I think first-time buyers are still suffering I feel sorry for them. Things have tightened up since the recession and unless they have a good cash deposit they won't get on the property ladder any time soon.
Great news for construction though, lets hope this continues for a long while!
That's the bottom line, they aren't innovating, creating new sectors, new markets to employ the U.S. worker. It's all about squeezing the U.S. workers, labor arbitrage and then a myriad of ways to squeeze a dime. Most derivatives typify the mentality. Creation of profits on fictional mathematical models and what does that have to do with a production economy, real products, real services, value added people hired.
That's still "Bush" and what we're doing here is not showing the effect or lack thereof on Obama's policies per say. That's impossible because the jobs slaughter reached it's height all through 2009 and one cannot say that's Obama's fault, he inherited a financial crisis and a major recession, so we'll just leave that one out.
What we are showing in this post, again, repeat, is the relative changes of various groups by demographics and this is something the Obama administration, through enforcement of EEOC as an example, putting a moratorium on foreign guest worker Visas (which he did not), these are all actions that could have been done, but were not, by executive order, policy, enforcement, under the Obama's administration's control not Congress.
Doing something about work discrimination against single mothers is another example. Hiring discrimination these days is brazen and if one notices, the DOL is AWOL.
So, the point is to show that blacks, as a group have been economically slaughtered under the Obama administration, relative to the statistics for say foreign born or white people.
That's the point of showing unemployment rates decreasing for white men vs. black unemployment rates increasing. It's relative to each other.
Honestly, please read the post and assumptions before making declarations in the comments.
This entire article is to show the relative to each other economic statistics of the major voting blocks by demographics.
We're saying the first Black President sure didn't do squat for Black people economically, relative to say foreigners, Hispanics, white people. One would think with a Black President the DOL, EEOC and other groups would be out in full force implementing, enforcing the laws on the books, which would have helped Black people economically.
Take foreclosure as an example. The Obama administration made a "50 state deal" on foreclosure fraud and we have disproportion foreclosures, shady mortgages for Black people. Not exactly doing much there on economic discrimination.
Absolutely. It's funny, but looking at old school construction of houses, farms, apartments, and the way even leasing or buying a house today are handled, everything has become build cheap, exploit buyers/renters, scam fees and fines at every turn. Hey, if a bank screws you on a mortgage and you wind up with interest rates you never signed off on or wind up being foreclosed on because they keep "losing the paperwork," oh well, go sue them. Let's think about the long-term implications of all the crap that goes on today. Basically the abuses and excuses and powergrabs by big corporations + politicians scare the crap out of people that want to work hard + come up with really good new ideas + products. If I came up with a new book or a new idea for a computer or a new idea for a clothing line, would I trust any financier or bigger corporation to look at my plans for one second? Would I trust a law firm to review my plans if they also represented possible competition? Would I send off a storyline to a publisher or Hollywood and expect not to get ripped off? No, I expect to get robbed in USA 2012. And what's my recourse? Sue a big company. Great, I'll go into debt. Why bother. The system rewards unethical slugs and their protectors. Why take a risk, why work hard. Scum rises to the top nowadays and laughs (literally) when confronted with their crimes or trangressions.
Just watching Bloomberg, talking about fiscal cliff, and some Canadian investment jackhole is talking about how top rates should never come down because after "10 years, they are a part of the landscape." He also made sure to mention "uncertainty" a few times. And how what's needed is Social Security cuts, Medicare and other "entitlement cuts," and how any tax increases punish the "good people." What a dolt. I'm guessing if we said tax raises for billionaires are certain for the next 10000 years he wouldn't be blaming uncertainty and still wouldn't be pleased. So protection for the people that need help, like the poor, disabled, unemployed, and so on, envisioned more than 200+ years ago by none other than Founding Father Thomas Paine and others, and legislated by FDR and other 70+ years ago, is somehow not "part of the landscape" of the USA but Bush tax cuts 10 years ago are? Or how Glass-Steagall really seemed to work for 60+ years and was certain but that wasn't good? Am I hearing this right? Yeah, they really are that stupid and will say and do anything for $. What pathetic sock puppets.
I call BULLSH*T on all of it. I'm so tired of these people on Bloomberg, in the press, in corporate boardrooms acting like the folks that backstabbed their way to the top or didn't have a single novel idea in the world are somehow the saviors of the universe. And plus these people get to step on Grandma Millie (Enron taped conversation where they purposely shutdown powergrid to jackup rates in California) are somehow innovators. No, that's crap. I've said it here before, I'll say it again, and I'll keep saying it, look at the true innovators, the great thinkers. And I'm not talking about consumerist crap and "Damn, let's sell slave-made products to people on Black Thursday 2 p.m. or Friday and call that great advances." I'm talking about people like Tesla (mad props, pure genius, one of the great examples of an immigrant changing the world and getting screwed over by banksters and Edison), Salk (helped the world and didn't ask for a dime because "can you patent the Sun?") I wonder, would Salk or Tesla appear on Bloomberg and talk about how the great innovators are now sitting in corporate boardrooms and in front of hedge fund computers and demand that the poor, unemployed, elderly, and disabled veterans somehow find a job and work until they turn 80 (as if big bosses are hiring those folks in the US anyway). No, they wouldn't.
