. economy - harm that is the cause of our current economic problems. No amount of hype, news stories, studies, or commentaries will change the above facts about the effects of foreign guest workers on the U.S. economy.

A huge army of conmen from India numbering into the several millions have spent a decade cleaning out America's economy. America's moronic MBA managers and boomers who know nothing about technology have been conned by this elaborate PR-driven charade and have been duped into throwing Americans who created IT out and replacing them with incompetent conmen. The end result is what you see now: a destroyed American economy and a vast transferrence of America's wealth to India. People like Vivek Fraudwha are India's cheerleaders and keep shouting from the rooftops that this is good for us, but based on the state of the economy, it clearly isn't.

Now you know the exact chronology of what has happened to America's economy and who is responsible. All the fluff you hear on the evening news is just cover or what has really happened: we've been invaded and plundered by foreign interests that's all.

Capital crisis? Nah - remittances. Guest workers send $45 billion year from the U.S. home to India. $70 billion to Mexico. And that's just those 2 countries. The total is in the hundreds of millions. Keep siphoning that money out year after year and it leaves American banks and lands in Indian banks. And we wonder where all the credit has gone - credit is capital sitting in banks. Except that after a decade of this nonsense, it's no longer sitting in U.S. banks where it would have been lent to businesses to create jobs. Duh.

Housing collapse? Subprime crisis? Nah - mortgage-paying Americans no longer having the jobs or incomes to pay their mortgages - because their jobs were taken away from them and given to cheaper imported workers who have no interest in living here, only in working here so they can send our their money home. There were no subprime loans in America's booming economy of 1998. Sure Barney Frank helped contribute, but that's not the prime cause. No jobs, no mortgages. At least not ones Americans can afford. The banks too are complicit in this: they give out too many loans and run the housing values way up in boom times due to excessive demand, then they flood the labor market and collapse the economy by laying everyone off. Homeowners who have been making payments for years lose all that cash, plus the interest, plus the house too - the banks end up with the money and the property. Pretty nice deal - if you're a banker.

Record federal debt? Nah - suplus elimination by the Fed banksters who control us. In 1998 Bill Clinton sequaled "We've cured the business cycle". Greenspan chimed in: "We should use the Federal surplus to pay down the national debt". Uh oh. Red warning alarms going off in every Fed building in the country (and in a lot of castles in Europe and in The City in England too). Surpluses put bankers out of business. A boom like the 90s lets everyone pay cash. No need to borrow much. Bankers don't like that. Hence, since they control our money supply through the Fed (it's illegal for the U.S. government to issue its own money due to The Federal Reserve Act of 1913), something had to be done. But what? First they tried Open Source to try to kill the value of proprietary software. That didn't work - smart companies continued to protect their inventions. The banksters finally figured out the best way to wreck an economy is to flood it with unproductive workers and replace the super-productive ones who are creating the boom. When salaries are high, tax revenues go up too. When salaries are low, tax revenues go down. Hence, to stop a surplus, all one has to do is get rid of the highly-paid workers, and replace the with lower-paid ones. If you can actually destroy the jobs in the processs, you put the brakes on the economy even more. Hence another reason for the flood of IQ81 people from India replacing America's most brilliant American workers whose IQs are in the 140 range.

That did the trick - that and pilling on even more debt through never-ending unecessary wars which cost billions.

So now you know the history of how the American economy was really wrecked - don't let the blow-dried morons on the news fool you.

€489B in three-year euro bonds now on markets

It looks like markets are still guessing ... what else do markets do? Something definitely looks better for Europe .... Probably not a roller coaster, just a see-saw. (But who knows what wonders flash-trading will perform?)

From Reuters (21 December 2011) --

LONDON, Dec 21 (Reuters) - Early hopes that the near 490 billion euros borrowed by banks from the European Central Bank at its first-ever offer of three-year loans would ease the two-year old debt crisis began to fade on Wednesday, sending the euro and stocks lower.

U.S. stock index futures turned negative as concern set in that the large take-up highlighted the scale of the pressure European banks are under.

