Exactly right, Phillips makes that a key point in his Moyers interview. The roots of the finacial melt down coincides with the shift away from a mfg economy and giving more power to the finacial economy - i.e moving away from a wealth producing and prosperity sharing economy to a wealth shifting and concentrating economy. Buffet, and Bogle of Vangard have echoed similar sentiments
This bill is getting pushed in the same way that the Patriot Act was pushed after 9/11: scare everyone and get it pushed through before anyone has a chance to think about it.
I heard a number and I don't quote it because I'm not sure if it's exact, but something like 23% of US GDP is now from the financial sector. It's in the Phillips interview (see comment on left for link) and how the financial sector has driven policy.
So, this implosion wouldn't be so bad if the US had stopped enabling outsourcing and we had a strong manufacturing base.
My immediate thoughts were, oh good job US, way to diversify your own GDP.
As far as Obama vs. McCain, God, again I cannot recommend this Phillips interview enough, he really expressed my own views on the election itself.
Dodd and Boehner were on This Week this morning and George asked them straight up "what would happen if Wall Street wasn't bailed out" neither gave a straight answer, they then said that Paulson laid out a scenario so stark and sobering they had to act now. Again George asked what was it he said - they both dodged and squirmed and didn't answer. This is classic "disaster capitalism" or shock doctrine - use a crisis to ram thru an agenda.
So I guess there really isn't any consequences for main street if they can't answer these simple and straight forward questions.
I blew coffee thru my nose when I heard Hank Paulson on the morning shows saying "we need to find out and understand how this happened" - not rocket science there Hank, we all know how it happened - too cheap and easy credit fueling speculation and bubbles, and lax regulation encouraging risky and corrupt behavior. - Duh! Then he went in to the usual retreaded variations of the "no one saw it coming" argument even though many have been sounding the alarms for some time.
No unelected agency or person should be wielding this kind of power over our economy
Welcome to the Peoples Republic of Wall Street folks
Indiana is one of the reddest of red states, KY, TN and MO are purple states.
It would be more correct that industrial states have generally the highest unemployment, although most except as noted above tend to lean blue
The right has long been able to successfully use god, guns, babies and gays as a cynical distraction from industrial states economic plunder.
The left needs to abandon "free" trade, and start being more tolerant of guns and religion and do a much better job of getting the economic word out to industrial staters if they want to stop losing the blue collar vote
We can't afford free trade or anything else anymore. (0.00 / 0)
Unemployed people don't contribute - they drain themselves and society. Do you know how many unemployed people there are? Here are USDOL BLS national numbers for Total Initial Claimants, Mass Lay-offs only, for all industries:
*1998: 1,771,069
*1999: 1,572,399
*2000: 1,835,592
*2001: 2,51,4862
*2002: 2,245,051
*2003: 1,888,926
*2004: 1,607,158
*2005: 1,795,341
*2006: 1,484,391
*2007: 1,598,875
*2008: 200,382 (July)
Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Most of these people do not get re-employed; and the few who do, take substantial pay cuts - if they're lucky. When there are NO JOBS (except nursing), there is nothing to retrain for and nowhere for unemployed people to go. When they gave away manufacturing, IT, and engineering, they gave away our ability to sustain a middle class. They left this country with service jobs, which mostly means "do you want fries with that?"
Obama needs to get with the program. He might get MI, OH. PA and IN in 08, but he better deliver if he wants to keep his job in 12. People were already pissed off and now this one last grab for power and money as they go out the door. No, neoliberalism better have a stake in its heart if Obama is going to win and stay in office.
Note how RED Michigan is. We have been dealing with Clinton's NAFTA and high unemployment for 8 years.
The bailout is ridiculous, and not needed, and only taxes future generations. (And both candidates want to increase govt spending?) NESARA as drafted by Dr. Barnard is the only way out of our fiscal and monetary mess. Force balanced budget, abolish income and capital taxes in favor of 14% sales tax on everything else except rents, groceries, insurance, and medical services; new monetary tools to ensure 0% inflation; abolish compound interest on secured loans in favor of simple monetization fee, and require principals be paid before before banks are allowed to collect on the monetization fee. No payment no matter how small will always reduce a debt to zero, banks more willing to prevent foreclosures and will turn around funds for more loans sooner. No more of this pay for 2.5 houses just to own 1. Pay for just 1.5 and be done with it in 17 years. National debt paid off in 30 years while standard of living doubled within a generation. NESARA (not the hoax, but Dr. Barnard's original version). A 21st century engineered solution for a 21st century economy. Google the NESARA Institute.
