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Protectionism has officially started. Protectionism is the opposite of the “free” market. So why is it done and who benefits and who loses from it? The free market was largely an invention of the developed world which it used to place itself as the world’s banker, lawyer, policeman, service provider etc. while the developing world was the world’s factory and the 3rd world was the world’s mine. So it is natural that the developed world – mostly the West – will be at a loss over the rise of protectionism, compared to the rest. The rest of the world has caught on to the scam of global corporations sending their wealth to off-shore tax havens and now prefers to keep the capital home.

Recently China blocked Coca Cola from acquiring its largest juice maker:

The giant US based multi-national – Coca Cola has been stopped from taking over a fruit juice company in China in the first major test of the country’s new anti-monopoly law.

The ruling suggests the 2-point-3- billion US dollar takeover would have reduced competiton by swallowing the juice company’s 40 per cent market share.

article continues

That would have indeed been huge. American opportunism clashing with Chinese protectionism. Next are the French who are moving automobile factories back to France – a move as it below says was imposed on the auto makers by the government which bailed them out:

French president Nicolas Sarkozy was today at the centre of a fresh row over protectionism when Renault said it would create 400 jobs at a plant near Paris by “repatriating” Clio production from Slovenia.

Sarkozy tried to douse the flames of the row after they were fanned by his industry minister, Luc Chatel, who said Renault’s move was the result of the government’s €7.5bn (£7bn) aid for the car industry.

article continues

For America’s protectionist steps please see my article about Mexican trucks.

Russia has already taken huge protectionist measure with about half the country’s economy being barred from foreign investment unless Putin personally authorizes it (tough chance for any company not in tune with Russia’s political interests) .

Another determined protectionist has been Hugo Chavez who nationalized many foreign enterprises to keep the raw material revenue inside the country. As I mentioned above a country of the 3rd world rich in resources is one that suffers the most from “free” trade. It is natural that in order for Chavez to make any change he has to be very protectionist. Expect the whole Latin American Left to expand the trade relations between the countries it rules first and between their global allies and partners like Russia, China and Iran. In the same time the Latin American left (think Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Brazil etc.) to cut down the business it does with the West as it has been raping their resources and labor since day one.

This row of protectionism is basically economic polarization of the global political fractions. As crisis grips the governments feel vulnerable and limit the trade with other – hostile – governments.

And last – here is a summary of the recent rise of global protectionism and how it may endanger any positive cooperation at the G20 summit.

I recently went through Seoul and I managed to take a few photos. S. Korea has been hyped up as a glorious success of capitalism in the last 10-15 years. After seeing the airport I was very inclined to believe it and thought that the rest of S. Korea probably resembles Japan. I couldn’t have been farther away from the truth. As soon as I got out of the train and into Seoul I saw the worst conditions I’ve ever seen in my life. It was pretty shocking to find out that all the hype about South Korea is fake and it’s a place with many problems. I realized the effects of the Japanese military occupation, the World War 2, the civil war and the American bombing are all still visible. It really seems to me that all the propaganda about the success of South Korea (its wikipedia article reads like a straight up commercial all the way through) is to be able to see how much better Capitalism is compared to Communism, because of how much better the South is doing vs North Korea. Well, I am willing to argue with anyone that Pyongyang has better living conditions than Seoul and whatever money S. Korea gets from its corporations goes for image/government and back to big business and doesn’t do much for the people. A lot of people I showed my  photos to immediately responded “Oh, you just went through the ghetto.” No, I walked in a straight line for 5 hours and it was like this until my eyes could see. Slums and rundown buildings with an occasional shiny corporate headquarter. The only residential alternative to the rundown buildings in the slums were big buildings with almost no living space at all.

Here are a few shots that I took while I was there(click on image for larger version):

The market near Seoul Station and the City Hall

Slums in downtown Seoul. Unfinished and halfbroken houses with broken roofs.

