Category: Economy

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

– Abraham Lincoln

 Wall Street has a problem.

 You see Wall Street functions much like Las Vegas. Their immense wealth depends on the continuing myth that their games aren’t rigged, and the willful denial of reality by the suckers.

  Just like Vegas, no one wants to talk about the money they lost playing the stock market. Instead, all you here about is how everyone is getting rich at the blackjack table. If you aren’t getting obscenely wealthy betting on interest rate spreads then there must be something wrong with you.

 In reality, the reason why you lost money is because the game is rigged. The House always wins in the end. The suckers are the ones who think there are rules. Like Wall Street, Vegas exists to separate you from your money.

 Wall Street may seem all powerful, but like Vegas it has an Achilles Heel – if the people don’t feed the beast it will starve.

 If the greed of The House gets to extreme, and the rigging of the games becomes too obvious to ignore, people will stop gambling at the casinos and in the stock market. The House goes broke.

 That tipping point, where the willful denial of Main Street starts to break down because the game rigging is so blatant, may have finally been reached.

Bipartisan Elephants, Endless Debt and Entitlements, Cats without Food … Oh My!

What IS all this fuss about?

Sometimes a picture is worth a 1000 rants.

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE – CBO

The Long-Term Budget Outlook

JUNE 2010 – (Revised August 2010)

larger

Image: Federal Debt Held by the Public as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product

Under Two Budget Scenarios

CBO — The Long-Term Budget Outlook (pdf)

OK sometimes not … What does that Picture mean to me?

2035, Haah!  that’s like a quarter century from now …  you got to be kidding me …

They Go or Obama Goes

Robert Scheer,

Truthdig, August 25, 2010

Barack Obama and the Democrats he led to a stunning victory two years ago are going down hard in the face of an economic crisis that he did nothing to create but which he has failed to solve. That is somewhat unfair because the basic blame belongs to his predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who let the bulls of Wall Street run wild in the streets where ordinary folks lived. And there was universal Republican support in Congress for the radical deregulation of the financial industry that produced this debacle.

The core issue for the economy is the continued cost of a housing bubble made possible only after what Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers back then trumpeted as necessary “legal certainty” was provided to derivative packages made up of suspect Alt-A and subprime mortgages. It was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Senate Republican Phil Gramm drafted and which Clinton signed into law, that made legal the trafficking in packages of dubious home mortgages. In any decent society the creation of such untenable mortgages and the securitization of risk irrationally associated with it would have been judged a criminal scam. But no such judgment was possible because thanks to Wall Street’s sway under Clinton and Bush the bankers got to rewrite the laws to sanction their treachery.

It is Obama’s continued deference to the sensibilities of the financiers and his relative indifference to the suffering of ordinary people that threaten his legacy, not to mention the nation’s economic well-being. There have been more than 300,000 foreclosure filings every single month that Obama has been president, and as The New York Times editorialized, “Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the Obama administration’s efforts to address the foreclosure problem will make an appreciable dent.”

[snip]

Aug 25, 2010 – Washington’s U.S. Senate race heated up Wednesday as Sen. Patty Murray and challenger Dino Rossi battled over veterans’ care and spending. A KOMO News story ignited controversy after a Rossi supporter and veteran Deryl McCarthy told KOMO it was time to take a much closer look at spending, including money aimed at helping veterans.

Murray’s campaign seized the moment by issuing a statement that said, “Following KOMO News’ report yesterday that Dino Rossi’s campaign believes our country is ‘spending recklessly’ on the Veterans Administration, U.S. Senator Patty Murray and veterans from around the state will hold a conference call with reporters this afternoon to call on Rossi to explain his campaign position and define which VA services need to be cut.”

Murray held that call on Wednesday.

Rossi’s campaign then issued its own statement late Wednesday afternoon:

The post-stimulus economic data are converging.  Jobs are sucking harder than a hobo at Rose ‘a Sharon’s tit, and the GDP, money supply (credit), and housing are all tanking.  On top of it all, people are feeling downright miserly and cantankerous.  Murderous, even.

Let’s take a look at the Consumer Metric Institute’s Growth Index, which bases its data exclusively on the 70% of US GDP driven by consumers, and which over the past five years has done a remarkable job as a leading indicator of GDP.  Here, the CMI is overlain with GDP and the S&P 500.

Obama To Create 17 New Jobs By Resigning And Finally Opening That Restaurant

WASHINGTON-In an effort to counter the highest unemployment rate the nation has faced in a quarter century, Barack Obama announced Monday that he will create 17 new jobs by resigning from the presidency to pursue his lifelong dream of opening a cozy little down-home restaurant just off the Galesburg, IL exit on Interstate 74. “Now is the time for drastic measures, and the several line-cook and serving positions that will be generated by Barry’s Place are imperative to getting the economy back on track,” said Obama, donning a white apron over rolled-up shirtsleeves. “The hope is that this bold initiative will demonstrate to other American business owners that it is possible to break the cycle after they somehow get sucked into politics and things snowball so fast that they lose sight of what’s really important, like serving people the best slice of pecan pie they’ve ever tasted at a price that can’t be beat.” Vice President Joe Biden has reportedly followed Obama’s entrepreneurial lead by purchasing a secondhand cologne and condom vending machine that will be installed in the men’s bathroom of a Wilmington, DE offtrack betting parlor.

