Tag: depression

it’s vultures that come home to roost.

The subprime mortgage crisis isn’t over. Neither is the global credit freeze it sparked. The stock market crash that followed hasn’t hit bottom yet either. But the main thing to worry about now, and for a long time to come, is the depression we are rolling and tumbling into.

The media has started reporting on one increasingly visible aspect of the depression: the budget crunch facing states and municipalities, and the resulting cutbacks in public services. News stories have detailed the end of the shuttle program Phoenix, AZ ran to take seniors grocery shopping, Mayor Daley’s elimination of 2250 Chicago city jobs–900 by layoffs, warnings of unsalted roads in rural Wisconsin this winter, and on and on. And it’s early days yet.

The service cuts I want to highlight today are a little different. Let me direct your attention briefly to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which serves 1.5 million rail and bus passengers every day. Yep, even in auto-centric L.A., a lot of folks, especially poor folks, can’t make it without public transportation.

Intro

Terry Matsamuto, the MTA’s chief financial officer is predicting massive service cuts soon. It seems that like many local governments around the country, L.A. County went for the okey-doke. They sold much of their system to private investors in “lease-back” deals. Companies like Wells Fargo and Philip Morris bought the rail system, 1000 buses and parking and maintenance facilities. The Tranist Authority gets a one shot injection of needed cash, the financiers get a steady annual cash flow bled out of the system.

The rail cars and locomotives of the Metrolink commuter rail system were also sold, and guess who financed and insured these deals?

American International Group.

Yep, AIG. And when AIG started going into cardiac arrest, their credit ratings were revised downwards before the Fed even applied the paddles.

The lower credit ratings triggered a clause in the lease-back agreements that require the MTA to either find a new firm to guarantee the deals or reimburse investors for their down payments and lost tax benefits, a scenario that could cost the transit agency between $100 million and $300 million.

For one thing, forget about finding a replacement lender–credit is still frozen, static. Second, once other clauses in the deal kick in, the MTA could be on the hook for $1.8 billion this year, more than half its total annual budget.

All those investors have to be made good somehow. So the service cuts commence.

I can’t wait to see what L.A.’s Bus Riders Union does about this…



Cross-posted from Fire on The Mountain.

Original article, by Lee Sustar, via socialistworker.org:

Tomorrow, tomorrow

I love ya, tomorrow

You’re always

a day away!



– From the Broadway show Annie

SO MUCH for that $700 billion bailout that was supposed to save world capitalism.

Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed what looks to me like the most sane and reasonable solution to our financial mess.  

Instead of being between a rock and a hard place, between a fraudulent bailout of the criminal banksters and a total collapse, Great Depression 2, destruction of the financial systems of the U.S. and the world, we have the middle ground sanity of Bernie Sanders.  His proposal for, if not solving, at least helping to heal our dire financial straits is the best I’ve seen.

Wall Street Bailout – 09/26/2008

There is little public support for President Bush’s $700 billion bailout. Just 30 percent support Bush’s package, according to an Associated Press poll released Friday. More than 4,000 of you have taken our survey, and those results are even more remarkable. Are you confident that taxpayers would be treated fairly if Congress and the Bush administration agree on a bailout? You aren’t. Do you think a bailout would help the economy? No. Do you favor a surtax on individuals who make more than $500,000 a year and couples earning more than $1 million to pay for a Wall Street bailout? More than 91 percent agree with the proposal by Senator Bernie Sanders. What’s more, as of late Friday, more than 40,000 (as of late Friday)of you co-signed Bernie’s letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson suggesting a tax on the very wealthy.

Follow below the fold to learn more and see if you want to sign on and support Sanders’ proposal.

Original article, an editorial subheaded Whether or not Henry Paulson’s rescue scheme works, one thing is already crystal clear: The capitalist system has failed spectacularly, via socialistworker.org:

THE BUSH administration’s treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, is demanding the financial equivalent of martial law–$700 billion and a blank check to rescue the Wall Street system from the catastrophe caused by the blind greed of the super-rich parasites who run it.

From the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/busines…

The original article, by Mike Whitney, via dissidentvoice.org.

The bright new financial system, with all its talented participants, with all its rich rewards, has failed the test of the marketplace.

– Former Fed Chief, Paul Volcker

Not much more needs to be said, but will the failure in the marketplace be allowed to die a dignified death?  Yeah…right.

I have said before “left” and “right” in America serve mostly as marketing type focus groups.  “Discussions” emerge for the sole purpose of discovering what is most destructive to America and how media can best promote it.

Note here that in 1992, yes that was 1992 Kyoto made China and India CARBON EMISSION EXEMPT.  Can I say that again louder.

Joe Lieberman however has “stepped” forward several times now with policies, beliefs and stances which should be in direct conflict with rational normal thinking.  It is as if he is in training for Henry Kissinger’s slot, high up in the Satanic organization that runs the world, The Illuminati.

First of all, I want to thank everyone who read “I Hate Writing About Myself….” and provided their stories, helpful advice, and kind words. This sort of thing is what I like about Docudharma. If you were all here, I’d give you all big hugs!

As a follow-up, yesterday was something of a rough day–because I knew after having read many of the comments I needed to see a doctor and get started on meds in spite of my reluctance due to the cost….