Category: Economy

  President Obama got up on the stage and gave the speech that we all wanted to hear.

 “I proposed a set of reforms to empower consumers and investors, to bring the shadowy deals that caused this crisis into the light of day, and to put a stop to taxpayer bailouts once and for all,” Obama said to supporters. “Today, thanks to a lot of people in this room, those reforms will become the law of the land.”

 It sounds really good. The problem is that it has no relationship at all to reality.

  The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) released a report within hours of the president giving his speech, and its finding portrayed something very different.

 “Indeed, the current outstanding balance of overall Federal support for the nation’s financial system…has actually increased more than 23% over the past year, from approximately $3.0 trillion to $3.7 trillion — the equivalent of a fully deployed TARP program — largely without congressional action, even as the banking crisis has, by most measures, abated from its most acute phases.

Gallery: Signs of trouble

Oil spill victims find an outlet for anger about the crisis and resentment toward BP.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

A WashingtonPost Photo Gallery …

  There has been a lot of talk about a double-dip recession recently by people like Paul Krugman and Nouriel Roubini, how to define it, and what it means. What is missing from these discussions is the most obvious question of all: why won’t the economy recover?

  Capitalism is supposed to be self-correcting – or so we’ve been told – and a recession like the one we’ve had is supposed to be that reset button. So why aren’t businesses hiring?

  I’m going to try to answer that question in the simplest way possible.

 There are two primary reasons why the economy isn’t recovering, one reason is cyclical, the other is secular.

  It’s a rare event to see honesty for a major politician. So when it happens you should take note. Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.) clearly listed his priorities yesterday, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

 WALLACE: We’re running out of time, so how are you going to pay $678 billion just on the tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 a year?

KYL: You should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely congress has the authority and it would be right, if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending. And that’s what republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.

Ed Schultz was stunned by the recent about face of BP —

First they promise to make everyone whole —

Now they are saying hold on, there a minute partner —

Where are your Papers?

Ed Schultz — BP: Broken Promises — Fisherman Not Getting Paid

summarized transcript over the fold  

  I’m going to make this a short diary in order to get straight to the point.

 As you probably know, the House has passed H.R. 4213, which would keep in place the unemployment extensions until the end of November.

 The Senate Republicans, with the help of Democrat Ben Nelson were able to filibuster the Senate version of the bill by a single vote. The reason why the Democrats were a vote short was because Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia died.

  By the start of next week 2.5 million Americans will exhaust their unemployment benefits, 3.5 million by the end of the month.

In the most recent week it was divulged by the WSJ that the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) official gold holding have tripled! Where did all this gold come from and why is it suddenly moving around remains a mystery.

Why should care? Because gold is being recognized as the worlds only real money once again and colored paper is being called into question … even by banks.

However yesterday the official denial arrived in the WSJ when they reported this:

“The operations concerned were purely market operations with commercial banks,” the BIS said in an email statement.

[BP Chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg] is no different than other corporate elitists who are surrounded by evidence of what they see as their superiority. Leona Helmsley referenced us when she said, “Only the little people pay taxes.”

But this time, the truth cannot be hidden. The real evidence of what he and much of the corporate plutocracy thinks of us will be apparent to the residents of the gulf coast and likely well beyond for decades.

Is Financial Reform Good for the “Small People?”

George Mantor, RISMEDIA, 06/22/10

“Only the little people pay taxes”   So says former Queen of the Elites.

Afterall, SOMEONE has to pay.

And we shouldn’t expect the Corporations and Millionaires to carry that weight —

They’re too busy Downsizing the Life out of the Economy, to be saddled with the burden, of paying for the Bush Years.

They really, really need that Bush Tax Cut ‘Free Ride’ to CONTINUE —

Or they just might LET the Economy GET EVEN Worse.

Best we not test them, eh?   Or they really might ef-it-up!

  The most heated debate in Washington these days involves deficits and unemployment. There are lots of heated rhetoric, finger-pointing, and hyperbole.

  What there isn’t is a surplus of actual facts.

 For instance, this headline reads “U.S. should cut deficit to spur recovery, IMF says”. It implies that cutting the deficit would automatically increase economic growth.

  That sounds good to me. The problem is that the IMF never actually says that. In fact, the article spends most of its time warning about a drop in economic growth.

 The headline was misleading, as is just about everything said in this debate.

  The whispers on Wall Street lately have been the feared “double-dip”.

There is a much louder chorus of people proclaiming that we are only looking at a “slow-down”. Of course they were the same people who were telling us as recently as April that we were in a “V-shaped” recovery.

 Generally speaking, Liz Ann Sonders agrees.

  “I’m amazed people still say it’s not a ‘V’-shaped recovery, which to means they’re simply not looking at the charts,” says Charles Schwab’s chief investment strategist…

 Ah, yes. The charts. I have several issues with people who say things like this.

“This is an impressive crowd: the Have’s and Have-more’s. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base.”

George W. Bush

“It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.”

Margaret Thatcher

“Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time.”

Margaret Bonnano

lest we forget …

Sociologist David Harvey, Professor in the Graduate Centre of City University of New York,  asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just, and humane?

Harvey’s influential books include The New Imperialism; Paris, Capital of Modernity; Social Justice and the City; Limits to Capital; The Urbanization of Capital; The Condition of Postmodernity; Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference; Spaces of Hope; and Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography.

This narrated animation is based on a lecture, “The Crises of Capitalism”, given by Professor Harvey in April this year at the RSA. For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress.

Radical sociologist Professor David Harvey visits the RSA to explain how capitalism came to dominate the world and why it resulted in the current financial crisis.

Taking a long view of the current crisis, Professor Harvey exposes the follies of the international financial system, looking closely at the nature of capitalism, how it works and why sometimes it doesn’t.

Examining the cycles of boom and bust in the world’s housing and stock markets, and the vast flows of money that surge round the world daily, Harvey shows that periodic episodes of meltdown are not only inevitable in the capitalist system but, in fact, are essential to its survival. Harvey argues that the essence of capitalism is its amorality and lawlessness and to talk of a regulated, ethical capitalism is to make a fundamental error.

Can crises of the current sort be contained within the constraints of capitalism? Or is it time to make the case for a social order that would allow us to live within a different type of system – one that really could be responsible, just, and humane?