The airport which most people only changing planes in S.Korea get to see and think everything is like it

Russia has been throwing a hint here and there for some time that it wants the US dollar replaced as a reserve currency of the capitalist world.  Now it is openly discussing it in highest caliber international meetings The dollar  was made such after WW2 with the Bretton-Woods agreement  when no other country had a stable economy – many of them having been devastated by the war. Since then that has given the USA the ability to turn itself into a service economy and forever fund its excesses through borrowing. If the dollar is no longer reserve America will have to have strong fundamentals of its economy to be able to have a strong currency – just like it works for any other country. Losing the dollar’s status of the world’s reserve currency will cost America its status as a privileged Empire. This is what Russia is proposing and China and other developing countries are joining. Sooner or later this will be a fact, but it may take a war or some  more economic cataclysms to get there…

MOSCOW, March 19 (Reuters) – China and other emerging nations back Russia’s call for a discussion on how to replace the dollar as the world’s primary reserve currency, a senior Russian government source said on Thursday. Russia has proposed the creation of a new reserve currency, to be issued by international financial institutions, among other measures in the text of its proposals to the April G20 summit published last Monday.

Calls for a rethink of the dollar’s status as world’s sole benchmark currency come amid concerns about its long-term value as the U.S. Federal Reserve moved to pump more than a trillion dollars of new cash into the ailing economy late Wednesday.

Russia met representatives of China, India and Brazil ahead of the G20 finance ministers meeting last week, as the big emerging powers seek to up their influence on decisionmaking globally. Their first ever joint communique did not mention a new currency but the source said the issue was discussed.

“They (China) did not formally put forward their position for the G20 summit but unofficially they had distributed their paper regarding the same ideas (the need for the new currency),” the source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The source said the Chinese paper envisaged the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) being first assigned a role of a clearing currency on some transactions and then gradually becoming the main global reserve currency. “They said that the role of reserve currency should be given to SDR,” the source said.

A U.N. panel of experts is also looking at using expanded SDRs, originally created by the International Monetary Fund in 1969, but now used mainly as an accounting unit within similar organisations as a new reserve currency instead of the dollar.

Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the U.N. panel, told a Reuters Funds Summit on Wednesday that the proposal was to create something like the old Ecu, or European currency unit, that was a hard-traded, weighted basket.

The SDR and the old Ecu are essentially combinations of currencies, weighted to a constituent’s economic clout, which can be valued against other currencies and against those inside the basket.

The Russian source said Moscow was aware that the emergence of the new global currency would not happen overnight and said its goal was to initiate a discussion about it at the G20 summit in London on April 2.

The source said that India did not object to the discussion but was not prepared to take the lead. The source said South Korea and South Africa backed the idea, while developed nations were not “allergic” to it.

“We are not waiting for everyone to say: ‘How beautifully it has all been formulated, let’s subscribe to it’,” the source said. “The main idea is to start a discussion about it.”

Russia holds about half of its reserves, the world’s third-largest, in dollars, with the rest in euros and pounds. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has called on reserve currency issuers to show more financial discipline.

Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told reporters on the sidelines of the G20 finance ministers meeting that it would take up to 30 years to create a new super-currency, suggesting there was no unity in Russia on the issue.

President Dmitry Medvedev’s top economic aide and G20 sherpa Arkady Dvorkovich is behind the Kremlin’s G20 proposals, made public one day after Kudrin returned from England. (Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; editing by Mike Dolan/Patrick Graham)

http://www.reuters.com/article/usDollarRpt/idUSLJ93633020090319

Ouch. This is pretty crazy. After having been keeping an eye on weekly unemployment claims and other news I believe the unemployment report for  March is going to be horrendous and knowing that the auto parts suppliers alone will lay off a million people throughout the year we can’t expect any improvement in 2009 at all. In 2010? Not likely.

DETROIT (Reuters) – More than half of the top U.S. auto parts suppliers could file for bankruptcy protection in 2009 with at least one million job losses, according to a study by global consultants A.T. Kearney.

Those suppliers, which ship parts directly to automakers, are pressured from above by production cuts by the automakers and from below by increasingly fragile companies that supply them with components, the study found.

The survey encompassed 60 top North American auto parts suppliers, but did not name any of the suppliers. It was compiled through interviews with senior executives at suppliers in the United States.

The U.S. government has pledged up to $5 billion to aid financially stressed auto parts makers that are crucial to General Motors Corp and Chrysler.

Chrysler, about 80 percent controlled by Cerberus Capital Management, and GM have accepted $17.4 billion of emergency government loans and are looking for an additional $22 billion.

Ford Motor Co, which has not sought emergency government assistance, said on Thursday that it was not participating in the supplier relief program at this time.

“Absent significant financial assistance from the government, we are headed toward a scenario that is going to be 50 percent or more of the supply base going through bankruptcy,” Doug Harvey, an A.T. Kearney partner in its automotive practice in Detroit, told Reuters in an interview.

