Category: Economy

Holiday Tunes to get everyone in the mood for shopping tomorrow

Also on Calculated Risk

With caveats, Barry Ritholtz sez the recession is over, and essentially that one couldn’t kill the remaining zombie perma-bears if you strapped them to a nuke and launched them into the Sun (which the true bears believe has already happened.  The rest is just travel time.).

As a perma-bear who believes that the United States is manifestly in an advanced state of moral, political, and economic decrepitude, I found his breezy optimism startling, and potentially even “dangerous,” as in “the sound of great applause lauding folly, then a long period of silence” kind of dangerous.

I suppose in alot of ways I am your run-of-the-mill yuppie with a slant toward environmentalism. My job is stressful and I strive to maintain balance so I am engaged in a alot of outdoors and spiritual activities when I am not latched to my BBerry and laptop.

I grew up on a small farm in the deep south and have vivid memories of waking up at the crack of dawn as a youngster to feed calves and goats. I spent many a summer hoeing and picking corn, beans, squash, and okra (which I must say I REALLY miss okra in the northeast). I have skinned fish with my Dad. I have helped dress wild turkeys, backyard chickens and even deer. I have been to slaughterhouses with my Dad when we would slaughter a cow or a hog to sustain our family into the next summer.

I was fortunate enough to attend a well-respected educational institution and earn a degree in Sociology peppered with a minor in Political Science. My degree makes for a great wide angle views, perceiving global shifts, and forecasting probable outcomes.

I share my personal history because my experience is germane in the continuing conversation. Please follow me below the fold….

House will take up unemployment benefits extension Thursday

By Vicki Needham, The Hill.com — Nov 17, 2010

The House has put a bill on Thursday’s floor schedule that would extend emergency unemployment benefits for three months, according to the schedule released Wednesday night by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).

House Ways and Means Chairman Sander Levin (D-Mich.) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, introduced the bill today that would extend federal benefits — up to 99 weeks in some states for those who have exhausted their state unemployment insurance — through Feb. 28.

The measure is on the suspension calendar and will require two-thirds vote to pass.

A 3 Months extension, on that precarious lifeline, for Millions.

Just a 2/3 Vote needed.

Good luck, folks, looks like you could be “On your Own” — given the priorities of Congress, lately.

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”

– Mohandas Gandhi

 Watching this great country being slowly crushed into a third-world plutocracy by the greedy and powerful is probably the most infuriating event in my life. Good people are being impoverished while bad people buy our government.

 What makes it worse is seeing both of the political parties compete in demonstrating their sycophancy to Wall Street money. It makes elections virtually meaningless.

 It’s enough to make a person surrender to despair.

 But then I remember something important – the money that Wall Street uses to buy our government is our money. The power that Wall Street wields only exists because the people allow it.

  All power originates from the people and we can take it back as easily as it was stolen from us. We can do it without firing a shot or shedding any blood.

 The example for how to it is about to be set in Europe.

  Ireland did everything right, according to the bankers of the world. They slashed wages, services, and public employment. After two years of sacrifice what do they have to show for it?

 Wages have fallen and unemployment is around 13%. That much was expected. What wasn’t expected is that the markets would punish the nation for crushing the domestic economy because of the austerity measures.

 “We do not really see how Ireland is going to be able to ‘hold on’ without EFSF help,” one euro zone source with knowledge of the talks said.

  “Obviously since this implies a pretty tough programme for the government and to some extent a loss of sovereignty, they want to think twice…” the source said.

 In other words, things are going to get even harder for Ireland. What will Ireland get in return? The ability to go even deeper into debt.

Over the course of the past couple of weeks we’ve been talking about how the War On Social Security was about to get under way and what happens when countries choose to privatize their systems.

Today we take on another bite-sized chunk of economic analysis: how can you get to a situation where Social Security is financially stable for the next 75 years?

We’ll describe some proposals that are out there-but the big focus of this conversation will be to look at one change that, all by itself, could not only solve the entire funding problem, but could actually allow us to lower the Social Security tax rate, immediately, and still achieve fiscal balance.

“Well, if that’s such a bright idea” you might ask, “why haven’t we adopted it already?”

That’s a great question-and after you hear the proposal, you may well have explanations of your own.

Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette

Laura Flanders of GRITtv talks once again with Truthdig.com’s Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, author of “The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street“, about Barack Obama’s economic policies and team, about the blackmailing of you and the country and the world by Wall Street, about the financial industry lately booking two thirds of all profits produced by all economic activity in the United States, and about the parasitical mindset that now passes for “success” among the ultra-wealthy and their political servants in a morally warped empire in decline…or in freefall?

“Wall Street was blackmailing us,” says Robert Scheer of the bank bailouts, “And we got nothing in return.” It’s not news to any viewers of GRITtv that Wall Street’s tentacles ran throughout our election, but now that the election is over, we turn again to the running of government. Scheer joined us in the studio recently to discuss his new book, The Great American Stickup, and we asked him to give us some thoughts for after the election as well. Most pressing of all, he asks if either bankers or politicians are capable of thinking in anyone’s long-term interests.

So if you’ve been following my work lately, you know that there is a renewed effort underway to change Social Security, and that the fight officially began just this very morning.

Now what’s supposed to happen is that a television ad buy sponsored by a Wall Street billionaire is supposed to get you enthused about cutting your own Social Security benefits in the future; this is the tip of a “disinformation iceberg” that is trying to get you to act, right now, because if you don’t you will never, ever, ever, ever, see a single dime of Social Security when you get older.

I was on a “let’s talk strategy” conference call today that laid out some ideas for the “next steps”; we’ll be talking about that call over the next couple of stories…but for today, we’re going to talk about something you can do that will bring the message right to your favorite Member of Congress.  

It is my job to bring to you not just the news that took place, but the news that has yet to happen.

Today, that’s exactly what we have.

There is a war coming to try to change Social Security from a social safety net to a “revenue stream” for certain corporate interests, and that war is set to begin Tuesday morning, according to information that was provided to me yesterday afternoon.

Follow along, and you’ll be both forewarned and forearmed.

Rob Johnson is the Director of the Economic Policy Initiative at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and is a regular contributor to the Institute’s blog NewDeal2.0. He serves on the UN Commission of Experts on Finance and International Monetary Reform. Previously, Dr. Johnson was a Managing Director at Soros Fund Management where he managed a global currency, bond and equity portfolio specializing in emerging markets. He was also a Managing Director at the Bankers Trust Company. Dr. Johnson has served as Chief Economist of the US Senate Banking Committee under the leadership of Chairman William Proxmire and was Senior Economist of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee under the leadership of Chairman Pete Domenici. Dr. Johnson was an Executive Producer of Taxi to the Dark Side, an Oscar Winning documentary produced and directed by Alex Gibney.

Here, Johnson talks with Paul Jay of The Real News Network about the economic fallout from the past couple of years and the 2010 mid term elections, and concludes that…

…the baseline scenario now is one of prolonged stagnation, gridlock in the government, unless Obama essentially capitulates to the agenda of the right. But will we go into a deep downturn similar to 2007, ’08, early 2009? Not necessarily. We may just remain stagnant. Perhaps the best model is the so-called lost decade in Japan, where you have negligible growth, negligible inflation, or even modest deflation, and you just kind of bump along the bottom. The danger of that, as I alluded to previously, is the long-term, persistent unemployment allows the skills of many people in society to atrophy. And the United States, unlike Europe and Japan, does not have a strong safety net, so it probably foments more social unrest, kind of like what we saw in the formation of the protest movements and Tea Party as we approach this election.