Democrats vs Republicans? Really??

Really. Democrats vs Republicans?   

Why??

Unless you're already wealthy, why, why would you vote Republican?

Well, already wealthy and fixated on only taking care of yourself.

Economy Improving

Two recent indications the national economy is improving, in spite of the Republicans and Congress:

Housing starts climb to highest rate since June 2008

Economy, Year-End Sales Help Auto Industry In 2012

and not to be done there but the indications for 2013 don't look completely bleak, either:

2013 Auto Sales Will Be Strong, Firm Predicts

Imagine, then, if Congress didn't fight our president on the economy, at least.

Imagine what we could achieve.

Blame the economy on this President?

That's what I'm talkin' 'bout.

Conservative, Right Wing, Republican Bill Kristol on this President--and Mitt Romney

"I think the biggest disaster for America in the 21st century was fighting two wars on a credit card. We could suck up several thousand killed in a terrorist attack (no offense to those who lost a loved one) but the economic damage of kicking multi-trillion dollar wars into Barack Obama's lap (and then blaming him for the deficits!) is profound and will resound for many more years. Do we want to put the geniuses responsible for this economic crime back in power?" --Brian Rock (friend)

Links: http://www.salon.com/2012/09/24/kristol_obama_did_pretty_well_with_financial_meltdown/

Mitt and Isaac

"Republican nightmare Monday: Tropical storm Isaac heads into Gulf, gathering hurricane winds. Reminds people (and the media) of Hurricane Katrina, which reminds them of George W. Bush -- the last Republican to occupy the White House.

But George W. is the last person Romney and Ryan want America to remember, because he brought on the Great Recession, turned a $5 billion surplus into a $6 trillion deficit, told America there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and didn't respond to Katrina for weeks.

Romney never speaks George W's name. Bush won't even appear at the GOP convention. But Hurricane Isaac may bring him back nonetheless."

--Robert Reich, American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator.

Link: https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/posts/489677981044803

Question of the day

"Why is the response to economic crisis not more serious?"

Link to original article, well worth reading: http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2012/07/12/why-is-the-response-to-economic-crisis-not-more-serious/

Great Depression coincidences

I've been thinking of this for some time.

We have the worst economy in 80 years, since the 2008 financial collapse (thank you, Wall Street) so it's the worst downturn since the 30's, since the Great Depression. They've called this one a few things like the "Great Recession" and the "Great Mancession" since so many men, proportionately, lost their jobs. It's even been referred to as the "Second Great Depression."

And now?

Now, the worst drought and heat wave since the 30's, at the same time. (See links below).

What are the odds?

1934 and 1936, specificially, were the worst drought and heat years of that time.

I tell you, the similarities and attributes these 2 economic downturns share are pretty uncanny.

Here's hoping it gets no worse. Let's hope there are no worse bread lines, like those of the 30's, etc., etc.

I don't think we're as tough now as those people were then. We aren't as close to poverty, as a group, as a nation, as a people, as they were then.

We aren't good at living without, I suspect.

Links: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48076883/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/05/12579687-drought-hits-56-percent-of-continental-us-significant-toll-on-crops?lite

Quote of the day

“The American people are angry. They are angry that the middle class is collapsing because of the Wall Street-caused recession... Meanwhile, the wealthy & the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well & now billionaires & their congressional friends want to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick & the poor.” --Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent, Vermont)

And they'll get away with it unless we stand up and demand different and better.

Quote of the day

"Why did government spending rise so much under Reagan, with his small-government rhetoric, while shrinking under the president so many Republicans insist is a secret socialist?" --Paul Krugman, economist, writer, author, columnist for The New York Times. Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/opinion/krugman-states-of-depression.html?smid=FB-nytimes&WT.mc_id=OP-E-FB-SM-LIN-SOD-030512-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click

Click on picture for easier reading.

Thank you, Calvin, George. Now, go away.