A.T. Kearney looked at three scenarios for the supply base. The other two scenarios include a “soft landing” resulting in 35 percent of the companies restructuring in bankruptcy and a “pessimistic” reading pushing that to 70 percent or more with many liquidations.

The “soft-landing scenario” looks more like “wishful thinking” at this point, with the industry heading more toward the middle ground and leaning toward pessimistic, Harvey said.

“To whatever extent the government provides relief to prevent them from going into bankruptcy, that number goes down,” Harvey said.

In each scenario, the study found that suppliers faced increased risk of bankruptcy through 2010.

U.S. auto parts makers have come under increasing financial pressure in recent months with steep production cuts by their customers starting toward the end of 2008 that have severely constrained revenue from the beginning of the year.

Auto sales have slumped for more than three years, but the declines accelerated as the recession deepened last year and monthly rates have plunged to the lowest levels in 27 years.

The study found that the larger suppliers expect up to 23 percent of the smaller companies that supply them with parts to face financial distress within a year.

Most of those smaller companies are privately held and do not disclose their finances publicly, making it difficult to probe the depths of the stresses in the vast supply base.  Continued…

http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSTRE52I7GL20090319

The media is giving more attention today to the rift between Treasury and leading democrat lawmaker Dodd. This is the biggest scandal to hit the new administration and may be very damaging for the Democrat party overall. It didn’t take very long, did it?

Who is responsible for the apparent loophole in the February 2008 stimulus bill that paved the way for the AIG bonuses? The front pages of the major newspapers in Connecticut point the finger at the state’s Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd. As the Hartford Courant banner headline puts it: “Dodd’s Flip-Flop: Admits Role in Bill Changes that Led to AIG Bonuses.”

But Dodd is pushing back hard, placing the blame on the Obama administration, saying that it is the Treasury Department that insisted on the inserting the loophole.

In a statement issued Wednesday night, Sen. Chris Dodd said that during stimulus negotiations, he did change a section on limiting executive pay to include an exemption for any company that received taxpayer bailout money. The change permitted payouts of any executive bonuses as long as they were agreed to on or before Feb. 11, 2009

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=7121125&page=1

And another article by MSNBC:

WASHINGTON – For a while, the disappearance of an executive bonus restriction from last month’s economic stimulus looked like sleight of hand worthy of a Las Vegas stage. No one could explain how the provision faded into thin air.

But on Wednesday, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., acknowledged that his staff agreed to dilute the executive pay provision that would have applied retroactively to recipients of federal aid. He said on MSNBC’s “Hardball” that it was done at the request of administration officials.

“It’s been reported widely the administration had problems with my language on the compensation,” he told Chris Matthews, the show’s anchor.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29771223/

*UPDATE*

It appears that Obama is trying to take the blame now and hoping his public support is strong enough to forgive him. Let’s see if it works:

(CNN) — President Obama topped a town hall appearance Wednesday by claiming responsibility for the bonuses paid out to executives at the bailed-out insurance giant American International Group, saying, “I’m outraged, too.”

Cushioned by high approval ratings, analysts said Obama can emerge from this controversy relatively unscathed, but there’s only so many times he can get away with saying, “Blame me.”

AIG accepted more than $170 billion in federal assistance in the past six months. It was revealed this week that since accepting those funds, the company doled out more than $165 million in bonuses.

In the stimulus bill passed last month, Congress had an opportunity to put a stop on those mega-bonuses. But, in a last-minute adjustment, the language of the legislation was changed, allowing AIG to go ahead with its controversial bonuses.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, told CNN on Wednesday that he was partially responsible for adding the loophole after coming under pressure from the Treasury Department. At the time, he said, the changes “seemed like innocent modifications.”

article continues

Senator Dodd who wrote the stimulus bill first said he was pressured by the White House to give parts of the stimulus as bonus to AIG. What does this mean? Is there a rift between the president and the leading Democrat lawmaker? That would have immense repercussions.

Senator Dodd

In a stunning development, Sen. Christopher Dodd said that Obama administration officials asked him to add language to last month’s federal stimulus bill to make sure the controversial AIG bonuses remained in place

Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, told CNN that Obama officials wanted the language added to an amendment limiting bonuses that could be paid by companies receiving federal bailout money. He said they were afraid that without it, the government would face numerous lawsuits from employees who were promised bonuses.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/29763023

*EDIT*

It appears now that Senator Dodd has switched his version and taken the blame himself.

