I don’t need to tell you that unemployment is through the roof. U6 is at 20+% nationwide, and in NYC it is as bad as anywhere else. At some point, we as a nation need to figure out that the private sector will not save us, rather they are strangling us, but, that is not why I write today, although it is an issue that must be addressed if we are to recover from the Bush/Cheney depression anytime soon.
In New York City you can see the class warfare at it’s prime. A few bonus baby Wall St types who tanked the whole economy on us yuk it up over drinks while a ton of busboys sweat it out for that extra buck.
Well, I have hit my breaking point. I have no job, no money, and no more patience. As much as I love the Big Rotten Apple, I have to say Good Bye, New York City.
This town is too rich for my blue collared blood. I have tried bootstraps. I have tried denying things like health care and dentist appointments, eating out and other non-necessities.
In these insane years, the only people making sense, and the only people with what appears to be what used to be called “common sense” are those who are now labelled “extreme left”. You know, Democracy Now, Dennis Kucinich, etc.
Well, Kucinich now can’t help but wonder if the Federal Reserve isn’t paying banks to NOT make loans.
Ohio Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich wants to know: “If [the Troubled Asset Relief Program] isn’t about keeping people in their homes or providing credit to businesses, what is it for?”
Expressing his frustration before the Government and Oversight Committee, the two-time presidential candidate suggested that the Federal Reserve may be paying banks to hoard money and avoid making loans.
Banks make loans in order to make money. If they don’t make loans, then what are they in business for? Why would they quit making loans?
This map represents the connections and relationships of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Goldman Sachs International, Goldman Sachs Japan, Goldman Sachs Europe Limited, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Goldman Sachs Hedge Fund Strategies LLC, Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Goldman Sachs (Asia) LLC
Below I will post a link to the interactive version where you can click on each of the boxes with a + sign and get more information and see even further connections. I will also post a list of all these many connections. I posted a smaller version of this wheel last night in Badabing’s diary, Matt Taibbi Pulls the Rug Out on Goldman Sachs – AGAIN… and am flushing it out for you all by request. Consider this a reference. I hope others will add to it.
Just a few thoughts this miserable Monday on the lemming farm as Goldman’s record earnings are about to be announced and the Republican pigs are shovelling bloody read meat to their dumber than a bucket of shit racist base over the Sotomayor hearings. There is a very good article by Paul Krugman in the damned librul New York Times today on the state of the economic fallout from the decades long class war. In Krugman’s piece, Boiling the Frog he is once again on the mark about Obama’s failings in propping up the looter capitalist system at the expense of the regular Americans.
A new study has been released by Lancet, The public health effect of economic crises and alternative policy responses in Europe: an empirical analysis, written by Dr. David Stuckler PhD et. al., which contends that the current economic crisis is having an adverse effect on public health. The findings from their research show that increased unemployment rates correlate to “significant short term increases in premature deaths from intentional violence.” The study also shows that labor market protection through government programs can reverse this terrible trend.
This scope of this study was the European Union nations. A brief google search didn’t reveal any similar recent studies conducted in the US, though there was an informal study conducted by a Doctor from Johns Hopkins, who reported his findings at a “After Peak Oil” Conference in the spring of this year.
I have been feeling lately that the entire country has been hit by a storm, that people are drowning or are standing on their roofs waving their arms, but that the most other people are ignoring them, their eyes set on some different horizon, looking for golden pots beneath rainbows.
The President and his family this week have been sampling the fine wines of Northern Italy with the worthless G-8, visiting an earthquake stricken town there. He has pontificated with the evil Santa that is the Pope and now having a delightful visit, no doubt, in Ghana.
The mainstream media has been preoccupied with sex, politics and celebrity death. Huge numbers of television watching Americans have been fueling those Networks’ ad revenue, distracted by these baubles of the macabre. The blogosphere seems more fragmented than ever, either being enraptured with its own meta, or having its sights set on foreign revolutions and wargames. Quite a number too have been focused on the macroeconomy, noting the incredible hypocrisy and corruption of the big houses on Wall Street. There are those too who are completely focused on healthcare legislation, which does get closer to the core issue. That issue is that people are hurting badly in this country and are slipping through its cracks.
HUCKABEE: There’s one thing though that Biden and President Obama have got to get under control. And that is quit blaming George Bush. George Bush inherited an economy when he became president back in 2001 that was already beginning to show real signs of the stress from the breaking of the technology bubble. George Bush didn’t go out whining and complaining every day, he stood up like the president of the United States and he worked on trying to get it fixed.
Remember how bad it was under Clinton? Having a job you had to go to and money to pay bills with sure was a drag. I mean, considering the fact that Clinton left Bush with the longest rate of economic growth and prosperity in our nation’s history, you can see just how unfair it is for Obama to blame Bush for the economic clusterfuck he was handed on 1/20/09. Seriously. It isn’t like Bush would have done that to his predecessor?
Oh. Wait. He did.
“When I took office, our economy was beginning a recession.” – Bush, 8/7/02
“The president inherited a Clinton recession and turned it into the early stages of Bush prosperity.” – Secretary of Commerce Don Evans, 9/2/04
“In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession.” – Bush, 1/12/09
Damned history. It constantly gets in the way of pretend reality we would love to live in.
