effectthegreen

The greenhouse effect magazine december t wothousandandten

music politics science

to save theearth

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at all!!

art culturemedia

United kingdom europe usathree pounds four euros five dollars

notprinted

travel

Contents:;

letter from the editor.............................p.6

do they take visa in baghdad................p.8-12

coursework: what would mcgyver do.........p.15

the return of the bankers...................p.16-19

are we killing ourselves with that shit........p.24santa’s got a massive co2 footprint.......p.26-29i dont want to do this anymore............p.30-31

intermission

the art review; the time of the hybrids........p.20

the end

column; have you seen my passport..........p.34

greenhouse effect magazine december t wothousand andten

The return of thetext and photos: henri kukkonen

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greenhouse effect magazine december twothousand and ten

Is America witnessing the return of the bank robber as local hero? Seventy-! ve years after Bonnie and Clyde were dispatched in a hail of Tommy-gun bullets, the FBI is reporting a spike in bank robberies. And as long as the only victim is the bank’s cash, there are indications that there is some sympathy for the robbers.

Which is hardly surpris-ing when Americans get a report in the New York Times saying that Wall-street ‘! nancial workers’ - bank-ers, brokers, Masters of the Universe - awarded them-selves $18.4bn in bonuses in 2008. It is a breathtaking

! gure - and most of it was paid after the ! nancial crisis had become apparent.

Think of it as a chunk of a $700bn bail-out package from the taxpayers. Think of it as a proportion of the $35bn " ushed down the khazi last year by the broker-age departments alone of the big banks playing roulette on Wall Street. And add this detail from the survey be-hind yesterday’s Times story: 45 per cent of Wall Streeters declared themselves ‘dissatis-! ed’ with their 2008 bonus.

It was back in the days fol-lowing the Crash of 1929 that America coined the term ‘banksters’, derived from

‘ gangster’ and ‘banker’. It became quasi-o# cial when it was used in Congress’s 1933 Pecora Committee inquest into the causes of the Depres-sion, according to Michael Woodiwiss, author of Gang-ster Capitalism, a prescient tome on the economy of the last 20 years.

“ People became aware of widespread white-collar looting,” he says. “Disman-tling New Deal checks and balances has given business criminals many more op-portunities today than their 1920s predecessors.”Americans have woken up once more to the idea that they have been taken on a glorious ride to ruin.

===>>continues on page 19

greenhouse effect magazine december twothousandandten

greenhouse effect magazine december twothousandandten