HARTFORD, Conn. — Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) suffered a political blow Wednesday with the admission that he had been involved in key legislative changes that helped pave the way for AIG to pay controversial bonuses.

In a retreat from earlier statements, Dodd said Treasury Department officials had come to him last month urging him to modify an amendment to the stimulus bill that capped bonuses for firms receiving aid.

On Tuesday, Dodd had said he was not a member of the conference committee that crafted the compromise bill and said the exception had not been in the bill as he drafted it.

But late Wednesday, Dodd admitted he had been involved in the change.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-dodd_18mar19,0,1351121.story

Ticketbastard as it is more suitable to call them

Ticketmaster is a monopoly for many venues and events. In many cases people have no other option, but to buy from them if they want to attend their favorite event whether it be music or whatever.

Ticketmaster uses this in a predatory manner and over the last few years their fees have been increasing. Yet there have been no anti-trust lawsuits or any effort to protect the customer.

I recently tried to place an order for a 15 dollar concert ticket and was given a final amount of 25 dollars. That’s a 66% percent on top of the actual price unless my math is failing me. To not seem outrageous this fee was broken down in 2 categories – convenience charge and processing fee. And mind you that’s AFTER I had selected to buy will call – the only option which didn’t come with, yet ANOTHER fee.

Don’t get me wrong – 10 extra dollars are nothing for me to spend on a concert of one of my favorite musicians and I’m sure many people feel that way, but the very fact that I’m being stolen from by a monopolist corporation makes me unwilling to go for it.

So right here and now I am proclaiming a TICKETMASTER BOYCOTT. Remember Ticketmaster can only get away with this, because it’s a monopoly. Let’s make room for other companies to get in as an alternative ticket vendor or come up with an alternative system. If you are fed up with Ticketmaster’s thievery this is what you can do to help:

1) Repost this message to everyone you know – either on blogs, forums or a mass mailer. Do not let this effort die out. If there are already similar efforts, let’s join them all into one movement.

2) Whenever there is a possible alternative to Ticketmaster use it instead. Try to reduce their business to as little as possible

3) Whenever there is no other option try to call Ticketmaster and demand an explanation of these fees when the clerk who picked up says it’s not their decision ask to be connected to a supervisor and repeat until you can give everyone in that company as much shit as possible and tell them that you no longer are willing to accept it. If enough people do this they will realize that their business might get hurt by their thefts.

4) Let every venue that you attend know that you despise Ticketmaster and refuse to be stolen from. Ask them to provide tickets which do not go through them.

5) IMPORTANT: Ticketmaster is merging with Livenation to form an even BIGGER MONOPOLY. This will only lead to increased fees and even more atrocious treatment of customers. LIVENATION will be the new name of Ticketmaster so do not get fooled by this trickery.

If enough people do this there are bound to be results.
www.RiseUpForTheNewDay.Net

Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro

Many Americans(well not that many, those who stay informed) may be a bit puzzled these days. What happened to their back yard, south of the border? You know… all those underdeveloped countries populated by poor latinos and blacks who never had a voice or had the privilege of having a leader of their own, and instead were subordinated to the whims of colonial Western powers through tyrannical puppets? You know, the places where avocados, bananas and hot Latinas come from.

Why has there been a communist country just few hundred miles south of Florida for the past 50 years, wasn’t someone meant to do something about that? Why is there a non-white man heading Venezuela dressed in red, shaking his fist at “the Empire”, threatening to cut off 1/4 of America’s daily oil supply and predicting its demise? And even worse why is country after country in South America joining his political blocks?

To understand Hugo Chavez, one has to learn a bit of history. He didn’t come from nowhere. He didn’t come for no reason. Let’s not forget that South America was once inhabited by the First Nations(Native Americans). They are considered members of the mongoloid race and are meant to have come to the continent during the last Ice Age when supposedly there was an ice bridge near Alaska. Those were people with many of their own cultures, tribes, customs, knowledge and practices. Those people are the characters in one of the most gruesome stories throughout history – one which is obviously not very popular in the mainstream. As soon as Columbus came, he started enslaving, slaughtering and “christening” them right away. Many more Europeans followed suit.  Millions died in mines extracting precious metal for the Europeans to haul home. Others died because of the horrible abuse of the invaders, their diseases and their social poisons namely alcohol. All together almost from one pole to the other, the Native Americans were either wiped out or forced to convert to the lifestyle of the Europeans, of course as low class peasants and slaves, while the ruling elite came from Europe. A true genocide and oppression.