Last night Bill Moyer interviewed Kevin Philips. He is the author of Wealth and Democracy and recently (I don't think it's out yet) a book on the current financial crisis and how we got here.
Click on the link and you can watch the entire interview online (thanks PBS!)
I caught it last night and what is most amazing is out of his mouth is pretty much everything I have been thinking about this and a host of other problems with this country.
Boy, she was on the case and is recommending creation of a Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). Dr. Doom (Roubini) is recommending the exact same thing.
You should watch this. Not only does she know all of the issues, she's presenting this fairly diplomatically and this would directly benefit main street vs. wall street.
Here are his bullet points on just the bailout. There is quite a bit more in the link.
Impose a five-year, 10 percent surtax on income over $1 million a year for couples and over $500,000 for single taxpayers. That would raise more than $300 billion in revenue
Ensure that assets purchased from banks are realistically discounted so companies are not rewarded for their risky behavior and taxpayers can recover the amount they paid for them
Require that taxpayers receive equity stakes in the bailed-out companies so that the assumption of risk is rewarded when companies’ stock goes up
Since currently the game is rigged so Wall Street cannot lose because if they do lose....it is determined they are too big to fail...it makes sense to carve out ownership in these companies to the taxpayers in return and try to give them the rewards in this can't lose game they play so somehow the American people can't lose and these fat cats....really do lose as they should.
CNBC is reporting that Dems want to add a Stimulus package of $100B (in addition to the $700B) then some are calling for a cap on CEO salaries and of course Paulson calls that a poison bill.
My personal choice is to plain somehow make these CDS plain disappear and all those playing them.....get nothing.
Is that possible to do without a financial collapse?
Financial week has a few more details on these CDSes but as far as I can tell, bankruptcy also means these are still settled and cause major losses across other institutions that by themselves are not in trouble.
CDSes are $65 trillion so figuring how to evaporate this massive debt which they label profits and assets to me seems to be the real plan?
In December 2000, Gramm, while a U.S. Senator, snuck in a 262-page amendment to a government re-authorization bill that created what is now the $62 trillion market for credit default swaps (CDSs). Gramm's "The Commodity Futures Modernization Act" freed financial institutions from oversight of their CDS transactions
Obama is reviewing the plan and looks forward to working with the administration.
Is the change we get simply where everything is out of focus and ill defined?
If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public--all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims.
He goes on to blast both parties, rightly so!
A kindred critic, Josh Rosner of Graham Fisher in New York, defined the sponsors of this stampede to action: "Let us be clear, it is not citizen groups, private investors, equity investors or institutional investors broadly who are calling for this government purchase fund. It is almost exclusively being lobbied for by precisely those institutions that believed they were 'smarter than the rest of us,' institutions who need to get those assets off their balance sheet at an inflated value lest they be at risk of large losses or worse."
If you don't know William Greider is do a search on here for there are multiple references to his books and some interviews.
Do you have any links to papers, graphs analysis on this?
I'm gravely concerned and so far few are focusing in on the possibility of a federal default. I've seen only one expert so far say it will not happen and that's Dr. Doom (Roubini), unlikely to happen but he said that before this latest bill.
Also, come and join us, to the right is a registration and a bunch of features become available to registered users. Sounds like this is one of your interests considering the comment.
The ratio of FED debt to GDP is not what matters...it is TOTAL debt to GDP that matters. The reason that the dire predictions about the consequences of large deficits in the 80s never materialized was that debt in all other sectors was very low. Total US debt to GDP in the 80s was 150% to 200% of GDP.