And yet these people appear on TV, screw over the people that need the most help all so that they get richer at their expense.
You know TV is a great example of our "democracy." The people with the power and money (rarely earned through brains or hardwork) appear multiple time on multiple channels ad nauseum. The unemployed, vets that need jobs, elderly, average struggling American never appear, never. And yet the .0001% appear all the time and spew their views to the exclusion of anything else and they lap it up.
July '09 not January '09 is a better comparison date for the Obama Administration's policies. If you start in January, after all, you get 3 weeks of pure Bush. But using the February to July period, we still labor under Bush policy. Starting from July of '09, its all Obama. That said, it is hard to see the statistical push in any of the 'Stimulus'. Rather, there is a slow painful drop in all unemployment rates. For years, we agonized how the Stimulus was constucted. Bank bailouts, tax cuts, state aid, and last but not least, the Detroit Bailout, the smallest but most effective part.
Many contributors to these pages argued strongly for the Industrial Planning component of the Stimulus to be primary. Never happened. But the Industrial Planning part of the Stimulus can be fairly said to have contributed to Obamas re-election in the Great Lakes states: Obama won every Great Lakes industrial state except Indiana. The begininings of re-industrialization of the Midwest touched not only autos but steel, plastics, auto parts, oil and gas.
Bringing back smokestack America was the enduring theme of the campaign.
To me HP is a classic example of how to destroy a great company through labor arbitrage, bean counter acquisitions, offshore outsourcing, H-1B visas, executive bonuses and stupid accounting tricks.
I have an "ancient" HP scientific calculator that was state of the art in 1990. I'm still using this calculator, it's that well made, has lasted all of this time and still is damn useful in terms of the mathematical functions available.
I wouldn't buy an HP printer if it was the last brand on Earth. Not only do they gouge on ink with putting microchips in the ink cartridges (pathetic). they break, they jam, they leak. their software should be labeled spyware/malware. It's like one big advertisement on your machine and it won't even uninstall. Beyond pathetic, outright evil.
The entire company was ruined by executives out to line their own pockets with acquisition bonuses, short term thinking by labor arbitraging their engineers and ridiculous business roadmaps where they kill entire product lines seemingly because they experienced a harsh wind. Completely clueless on how to develop, make inroads into new market areas. Anything that has to do with real innovation, real products, real ventures these cats are clueless. They have a shell of a company and that's because they gutted it over time. Literally labor arbitraged their advance R&D engineers, no surprise they cannot compete in new products as a result.
A great example of incompetence and greed at the top. HP was one of the great engineering firms and along with IBM really typify the destruction of an American industry.
Unfortunately this is systemic. The way to power and top dollar isn't simply making great products and providing great services, it's all acquisitions, labor arbitraging the staff to point one wonders who even works there, executive bonuses, silly accounting tricks and marketing weirdness into emerging markets brew ha ha.
When people are struggling to feed and clothe themselves this Thanksgiving, look at the useless eaters that still roll in big cash but apparently are completely clueless or just flat-out criminals. Deloitte screwed up or ignored major accounting issues with HP's acquisition of another company, and KPMG did the same thing when reviewing Deloitte's work. Due diligence? Isn't that what these big boys and girls get paid six and seven figures to do? I mean that's their job, their only job! Don't worry, they won't be fired, that's for those who lack "skills." Apparently not doing the sole job one is paid big money to do is not a "skills gap," it's par for the course. So, the former CEO of HP and current CEO, any mention of how the "best and brightest" can completely mess this up or is that not allowed in the business press on Fox or in Forbes or by everyone's favorite Australian hacker? So tragic. Other news is that SAC had insider trading going on and that case is implicating more and more corporations. Best and brightest, job creators sound so ridiculous, don't they, everytime a new day dawns and their incompetence or criminal behavior is revealed yet again.
So as the law-abiders and hard workers in America look to find jobs, suffer endlessly, and struggle to buy a turkey for Thanksgiving and look hard for reasons to give thanks, the criminals at the top or the absolutely idiotic continue to get richer beyond our wildest dreams all for doing things that would get us fired, not hired ever again, or sent to prison for very long stretches. If you owned a small business, you'd go bankrupt for this within a few weeks and face criminal prosecution, no deals over coffee with your local district's US Attorney. But don't dare talk about holding these big players accountable or taxing them, oh no, that's just wrong.
It seems only yesterday that Enron imploded and CEO after CEO was named for scams or insider trading, big accounting and consulting were implicated, and many things were really, really going to be different this time, big corporations were going to behave, no really. Nothing's changed. In fact, some of the companies and corporate leaders are still the same, they might change office buildings or the company names on their business cards, but it's business aka crime and incompetence as usual. In fact, some of them feel so blessed that they want to rule us as politicians directly when not bribing, sorry, contributing, to other politicians.
