Protests throughout Israel continue

The issue seems to be affordable housing

Amplify’d from www.jpost.com

An estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Israelis took part in a series of demonstrations held across the country on Saturday night, as part of the social issues movement that has gripped the nation over the past month.

Unlike the previous three weeks, protest leaders decided not to hold a mass protest in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, and to instead hold demonstrations in 18 other cities.

A week ago, more than 300,000 people took to the streets across the country, including an estimated 250,000 plus in Tel Aviv.

"People see their grown children cannot afford an apartment for themselves even though they earn a good salary," Odonsky said. "We want the young people of Ramat Hasharon to be able to afford an apartment in town."

"I think this demonstration is very important. There's a horrendous gap between rich and poor in Israel," said Guth. "The cake needs to be distributed more equally."

See more at www.jpost.com

 

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Syria’s Failed Ramadan Crackdown

The persistence of protests in Syria calls for greater attention from media and world leadership.



Facile analyses whither in the face of the unyielding constancy, perseverance, and geographical range of citizens in the face of full military aparatus.

Amplify’d from www.thedailybeast.com

Despite—or because of—a Ramadan military crackdown by Bashar al-Assad’s regime, thousands of protesters took to the streets in Syrian cities.

It’s hard to imagine a more cynical ploy. As millions of Muslims prepared for Ramadan in Syria last week, the regime was planning for something else entirely: a military assault. Hundreds of troops and tanks laid siege to Hama, Homs, and a handful of smaller cities in an all-out effort to squash the five-month old uprising that has nearly paralyzed the country. On Thursday, the regime felt confident enough they had crushed the protests that they took a handful of Turkish journalists for a look at Hama, one of the centers of the uprising. The journalists reported seeing heavily damaged buildings and deserted streets. It wasn't George W. Bush on an aircraft carrier with a “Mission Accomplished” banner, but the regime seemed to be gloating all the same.

The regime just got a reality check. Protests sprang up in more than half a dozen cities on Friday, including Hama, according to Syrian human-rights activists. And, tellingly, thousands of demonstrators also came out in Damascus and Aleppo, the two biggest cities in the country that have been largely quiet. The Ramadan crackdown completely backfired. “The violence has only increased the anger toward the regime,” says Rami Nakhle, a prominent Syrian activist who now lives in Lebanon. “And it's made the people want to break the chains of oppression.” Read more at www.thedailybeast.com

 

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School aims to take business back to basic biblical principles

We presently suffer from recent decades of business taught in a vacuum sans spiritual principles. Other religions should likewise follow the example of this Christian visionaries. After this, heads of such institutions should dialogue regularly with each other regularly with a goal to forge universal principles applicable for entrepreneurs in all cultures.

Amplify’d from www.buffalonews.com

A church's calling goes beyond Sunday morning, and its instruction shouldn't be limited to spiritual matters, according Stephen Andzel,

Churches, he says, are called to teach everything, from science to literature.

And even business.

The Joseph Business School franchise has a modest goal -- to educate Christians to be successful entrepreneurs and business leaders through biblical principles.

But Andzel says he hopes it will have a much larger impact than that. Business owners, he says, should be "taking their success and reinvesting it back in the community and turn it back into the thriving community we think it could be."

By learning business principles in a biblical manner, Brown said he will be able to have more integrity in his business and help others become entrepreneurs as well. Read more at www.buffalonews.com

 

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Next Frontier for Restless Americans?

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

The American jobs that vanished don’t appear to be returning. The stock market is plunging. Seemingly everyone, from the guy at the corner bar to the U.S. Treasury Department, is in debt. The country’s credit rating just got knocked. Smart people on television are speaking of a looming “lost decade.”

Throughout history, for millions of people in less prosperous societies, the solution to such circumstances has been obvious: You sail away.

So could America, that great nation of immigrants, become in harder times a nation of emigrants? Could the metropolises of China one day have Americatowns?

Imagine a bustling one in the heart of Beijing. Local Chinese stream past, scratching their heads at those Americans who come just for money, never learning China’s language or customs, living in their own little world. The signs are all spelled out in Roman letters

These American immigrants have strange manners, as the Chinese see it. They never share food, and they finish everything on their plates

But they thrive. They put their energy, skills and family networks to work; they reap great success. They run burgers-and-fries joints, English-language academies, fitness centers and even an intercity transport service known as the Americatown bus. Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

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When ratings agencies judge the world

I do not favor the US government wastefulness and its addiction to gluttonous debt. Nevertheless there can be no excuse for the perfectly irresponsible decision by Standard & Poor to go ahead with its press release when a two trillion dollar error was pointed out in its calculations:



"Standard & Poor’s credit agency downgraded the U.S. credit rating using an incorrect budget baseline and now analysts are questioning why they, the government or the American people should listen to an agency that is apparently incompetent." The Economist



"The point here is not so much the $2 trillion, which makes very little difference to real US fiscal prospects; it’s the fact that S&P stands revealed as not understanding basic analysis of budget estimates." Paul Krugman



It is S&P that gave out top ratings to ultimately worthless structured mortgage products that caused the crash of 2008!

Amplify’d from www.reuters.com

You may have never heard of David Beers but every finance minister in the world knows of him. A Wall Street veteran, a graduate of London School of Economics where he has endowed a scholarship in his name, he is the global head of sovereign credit ratings for Standard & Poor's.

It is on his say-so and the committee he oversees that financial markets have been rocked over the last 18 months

Yet there is an overwhelming irony in their new-found prominence. These are the same firms that many blame as prime instigators of the 2007-2008 credit crisis for freely giving out top ratings to ultimately worthless structured mortgage products, allowing the credit bubble to form. Now they sit in judgment of the countries that had to ruin their public balance sheets to prevent financial collapse by saving the banks shattered by those bad instruments once blessed by the agencies. Read more at www.reuters.com

 

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Why Markets Are Melting

Zachary Karabell explains (again) that investment machinery often creates market activity unrelated to the strengths or weaknesses of the companies battered during times of uncertainty



"Stocks aren’t selling because of the Washington debt deal or now even because of yields in Italy. They are selling because they are selling."

Amplify’d from www.thedailybeast.com

I also watched in fascination as stock after stock sold off without any consideration of the intrinsic strength of the underlying businesses, even discounting for a possible global recession.

Stocks aren’t selling because of the Washington debt deal or now even because of yields in Italy. They are selling because they are selling. Apple this week is not a company with 12 percent less business than last week; Caterpillar is not about to sell 30 percent fewer earthmovers in China or Brazil. China is not about to purchase 25 percent less iron ore.

what the markets are saying about those companies, which is a sign that the markets actually aren’t saying anything about those companies, or about the U.S. debt burden or even problems in Europe. It is about the way that external triggers can set off market chain reactions that happen too quickly to react.   Read more at www.thedailybeast.com

 

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Analysis: Beyond debt woes, a wider crisis of globalization?

This Reuters article looks at global financial structures that outstrip the capacities of governments to manage and respond.



Genuine responses to the financial crisis must include observation at this level, rather than scurrying madly inside the confines of an obsolete mental framework.

Amplify’d from www.reuters.com

LONDON (Reuters) - The crises at the heart of the international financial and political system go beyond the debt woes currently gripping the Western world and to the heart of the way the global economy has been run for over two decades.

After relying on it to deliver years of growth, lift millions from poverty, keep living standards rising and citizens happy, nation states look to have lost control of globalization.

In the short term, that leaves policymakers looking impotent in the face of fast-moving markets and other uncontrolled and perhaps uncontrollable systems -- undermining their authority and potentially helping fuel a wider backlash and social unrest. Read more at www.reuters.com

 

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