The ECB had indicated the ultra-cheap, long-term loans were designed to boost trust in banks, free up money markets and tempt banks to buy Italian and Spanish debt.

"Certainly this will help ease liquidity, as will last month's coordinated central bank action on dollar swaps, but it also highlights the gravity of the situation in the euro zone - so don't expect sustained euro gains," said Richard Driver, currency analyst for Caxton FX.

Traders polled by Reuters just hours before the operation expected the ECB to allot 310 billion euros, up from a forecast of 250 billion euros in a poll on Monday.

"The number (489 billion euros) beats the previous record of 442 billion euros (the ECB allotted) in June 2009," said Christian Schulz, senior economist at Berenberg Bank.

"It is highly unlikely now that banks in the euro zone will go bust because of a liquidity shortage."

From Bloomberg/Businessweek (21 December 2011) --

According to the European Banking Association banks face a 700 billion euro wall of funding redemptions, most in the first half.

Italian bond yields were 29 bps higher at 6.92 percent, with Spanish yields 10 bps higher at 5.23 percent, having fallen almost 100 basis points in the last week and a half.

"Today's allotment of three-year loans is equivalent to almost one and a half times Spain and Italy's combined sovereign bond issuance in 2012," said Martin Van Vliet, senior economist at ING.

"However, we doubt whether the money will be used extensively to fund purchases of peripheral debt, given concerns about mark-to-market risks and possible reputation risks."

The scale of the recent rally in Spanish bonds is reflected by outright 10-year yields now lower than they were at the beginning of the year, despite the market volatility since then. Spreads over Bunds are however wider.

Total returns on Spanish government bonds this year are currently 6.4 percent, according to Evolution Securities, quoting iBoxx data, compared with 9.3 percent on Germany Bunds.

March Bund futures were 25 ticks higher at 137.75, having fallen as low as 136.69 after the tender, testing support at 136.72, the 38 percent retracement of the rally seen in November and December.

To my blurry eyes, what's happening looks like this -- scant action in Precious Metals. Holidays. Everything reduces to that the USD continues to look good, but no market rally appears to be building anywhere, despite some samo talk of a 'surge' or whatever (on light volume?)

 

Bottom line: Euro bonds have been quietly introduced and no one is panicking.

From story Reuters story by Benjamin Kang Lim, 21 December 2011)

BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea will shift to collective rule from a strongman dictatorship after last week's death of Kim Jong-il, although his untested young son will be at the head of the ruling coterie, a source with close ties to Pyongyang and Beijing said.

2002 Electrical Engineering and Computer Science graduate here from a prominent, well known university. In the top quartile of the class. Graduated amidst the tech bust, sent out thousands of resumes over the past decade, only to receive replies to just a few.

The whole idea of a tech worker shortage is complete nonsense. Firms would be tripping over themselves to hire guys like me if there was any shortage. Instead, resumes like mine, and those of my classmates, don't even get the 'time of day' from employers.

My crime -- I'm not a cheap overseas/offshore resource from India or China. If I work, I need to be able to earn enough to pay for a retirement in the USA. Letting in the H-1B's has destroyed my career prospects, and literally millions of families who have to care for unemployed STEM talent. Why do we persist in keeping our best and brightest unemployed, simply so a small group of CEOs and bankers can "earn" millions of dollars a year?

"None of us is very far from the receiving end of Mao Tse-tung’s pithy observation that power comes from the barrel of a gun. Power is increasingly being concentrated in the hands of governments unafraid to use guns to sustain their control."  -- Numerian

This generally grim global picture presented by Numerian is doubtless accurate.

If that isn't frightening enough, here's the big picture as it bears down on us here in the USA, brilliantly summarized by Numerian --

Just this past week over 200 years of devotion in the United States to the right of a fair trial was thrown out the window, by a majority of Republican and Democratic Congressmen, with the connivance of a Democratic president. Neither party cares anymore if American citizens are detained indefinitely without charges being filed, without access to an attorney, and without any trial. This weakening of constitutional rights is done in the name of the perpetual fight against terrorism, but increasingly the public sees that as an excuse for the state to grab further totalitarian powers. The public is helpless in stopping any of this.