All these folks love to look to China as some sort of model (but only when it means low labor costs, no rules or regulations, and the power to do whatever American CEOs want to do). Okay, let's play along. Ignoring the fact that the Communist Party runs the show and these CEOs could never actually have this much power there, do these CEOs and top corporate folks know what would happen for such incompetence and corruption when the Party wants to send a message once in a while to appease the masses and keep the idiots/criminals in check? Yup, arrest and quick execution are an option over there, and are used without hesitation. So keep on looking overseas and praising foreign nations at the expense of your fellow citizens while enjoying the freedom and protections this country gives you while you steal and mess up time and time again. What a joke, a sick, nationally-destructive joke.
Democrats aren't exactly helping the middle class either, especially single women with children frankly, but at the top of this article we said political rhetoric instead of pocketbook beyond identity policies.
It was the Clinton administration who deregulated banking that enabled the financial crisis.
Why on earth would anyone "voting their pocketbooks" vote for a return to the discredited ideology, the political party, and the same set of inept economic advisors who were responsible for the greatest economic disaster in their lifetimes? Are you nuts?
A few years ago I wrote a paper for a local newspaper about wage stagnation. My calculations showed that wage stagnation went back into the early 1970's.
At the moment I am really PO'd about the stores opening early Thanksgiving evening. As more people are now part-time workers, this effects people who never had to participate in the holiday workforce.
I never participate in the Black Friday mayhem because to me, it is a picture of temporary insanity. Going shopping on Thanksgiving evening? I don't care if they are giving away the latest greatest "whatever" on Thursday night, I wouldn't go. It is the principal of the matter. But I am sure like a herd of animals, people will flock to the stores on Thursday night. It is an interesting site and tells me a lot about American society. They can't wait to go deeper in debt.
Well, if you are that well-informed, then you must know that the social welfare programs have not begun to keep up with inflation over the past 30 years.
Aren't lot of people who sell Food Stamps doing it to pay rent or keep their lights on than for other reasons?
Yes, addicts will do things they aren't supposed to do. Yes, women with drug selling boyfriends who pay all their expenses go to Welfare and flat out lie to get benefits.
But why focus on them? They are not the real story here. Society has always had the undeserving poor and always will.
The undeserving poor unfortunately have kids and the children must be helped as best we can.
The deserving poor have always been scapegoated for the acts of the undeserving poor. That is wrong and we should be taking steps to eliminate that.
Frankly, I think the deck is stacked against workers since we know private equity is involved with a controlling interest. That said, CNBC just tweeted that the union and Hostess have agreed to mediation, we'll assume that possibly means arbitrator, so their ruling would be final, dunno, but this pension raiding for profits just should be made illegal period. Pensions should be the #1 secured credit, end of story.
This is what? Example #234,555 in the last 30 years of how the short-term "thinking" by certain people in power (and even in the general populace) is killing us.
What does private equity actually do? What do the large consulting firms actually do? Private equity piles on massive debt short-term, loots goodies like pensions, capital like critical machinery, cuts wages, sells off key IP and voila = great short term profits for the MBA boys that live 1,500 miles away. The workers and communities that just got f*cked, well, they're out of luck. So now the rest of the country has to cover pension losses, try to help out fellow citizens through unemployment, cover increasing social cost of crime, mental and physical health issues, decreasing tax base in communities in every single county across the country, etc. Consulting firms are the same, they get paid to give some CEO and his minions cover to cut critical employees, "streamline" this or that, outsource, and whatever else he can do to cut costs and through transformation that some consulting company approved, give himself and his boys/girls big ol' paychecks. Long-term, the company is destroyed.
Glass-Steagall eliminations - sponsors of the bill, Goldman Sachs and other banksters, lobbyists, bankster law firms, and other assorted criminals get rich. Medium and long-term, financial carnage unleashed as FDIC-backed banks that are backstopped by you and I engage in essentially roulette in which the quiet, bookreading librarians are on the hook for crack addicts betting billions and trillions of dollars on red or black, heads or tails. When it pays out, the gamblers and their friends get insanely rich. When it doesn't, they get just a little less rich and pass the bill on to the folks at home that had no control of the crackhead gamblers.
Outsourcing - short-term, loot for the CEOs that see people as costs only. Medium and long-term, massive unemployment that continues to grow. Loss of belief that education, skills, work ethic mean a damn thing. Loss of faith in politcians or American business in general. Critical issues like our enemies controlling our defense technology, American-developed IP that cost trillions to develop but can be stolen in a wink of the eye overseas. ID theft constantly increasing as credit agencies, banks, contractors, etc send information that other Americans would have to have security clearances for over to people that are willing to work the cheapest, if they are criminals or terrorists, that doesn't matter, it's only if they work cheap.
Visa abuses - same thing.
Military - arm people that have a common enemy because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." See Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc.
