Forum Post: Occupy World Street: A Global Roadmap for Radical Economic and Political Reform

Blockbuster Book: Read about everything you ever wanted to know about the economy and the wealthy 1%, including fundamental issues that are at the core of the Occupy Movements list of grievances, all neatly outlined in one book "Occupy World Street" by Ross Jackson, it's aims and purpose and the underlying practices of how the
elite 1% are enriching themselves at the expense of the 99% majority and why democracy has failed in the US, certainly a 'Must Read' for every person in the US, how we all have been doped and exploited by the rich and powerful and how wealthy people control corporations, congress, government and the media and how we continue to damage
the planet, all in the name of greed and profits.

As demonstrators worldwide demand reform of a corrupt global economy that concentrates wealth in the top 1% of income earners, Occupy World Street offers a long awaited plan of action for 'the 99 percent'. Ross Jackson delivers one of the most lucid descriptions of how global financial practices are driving economies to the
brink of collapse, and making it impossible to deal effectively with climate change, ecosystem damage and peak oil.

He outlines a compelling plan that will allow countries to regain control of their economies, reorganize global trade alliances on a more human scale, and gradually replace WTO/IMF/World Bank with new institutions that support sustainable economies and uphold human rights. Rather than force a direct confrontation with the crumbling 'Empire', Jackson’s innovative strategy would be led by a handful of small nations that are already starting to break away from the contemporary global order, and supported by ordinary citizens around the world.

Jackson has done what few others have dared to do: constructed a specific, implementable plan to reorganize the way economies work. It’s a plan, says sustainable economics pioneer Hazel Henderson, that “has the potential to unite hundreds of NGOs and millions of ordinary citizens behind a simple proposal that could change the
current dysfunctional game.”

This book is no urban legend or conspiracy theory, it's all hard facts that is not available to the general public.

Book Details:

Occupy World Street: A Global Roadmap for Radical Economic and Political Reform Author: Ross Jackson

Publish Date: January 2012 ISBN-10: 1603583882 ISBN-13: 9781603583886

Purchase the book from the comparison shopping site: http://www.allbookstores.com/book/compare/1603583882

Watch YouTube Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgAuD2-syWk

Press Release: www.greenbooks.co.uk/media/OWS_Press_Release_Jan_2012.pdf

Excerpts from the book:

The period from 1945 to 1980 was, in retrospect a period characterized by relative peace, rapid economic growth, no major financial crisis, a general sense of social cohesiveness in most nations, with the coming to power of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and the ascendency of the neoliberals, everything changed. The subsequent period from 1980 to the present has been characterized by a deterioration of social cohesiveness, environmental destruction, increasing stress, increasing criminality, a shift from solidarity to individualism, a 'greed is good" mentality, a dramatic widening of the gap between rich and poor, and not least, a series of major financial crisis resulting from the 'financialization' of the world economy, recall, that 1980 was also the point at which the marginal costs of growth began to exceed the
marginal benefits, the point at which a global collapse may well have begun. It is as if the dominant culture entered a final stage of frenzy, denial, absurdity and fantasy to stave off the reality that its way of life was coming to an end. Nowhere was this truer than in the field of finance, which removed itself further and further from any contact with the real world. In reality basic financial and accounting principles were ignored.

---

Deregulation - The basic problem with removing government regulations from markets was pointed out in the 1700s by Adam Smith, who did not trust the morality of a merchant class that had no concept of restraint or social responsibility. Since human ingenuity is limitless, any relaxation of rules will inevitably lead to unintended and unforeseen exploitation by profit-seeking businessmen, typically at the expense of the non-profit seeking parts of society - local communities, working people and the environment. History has shown that repeatedly that markets are not self-regulating as the neoliberal ideology has shown, on the contrary, unregulated markets tend to go to extremes until they eventually crash. The deregulation and removing of safeguards caused an entirely predictable result as it allowed new profit driven unscrupulous investors to get their hands on the enormous assets built up over several decades from local community savings and engage in an unregulated and
irresponsible speculative frenzy as they invested in all kinds of dubious get-rich-quick schemes characterized by conflicts of interests, incompetence, highly speculative investments and criminal activities using other people's money. The ruling concept was: head we win, tails the taxpayers pay.

---

Unrestricted capital Flows - Free capital flow (including free flow of goods across borders) is both the source of strength and the Achilles heel of neoliberal politics. Unrestricted capital flows systemically cause financial crises in two ways, firstly, they allow investor of one country to create a financial crisis in another that would otherwise not have occurred and secondly, they act like a virus that allows a crisis in one country to spread to other countries and example is the
US subprime loan crisis. These unrestricted capital flows are also the reason for systemic recurrence of financial crisis, because the foreign markets in which the "players" invest, even though large enough and liquid enough in normal markets are extremely illiquid in a crisis.

---

The Financial Crisis of 2007-8 - This most recent crisis had elements of all three "culprits", deregulation, over-gearing of naked derivatives at the national level in the United States and unrestricted capital movements, which spread like a virus to the rest of the world. A major deregulation event that paved the way for the crisis was the repeal of the American Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 under pressure from the financial elite who wanted more freedom to operate, this act was passed originally
back in 1933 to prevent the kind of irresponsible and unregulated speculation that was identified at that time as a major cause of the 1929 stock market crash. The administartion of George W. Bush went even further cutting market oversight to almost nothing. The subprime housing market is often cited as the major cause of the
crisis, but this is misleading because the problem is systemic. With Glass-Seagall out of the way, the post-1999 financial world became even more of a casino, unrelated to the underlying economy. Money was not being used productively but for naked speculation. the current global financial system is systemically unstable and flawed and continues to be an accident waiting to happen. The only unknowns are when and how the next accident will be precipitated.

---

The Kennan Doctrine - The guiding doctrine followed by the American political leadership over the past half century and the reasoning behind it, was formulated in a remarkably clear statement by George F Kennan (in 1948) " We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population, This disparity is particularly great between the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming, and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives......." we see here a classic attitude of the worldview of separation. there is no sense of global solidarity or sharing. Kennan's doctrine is a blueprint for Empire. There is only one wish to control 50% of the world's resources at the expense of everyone else. Other countries might as well be enemies from outer space. But a dilemma is created by this doctrine, because the proclaimed values of the United States for which it has been widely admired the past 200 years are precisely those values that must be sacrificed, and that in practice have been sacrificed, "human rights, the raising of living standards [of developing countries] and democratization", therefore the doctrine must not be announced openly to the American people, who would never accept it if they had choice in the matter. It is the doctrine of the ruling elite (1%).

Thus the US leadership has been forced to be hypocritical, cynical, even schizophrenic, saying one thing while doing another.

In the subsequent 200-plus years, the power struggle between the "opulent minority" and the great majority has continued unabated. Though the trend has been towards democracy in the past, the coming of neoliberalism in the 1980's, the trend has been reversed, evolving into the situation, as we know today, with the minority owners
of great private wealth enjoying unprecedented influence while a frustrated majority experiences disempowerment and a constant deterioration in their freedoms and quality of life. Most observers would agree that merely having elections every four years is not sufficient evidence that a nation is democratic. Do voters have real
choice or are we looking at a one-party system? There are serious questions about the degree of true democracy present in twenty-first-century United States.

Website: http://www.occupyworldstreet.org/ows-the-book