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More Government BS Amidst Real Economic Disaster
By Junious
Ricardo Stanton
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The banks and other
financials have more losses from the
subprime-mortgage mess on their books that
they haven't yet confessed. Worse, the
mortgage debacle has spread to other types
of debt, with banks and other financial
companies reporting mounting losses in their
credit card and auto loan portfolios. And
worst of all, the next big leg of the crisis—the
one I think will mark the true bottom
—has just started. As the economy
slows, the default rate is rising for
corporate debt, especially for the
high-risk, high-yield corporate debt called
‘junk’ by many of us. That's opening a
Pandora's box of potential write-downs that
could dwarf the losses in the mortgage
market.”
—The
next banking crisis on the way |
The US economy is in deep trouble
but for the most part AmeriKKKans are clueless just how
precarious the situation really is. AmeriKKKans are
woefully ignorant about how the economy works for
numerous reasons: an educational system that fails to
teach real world financial realities, a mass media
wedded to the class interests and agenda of the ruling
oligarchy whose mission is to distract and bamboozle us
and our own apathy and ignorance. The media and
government treat us like mushrooms, they deliberately
keep us in the dark and feed us excrement so we will not
connect the dots and comprehend the totality of
corruption, fraud and treachery that exists. The
government lies and manipulates the figures in their
economic reports and unemployment statistics. The Bu$h
administration is not the only one guilty of such
dishonesty although they are the most egregious liars in
AmeriKKKan history. Every administration since WWII has
done it and for the most part got away with it.
Check out and article entitled
Manipulating
the Masses by John Williams at
to glean an understanding just how pervasive the rigging
of government figures and stats is. The really scary
thing is, the banks and corporations are doing the exact
same thing. When the corporate media uses these figures
it buttressed the disinformation and legitimized the
agendas the various administrations pushed. This
disinformation much like the Bu$h administrations lies
about Iraqi WMD, is accepted by the public because it is
echoed by the corporate media. These lies are rarely
challenged except by a few niche Websites or blogs.
Recently Henry Paulson the
Secretary of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve
Chairman Ben Bernanke called for immediate government
intervention to stem an impending economic downturn.
Their pleas to an Executive branch and highly partisan
Congress that have done everything to help the military
industrial complex, Wall Street and major corporations
at the expense of working AmeriKKKans are really not
out of concern for working folks. They just want to prop
up the system as long as they can and avoid a panic. But
Paulson and Bernanke’s pleas have caused alarm around
the world as investors and bankers are reading worst
case scenario into their statements. Global markets
immediately responded by sending stocks tumbling.
Given the fact, the last thing they
want to do is create a global panic you know things are
really really bad for them to ask the government to get
involved. Conditions are so bad the worst news has yet
to be reported. The whole system is imploding, the
various components are starting to topple like dominoes.
There are so many bubbles out there that have already
burst or are about to burst its scary: mortgage, credit,
credit card and soon the shadow banking industry
comprised of hedge funds and derivatives will start to
unravel. If bond and insurance markets start to fall it
will exacerbate the already evaporating trust between
bankers. If this spreads across the board, major panic
will set in. Eventually we could see runs on banks or
major bank insolvencies. Then the whole house of cards
will tumble.
Bu$h’s “economic stimulus” is more
smoke and mirrors designed to dupe the masses into
thinking the government’s actions will jump start a
collapsing economy. The “stimulus package” Bu$h, the
Democrats, Paulson and the Fed are pushing is a PR scam.
It represents the same fiscal irresponsibility and
failed policies that got us in this mess in the first
place. Cranking up the Fed’s printing presses, borrowing
to dole out “tax rebates” or passing more tax reductions
for business will further drive the value of the US
dollar down while drastically increasing the already
insupportable federal debt. Additional money stock (true
inflation) will cause the cost of living to increase
while only producing minuscule results employment wise.
Remember, the federal government is
broke and in major hock to foreign banks and countries.
This means most of the money for the tax rebates must be
borrowed or printed out of thin air by the Federal
Reserve. Either way it will not solve the problem
because the Fed’s inflationary monetary and credit
policies caused the problems in the fist place. By now
you get the drift, Bu$h’s “stimulus package” is more
okey-doke, more PR smoke and mirrors. Bu$h tried that in
2001 and it didn’t work. Just like then, the rebates
did not really stimulate the economy nor did they
trickle down and improve the lot of the majority of
AmeriKKKans. Some businesses did pick up production and
their profits did increase but the so called recovery
didn’t produce the requisite number of jobs to meet
annual increases in the work aged population. The
mortgage meltdown has spread to other sectors of the
economy and the fallout is also spreading. This is the
reason US unemployment is so high despite the
government’s rigged figures.