Years passed and European colonial power seemingly diminished, but there was now another Western power inhabited and ruled by Caucasians many of whom had come from Europe themselves or were sons of European immigrants. I’m talking, of course, about the USA which took the reins from the European empires. As soon as the first 13 colonies liberated from the UK, the newly founded country proceeded to the West and took all the land from the indigenous people and forced them to live in camps. Then erased their history. Then the now bigger USA had a war with its neighbor Mexico resulting in annexation of the now American Southwest. Without losing much time the USA had war against Spain in quest for domination of the Americas. It moved on South and it installed series of puppet dictatorships. Bombed many places. Killed many rebels. Marxist influence came to Latin America and in most countries peasants and lowly paid workers started organizing.

The first major victory for Marxism came when  on the island of Cuba just south of Florida, a man named Fidel Castro lead the resistance to throw out the American puppet Batista. This was a humiliating blow for the American empire for 2 reasons. One is the proximity to its mainland and two is that Cuba used to be America’s playground (as portrayed in film “the Godfather”) it served as an ideal spot for money laundering and all kinds of schemes, as a tropical getaway for many big shots. When Castro took over everything changed and the country was immediately isolated under strict embargo. It was later invaded by the CIA and of course the main part of the Cuban missile crisis.

But it didn’t end there. Along with Castro fought a man named Ernesto Guevara who was loved so much that everyone called him Che (friend). An idealist from Argentina, Che Guevara left his doctor’s occupation to lead guerrilla squads in the jungles. When Castro took over and gave Che a high ranked government job, instead of living it up the rest of his life Che chose to continue fighting elsewhere. He had a vision. A vision of Latin America rising and breaking the colonial chains. A united, independent and prosperous Latin America which is no longer considered the third world and kicked around in foreign politics.

Allegedly before he was killed by the CIA in Bolivia Che’s last words were:

I know you’ve come to kill me. Shoot, you are only going to kill a man.

And it turned out true, because even today in every Latin American country there is a Marxist movement. The USA, as the guardian and enforcer of capitalism, tried every dirty trick in the book including straight up bombing places to suppress the insurgency. Leaders were bribed,  blackmailed and assassinated. Contra and paramilitary squads were deployed to wreak havoc. Gang violence was incited. A whole onslaught was launched under the fake pretext of the War on “Drugs”. Civil wars were sponsored in which foreigners supported brutal fascist dictatorships against the poor people’s rebellion. Yet somehow the resistance lived on.

Throughout all this emerged a man named Hugo Chavez. He met Raul Castro in the 70s and received training and instructions. Back in Venezuela he joined the army and in the early 90s he lead a coup d’etat against the local puppet regime. The coup failed and Chavez went to jail. As soon as he came out he was back in Cuba and met with both Fidel and Raul Castro this time. Few years later he was elected the president of Venezuela – the country with highest deposits of fossil fuels in South America. From the beginning he pledged to remove any remnants of colonialism and give Venezuela back to the Venezuelans. As his rule proceeded he gradually moved the country to the Left and for this he is loved by the poor. He is also loathed by the rich and  the capitalists worldwide. He nationalized much of the oil industry and moved on to cement, steel, gold and recently food. The CIA organized a coup d’etat of their own to remove him, but some of the coup organizers turned out to be on Chavez’s side and leaked the location of the island he was taken after he was kidnapped.

Since that moment Chavez has been blatantly anti-American. He most commonly refers to the USA as the Empire. He called ex-President George W. Bush – a donkey, the worst, an assassin, a genocidal killer and the Devil (at the UN) among many other colorful names. He has threatened many times to cut off America’s oil supply (1/4 or so of USA’s oil comes from Venezuela) and he has kicked out the American ambassador. All this might sound funny and make Chavez look like an arrogant loud mouth not worth the Empire’s time, but that is perhaps exactly why he’s doing it. Hugo Chavez can be called many things, but no one informed can say he’s all talk.