Hopefully he’ll also be soon hiring a new White House Economic Adviser, a new Treasury Secretary, and a new Fed Chairman. If he knows what’s good for him… and he ain’t no dummy, or puppet, or so I’m repeatedly assured.

You rock, B. You can do this. I have faith in you.

  It’s that time of the year again.

No, not Christmas. It’s the time of the year when the state of California starts paying its bills in IOU’s.

 California lawmakers passed a bill to let recipients use state IOUs to pay fees and taxes owed to the government in Sacramento, if the warrants are issued.

  The bill, from Assemblyman Joel Anderson, a San Diego Republican, passed the Senate unanimously. It requires all state agencies to accept registered warrants issued to pay for goods and services. The Assembly unanimously approved the measure in September.

 The state could start handing out these IOU’s as soon as two weeks from today.

 One thing you can count on is that blame and suggestions on how to fix the budget mess will start flying fast and furious. Some ideas will be crazy. Some reasonable, but long on image and short on impact. Many good ideas will never be considered.

  What is also sure to happen is you will see a blizzard of numbers. Some will be created out of thin air. Most will be half-truths. Almost none of them will give you an honest perspective on what the actual problems are.

 That’s why I am presenting this essay, so that you can make a rational judgment for yourself.

Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette

Note: Due to a deluge of editorial cartoons over the past week or so, I’m going to, time permitting, post Part II of this weekly diary in the next few days.  In addition to some of the issues covered in this edition, I’ll include more cartoons on the floods in Pakistan, the withdrawal of combat U.S. forces in Iraq, and Rupert Murdoch’s $1 million contribution to the GOP.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

In the firefly-dreaming edition of last week’s Burning the Midnight Oil for Progressive Populism diary, RiaD raised the issue:

only that i’m a rural dweller, we must have a vehicle as there is no mass transit here. but we do pay very close attention to our trips to town (10+ miles) & city(40+ miles) and do as much as possible each trip. i would guess we actually use less gas living rurally than most city/urban dwellers.

we’ve got to start thinking differently as a nation.

become more citizens of the planet than american consumers

imo anyway.

… which set me thinking about the difference between One-Size-Fits-All solutions like Auto-Uber-Alles and A-Fit-For-Each-Size solutions. One size fits all makes is seem as if “that does not do this” is a massive obstacle … when under A Fit for Each Size, it is a challenge to find the means of accomplishing that task.

Here Paul Jay of the Real News talks in November 2008 at The Krahl Academy about US foreign policies, blowback, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the concurrent crises of capitalism, of media, of economies, of terrorism, of fascism, of corporatism, of corruption in US political parties, about the shit hitting the fan, and about one part of the solution for it all.

I originally posted this at Antemedius as one part of the solution, shortly after the video was released, in October 2009.

Jay’s talk is about 40 minutes. Watch the video. It’s worth your time, and beats TV all to hell. I guarantee it.

“If I’m not doing the thing I feel is most significant, then I feel empty inside.”

–Paul Jay

Elizabeth Warren Rap Video- Got A New Sheriff

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

There is so much flak for what seems would be a fine Presidential appointment.  The nation’s Chief Executive, Barack Obama, is often characterized as Spock, a Vulcan who is almost virtually void of emotion.  It is said that our current President is practical.  He acts on logic.  Yet, this supposed intellectual individual has, at times, seemed ready to do other than what most think reasonable.  Mister Obama has not appointed the truly best Sheriff for towns throughout the country, Elizabeth Warren..

Daniel Tencer writing at RawStory Friday reported that “The US economic recovery in recent quarters is little more than a “cover-up” and the world is headed for a “Greatest Depression,” complete with social unrest and class warfare, says a renowned economic forecaster. Gerald Celente, head of the Trends Research Institute, told Yahoo! News’ Tech Ticker that there’s no risk of a “double-dip recession” because the first “dip” never ended.”

“We’re saying there’s no double dip, it never ended,” Celente said. “We’re looking at the Greatest Depression. There’s no way out of this without [rebuilding] productive capacity. You can’t print [money to get] out of it.”

“Celente said the current unemployment rate, if it were measured as it was measured during the Great Depression, would be around 17.5 percent. And he expects that number to rise to around 22 percent in the coming years.”

“One of the good businesses to get in to may be guillotines,” Celente quipped. “Because there’s a real off-with-their-heads fever going on. People are really fed up.”

…

“We went from a country that used to be merchants, craftspeople, manufacturers, to clerks and cashiers,” Celente said. “We have to bring manufacturing back to America.”