Quit spending money so we can use it for tax cuts. That seems to be the root of every “Gov spending is evil” complaint.
Guess why the stimulus wasn’t enough? It is because the crooked corporatists in the GOP just had to have 40% of the stimulus as tax cuts, tax cuts that return only cents for every dollar the Government invests into them, and tax cuts that mainly benefit only the rich. Nevermind that the Obama bailout itself went straight to the rich as well. And what did we get for the $300 Billion or so in tax cuts that the GOP demanded had to be in the stimulus? 3 measly votes.
The only thing better than having your cake and eating too must be making sure no one else gets cake and then telling them when they are mad “Let Them Eat Cake.”
I thought religious people were supposed to be empathetic?
On the face of things, Mike Huckabee looks like a sane, rational person. Some even find that he has a certain charisma. I feel the same way about the carnival barker who sells elixir at the county fair. Sure he talks a good game, but if you buy his shtick watch out. The elixir selling carnival barker, much like Huckabee, is selling you crap, and, much like Huckabee and the rest of the GOP, if you want your money back you will never be able to find him again.
Remind me never to take political or economic advice from someone who doesn’t believe in evolution or a woman’s right to chose.
If it was up to Huck we would just cut taxes, halt Government spending on everything but the Military and Faith based initiatives, and pray for the Bush Depression to go away.
Good luck with that.
And for future reference, the next time someone ( especially if that someone is Mike Huckabee) thinks Mike Huckabee has advice for us on the economy or anything President Obama should do regarding the Bush Administration, would someone please tell him to Shut The Huck Up!
The hits just keep coming for the Empire of Avarice, the Great Satan that is Goldman Sachs. As Matt Taibbi’s brilliant expose The Great American Bubble Machine continues to spread across the internet there is chaotic shuffling around the feeding troughs by Wall Street’s big piggies. It is now conventional wisdom on both the street itself and the whorehouse in D.C. that there must be a savage campaign to use the pocket media to take down Taibbi with extreme prejudice. The good ole bread and butter “conspiracy theorist” tag is to be the weapon of choice. According to this story by the Independent’s Stephen Foley, the Great Satan’s oily mouthpiece chimes in with these old warhorses (Propaganda 101) –
In keeping with the hyperbole of the row, Goldman’s wonderfully arch spokesman Lucas van Praag described the piece as “an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories,” adding: “Notable ones missing are Goldman Sachs as the third shooter [in John F Kennedy’s assassination] and faking the first lunar landing.”
Why do we still continue to ignore the fact that women serve, Johnny comes marching home and similar, in greater numbers and are a big part of our military operations? They have always been a Big part of the Military Family and an Important part!
“Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough.”
– Jan Willem Van De Wetering
The battle has now been joined by the Great Satan (aka Goldman Sachs) as the brilliant Matt Taibbi piece has fortunatly gone viral thanks to bloggers. When the pigs on Wall Street, their legal armies and on call public relations propagandists turn into pirannhas as they are with this piece the fuckers are on the run. The seige on CNBC’s drooling house baboon Jim ‘Mad Money’ Cramer that was kicked off by comedian Jon Stewart was beaten back with a disinformation laden blitzkrieg and the money changers regained control of the temple. It’s all been the hogwash of the GREEN SHOOTS ever since. And despite the dismal news contained in yesterday’s jobs report the long weekend couldn’t come at a more fortuitous time as the four flushing,gold plated cocksuckers will regroup once again and launch a saturation bombing campaign of more goddammed lies.
America was built on lots of hard work. At the cost of untold blood, sweat and tears. So much so, that we take it for granted. We just assume that all the modern conveniences we enjoy — will just always be there!
Well a team of super serious, civil engineers, is warning our careless assumptions here, could be in for a very rude awaking.
American Society of Civil Engineers, ASCE, has issued their 2009 Infrastructure Report Card, for America, and well, it’s far from encouraging …
“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing. ”
– Charles Bukowski
The dazzling propaganda onslaught conducted by the financial sector has been shock and fucking awe as the amazing resuscitation of the FIRE industry roars into the next quarter. A dirty as a pig in shit corporatist media waged total war against reason, morality, facts, history and the law itself in allowing the treasonous looters from Wall Street bounce back off of the ropes and reassert their control over the government and the country at large. Now under the cover of the saturation coverage of the Michael Jackson freak show (I doubt that I will see this shit end in my lifetime) the still annoying little trickles of doom, like the impending implosion of Arnoldland are stomped on by gatekeepers who just play another card from the Whacko Jacko deck of jokers. Face it people, we are fucked! With the celebrity infatuated lemmings in this rotting from the insides empire it is only a matter of time until they start seeing the great one’s ghoulish visage appearing on tortillas and grilled cheese sandwiches. If there were such a thing as a truly American Jesus it would be Michael Jackson. Neverland will become the bastardized equivalent of Lourdes, Jerusalem and Graceland uniquely spliced together to resemble our sick, twisted and mutated national DNA.