Banks laundering money for criminals, terrorists and other assorted crimes - short-term, banksters get rich. Long-term, our Nation's safety is put at peril, crime increases, criminals get more powerful and wealthier, and people see more and more the rule of law, equality before the law, and other themes are only so much propaganda when they look at the big banks and people like Dimon and Corzine spitting in the face of the rest of the country and literally laughing all the way to the banks/financial companies they work at while getting insanely rich through their crimes or jobs that a trained seal could do for a few fish, not the 100s of millions of dollars American and foreign bankers make.
Here is vulture capitalism again. The unions are blasting back about Hostess. Seems from their 2009 bankruptcy (they also went into bankruptcy in 2004), private equity swooped in and bought up junk bonds. Ripplewood in exchange for a controlling interest in Hostess (50%). There are three private equity firms who obtained a controlling stake. They targeted worker's pensions because it was an almost $1 billion liability to the pension trust fund.
This has got to stop, private equity swooping in on distress companies for profits and being allowed to dismantle retirement obligations to turn a profit.
I found this about Ripplewood Holdings:
The top management got huge pay increases.
EXECUTIVE PAY INCREASES THIS YEAR:
Brian Driscoll, CEO, around $750,000 to $2,550,000
Gary Wandschneider, EVP, $500,000 to $900,000
John Stewart, EVP, $400,000 to $700,000
David Loeser, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256
Kent Magill, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256
Richard Seban, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256
John Akeson, SVP, $300,000 to $480,000
Steven Birgfeld, SVP, $240,000 to $360,000
Martha Ross, SVP, $240,000 to $360,000
Rob Kissick, SVP, $182,000 to $273,008
As well as Hostess management in the 1990's paid themselves outrageous executive compensation packages and went on an ill-advised acquisition spree.
Folks, if you dig out what the bakers union was striking about, their pensions destroyed, their wages cut to the top rate of about $11.25/hr over the space of 5 years and that's for people working there the longest, it's no wonder the union wouldn't make a deal. It's really outrageous to squeeze skilled labor to wages they probably would have been foreclosed on, lose their retirement at.
Yet the MSM narrative is somehow the Hostess bankruptcy is the union's fault. That's obviously B.S. It was management, the company that drove Hostess into the ground. For one, they couldn't make the transition into healthier foods and lord knows what else is wrong with their management, did they expand abroad and so on.
Blaming union workers seems to be a theme and there is mega high correlation to unions and better working conditions, wages for labor. The attack on unions here is also very bad news generally for the U.S. middle class and it's clear who controls the MSM, corporations.
Where is the government, bankruptcy courts in things like this, instead of legalizing pension theft, they should be awarding assets of the company to the union in a liquidation sale. How can company after company break commitments, contracts to labor and even in a liquidation event, that labor not be 1st for assets and profits from those assets?
Last year it was estimated to be up by 11-22% from 2010. This year the price has decreased but to go back to 1980, I'd have to dig in some databases to see.
The above real earnings are wages normalized by CPI-U, but the base year is the average of 1982-1984.
Looking at the median wages, not even sure during the highest point how people were getting by. A truly depressing stat would be the median price of Thanksgiving feast over the years graphed along with the median wages. Because I haven't seen any evidence that the so-called "peace dividend" that we were supposed to enjoy falling the end of the Cold War has translated to the homes and hearths of the US. In fact, things are getting worse for the average American. Food always goes up, while wages stagnate or are forced down. And the Thanksgiving Day dinner doesn't allow for the substitution games the Fed and USG like to engage in (e.g., if oil/gasoline becomes too expensive, people will merely substitute cheaper goods like horsedrawn carriages or good sneakers to walk 20 miles to work). No, Thanksgiving must include turkey, stuffing, cranberries, pies, etc.
Jobless: Yes. I am talking about people who sell their cards at a discount. I am a lawyer in a small town with alot of poverty and am aware of both the need and the abuse. The USDA itself acknowledges the tremendous fraud and suspend and/or prosecute when they can but it is difficult to prove.
Ya got that right. It is a rigged game and most of the people are on the wrong end of the stick.
"Of course not, this is all a bunch of crap to screw over the American people on what meager benefits they have left for old age. "
Look at the crap TARP did and it was all to make the big boys happy.
I'm very negative about what I see these days and I think it will take a miracle for the USA to turn around. I'm worried that they will try to old start a war trick because war has in the past been good for economy.
I keep remembering ole Ross Perot talking about the sucking sound. The sucking sound came and whisked the jobs away, far away. The idea that all we need is to educate more is an illusion. We could educate every kid in the USA and there wouldn't be enough jobs to fill the need. Plus there are people who will just never, ever, never understand calculus. SO what are we to do with the math challenged, just throw them on the funeral pyre?
I'm one of those believers that think to have a vibrant society, a vibrant full economy, you need the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, all working here on our soil. I'm not a globalist. To me a global economy benefits the high up the chain folks and does little for the remainder of us.
I think first-time buyers are still suffering I feel sorry for them. Things have tightened up since the recession and unless they have a good cash deposit they won't get on the property ladder any time soon.