In North Korea, as was true in Enver Hoxha’s Albania, the operative policy for proper behavior is “self reliance”. We are assured by the government in Pyongyang that Kim Jong-un will continue with his father’s policy of self reliance. Self reliance in a totalitarian state means that after the individual fulfills all of their obligations to the state, they are on their own in finding food to eat when it is scarce, in providing warmth for their family when the electricity runs out, in seeking out a useless herbal nostrum when someone in the family develops cancer.

Have you been paying attention to the Republican Party candidates for president, and to the crowds that attend the debates, cheering on every time a candidate urges the Occupy Wall Street protestors to “get a job!” Have you noticed how much the Republican Party has embraced the North Korean concept of self reliance? [Yes, but I had not thought of it so clearly before!]

All true enough. However, I have some comments on specifics.

About Korea and China:

China's Red Army entered Korea some 60 years ago, and it would be nonsense to suppose that it has ever entirely left or is no longer represented at many levels in the government and military of North Korea. Therefore, Beijing has still, at the very least, a finger on the pulse of life in North Korea. Wen and Wu have a much better idea of what is happening in Phongyang than do Obama, Clinton or the Pentagon.

China ruled Korea much longer and much more effectively than it ever ruled Tibet. China historically has no claim to Taiwan equal to its historical claim on Korea. Similarly, China's claims to Korea are much better founded in history than would be any Chinese claims to Viet Nam. China's hegemonic territorial ambitions likely include the entire Korean peninsula.

About Russia and Europe:

According to Numerian --

Vladimir Putin pretends to retire from power and hand control over to his lackey Dmitry Medvedev. Then, when the time comes for Putin to run again for the presidency, he loses the election and has to stuff the ballot boxes in order to obtain power. Russian youth come out onto the streets in protest, but are beaten back by the police. Just when all looks lost, a candidate emerges to challenge Putin at the next election. But all is lost – the candidate is yet another Russian billionaire oligarch [Prokhorov].

I think Numerian's account is over-simplified, at best. Although Medvedev works with Putin in an occasionally strained partnership, I don't believe that it's accurate to cast Medvedev as Putin's lackey. (Is Biden Obama's lackey?) Medvedev's reputation has suffered from failure of attempts to move Russia closer into the WTO or EU, and now from his (but not Putin's) identification with that objective -- plus, above all, by inability of Russia to stop talk of missile-site construction on Russia's western borders.

It's difficult to summarize the recent 2011 Russian election as stuffing of ballot-boxes "in order to obtain power" when three other parties were major winners in that election and the majority party (United Russia) did not win a majority of seats in the Duma. Were the elections in Russia any more rigged than some of the recent elections in Italy under Berlusconi?

Furthermore, the time has not yet come for Putin to be re-elected President -- that will be next year, March 2012. Meanwhile, characterizing protestors as Russian youth united against Putin is inaccurate, since Putin apparently has his own organization of youth who have come out regularly on the streets in support of United Russia. Of course, to accept the news story that opposition to Putin is accurately represented by a group of relatively young supposedly "go-go capitalism" urbanites ('Yuppies'?) led by Prokhorov is ridiculous. Just for starters, even after balloting irregularities, the Communists and Social Democrats together are represented by 154 deputies in the Duma, which is slightly more than 1/3. (The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is second in numbers only to United Russia.)

I suggest that United Russia is seen by Russian voters as center-right and that a better picture of Russia would be to describe it as like almost all the other more-or-less democratic states of Europe today, as described in AP story (via HuffPo) dated 21 November 2011 --

The center-right is the natural preference in times of crisis," said Piotr Kaczynski of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. "If you look at societies and how they make their preferences, they all tend to vote more conservative in times of crisis and more center-left in times of economic progress."

Granted, on the European Union map there are scattered spots of leftist liberalism. A new Social Democratic government runs Denmark, there is a center left government in Norway and there is a broad Social Democratic-led coalition in Austria. And the Socialists might beat conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy in France's presidential election next year.

