Category: Economy

  When the Wall Street bankers ran up hundreds of billions of debt they could not pay back they convinced the American taxpayers (via the government) to bail them out, no questions asked.

  However, when the American taxpayer runs up a little debt, not only is there no bailout, there is no mercy either.

 It’s not a crime to owe money, and debtors’ prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts….

   “The law enforcement system has unwittingly become a tool of the debt collectors,” said Michael Kinkley, an attorney in Spokane, Wash., who has represented arrested debtors. “The debt collectors are abusing the system and intimidating people, and law enforcement is going along with it.”

 Frequently the bail is set at the exact same amount as the debt owed. While this makes it easy for judges, it is also a tacit admission that these are de facto debtor prisons.

 Many state constitutions bar imprisonment for debts, yet in many cases the judges in these states don’t seem to care. Some seem eager to side with the powerful against the weak.

  The financial news from Europe is getting increasingly distressing.

A new EU report warns that economic conditions in Portugal and Spain could “result in a high ‘snowball’ effect on the government debt.”

  French financial group AXA says “there is a fatal flaw in the system and no clear way out.” They are predicting the Eurozone to break in half or completely disintegrate in the next 18 months.

  Over 13% of Europe’s investors are betting on a Black Monday-style collapse in stock prices (think 1987).

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

Taylor Jones, Politicalcartoons.com, Buy this cartoon

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

Cheney Spews by Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune, Buy this cartoon

Speaker Pelosi pulled a brilliant move at the end of the last weeks legislative session.

   House Democrats are home for a long Memorial Day break with a gift-wrapped wedge issue delivered just in time for district campaigning. One of their final actions before adjourning late Friday was passing a measure that would strip tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas by a 215-204 vote.

talkingpointsmemo.com

  The Grand Outsourcing Party. Expect Dems to run on this come election time.

More brilliance below the fold.

   Discussion of the economic crisis in Europe has been largely confined to Greece and how it effects the Euro. All that changed this week.

   It all started with the Spanish banks at the start of the week.

 CajaMurcia, Caja Granada, Sa Nostra, and Caixa are joining together in a SIP (System of Integrated Protection), which will combine bank reserves and result in a firm worth €100 billion, according to Cotizalia.

  This comes after yesterday’s announcement that four banks, Cajastur, Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo, Caja Extremadura, and Caja Cantabria were merging under a similar agreement.

  All of this started with the weekend’s €530 million bailout of CajaSur, and is sure to continue as Spain tries to sure up its banking sector under IMF pressure.

 Sudden mergers of major banks, following a major bank bailout, is very suspicious. The markets noticed, and two days later the Spain’s central bank was forced to act.

We are in the mist of not only a total devastating, ongoing, tragedy for the Gulf Coast area’s as well as the ecological damage being done in the Gulf Waters and the Coastal area’s that will effect Everyone for nobody knows  how long! We are also in a collapsed economy still, high unemployment, twos still ongoing Wars and Occupations of Choice, still infrastructure demands for fixes, immigration that is still and has been allowed to ignore the laws already on the books and sooooo much more!!

How many of you will not only see your representatives, or their staffs, but hear anything about what they are doing while ‘on vacation’ from their 24/7 jobs of representation!

“By allowing persistent declines in the money supply and in the price level, the Federal Reserve of the late 1920s and 1930s greatly destabilized the U.S. economy and the economies of many other nations as well.

 – Federal Reserve Governor, Ben Bernanke, 2004

  Ben Bernanke, Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, and most other economists out there agree that the reason the Great Depression was so deep and destructive was that the Federal Reserve failed to keep the money supply from shrinking. I’m a little more skeptical, but I agree that it would be impossible for an economy to grow without a growing supply of money in a debt-based monetary system.

  That’s why this news article should be extremely distressing.

 The stock of money fell from $14.2 trillion to $13.9 trillion in the three months to April, amounting to an annual rate of contraction of 9.6pc. The assets of insitutional money market funds fell at a 37pc rate, the sharpest drop ever.

  “It’s frightening,” said Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research. “The plunge in M3 has no precedent since the Great Depression. The dominant reason for this is that regulators across the world are pressing banks to raise capital asset ratios and to shrink their risk assets. This is why the US is not recovering properly,” he said.

 As our political and financial leaders are using every tool at their disposal to jump-start the economy, there are fewer and fewer dollars in circulation. That’s not a prescription for a growing economy. It’s a prescription for economic disaster.

   Strikes and protests from Greece to Spain to Slovenia to Ireland to Romania have followed riots and bloodshed.

  The corporate media has reported this unrest with the following narrative:

 The Greek people are angry because their government pledged to make cuts in social spending…

 Fox News correctly observed that “Greece lived for years beyond its means, borrowing money and spilling red ink to finance excessive government spending, offer socialized health care and provide lavish wages for federal workers.”

 It’s a rather convenient spin: greedy, lazy, leftists workers that are getting their comeuppance. It’s the same narrative that the corporate media rolls out whenever social services are being cut anywhere in the world.

  It’s a convenient story because it is a complete story. Nothing more needs to be done. Good guys win. Bad guys lose. Roll the credits.

 Except that this isn’t the whole story by a long shot.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

John Cole, Scranton Times-Tribune, Buy this cartoon

THE Question – Is America a Democracy or an Oligarchy?

Sen. Sanders:    “Right now, what ends up happening, is Big Money interests, whether in fact it is in oil and energy, whether it’s in prescription drugs . . .”

Dylan Ratigan:     “BP”

Sen. Sanders:    “Whether it is in banking, these guys have huge amounts of money, and the situation gets worse with the recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision, and anyone who stands up to the big money interests can expect a huge amount of 30 second ads against them. That’s the reality. Are we a Democracy, or are we an Oligarchy where the very powerful special interests exert enormous influence over our Government?”

Ratigan:     “What’s your answer to that question?”

Sen. Sanders:     “I think we’re an Oligarchy and I think it’s getting worse.”

   Much more, plus video and transcript below the fold.