Great news for construction though, lets hope this continues for a long while!
That's the bottom line, they aren't innovating, creating new sectors, new markets to employ the U.S. worker. It's all about squeezing the U.S. workers, labor arbitrage and then a myriad of ways to squeeze a dime. Most derivatives typify the mentality. Creation of profits on fictional mathematical models and what does that have to do with a production economy, real products, real services, value added people hired.
That's still "Bush" and what we're doing here is not showing the effect or lack thereof on Obama's policies per say. That's impossible because the jobs slaughter reached it's height all through 2009 and one cannot say that's Obama's fault, he inherited a financial crisis and a major recession, so we'll just leave that one out.
What we are showing in this post, again, repeat, is the relative changes of various groups by demographics and this is something the Obama administration, through enforcement of EEOC as an example, putting a moratorium on foreign guest worker Visas (which he did not), these are all actions that could have been done, but were not, by executive order, policy, enforcement, under the Obama's administration's control not Congress.
Doing something about work discrimination against single mothers is another example. Hiring discrimination these days is brazen and if one notices, the DOL is AWOL.
So, the point is to show that blacks, as a group have been economically slaughtered under the Obama administration, relative to the statistics for say foreign born or white people.
That's the point of showing unemployment rates decreasing for white men vs. black unemployment rates increasing. It's relative to each other.
Honestly, please read the post and assumptions before making declarations in the comments.
This entire article is to show the relative to each other economic statistics of the major voting blocks by demographics.
We're saying the first Black President sure didn't do squat for Black people economically, relative to say foreigners, Hispanics, white people. One would think with a Black President the DOL, EEOC and other groups would be out in full force implementing, enforcing the laws on the books, which would have helped Black people economically.
Take foreclosure as an example. The Obama administration made a "50 state deal" on foreclosure fraud and we have disproportion foreclosures, shady mortgages for Black people. Not exactly doing much there on economic discrimination.
Absolutely. It's funny, but looking at old school construction of houses, farms, apartments, and the way even leasing or buying a house today are handled, everything has become build cheap, exploit buyers/renters, scam fees and fines at every turn. Hey, if a bank screws you on a mortgage and you wind up with interest rates you never signed off on or wind up being foreclosed on because they keep "losing the paperwork," oh well, go sue them. Let's think about the long-term implications of all the crap that goes on today. Basically the abuses and excuses and powergrabs by big corporations + politicians scare the crap out of people that want to work hard + come up with really good new ideas + products. If I came up with a new book or a new idea for a computer or a new idea for a clothing line, would I trust any financier or bigger corporation to look at my plans for one second? Would I trust a law firm to review my plans if they also represented possible competition? Would I send off a storyline to a publisher or Hollywood and expect not to get ripped off? No, I expect to get robbed in USA 2012. And what's my recourse? Sue a big company. Great, I'll go into debt. Why bother. The system rewards unethical slugs and their protectors. Why take a risk, why work hard. Scum rises to the top nowadays and laughs (literally) when confronted with their crimes or trangressions.
Just watching Bloomberg, talking about fiscal cliff, and some Canadian investment jackhole is talking about how top rates should never come down because after "10 years, they are a part of the landscape." He also made sure to mention "uncertainty" a few times. And how what's needed is Social Security cuts, Medicare and other "entitlement cuts," and how any tax increases punish the "good people." What a dolt. I'm guessing if we said tax raises for billionaires are certain for the next 10000 years he wouldn't be blaming uncertainty and still wouldn't be pleased. So protection for the people that need help, like the poor, disabled, unemployed, and so on, envisioned more than 200+ years ago by none other than Founding Father Thomas Paine and others, and legislated by FDR and other 70+ years ago, is somehow not "part of the landscape" of the USA but Bush tax cuts 10 years ago are? Or how Glass-Steagall really seemed to work for 60+ years and was certain but that wasn't good? Am I hearing this right? Yeah, they really are that stupid and will say and do anything for $. What pathetic sock puppets.
I call BULLSH*T on all of it. I'm so tired of these people on Bloomberg, in the press, in corporate boardrooms acting like the folks that backstabbed their way to the top or didn't have a single novel idea in the world are somehow the saviors of the universe. And plus these people get to step on Grandma Millie (Enron taped conversation where they purposely shutdown powergrid to jackup rates in California) are somehow innovators. No, that's crap. I've said it here before, I'll say it again, and I'll keep saying it, look at the true innovators, the great thinkers. And I'm not talking about consumerist crap and "Damn, let's sell slave-made products to people on Black Thursday 2 p.m. or Friday and call that great advances." I'm talking about people like Tesla (mad props, pure genius, one of the great examples of an immigrant changing the world and getting screwed over by banksters and Edison), Salk (helped the world and didn't ask for a dime because "can you patent the Sun?") I wonder, would Salk or Tesla appear on Bloomberg and talk about how the great innovators are now sitting in corporate boardrooms and in front of hedge fund computers and demand that the poor, unemployed, elderly, and disabled veterans somehow find a job and work until they turn 80 (as if big bosses are hiring those folks in the US anyway). No, they wouldn't.