But Kaczynski said there is no doubt the European left faces an uphill battle in re-establishing itself with an appealing message and the means to enact it, despite widespread disillusionment with go-go capitalism as seen in the Occupy Wall Street protests and Europe's widespread anti-austerity marches. ....

... in Italy, conservative premier Silvio Berlusconi was forced to resign this month as the eurozone crisis centered on his debt-laden country – but that was to a technocratic administration, not to leftist politicians.

Barroso also mentioned the 2012 French presidential race and Sarkozy's record low approval rating. The feisty French conservative is trailing the Socialist Francois Hollande badly in the polls, although he has recovered a bit in recent weeks.

Socialists are strong in local and regional politics in France: They head 24 of France's 26 regional governments and run major cities including Paris, Lyon, and Lille. Most recently, in September, the Socialists wrested control of the Senate, Parliament's upper house, for the first time in more than a half-century – seen by many as a rebuff to Sarkozy.

In Germany, conservative Angela Merkel beat the center-left's Gerhard Schroeder in 2005 after he pushed through labor market reforms and welfare state cuts. The moves angered his leftist supporters but they are credited with bolstering Germany's strength in the current financial crisis.

However, Stephen Lewis of Monument Securities in London agreed it is perhaps natural for people to turn to the right in times of extreme financial hardship. He noted it happened in the 1930s during the Depression.

"It is not surprising that we are seeing all these right-wing governments appear as a result of elections or imposed from Brussels," Lewis said.

I agree that it's past time for the world to abandon "the hackneyed paradigm of liberalism vs. conservatism, of left vs. right" -- especially here in the USA. However, I suspect that the old paradigm probably still retains substantial residual meaning throughout greater Europe, from the Pacific coast of Siberia all the way to Iceland and the Azores -- plus in New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, Chile and a few other places.

My impression is that 'left' in the European tradition refers precisely to Communism, 'center-left' to the nearly ubiquitous social democratic tradition, 'center right' has come to represent some kind of pragmatism needed because of a nervous lack of confidence in the social democratic state, especially in matters relating to immigration and economic integration ... while 'right' refers to xenophobia or at least to demands for much tighter controls on immigration (especially from outside Europe).

The standard European set-up from left to right is somewhat like what we have here in the U.S., except that we have practically lost sight of our social democratic (New Deal) tradition, we never really had an effective 'left', and, any political program representing itself as pragmatic 'center right' is abused by a corrupted 'right' as socialist or communist.

The question is no longer about political will -- that's become evident. It's whether it's too late for the Euro ... but what comes to mind is Mark Twain's famous "rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

I don't know how they will do it, but somehow I think the EU will be successful in finding a way to amortize the PIGS debt -- despite the nay-sayers. Of course, I could be dead wrong, and Europe may have no choice but to accept 'Gloom Boom and Doom' Marc Faber's recommendation that EU should dissolve and get it over with (14 December 2011).

 

Robert Oak writes, in comment, supra --

There are all sorts of problems with the Chinese banking system. Additionally, the Chinese currency is fixed, it's manipulated, it does not even float.

A host of Europe downgrades came today and the Euro/USD exchange is expected to drop, i.e. the Euro is less valued.

I don't know about the Euro demise, I look at weird signs like pulling out national currency trading equipment from basements.

Seems we have a lull in the never ending European crisis at the moment.

Rumors of bank runs in Paris are now sounding hollow. There may yet be nationalization of some banks, as you have suggested. It's still possible that Greece will return to the drachma, for example, but that seems less likely with each passing day.

I'm focusing on currencies as backed by fundamentals, in particular, industrial/technological infrastructure of participating nation(s). Another important factor is whether investment within a currency area is made into that currency area ... as opposed to invested somewhere else. China, like Singapore, invests in itself. That kind of savings system is built into their economies. By contrast, USA investors have been very happy in recent years to invest in China -- that is, in yuan-based assets. Of course, there are problems everywhere, but can we deny that the PBoC is doing a much better job of monetary management than our Fed?