Bu$h’s latest tax rebates are not
going to stop the off shoring of AmeriKKkan jobs nor
will they reverse the negative impact globalization is
having on the US economy and working folks. AmeriKKKans’
purchasing power and standard of living will continue to
decline while debt will rise (unless we wake up and stop
being mindless consumers) due to the workings of
compound interest. Nevertheless Joe and Jane Sixpack
will take Bu$h’s rebates and run, not realizing they
will suffer in the long run. They will spend the money
oblivious to the truth, there are no free lunches.
posted 22 January 2008
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AFL-CIO Proposes 5-Point Economic Stimulus Plan
By
Mike Hall,
Jan 18, 2008
Unemployment is climbing. The
stock market is dropping. The
housing boom is
bust. Corporate earnings are tanking. The
nation’s economy is
in the worst shape it’s been in years. Maybe even headed
toward recession.
Working families are worried.
The Bush administration today
proposed a growth
package of as much as $150 billion, which insiders
familiar with the details say may include $800 tax
rebates for individuals and $1,600 for households, along
with business incentives. Although it is “encouraging”
that President Bush recognizes the need to act quickly
to stimulate the economy, Bush focuses too much emphasis
on tax cuts—both business and personal, according to
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Bush’s plan does not
address crucial problems facing working families or
target tax benefits to those families who need them the
most and will spend them the fastest.
In a letter to
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Sweeney wrote:
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In particular, we
are concerned that the President’s income
tax cut proposal would not be sufficiently
stimulative because it fails to target
lower-income and middle-income households
who, as the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
wrote last week, are likely to spend a
larger share of any tax benefit they
receive. |
Today, the AFL-CIO outlined several proposals to develop
a short-term stimulus package that “offers the biggest
bang for the buck” and began to address the underlying
causes of today’s economic anxiety.
In addition, with many state tax codes linked directly
to federal tax rates, Sweeney warns the business tax
cuts could lead to a reduction in state revenues,
resulting in economically depressing budget cuts and tax
increases by state governments.
Noting that compromise will be needed to quickly enact a
stimulus package, Sweeney urges Reid and Pelosi to
“insist on legislative measures” that will deliver the
biggest boost to the economy and protect state and local
budgets.
The five points the leaders are urged to include are:
-
Extension of unemployment
benefits.
-
Increased food stamp benefits.
-
Tax rebates targeted to
middle-income and lower-income taxpayers.
-
Fiscal relief for state and local
governments to avoid the economically depressing
effect of tax increases and budget cuts.
-
Acceleration of ready-to-go
public investment in school renovations and bridge
repair.
For the long term, Congress also must address the deep
and serious underlying causes of today’s economic woes.
Says Sweeney:
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While it is
appropriate for Congress to focus on
measures that have an immediate economic
impact as it crafts a short-term stimulus
package, this is no excuse to put our heads
in the sand and do nothing about the
underlying longer-term problems afflicting
our economy. |
Wage stagnation is at the heart of the economic problems
facing today’s ordinary working families.
|
Wage stagnation,
which began in the 1970s, has led to longer
working hours, higher consumer debt, and
increasing reliance on home equities. But
today home values are plummeting, home
foreclosures are on the rise, consumer debt
is reaching unsustainable levels, and prices
for energy, health care, and education are
soaring out of reach for many working
families. |
Sweeney’s letter points to several solutions to solving
the wage stagnation, including:
-
Ensuring transparency and effective regulation of
our housing and financial markets.
-
Reactivating the historically successful fiscal and
monetary policies that place a higher priority on
full employment.
- Fixing
our flawed trade policies.
-
Investing in the high-paying green jobs of the
future.
- Fixing
our broken labor laws so that workers who want to
form a union can bargain with their employers for
better wages and benefits.
-
Ensuring affordable health care and retirement
security.
Source:
AFL-CIO Blog
* * *
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Economy Plan
Angers Women's Groups—Thursday's tentative agreement
between President Bush and congressional Democrats on a
proposed stimulus package—which would give most workers
a $300 rebate check and includes tax incentives for
businesses--angered women's rights advocates because it
excludes extensions for unemployment insurance, more
money for food stamps and home heating oil, and aid to
state and local governments.
Women, who comprise the vast majority of the country's
poor, rely more heavily on government programs aiding
low-income people.
"Certainly it is a big disappointment that so much of
the package is going to ineffective business tax cuts
and nothing is going to two of the most affirmative and
effective stimulus measures that were on the table:
unemployment insurance and food stamps," said Joan
Entmacher, a budget expert at the National Women's Law
Center, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C.—WomenseNews
* * *
* *
Clitoral
Economics—Democrats . . . demanded, sensibly enough,
that the tax cuts include 45 million in low-income
families that the president would have excluded. They
demanded the president take extending his tax cuts
beyond 2010 off the table. They got some help for
imperiled homeowners through the Federal Housing
Authority and Fannie Mae.
So only $40 billion
of the $150 billion package gets squandered on business
tax boondoggles. The rebates — what Jesse Jackson calls
Wal-Mart gift certificates — will get handed out by
August at best. It might help a bit, although if the
economy is still in bad shape in August, people are more
likely to be paying down credit-card debt than buying a
new TV made in China.