And yet these people appear on TV, screw over the people that need the most help all so that they get richer at their expense.
You know TV is a great example of our "democracy." The people with the power and money (rarely earned through brains or hardwork) appear multiple time on multiple channels ad nauseum. The unemployed, vets that need jobs, elderly, average struggling American never appear, never. And yet the .0001% appear all the time and spew their views to the exclusion of anything else and they lap it up.
July '09 not January '09 is a better comparison date for the Obama Administration's policies. If you start in January, after all, you get 3 weeks of pure Bush. But using the February to July period, we still labor under Bush policy. Starting from July of '09, its all Obama. That said, it is hard to see the statistical push in any of the 'Stimulus'. Rather, there is a slow painful drop in all unemployment rates. For years, we agonized how the Stimulus was constucted. Bank bailouts, tax cuts, state aid, and last but not least, the Detroit Bailout, the smallest but most effective part.
Many contributors to these pages argued strongly for the Industrial Planning component of the Stimulus to be primary. Never happened. But the Industrial Planning part of the Stimulus can be fairly said to have contributed to Obamas re-election in the Great Lakes states: Obama won every Great Lakes industrial state except Indiana. The begininings of re-industrialization of the Midwest touched not only autos but steel, plastics, auto parts, oil and gas.
Bringing back smokestack America was the enduring theme of the campaign.
To me HP is a classic example of how to destroy a great company through labor arbitrage, bean counter acquisitions, offshore outsourcing, H-1B visas, executive bonuses and stupid accounting tricks.
I have an "ancient" HP scientific calculator that was state of the art in 1990. I'm still using this calculator, it's that well made, has lasted all of this time and still is damn useful in terms of the mathematical functions available.
I wouldn't buy an HP printer if it was the last brand on Earth. Not only do they gouge on ink with putting microchips in the ink cartridges (pathetic). they break, they jam, they leak. their software should be labeled spyware/malware. It's like one big advertisement on your machine and it won't even uninstall. Beyond pathetic, outright evil.
The entire company was ruined by executives out to line their own pockets with acquisition bonuses, short term thinking by labor arbitraging their engineers and ridiculous business roadmaps where they kill entire product lines seemingly because they experienced a harsh wind. Completely clueless on how to develop, make inroads into new market areas. Anything that has to do with real innovation, real products, real ventures these cats are clueless. They have a shell of a company and that's because they gutted it over time. Literally labor arbitraged their advance R&D engineers, no surprise they cannot compete in new products as a result.
A great example of incompetence and greed at the top. HP was one of the great engineering firms and along with IBM really typify the destruction of an American industry.
Unfortunately this is systemic. The way to power and top dollar isn't simply making great products and providing great services, it's all acquisitions, labor arbitraging the staff to point one wonders who even works there, executive bonuses, silly accounting tricks and marketing weirdness into emerging markets brew ha ha.
When people are struggling to feed and clothe themselves this Thanksgiving, look at the useless eaters that still roll in big cash but apparently are completely clueless or just flat-out criminals. Deloitte screwed up or ignored major accounting issues with HP's acquisition of another company, and KPMG did the same thing when reviewing Deloitte's work. Due diligence? Isn't that what these big boys and girls get paid six and seven figures to do? I mean that's their job, their only job! Don't worry, they won't be fired, that's for those who lack "skills." Apparently not doing the sole job one is paid big money to do is not a "skills gap," it's par for the course. So, the former CEO of HP and current CEO, any mention of how the "best and brightest" can completely mess this up or is that not allowed in the business press on Fox or in Forbes or by everyone's favorite Australian hacker? So tragic. Other news is that SAC had insider trading going on and that case is implicating more and more corporations. Best and brightest, job creators sound so ridiculous, don't they, everytime a new day dawns and their incompetence or criminal behavior is revealed yet again.
So as the law-abiders and hard workers in America look to find jobs, suffer endlessly, and struggle to buy a turkey for Thanksgiving and look hard for reasons to give thanks, the criminals at the top or the absolutely idiotic continue to get richer beyond our wildest dreams all for doing things that would get us fired, not hired ever again, or sent to prison for very long stretches. If you owned a small business, you'd go bankrupt for this within a few weeks and face criminal prosecution, no deals over coffee with your local district's US Attorney. But don't dare talk about holding these big players accountable or taxing them, oh no, that's just wrong.
It seems only yesterday that Enron imploded and CEO after CEO was named for scams or insider trading, big accounting and consulting were implicated, and many things were really, really going to be different this time, big corporations were going to behave, no really. Nothing's changed. In fact, some of the companies and corporate leaders are still the same, they might change office buildings or the company names on their business cards, but it's business aka crime and incompetence as usual. In fact, some of them feel so blessed that they want to rule us as politicians directly when not bribing, sorry, contributing, to other politicians.