I'm trying to be objective, and maybe I am leaning too far against my natural inclinations for that reason. Of course, I would like to see the USD remain the world's reserve currency. Of course, I would like to see China progress out of its authoritarian system. Of course, I support the USA in the on-going struggle with China, up to and including nuclear Armageddon. But I am trying to avoid being influenced by my pro-USA views in evaluating the question of whether the Euro really is destined to self-destruct (along with dissolution of the EU). In that regard, I cite the yuan mainly as proof of basic classical monetarist theory, that "full faith and credit" need not equate to hyperinflation, when the banking system and money-creation are reasonably (if imperfectly) regulated.

It's been popular of late to talk of the EU's leaders as delusional and to play up recent inflationary trend in China and likely marginal decline in China's rate of industrial growth. But I am asking myself, who are we (USA) to be talking about delusional leaders and unacknowledged inflationary trends?

What I see with the Euro isn't so much the financial problems, but fundamentals for the economy. I am thinking about what is absent, by comparison with the USD, like they don't seem to have out-of-control costs for maintaining satisfactory medical systems or huge and growing military costs -- such as, costs of maintaining 1100 or 1200 foreign military bases, non-vested expenses related to growing costs of military pensions, etc.. I don't think we should abandon any of these commitments -- I'm just noting that Europe generally is much more free of these encumbrances going forward.  Same story with Japan, Singapore and others. The main problem in Europe is the financial sector, of course ... but their governments now appear to be focused on fixing that, probably including increased capital controls, whereas our government continues smiling while skewered on the banksters' pike.

 

BTW: About fixing value of currency, let's consider this:

"The Congress shall have Power ...To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin ... "  U.S. Const., Art. I, Sect. 8

 

First, some bad news, this bill is "most popular" in thomas.gov, which means there is a lot of links, reads, activism on it.

See H.R. 3012, Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2011.

Then, the Senate Version, S. 1857, Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2011, current legislative status is referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Believe me, you're going to the wrong link for who is behind this bill. It's the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who are writing and pushing it. That's how it passed the House with nary a word and could possibly have a voice vote override.

Literally we have a currency manipulation bill on China passing the Senate, being blocked by Boehmer, same situation, everyone wants to pass it, except the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

What the bill does is lift the per country quota cap on green cards. This is for the lowest green card, the one where it doesn't have to be proved the person is "highly skilled" and this is the only one, the EB-3, which has a wait list.

Ok, workers on H-1B Visas do not go home, they are simply waited on the H-1B past the 6 years already on it.

Secondly, if someone is a genius, they could easily get the EB-2, EB-1 green card.

No surprise, this throws diversity under the bus, but we already have entire divisions of male Hindu Indians, ages 24-32, working in Silicon valley, not an American on site and esp. not a U.S. domestic diversity candidate, such as a woman engineer, black engineer or gray haired engineer.

Finally, to get a green card that's where the infamous lie comes in, complete with immigration "attorneys" to "prove" there is no "qualified American" for that job.

We've seen tons of fraud in this regard and the point of this article, without drawing attention to the many economic fictional white papers (for they want their propaganda disseminated, which is why I didn't mention specifics or specific equation manipulation techniques).

So, this bill isn't too great, but there are many many worse than this one.

Looks like Grassley's hold is still there and another attempt, this time to give the Irish more green cards as an amendment, also failed. Gee wiz, if they can give more green cards to India and China, why not Ireland?

Anyway, there is already a loophole in the works, administration issuing waivers to the EB-3 per country caps.

Folks, why Grassley put a hold is encapsulated in the below video. It caught a law firm, in the act, giving a seminar on how to make sure one doesn't find any qualified American for a job in order to give that job and corresponding green card to a foreigner.

 

 

Finally, in terms of foreign workers, not to say Americans are the ones who need those jobs, they do, that's the bottom line and the ultimate premise for this article, but a green card is better than a foreign guest worker Visa for worker rights.