Today, total debt to GDP is 350%!! The debt service has to come out of GDP. The US simply can not afford to expand debt. We are already stroking close to 25% of GDP on debt service. It does not matter which sector (Fed, State/Muni, Consumer, Corporate, Mortgage) the debt is in. We can not take on any more...period. In fact, all this is a symphtom of debt saturation. Debt saturation is the cause, and 'unclogging the channels of credit won't do anything' because there is no more capacity to support the debt service associated with credit growth.
Exactly right, Phillips makes that a key point in his Moyers interview. The roots of the finacial melt down coincides with the shift away from a mfg economy and giving more power to the finacial economy - i.e moving away from a wealth producing and prosperity sharing economy to a wealth shifting and concentrating economy. Buffet, and Bogle of Vangard have echoed similar sentiments
California at one time had the seventh largest mfg economy in the world
This bill is getting pushed in the same way that the Patriot Act was pushed after 9/11: scare everyone and get it pushed through before anyone has a chance to think about it.
NAFTA is assuredly also Bush's.
I heard a number and I don't quote it because I'm not sure if it's exact, but something like 23% of US GDP is now from the financial sector. It's in the Phillips interview (see comment on left for link) and how the financial sector has driven policy.
So, this implosion wouldn't be so bad if the US had stopped enabling outsourcing and we had a strong manufacturing base.
My immediate thoughts were, oh good job US, way to diversify your own GDP.
As far as Obama vs. McCain, God, again I cannot recommend this Phillips interview enough, he really expressed my own views on the election itself.
are not, look west.
Dodd and Boehner were on This Week this morning and George asked them straight up "what would happen if Wall Street wasn't bailed out" neither gave a straight answer, they then said that Paulson laid out a scenario so stark and sobering they had to act now. Again George asked what was it he said - they both dodged and squirmed and didn't answer. This is classic "disaster capitalism" or shock doctrine - use a crisis to ram thru an agenda.
So I guess there really isn't any consequences for main street if they can't answer these simple and straight forward questions.
I blew coffee thru my nose when I heard Hank Paulson on the morning shows saying "we need to find out and understand how this happened" - not rocket science there Hank, we all know how it happened - too cheap and easy credit fueling speculation and bubbles, and lax regulation encouraging risky and corrupt behavior. - Duh! Then he went in to the usual retreaded variations of the "no one saw it coming" argument even though many have been sounding the alarms for some time.
No unelected agency or person should be wielding this kind of power over our economy
Welcome to the Peoples Republic of Wall Street folks
Indiana is one of the reddest of red states, KY, TN and MO are purple states.
It would be more correct that industrial states have generally the highest unemployment, although most except as noted above tend to lean blue
The right has long been able to successfully use god, guns, babies and gays as a cynical distraction from industrial states economic plunder.
The left needs to abandon "free" trade, and start being more tolerant of guns and religion and do a much better job of getting the economic word out to industrial staters if they want to stop losing the blue collar vote
We can't afford free trade or anything else anymore. (0.00 / 0)
Unemployed people don't contribute - they drain themselves and society. Do you know how many unemployed people there are? Here are USDOL BLS national numbers for Total Initial Claimants, Mass Lay-offs only, for all industries:
*1998: 1,771,069
*1999: 1,572,399
*2000: 1,835,592
*2001: 2,51,4862
*2002: 2,245,051
*2003: 1,888,926
*2004: 1,607,158
*2005: 1,795,341
*2006: 1,484,391
*2007: 1,598,875
*2008: 200,382 (July)
Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Most of these people do not get re-employed; and the few who do, take substantial pay cuts - if they're lucky. When there are NO JOBS (except nursing), there is nothing to retrain for and nowhere for unemployed people to go. When they gave away manufacturing, IT, and engineering, they gave away our ability to sustain a middle class. They left this country with service jobs, which mostly means "do you want fries with that?"
Obama needs to get with the program. He might get MI, OH. PA and IN in 08, but he better deliver if he wants to keep his job in 12. People were already pissed off and now this one last grab for power and money as they go out the door. No, neoliberalism better have a stake in its heart if Obama is going to win and stay in office.
Note how RED Michigan is. We have been dealing with Clinton's NAFTA and high unemployment for 8 years.
