Category: Economy

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “The Economic Bill of Rights”

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all-regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

Finally a Representative body, that knows WHO they work for …

Class war breaks out in the U.K.

The Labor government announces a tax on exorbitantly-paid bankers. American populists gnash their teeth in envy

By Andrew Leonard, Dec 9, 2009

Unsurprising headline of the year: “U.S. Probably Will Avoid Matching U.K. 50 percent Bonus Tax.”

Alistair Darling, the U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced the tax — aimed squarely at overpaid bankers

[…]

From Bloomberg:

“There are some banks who still believe their priority is to pay substantial bonuses,” Darling said in Parliament. “I am giving them a choice. They can use their profits to build up their capital base. If they insist on paying substantial rewards, I am determined to claw money back for the taxpayer.”

Paul Krugman says the move is “entirely reasonable.” Justin Fox asks, “why the heck not?” Felix Salmon says “well done.”

But don’t expect a repeat across the pond.

http://www.salon.com/technolog…

Interesting … maybe the People CAN Fight back?

It’s hard to believe it, but the housing bubble has not finished bursting.

 Four years after the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble, flipping homes is back in fashion.

…

 The minimum bid, as set by a unit of Citigroup Inc., which had a $1.3 million mortgage on the home, was $379,900. After several minutes of bidding among investors and their representatives, some wearing shorts and flip-flops, Mr. Mirmelli won the home for $486,300. A week later, he agreed to sell it for $690,000 to a woman who moved in this month.

After all these years, and all that heartbreak, people are still trying to get back to 2006.

     Just witness the failure of the HAMP program and Fannie Mae’s desperation. Everyone is trying to return to a past that was unsustainable.

 You’re in debt up to your eyeballs. You can’t keep up with the mortgage and you are going to lose your home. It doesn’t get any worse than that, right? Wrong.

 Lawyers for troubled Staten Island homeowners say they are beginning to see examples of clients who go to the bank to take out money and find that their accounts have been frozen or wiped out by other banks or debt collectors — the entities holding second mortgages on houses already in default on the first and primary mortgage. Some are learning the lender or debt collector has already gone to court and secured a judgment to garnish paychecks.

   It’s a move more in line with the traditional debt collection industry, which typically targets credit card debt, and it’s dragging the house and what little cash reserves people often have into the foreclosure battleground. Experts say it’s an end-run by second lien holders around the traditional foreclosure process, which involves only the first mortgage holder and provides important legal protections for the homeowner.

Just two days after announcing the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, President Obama held a jobs summit:

With unemployment levels above 10 percent, Obama said “We cannot hang back and hope for the best.”

But, mindful of growing anxiety about federal deficits, Obama also tempered his upbeat talk with an acknowledgment that government resources could only go so far and that it is primarily up to the private sector to create large numbers of new jobs.

He said while he’s “open to every demonstrably good idea … we also though have to face the fact that our resources are limited.”

Beyond the question of why a Democratic president is giving lip service to deficit hawks at a moment that screams for more Keynesian stimulus, the real question is this: why is it that we have to endure nearly a year of grueling political games just to get a weak, watered down health care bill that we have been told, all along, has to be deficit-neutral, yet no one bats an eye at throwing tens of billions more each year into wars?

A couple weeks ago, CBS News reported:

  The big economic news today is the unemployment rate dropped slightly.

 The rate unexpectedly fell to 10 percent, from 10.2 percent in October, as employers cut the fewest number of jobs since the recession began. The government also said 159,000 fewer jobs were lost in September and October than first reported.

  If part-time workers who want full time jobs and laid-off workers who have given up looking for jobs are included, the so-called underemployment rate also fell, to 17.2 percent from 17.5 percent in October.

 Understand that I’m suspicious of any government numbers, especially positive economic numbers, because politicians have a long tradition of lying with them. So when these numbers came out so much better than everyone expected, I decided to look at the raw numbers.

Hey, don’t everyone thank me at once!

As my gift to this country that I love so much, I personally fixed that whole unemployment problem there by lowerin’ the unemployment rate from 10.2% to 10.0% last month.  It was obvious that rampant socialism wasn’t gettin’ the job done, and that someone had to goose the free markets to get things rollin’ again.  And I am that goose.

How, you may ask, did I save the country?  With my book, of course!  The publishing company had to hire millions (-ish) of new workers to print additional copies, plus all those pilots, stewardesses, and associated airport employees needed for my bus tour, and also all those additional mall employess for the crush of humanity linin’ up to get there books signed.  The waves of free market activity are like a giant tiramisu rollin’ across the ocean!

http://act.boldprogressives.or…

Bernie Sanders has used a bit of Senate finesse to block the renomination of Ben Bernanke to head the Federal Reserve.  Chris Bowers over at Closed Left explains what’s happening, but what it all boils down to is that Sanders has managed to hold up the renomination of one of Bush’s creatures to a hugely important office.  Obama and Wall Street want Bernanke to stay and keep fucking up the economy.  Sanders is looking like one of the only senators willing to go on record and try to stop this from happening.

So please click the link above and thank Bernie for looking out for us.  And while you’re at it, use the Senate phone directory to call your own senator and demand a filibuster of Bernanke’s renomination.  We need someone in there who will actually represent the public interest.

http://www.senate.gov/general/…

There’s nothing like having a good job.

So WHY is Corporate America so keen on giving those good jobs to someone other than Americans?

The Geography Of A Recession 2007-2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Of course, the answer to that WHY — is to increase their bottom lines, whatever it may cost their country in the long run.

It’s just Business, right?

  The Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program has been touted as a savor of distressed homeowners across America. The problem is that the numbers show an entirely different story.

 More than 650,994 loan revisions had been started through the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program as of last month, from about 487,081 as of September, according to the Treasury. None of the trial modifications through October had been converted to permanent repayment plans, the Treasury data showed.

None? NONE! Not a single one! WTF!

 Five months and 651,000 trial modifications and not one single borrower can get a permanent break? We throw hundreds of billions of dollars at these TARP banks and they can’t cut a single distressed homeowner some slack?

 These “trial” modifications only last 90 days, so its not like there hasn’t been thousands of mortgage holders who have tried to turn it around, and the banks then rejected.

We’re diving deep into “geek world” today with a story that combines economic hardball, the periodic table of the elements, and a barely noticed provision of the Defense Authorization Act that seeks to break a monopoly which today gives China near-absolute control over the materials that make cell phones, electric cars, wind turbines, and pretty much every other tool of modern life possible.

If we successfully break the monopoly, we’ll be able to create millions of new manufacturing jobs in this country-and if we don’t, somebody else owns the 21st Century.

Ironically, the global warming we’re trying to fight with new green technologies might be an ally in our efforts to make those very same green technologies happen.

There’s a revolution in industrial processing going on, rare earths are at the center of it all…and in today’s story, the revolution will be televised.