Quote of the day

"Think of the American economy as a large apartment block. A century ago—even 30 years ago—it was the object of envy. But in the last generation its character has changed. The penthouses at the top keep getting larger and larger. The apartments in the middle are feeling more and more squeezed and the basement has flooded. To round it off, the elevator is no longer working. That broken elevator is what gets people down the most." --Lawrence Katz, Harvard University economist Links: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/12/how-oligarchs-took-america; http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1a8a5cb2-9ab2-11df-87e6-00144feab49a.html#axzz1bx0i0jtg

Note to Washington: On cutting spending when you need growth

“The austerity that is going on in Europe, America and so forth is effectively a suicide pact for our economies. “Greece does not have much scope, but the United States and Germany and a number of other countries do have considerable space for stimulating their economy, and it is absolutely essential that they do that.” --Joseph Stiglitz, economist, professor at Columbia University and former chief economist at the World Bank. Links: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/government-stimulus-measures-too-feeble-stiglitz/article2213385/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stiglitz

October2011.com---an organization for the people (and guest post)

"We Stand With the Majority of Americans: Human Needs, Not Corporate Greed A large majority of the American people consistently support the following agenda: Tax the rich and corporations End the wars, bring the troops home, cut military spending Protect the social safety net, strengthen Social Security and improved Medicare for all End corporate welfare for oil companies and other big business interests Transition to a clean energy economy, reverse environmental degradation Protect worker rights including collective bargaining, create jobs and raise wages Get money out of politics The government, dominated by elite economic interests, is going in the opposite direction from what the people want. The American people’s agenda is our agenda. The broad agenda for Stop the Machine: Create a New World is to end corporatism and militarism and shift power to the people, so necessities can be met. In addition to stopping the machine we also want to show the “new world” we want to see. The seven issues above are part of our agenda, each of these issues are discussed below, primarily in relation to showing that according to polls, large majorities of Americans support each issue and in many cases have done so for years. While our agenda is based on fact, science and the type of world we want to see, not on polling, it is useful to know that the American people are in favor of the types of reforms October2011.org is advocating. We share these polling results to show that in all of these critical areas the government is going in the opposite direction than the people want the country to go. October2011.org is on the side of the people." Links: http://october2011.org/; https://www.facebook.com/pages/October2011com/128339797264686?sk=wall#!/pages/October2011com/128339797264686

Quote of the day

"Mr. Obama’s proposals, including the taxes to pay for them, could not be more urgent. There is a crater in the economy where the job market used to be." - The New York Times editorial. Link to original post: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/opinion/fixing-the-economy-a-good-jobs-program.html

Something to keep in mind as the economy seems to get worse

Riots in Greece and across Europe. Can it happen here? Food for thought: "If inequality continues to increase relentlessly, it seems likely that major social disruptions are inevitable. What people should keep in mind is that the U.S. has the weakest social safety net of any advanced country." --"Martin Ford, Founder, Silicon Valley-based software development firm. Links: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-ford/could-we-have-civil-unres_b_906478.html; http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/07/raging-inequality-may-cause-unrest-and-violence/

Quote of the day

"...could the full force of a depression be delayed with a combination of yet more debt and spending? Governments around the world are betting that it can. But they are also hedging their bets by preparing and implementing austerity measures as it must be obvious, even to them, that the historically unprecedented expansion of state spending and debt cannot go on for ever if capitalism is to survive. Keynes himself famously ignored this problem. 'In the long run, we’re all dead,' he said. Over the next decade, we’ll discover what happens in the ‘long run’. The probability is that previously taken-for-granted entitlements (to education, jobs, retirement, health care, an income during periods of illness, joblessness or disability, and so on) and standards of living will end. There will be continuing struggles both within the capitalist class and between the capitalist and working classes over who is to bear the brunt of the losses. The hegemony of the United States may be challenged in the not too distant future, with potentially catastrophic consequences: bear in mind that it took a world war to completely end the last truly major depression. And the depression, if not rescued by a major war, could be deeply exacerbated by the falling off of cheap and easy oil and energy supplies and the possibility of ecological catastrophe." --Stuart Wilkins; Link: http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/jul11/is_the_crisis_over.html#top

In case you missed it on Social Security

Just out today:

Social Security fund slides into permanent deficit


By Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press
Thu Jan 27, 11:18 am ET

WASHINGTON – Social Security's finances are getting worse as the economy struggles to recover and millions of baby boomers stand at the brink of retirement.
New congressional projections show Social Security running deficits every year until its trust funds are eventually drained in about 2037.
This year alone, Social Security is projected to collect $45 billion less in payroll taxes than it pays out in retirement, disability and survivor benefits, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. That figure swells to $130 billion when a new one-year cut in payroll taxes is included, though Congress has promised to repay any lost revenue from the tax cut.
The massive retirement program has been feeling the effects of a struggling economy for several years. The program first went into deficit last year — the first deficit since it was last overhauled in the 1980s. But CBO said last year that Social Security would post surpluses for a few more years before permanently slipping into deficits in 2016.