But $40 billion
isn't the largest cost. The real price is the continued
misdirection of the economy and miseducation of the
country.
We need what the
stimulus package excludes. We need long term investment
in rebuilding America — spending money on mass transit,
on basic sewers and water disposal, on the electric
grid, on renewable energy, on a green rebuilding of our
urban areas, on schools and teachers, pre-K and
affordable college. We need to stop squandering money
abroad in misbegotten wars — now approaching $1 trillion
spent on Iraq. We need to revive progressive taxation so
at the very least hedge fund billionaires stop enjoying
a lower tax rate than their secretaries. We need to
develop a national strategy for the global economy,
ending our addiction to oil, curbing the casino
speculation that will eventually bring down the house,
and balancing our trade with the mercantilist nations
while capturing the new green industries of the future.—
Robert Borosage
* * *
* *
Why The Right Loves a Disaster—But of all the
cynical scrambles to package pro-business cash grabs as
“economic stimulus,” the prize has to go to Lawrence B.
Lindsey, formerly President Bush’s assistant for
economic policy and his advisor during the 2001
recession. Lindsey’s plan is to solve a crisis set off
by bad lending by extending lots more questionable
credit. “One of the easiest things to do would be to
allow manufacturers and retailers” — notably Wal-Mart —
“to open their own financial institutions, through which
they could borrow and lend money,” he wrote recently in
the Wall Street Journal.
Never mind that that an increasing number of Americans
are defaulting on their credit card payments, raiding
their 401(k) accounts and losing their homes. If Lindsey
had his way, Wal-Mart, rather than lose sales, could
just loan out money to keep its customers shopping,
effectively turning the big-box chain into an old-style
company store to which Americans can owe their souls.
If this kind of crisis opportunism feels familiar, it’s
because it is. Over the last four years, I have been
researching a little-explored area of economic history:
the way that crises have paved the way for the march of
the right-wing economic revolution across the globe. A
crisis hits, panic spreads and the ideologues fill the
breach, rapidly reengineering societies in the interests
of large corporate players. It’s a maneuver I call
“disaster capitalism.”—Naomi
Klein
* * *
* *
Response to the State of the Union—Tonight's
State of the Union was full of the same empty rhetoric
the American people have come to expect from this
President. We heard President Bush say he'd do something
to cut down on special interest earmarks, but we know
these earmarks have skyrocketed under his
administration.
We heard the
President say he wants to make tax cuts for the
wealthiest Americans permanent, when we know that at a
time of war and economic hardship, the last thing we
need is a permanent tax cut for Americans who don't need
them and weren't even asking for them. What we need is a
middle class tax cut, and that's exactly what I will
provide as President.
We heard the
President say he has a stimulus plan to boost our
economy, but we know his plan leaves out seniors and
fails to expand unemployment insurance, and we know it
was George Bush's Washington that let the banks and
financial institutions run amok, and take our economy
down this dangerous road. What we need to do now is put
more money in the pockets of workers and seniors, and
expand unemployment insurance for more people and more
time. And I have a plan that to do just that.—Barack
Obama
* * *
* *
The worst market
crisis in 60 years—Although a recession in the
developed world is now more or less inevitable, China,
India and some of the oil-producing countries are in a
very strong countertrend. So, the current financial
crisis is less likely to cause a global recession than a
radical realignment of the global economy, with a
relative decline of the US and the rise of China and
other countries in the developing world. The danger is
that the resulting political tensions, including US
protectionism, may disrupt the global economy and plunge
the world into recession or worse.—George
Soros
* * *
* *
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It's too little and
too late to overcome the bursting
housing bubble—Research
has estimated that the next recession
could increase unemployment by 3.2
million to 5.8 million people, and
poverty by 4.7 million to 10.4 million,
with at least 4.2 million also losing
health insurance. . . . Hard times ahead
highlight the need for structural
changes such as universal health care
and labor law reform. These and a
bigger, "green" fiscal stimulus that
would reduce carbon emissions should be
pushed to the top of the political
agenda.—Charlotte
Observer |
* * *
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* * * * *
 |
Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
* * * * *
|
The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a sharecropper's
wife, left Mississippi for Milwaukee in
1937, after her cousin was falsely accused
of stealing a white man's turkeys and was
almost beaten to death. In 1945, George
Swanson Starling, a citrus picker, fled
Florida for Harlem after learning of the
grove owners' plans to give him a "necktie
party" (a lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing
Foster made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for the
United States Army and couldn't operate in
his own home town." Anchored to these three
stories is Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist
Wilkerson's magnificent, extensively
researched study of the "great migration,"
the exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into the
novelistic narratives of Gladney, Starling,
and Pershing settling in new lands, building
anew, and often finding that they have not
left racism behind. The drama, poignancy,
and romance of a classic immigrant saga
pervade this book, hold the reader in its
grasp, and resonate long after the reading
is done. |
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
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