Category: Economy

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

 – Karl Marx

 The world’s leaders gathered in Washington last weekend to try to address the global imbalances that continue to weight on the economies of the world. It didn’t go well.

 The IMF meeting, meant to lay the foundation for some greater co-operation on the co-ordination of national economic policies, instead ended in mutual recrimination. And that has made it harder to reach agreement at the gathering in Seoul next month of the Group of 20 industrialised and developing nations.

 The heart of the disagreement is the “international currency war”, as Guido Mantega, the Brazilian finance minister, called it three weeks ago. The media has focused on the verbal spat between America and China, but the beggar thy neighbor policies are being waged by dozens of nations around the world.

 What I find surprising is that so far the media has failed to recognize how familiar this scenario is.

Supposedly ‘Uncertainty‘ is the new Corporate buzzword.

‘Uncertainty‘ is the Mantra that keeps them FROZEN with inaction.

Well I guess, a lot depends on what kind of ‘Action’ — were looking at.

America’s Corporate Cash Cushion

Jonathan Cheng, WSJ Market Beat — Sep 17, 2010

The Federal Reserve put out its quarterly report on fund flows today, which shows corporate balance sheets more or less flat at $1.845 trillion, compared to $1.847 trillion in the first quarter of 2010.

[…]

“Companies weren’t stuck like a deer in the headlights because of regulatory or political uncertainty,” he said. Instead, he says corporate directors have been spending on capital expenditures, M&A, and buybacks and dividends.  [ … according to Anthony Carfang, from at Chicago-based corporate treasury consultancy Treasury Strategies.]

Dividends and buybacks, like the ones announced after market close yesterday by Texas Instruments, are on the rise […]

Be afraid, be very afraid, people — Or so the Corporate Speakers are telling us.

  The recent unemployment report was a disaster. Another 95,000 jobs vanished, 18,000 jobs after you subtract census workers.

 However, the story doesn’t end there. Like most months, the MSM mostly ignored past revisions, or even tried to spin them as something positive.

 As part of the employment report, the BLS released the preliminary annual benchmark revision of minus 366,000 payroll jobs.

 Disappearing hundreds of thousands of jobs has become a yearly tradition at the Bureau Labor Statistics. Last year the BLS wiped away 902,000 previously reported jobs, another 89,000 jobs in 2008, and another 293,000 jobs in 2007.

 All told the BLS has erased 1.65 million reported jobs in the last four years.

That’s more than twice the number of jobs the Obama Administration claims were created this year.

 What we’ve seen consistently through this entire Depression is the government reporting employment numbers that often come in higher than feared, only to revise them drastically down weeks or months later when no one is looking.

Citigroup, Ally Sued for Racketeering Over Database

Bloomberg

By Margaret Cronin Fisk and Thom Weidlich – Oct 4, 2010

Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial Inc. units were sued by homeowners in Kentucky for allegedly conspiring with Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. to falsely foreclose on loans.

The lawsuit, filed as a civil-racketeering class action on behalf of all Kentucky homeowners facing foreclosure, also names as a defendant Reston, Virginia-based MERS, the company that handles mortgage transfers among member banks. The suit claims that through MERS the banks are foreclosing on homes even when they don’t hold titles to the properties.

[…]

The homeowners claim the defendants filed or caused to be filed mortgages with forged signatures, filed foreclosure actions months before they acquired any legal interest in the properties and falsely claimed to own notes executed with mortgages.

Forgery is No Joke.

Neither is being evicted, by Banks who ‘really don’t own’ your Home.

Thank goodness.  It couldn’t have happen a day too soon.

NBC Nightly News (03-09-09) Tent Cities of Homeless Springing Up In Bad Times



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F94f_Ycsjs

Tent City, USA



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

  The new weekly unemployment numbers came out Thursday, and on the surface they didn’t look bad. Initial claims, continuing claims, and extended benefits were all down.

 It looks like a win-win…until you start thinking about it.