Something has to be done with this sucker.  Our representatives need to stop being such cowards and address it.

And we need to let them, too.

We've known for decades this needs solutions.  We've also known that the earlier we fix it, the easier, relatively, and smaller the fixes will be required.  Alternately, the longer we wait and do nothing, the bigger and more difficult the solutions will need to be.

Washington?  You listening?

Link to original post:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110127/ap_on_re_us/us_social_security

A new term, to me: the coming "Greatest Depression"

My deep-winter's reading yesterday brought about plenty of stories and coverage of the Arizona shooting, certainly, but it also brought about a brief article on the current and possible future economy:

For the last few years Gerald Celente, publisher of the Trends Journal has come on Tech Ticker and other media outlets talking of a further economic collapse, which he calls "the Greatest Depression."


Here's how he puts it in his Top Trends of 2011 release:

"In 2011, with the bailout funds and arsenal of other schemes to prop up the economy depleted, teetering economies will collapse, currency wars will ensue, trade barriers will be erected, economic unions will splinter, and the onset of the 'Greatest Depression' (a trend we forecasted before the massive bailouts existed) will be recognized by everyone…"

The only way to avoid the coming disaster is do what we did coming out of the Great Depression - start manufacturing quality goods the world wants. "You can't print your way out of this," he argues. 

The only way to do that is to improve productive capacity through either manufacturing industrial goods or technological innovation. Otherwise, Celente says the "Greatest Depression" is inevitable.

Here's hoping he's wrong about this "Greatest Depression" he sees coming.

Thank goodness the sun was brilliant and shining.

Link to original post:  http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/bailouts-postponed-but-cant-prevent-the-greatest-depression-gerald-celente-says-yftt_535804.html;_ylt=ArPLgVqjlIR51f_8G9xyxP7eba9_;_ylu=X3oDMTFnNXBkYTl0BHBvcwMyBHNlYwNjb250ZXh0dWFsLXRlY2h0aWNrZXIEc2xrA2JhaWxvdXRzcG9zdA--

A silver lining to this economic cloud?

Just so we're not that gloomy, there's this:

It’s a perennial: nearly every recession leads pundits to proclaim that the job market is facing structural challenges, and that higher unemployment is here to stay. During the 1981-82 recession, now seen as a classic cyclical recession, the economist Barry Bluestone warned that, as a result of structural issues, there might not be “much recovery in terms of overall employment in the United States.” Yet, by 1984, unemployment was back to where it had been before recession hit. A 1964 survey of economists found that more than half believed structural issues were playing a significant role in limiting the number of jobs; three years later, unemployment was below four per cent. And, during the Great Depression, even F.D.R. thought that unemployment might well be stuck at a permanently higher level. Recessions are, among other things, crises of confidence, and one manifestation of lack of confidence is the conviction that this time we’re not going to be able to climb our way out.   --James Suroweicki, The New Yorker Magazine

  
So it may not be "the end of the world as we know it", folks.  Let's let calmer heads prevail.

Link to original post:  http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2011/01/03/110103ta_talk_surowiecki

One of our own on under-reported stories in our media right now

From The Huffington Post just now:

From William K. Black, professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and author of the book,"The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One":


The things I think are critical and badly underreported are:

1. The astonishing amount of mortgage fraud (literally, millions of cases annually) and how it hyperinflated the bubble and led to the Great Recession.

2. The fact that these mortgage frauds were overwhelmingly due to consciously fraudulent lending practices in which the CEOs of seemingly legitimate entities used accounting tricks as their “weapon of choice" to report higher profits and get bigger bonuses. (George A. Akerlof and Paul R. Romer got it right in the title to their 1993 article: Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit.)