All these folks love to look to China as some sort of model (but only when it means low labor costs, no rules or regulations, and the power to do whatever American CEOs want to do). Okay, let's play along. Ignoring the fact that the Communist Party runs the show and these CEOs could never actually have this much power there, do these CEOs and top corporate folks know what would happen for such incompetence and corruption when the Party wants to send a message once in a while to appease the masses and keep the idiots/criminals in check? Yup, arrest and quick execution are an option over there, and are used without hesitation. So keep on looking overseas and praising foreign nations at the expense of your fellow citizens while enjoying the freedom and protections this country gives you while you steal and mess up time and time again. What a joke, a sick, nationally-destructive joke.
Democrats aren't exactly helping the middle class either, especially single women with children frankly, but at the top of this article we said political rhetoric instead of pocketbook beyond identity policies.
It was the Clinton administration who deregulated banking that enabled the financial crisis.
This site is fact based, not partisan.
Why on earth would anyone "voting their pocketbooks" vote for a return to the discredited ideology, the political party, and the same set of inept economic advisors who were responsible for the greatest economic disaster in their lifetimes? Are you nuts?
Thanks so much for the research and graphs. Am going to forward it to local newspapers.
Had not heard the phrase "chemical cupcakes" before. But like it.
Nostalgia outbreak for end of "snack cake" is something Brecht might use well.
Regards,
Will
A few years ago I wrote a paper for a local newspaper about wage stagnation. My calculations showed that wage stagnation went back into the early 1970's.
At the moment I am really PO'd about the stores opening early Thanksgiving evening. As more people are now part-time workers, this effects people who never had to participate in the holiday workforce.
I never participate in the Black Friday mayhem because to me, it is a picture of temporary insanity. Going shopping on Thanksgiving evening? I don't care if they are giving away the latest greatest "whatever" on Thursday night, I wouldn't go. It is the principal of the matter. But I am sure like a herd of animals, people will flock to the stores on Thursday night. It is an interesting site and tells me a lot about American society. They can't wait to go deeper in debt.
Well, if you are that well-informed, then you must know that the social welfare programs have not begun to keep up with inflation over the past 30 years.
Aren't lot of people who sell Food Stamps doing it to pay rent or keep their lights on than for other reasons?
Yes, addicts will do things they aren't supposed to do. Yes, women with drug selling boyfriends who pay all their expenses go to Welfare and flat out lie to get benefits.
But why focus on them? They are not the real story here. Society has always had the undeserving poor and always will.
The undeserving poor unfortunately have kids and the children must be helped as best we can.
The deserving poor have always been scapegoated for the acts of the undeserving poor. That is wrong and we should be taking steps to eliminate that.
Frankly, I think the deck is stacked against workers since we know private equity is involved with a controlling interest. That said, CNBC just tweeted that the union and Hostess have agreed to mediation, we'll assume that possibly means arbitrator, so their ruling would be final, dunno, but this pension raiding for profits just should be made illegal period. Pensions should be the #1 secured credit, end of story.
This is what? Example #234,555 in the last 30 years of how the short-term "thinking" by certain people in power (and even in the general populace) is killing us.
What does private equity actually do? What do the large consulting firms actually do? Private equity piles on massive debt short-term, loots goodies like pensions, capital like critical machinery, cuts wages, sells off key IP and voila = great short term profits for the MBA boys that live 1,500 miles away. The workers and communities that just got f*cked, well, they're out of luck. So now the rest of the country has to cover pension losses, try to help out fellow citizens through unemployment, cover increasing social cost of crime, mental and physical health issues, decreasing tax base in communities in every single county across the country, etc. Consulting firms are the same, they get paid to give some CEO and his minions cover to cut critical employees, "streamline" this or that, outsource, and whatever else he can do to cut costs and through transformation that some consulting company approved, give himself and his boys/girls big ol' paychecks. Long-term, the company is destroyed.
Glass-Steagall eliminations - sponsors of the bill, Goldman Sachs and other banksters, lobbyists, bankster law firms, and other assorted criminals get rich. Medium and long-term, financial carnage unleashed as FDIC-backed banks that are backstopped by you and I engage in essentially roulette in which the quiet, bookreading librarians are on the hook for crack addicts betting billions and trillions of dollars on red or black, heads or tails. When it pays out, the gamblers and their friends get insanely rich. When it doesn't, they get just a little less rich and pass the bill on to the folks at home that had no control of the crackhead gamblers.
Outsourcing - short-term, loot for the CEOs that see people as costs only. Medium and long-term, massive unemployment that continues to grow. Loss of belief that education, skills, work ethic mean a damn thing. Loss of faith in politcians or American business in general. Critical issues like our enemies controlling our defense technology, American-developed IP that cost trillions to develop but can be stolen in a wink of the eye overseas. ID theft constantly increasing as credit agencies, banks, contractors, etc send information that other Americans would have to have security clearances for over to people that are willing to work the cheapest, if they are criminals or terrorists, that doesn't matter, it's only if they work cheap.
Visa abuses - same thing.
Military - arm people that have a common enemy because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." See Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc.