The bailout is ridiculous, and not needed, and only taxes future generations. (And both candidates want to increase govt spending?) NESARA as drafted by Dr. Barnard is the only way out of our fiscal and monetary mess. Force balanced budget, abolish income and capital taxes in favor of 14% sales tax on everything else except rents, groceries, insurance, and medical services; new monetary tools to ensure 0% inflation; abolish compound interest on secured loans in favor of simple monetization fee, and require principals be paid before before banks are allowed to collect on the monetization fee. No payment no matter how small will always reduce a debt to zero, banks more willing to prevent foreclosures and will turn around funds for more loans sooner. No more of this pay for 2.5 houses just to own 1. Pay for just 1.5 and be done with it in 17 years. National debt paid off in 30 years while standard of living doubled within a generation. NESARA (not the hoax, but Dr. Barnard's original version). A 21st century engineered solution for a 21st century economy. Google the NESARA Institute.
Last night Bill Moyer interviewed Kevin Philips. He is the author of Wealth and Democracy and recently (I don't think it's out yet) a book on the current financial crisis and how we got here.
Click on the link and you can watch the entire interview online (thanks PBS!)
I caught it last night and what is most amazing is out of his mouth is pretty much everything I have been thinking about this and a host of other problems with this country.
It's a must see interview.
Obama, McCain mum on Paulson's bill
Ya all, what can I say. I think ya all know what I want to say.
Anybody else notice this, the highest areas of unemployment are the blue states?
hmmmmm. Great map, and it's going to get worse.
Boy, she was on the case and is recommending creation of a Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). Dr. Doom (Roubini) is recommending the exact same thing.
You should watch this. Not only does she know all of the issues, she's presenting this fairly diplomatically and this would directly benefit main street vs. wall street.
Sanders policy recommendations came out today.
Here are his bullet points on just the bailout. There is quite a bit more in the link.
Since currently the game is rigged so Wall Street cannot lose because if they do lose....it is determined they are too big to fail...it makes sense to carve out ownership in these companies to the taxpayers in return and try to give them the rewards in this can't lose game they play so somehow the American people can't lose and these fat cats....really do lose as they should.
CNBC is reporting that Dems want to add a Stimulus package of $100B (in addition to the $700B) then some are calling for a cap on CEO salaries and of course Paulson calls that a poison bill.
My personal choice is to plain somehow make these CDS plain disappear and all those playing them.....get nothing.
Is that possible to do without a financial collapse?
Financial week has a few more details on these CDSes but as far as I can tell, bankruptcy also means these are still settled and cause major losses across other institutions that by themselves are not in trouble.
CDSes are $65 trillion so figuring how to evaporate this massive debt which they label profits and assets to me seems to be the real plan?
Really want to hear more info on this.
Here's McCain's plan on the financial crisis.
Sound familiar? Not one word about CDS.
In case anyone forgot, Phil Gramm:
Obama is reviewing the plan and looks forward to working with the administration.
Is the change we get simply where everything is out of focus and ill defined?
William Greider just weighed in.
Do you have any links to papers, graphs analysis on this?
I'm gravely concerned and so far few are focusing in on the possibility of a federal default. I've seen only one expert so far say it will not happen and that's Dr. Doom (Roubini), unlikely to happen but he said that before this latest bill.
Also, come and join us, to the right is a registration and a bunch of features become available to registered users. Sounds like this is one of your interests considering the comment.
2YrOld,
The ratio of FED debt to GDP is not what matters...it is TOTAL debt to GDP that matters. The reason that the dire predictions about the consequences of large deficits in the 80s never materialized was that debt in all other sectors was very low. Total US debt to GDP in the 80s was 150% to 200% of GDP.
Today, total debt to GDP is 350%!! The debt service has to come out of GDP. The US simply can not afford to expand debt. We are already stroking close to 25% of GDP on debt service. It does not matter which sector (Fed, State/Muni, Consumer, Corporate, Mortgage) the debt is in. We can not take on any more...period. In fact, all this is a symphtom of debt saturation. Debt saturation is the cause, and 'unclogging the channels of credit won't do anything' because there is no more capacity to support the debt service associated with credit growth.
End of story.
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