3. The disgraceful lack of prosecutions which has resulted from regulators virtually ending the practice of making criminal referrals and the pathetic March 2007 "partnership" that the FBI entered into with the Mortgage Bankers Association (the trade association of the "perps") that led the FBI and the Department of Justice to (implicitly) define out of existence fraud by the lenders (and to conceive of them as the "victim" -- which they are, but only of their controlling officers). Bush administration attorney general Michael Mukasey in June 2008 notoriously refused to create a national task force against mortgage fraud based on his claim that mortgage fraud was analogous to "white collar street crime."

4. The "echo" epidemics of fraud set off by the primary epidemic of accounting “control fraud". The fraud designed by CEOs in turn kicked off an epidemic of fraud among loan brokers and appraisers. Reporters should explore the concept of the Gresham's-style dynamic in which bad ethics were a competitive advantage and drove good ethics out of the marketplace.

5. The massive foreclosure fraud we are seeing now as another "echo" epidemic. To optimize their accounting control fraud, lenders gutted underwriting. That led to "fraud in the inducement" (vis a vis borrowers), endemic documentation problems, and an extraordinary numbers of defaults. The process required tens of thousands of real estate financing personnel to commit fraud on a daily basis as their core function. Some of these people are unemployed, but many are in the industry and are presently engaged in loan servicing. Now that their job is to foreclose on properties, there is no reason to expect that they would suddenly become honest, and they haven't.

6. The ongoing massive cover up of losses on bad assets, particularly by the “too big to fail” institutions, which I call “systemically dangerous institutions” (SDIs). Those institutions, along with Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and Congress (at the behest of the Chamber of Commerce and with no opposition from the Obama administration) in April 2009 forced the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to change the rules so that the banks do not have to recognize their losses unless and until they sell the bad assets. The implications of this cover up are large (and rarely reported). At the very least, it means that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's propaganda campaign about TARP saving the world at virtually no cost (perhaps even a "profit") is nonsense -- despite its success in influencing the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. Consider:

A) The repayment of TARP funds does not mean the banks are healthy. Their asset values are often grossly inflated, which means their net worth is grossly inflated. That means that the claims that we have increased net worth requirements (and that Basel III will further increase net worth requirements) are false. Net worth requirements have meaning only if the accounting is honest

B) The repayment of TARP funds does mean that the banks are freed from any meaningful restraint on senior officer compensation. Note that absent the accounting lies the banks would often be reporting losses (and failure to meet required capital requirements, or outright insolvency) and could not pay their senior officers bonuses and would be subject to mandatory closure under the Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) law.

C) No commercial entity would have ever signed the TARP deals on the terms that the U.S. drafted for itself. The U.S. provided not only fresh money but an unlimitedde facto guarantee (along with permitting phony accounting). If the U.S. had negotiated competently it would have owned virtually all the shares of every TARP recipient (which, of course, was a political impossibility).

D) The accounting lies are stalling the recovery. Markets cannot clear promptly when one creates an incentive to hold massively overvalued assets for years.

E) The losses are still there, but the taxpayers are on the hook via Fannie and Freddie and the Fed (which has taken over a trillion dollars in toxic collateral at grossly inflated values).

7. The continued absence of effective regulation. It should be scandalous that President Obama left in charge, or even promoted, the anti-regulators who permitted the Great Recession. The (failed) anti-regulator of Fannie and Freddie, for example, remains FHFA's acting director. This is significantly insane as a matter of both economics and politics. (The administration doesn't even seem to realize the issue of integrity.)

8. The crises of state and local government and the lack of a rational basis for Republican and Blue Dog opposition to the proposed revenue sharing component of the stimulus bill. The compounding insanity of the administration failing to fight for its concept and failing to make explicit how badly its removal would harm the recovery, employment, and vital government services.

9. The insanity of accepting mass, long-term unemployment rather than having the government provide productive jobs for everyone willing to work (as the employer of last resort).

Links  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/20/nine-stories-the-media-is_n_769620.html;

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/the-two-documents-everyon_b_169813.html