By Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com. Posted October 20, 2008.
Violent reactions are bubbling up across the country to new economic realities.
On July 23d, about 90 minutes before her foreclosed Taunton, Massachusetts home was scheduled to be sold at auction, Carlene Balderrama faxed a letter to her mortgage company, letting them know that "by the time they foreclosed on the house today she'd be dead." She continued, "I hope you're more compassionate with my husband and son than you were with me." After that, she took a high-powered rifle and, according to the Boston Globe, shot herself. In an interview with the Associated Press, Balderrama's husband John said, "I had no clue." His wife handled the finances and had been intercepting letters from the mortgage company for months. "She put in her suicide note that it got overwhelming for her," he said. In the letter, she wrote, "take the [life] insurance money and pay for the house."
The day after Balderrama took her life, 50 miles away in Worcester, Massachusetts, a 64-year-old man, who had already been evicted, barricaded himself inside his former home. Police were called to the scene to find him reportedly prepared to ignite four propane tanks. "His intention was to burn the house down with him in it," Sgt. Christopher J. George told the Telegram & Gazette. With the man becoming "even more despondent" as "a moving van arrived on the street," police stormed the house to find him "holding a foot-long knife to his own chest" as a piece of paper burned near the propane. The man was disarmed and the fire extinguished.
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Showing posts with label economic collapse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economic collapse. Show all posts
Debt Rattle, October 2 2008: Showboating
Ilargi: Ireland this week announced full insurance for all bank deposits in the country, to the tune of some $650 billion. This is twice the country’s GDP. For comparison, if the US were to do the same, about $25 trillion would be required.
Is this realistic, in either of the countries? You kidding me? Ireland would only need one major bank run to turn into a scary mess, adorned with fighting in the streets. Let alone two or three.
For its part, the US has huge problems passing a $700 billion "rescue" (the Senate raised it to $800 billion), and its FDIC banking insurance fund has maybe $45 billion left.
No problem, the FDIC keeps reiterating: we can always borrow from the Treasury. Well, nice and all, but then you’re back to square one, ain’t you? You would have to put the taxpayer in deeper debt, in order to insure that same taxpayer’s bank deposits. How does that qualify as a plan?
Ilargi of the blog Automatic Earth rants about economic collapse and speculates about societal collapse. What does this have to do with Criminology? Anyone care to speculate about crime rates in the near future? I'll hazard a guess that arson rates will go up. Tom
Military Industrial Complex 2.0
Cubicle Mercenaries, Subcontracting Warriors, and Other Phenomena of a Privatizing Pentagon
by Frida Berrigan
Seven years into George W. Bush's Global War on Terror, the Pentagon is embroiled in two big wars, a potentially explosive war of words with Tehran, and numerous smaller conflicts - and it is leaning ever more heavily on private military contractors to get by.
Once upon a time, soldiers did more than pick up a gun. They picked up trash. They cut hair and delivered mail. They fixed airplanes and inflated truck tires.
Not anymore. All of those tasks are now the responsibility of private military corporations. In the service of the Pentagon, their employees also man computers, write software code, create integrating systems, train technicians, manufacture and service high-tech weapons, market munitions, and interpret satellite images.
Whenever I read about the money the U.S. spends on the military industrial complex I can't help but think of the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are whole books written on the similarities between the two empires. Read "Closing the Collapse Gap" by Dmitry Olav if you're interested. The point is that once this huge military machine stops being fed, it decays very quickly. Will it take economic collapse to curb America's appetite for war? I think that it might. Tom
by Frida Berrigan
Seven years into George W. Bush's Global War on Terror, the Pentagon is embroiled in two big wars, a potentially explosive war of words with Tehran, and numerous smaller conflicts - and it is leaning ever more heavily on private military contractors to get by.
Once upon a time, soldiers did more than pick up a gun. They picked up trash. They cut hair and delivered mail. They fixed airplanes and inflated truck tires.
Not anymore. All of those tasks are now the responsibility of private military corporations. In the service of the Pentagon, their employees also man computers, write software code, create integrating systems, train technicians, manufacture and service high-tech weapons, market munitions, and interpret satellite images.
Whenever I read about the money the U.S. spends on the military industrial complex I can't help but think of the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are whole books written on the similarities between the two empires. Read "Closing the Collapse Gap" by Dmitry Olav if you're interested. The point is that once this huge military machine stops being fed, it decays very quickly. Will it take economic collapse to curb America's appetite for war? I think that it might. Tom
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