The Economics of Global Empire

By Henry C K Liu, Asia Times

The productivity boom in the US was as much a mirage as the money that drove the apparent boom. There was no productivity boom in the US in the last two decades of the 20th century; there was an import boom. What's more, this boom was driven not by the spectacular growth of the American economy; it was driven by debt borrowed from the low-wage countries producing this wealth. Or, to put it a tad less technically, the economic boom that made possible the current US political hegemony was fueled by payments of tribute from vassal states kept perpetually at the level of subsistence poverty by their own addiction to exports. Call it the New Rome theory of US economic performance.

Full story is at Global Economy

from hydrarchist:

"Panic, War and Semio-Kapital"

Franco Berardi (Bifo)

Globalisation stands reframed in the dark light of the global war. This means we need
to reconceptualise the change that is taking place in the social, economic and anthropological
form of globalisation. During the past two centuries, global control was the
general techno-utopia of capitalist society and modern culture. Now, the time of global control
is over. We are completely out of this framework today. The new governing framework
of capitalism is global panic. If we want to understand what panic means we have to talk
about the ‘attention economy’ and about ‘digital labour’. This is where the source of contemporary
panic is, in the organisation of time in the digital sphere, in the relationship
between cyberspace and cybertime.

from ainfos

There has been much talk about the Italian group
YaBasta--and even imitations!--in anarchist circles. And
while it should be clear to anyone paying attention that
YaBasta (a.k.a. "Movement in White Overalls") isn't an
anarchist organization, the problems with YaBasta go
much deeper. Not only does YaBasta openly dialogue and
work with the state (including supporting and running
candidates in elections), but they even collude with the
state to suppress anarchists and anarchist projects. Yet it is
not only YaBasta as a particular organization that
anarchists should be wary of, but as a method of
organization and a model of struggle--the focus of most
anarchists' acritical jubilation--YaBasta is highly
problematic. They have explicitly moved away from
self-organization and towards politics, away from
conflictual action towards mediated, public spectacles
(often arranged with the police in advance). Thus we
include the article below to clarify where YaBasta stands in
relation to the state, anarchists, and social revolution. But
don't take our word for it, look at the quotes from YaBasta
themselves at the end of the article.