While launching his barrage of insults and mockeries of the West Chavez has never stopped to work hard. With the same oil money he gets from the USA he has organized a number of political and economical blocs to counter US influence in the region. He has initiated a multitude of social programs in Venezuela and even abroad – cheap heating, housing for the poor and much more. His influence has been steadily growing in the last decade while the USA’s has been rapidly diminishing. Let’s take a look, all of Latin America used to be under US domination with rightist or center-right (fascist) rulers. Now it looks like this:

Latin American Left allied with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro: Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil*, El Salvador**

*Brazil’s government is closer to the center than the left, but is definitely on board with Chavez as a main part of Silva’s recent visit  to Washington had to do with him mediating between Obama and Chavez

**El Salvador’s leftists won the election just few days ago

Latin American countries where the right looks shaky: Peru, Chile

So what remains? Almost the whole of Latin America is uniting behind Hugo Chavez and with that the vision of Che Guevara is coming to fruition. Yes, they killed the man, but his ghost is still around and it haunts his murderers and their imperialist ambitions. With America itself initiating the biggest nationalizations the world has ever seen and American influence on the decline, who will  protect capitalism from this indigenous people’s Marxist rebellion? Even worse – those Latin American countries who turned left (Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua) are in talks with the USA’s most feared enemies – Russia - to host strategic bombers and are purchasing as many Russian war machines as possible. Venezuela and its allies back Iran in its stand off against Israel and the USA. Venezuela is supplying Cuba with cheap oil in exchange for doctors and other technology and with that both countries become more independent. All this consolidation and cooperation is at the expense of capitalism and its guard dog – the USA.

None of this would have been possible without the sacrifices of Che Guevara and everyone like him. Thanks to their legend and influence, all those Leftist leaders (Chavez, Morales, Correa etc.)  are being elected peacefully can lead an unprecedented wave of peaceful Marxist revolutions in their countries.

The ghost of Che Guevara continues to haunt capitalism.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara

A new day is upon us and it is the day when the first big newspaper turns to web only. Newspapers are a dying, outdated form of media and their days have been numbered since the conception of the Internet. All bloggers should celebrate this day as the day the newspaper died and blogging reigned supreme. With this shift a whole new culture has been born – a culture of free, easily accessibly media and information. It is very important for all Internet users to be adamant on the issue of Net Neutrality and not allow corporations to consume the new media like they did to the old ones.
RiseUpForTheNewDay.Net

P.S. It is important to note here that Seattle has more than 2 newspapers, but the rest are freely distributed and independent. Yet they survive.  The corporate one bit the dust. Let’s hope more follow.

P.S.S. With Seattle PI’s more than 100 000 weekday readers, this means that many million newspapers a year will no longer be printed. Just imagine how much less trash on the Earth that is. How much paper  We need the end of all newspapers and spam mail NOW!

SEATTLE (CNN) — The Hearst Corp. announced Monday it will publish its last print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Tuesday and shift the operation of Seattle’s oldest business wholly to the Internet.

“Tonight we’ll be putting the paper to bed for the last time,” Editor and Publisher Roger Oglesby told a silent newsroom in Seattle, Washington, Monday morning, according to a posting on its Web site. “But the bloodline will live on.”

The newspaper said delivery would be halted to more than 117,600 weekday readers.

“The company, however, said it will maintain seattlepi.com, making it the nation’s largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product,” it said.

The New York-based Hearst had put the Seattle P-I up for sale in early January, when it said the paper would stop printing if no buyer was found within 60 days.

“Despite community concern, no buyer emerged,” the paper said, adding that it lost $14 million last year.

It was not clear how many of the paper’s 150 employees would lose their jobs. But columnist Mike Lewis told CNN over the weekend that he was not among those who was asked last week to remain.

“The mood has been lousy in the newsroom,” said the 20-year P-I employee. “It’s one thing to lose your job; it’s another thing to lose a group of friends who you have worked with very closely for a long period of time and it’s still another to lose an institution that’s mattered in Seattle since the Civil War.”

The 146-year-old newspaper is the latest to take drastic steps in the face of declining readership and advertising revenue.

0:00 /1:33Bad news for newspapersvidConfig.push({videoArray: ["/video/fortune/2008/12/08/fortune.sl.120808.news.fortune.json"], collapsed:true});

Last month, the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado, published its final edition after nearly 150 years.

The dramatic decline in advertising dollars in a brutal economy has led some newspapers to cut costs by firing cartoonists, columnists and others, leaving many of them searching for jobs in a struggling industry.

The News’ closure left Denver – like most American cities – with one daily newspaper, the Denver Post.

That will now be the case with Seattle, where daily newspaper readers will have only the P-I’s rival and business partner The Seattle Times.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/16/news/companies/Seattle_PI/