I couldn’t believe my ears.  Did Arnold just change from Red to Blue ?

Or maybe it was just a deeper shade of Green.

Schwarzenegger defends climate law, slams Texans

Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer, SFGate — Sep 28, 2010

The governor’s vehement defense of the climate legislation commonly referred to as AB32 comes amid a fierce campaign led by oil interests to win passage in November of Proposition 23, a ballot measure that calls for suspending the climate law until the jobless rate hits 5.5 percent for a year, a level achieved only three times in 40 years.

Schwarzenegger, speaking before several hundred people at the Commonwealth Club in Santa Clara, said the proponents of Prop. 23 are attempting to subvert the democratic process using scare tactics. He likened the campaign to a shell game hiding what he said was the real purpose: “self-serving greed.”

“They are creating a shell argument that they are doing this to protect jobs,” the governor said. “Does anybody really believe they are doing this out of the goodness of their black oil hearts – spending millions and millions of dollars to save jobs?”

   Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega spilled the beans on Monday when he committed the cardinal sin of telling the truth.

 “We’re in the midst of an international currency war,” Mr. Mantega said. “This threatens us because it takes away our competitiveness.”

  “The advanced countries are seeking to devalue their currencies,” he said, mentioning the United States, Europe and Japan in the context of what he portrayed as an intensifying trade competition.

 All over the world nations are in a race to the bottom with their currencies. The objective is to gain trade advantage over competitors. In other words this is a global trade war, one that is being done by destroying people’s savings.

  In all, about 2/3rd of the global economy is in the process of debasing their currencies. Nothing has happened like this since the 1930s.

 It’s a return to global beggar thy neighbor economic policy that proved so hopelessly flawed in the Great Depression.

Ed and Bernie take on the Chamber of Commerce Outsourcing …

They urge Congress to pass this Act designed to slow the pace of Outsourcing:

Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30…

WHO in the World — Does the CHAMBER work for, anyways?

Cuz it aint you and me.

Poor posting etiquette, I know, but I really don’t have much time to write. Just read….

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2…

Consider:

• Many of the regulations that govern energy and banking sector were written by Corporations;

• The biggest influence on legislative votes is often Corporate Lobbying;

• Corporate ability to extend copyright far beyond what original protections amounts to a taking of public works for private corporate usage;

• PAC and campaign finance by Corporations has supplanted individual donations to elections;

• The individuals’ right to seek redress in court has been under attack for decades, limiting their options.

• DRM and content protection undercuts the individual’s ability to use purchased content as they see fit;

• Patent protections are continually weakened. Deep pocketed corporations can usurp inventions almost at will;

• The Supreme Court has ruled that Corporations have Free Speech rights equivalent to people; (So much for original intent!)

None of these are Democrat/Republican conflicts, but rather, are corporate vs. individual issues.

Excellent Article!  

Cross-posted from Main Street Insider

Check back on Wednesday for our first Sponsor Special with Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT3). One-page summary below the fold…

The main GOTP argument for keeping the Bush Tax Cuts in place for the Top 2% — pivots on how it will “hurt Small Businesses” if we don’t.

This simple slogan, fails to take into account one VERY SMALL stat.

[Mitch McConnell] says President Barack Obama’s plan to limit future tax breaks to couples earning less than $250,000 would subject 50 percent of small business income to a tax increase, stalling the job creation engine.

[…]

McConnell’s 50-%-of-income figure is based on a July 12 finding by the Joint Committee on Taxation, … that 1/2 of about $1 trillion of business income in 2011 will be reported on some 750,000 personal tax returns filed by people who pay the top marginal rates.

He calls those small businesses. Yet the report says the data “do not imply that all of the income is from entities that might be considered ‘small.’ ” Almost 20,000 of those businesses, for example, had receipts of more than $50 million, it says.

Would Ending Bush’s Tax Cuts Hurt Small Business?

Ryan J Donmoyer, BusinessWeek – 09/23/10

Behold the GOTP — Defenders of the $50 Million-aires!