Banks laundering money for criminals, terrorists and other assorted crimes - short-term, banksters get rich. Long-term, our Nation's safety is put at peril, crime increases, criminals get more powerful and wealthier, and people see more and more the rule of law, equality before the law, and other themes are only so much propaganda when they look at the big banks and people like Dimon and Corzine spitting in the face of the rest of the country and literally laughing all the way to the banks/financial companies they work at while getting insanely rich through their crimes or jobs that a trained seal could do for a few fish, not the 100s of millions of dollars American and foreign bankers make.
And on. And on. And on.
Here is vulture capitalism again. The unions are blasting back about Hostess. Seems from their 2009 bankruptcy (they also went into bankruptcy in 2004), private equity swooped in and bought up junk bonds. Ripplewood in exchange for a controlling interest in Hostess (50%). There are three private equity firms who obtained a controlling stake. They targeted worker's pensions because it was an almost $1 billion liability to the pension trust fund.
This has got to stop, private equity swooping in on distress companies for profits and being allowed to dismantle retirement obligations to turn a profit.
I found this about Ripplewood Holdings:
The top management got huge pay increases.
EXECUTIVE PAY INCREASES THIS YEAR:
Brian Driscoll, CEO, around $750,000 to $2,550,000
Gary Wandschneider, EVP, $500,000 to $900,000
John Stewart, EVP, $400,000 to $700,000
David Loeser, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256
Kent Magill, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256
Richard Seban, EVP, $375,000 to $656,256
John Akeson, SVP, $300,000 to $480,000
Steven Birgfeld, SVP, $240,000 to $360,000
Martha Ross, SVP, $240,000 to $360,000
Rob Kissick, SVP, $182,000 to $273,008
As well as Hostess management in the 1990's paid themselves outrageous executive compensation packages and went on an ill-advised acquisition spree.
Folks, if you dig out what the bakers union was striking about, their pensions destroyed, their wages cut to the top rate of about $11.25/hr over the space of 5 years and that's for people working there the longest, it's no wonder the union wouldn't make a deal. It's really outrageous to squeeze skilled labor to wages they probably would have been foreclosed on, lose their retirement at.
Yet the MSM narrative is somehow the Hostess bankruptcy is the union's fault. That's obviously B.S. It was management, the company that drove Hostess into the ground. For one, they couldn't make the transition into healthier foods and lord knows what else is wrong with their management, did they expand abroad and so on.
Blaming union workers seems to be a theme and there is mega high correlation to unions and better working conditions, wages for labor. The attack on unions here is also very bad news generally for the U.S. middle class and it's clear who controls the MSM, corporations.
Where is the government, bankruptcy courts in things like this, instead of legalizing pension theft, they should be awarding assets of the company to the union in a liquidation sale. How can company after company break commitments, contracts to labor and even in a liquidation event, that labor not be 1st for assets and profits from those assets?
Last year it was estimated to be up by 11-22% from 2010. This year the price has decreased but to go back to 1980, I'd have to dig in some databases to see.
The above real earnings are wages normalized by CPI-U, but the base year is the average of 1982-1984.
Looking at the median wages, not even sure during the highest point how people were getting by. A truly depressing stat would be the median price of Thanksgiving feast over the years graphed along with the median wages. Because I haven't seen any evidence that the so-called "peace dividend" that we were supposed to enjoy falling the end of the Cold War has translated to the homes and hearths of the US. In fact, things are getting worse for the average American. Food always goes up, while wages stagnate or are forced down. And the Thanksgiving Day dinner doesn't allow for the substitution games the Fed and USG like to engage in (e.g., if oil/gasoline becomes too expensive, people will merely substitute cheaper goods like horsedrawn carriages or good sneakers to walk 20 miles to work). No, Thanksgiving must include turkey, stuffing, cranberries, pies, etc.
Jobless: Yes. I am talking about people who sell their cards at a discount. I am a lawyer in a small town with alot of poverty and am aware of both the need and the abuse. The USDA itself acknowledges the tremendous fraud and suspend and/or prosecute when they can but it is difficult to prove.
Ya got that right. It is a rigged game and most of the people are on the wrong end of the stick.
"Of course not, this is all a bunch of crap to screw over the American people on what meager benefits they have left for old age. "
Look at the crap TARP did and it was all to make the big boys happy.
I'm very negative about what I see these days and I think it will take a miracle for the USA to turn around. I'm worried that they will try to old start a war trick because war has in the past been good for economy.
I keep remembering ole Ross Perot talking about the sucking sound. The sucking sound came and whisked the jobs away, far away. The idea that all we need is to educate more is an illusion. We could educate every kid in the USA and there wouldn't be enough jobs to fill the need. Plus there are people who will just never, ever, never understand calculus. SO what are we to do with the math challenged, just throw them on the funeral pyre?
I'm one of those believers that think to have a vibrant society, a vibrant full economy, you need the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, all working here on our soil. I'm not a globalist. To me a global economy benefits the high up the chain folks and does little for the remainder of us.
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