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BREAKING: Wall Street Mega-Merger!!!
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US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
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Uncle Sam wants to buy your car
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Ben Freaks Out the Gold Bugs, Says Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow and Pisses Everybody Off with QE3
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Why the economy isn't recovering
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Ignoring the Big Picture/Disturbing Trend in Graphs
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Manufacturing Forum - Obama and Clinton
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Lobbyists Surround the Hill - Demand Their Bail Out
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BREAKING: Wall Street Mega-Merger!!!
- 22526 reads
US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
- 182944 reads
Uncle Sam wants to buy your car
- 8734 reads
Ben Freaks Out the Gold Bugs, Says Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow and Pisses Everybody Off with QE3
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Why the economy isn't recovering
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Ignoring the Big Picture/Disturbing Trend in Graphs
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Manufacturing Forum - Obama and Clinton
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Lobbyists Surround the Hill - Demand Their Bail Out
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The Golden Rule
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Will the NY Attorney General Bring Doomsday Charges Against Wall Street? If So, How Long Will He Survive?
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New York Post Claims Census Falsifies Unemployment Figures
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How Many Jobs Are Needed to Keep Up with Population Growth?
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VAT or Value Added Tax is Getting a Look in D.C.
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U3 and U6 Unemployment during the Great Depression
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The war on the middle class
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House discusses 401k/IRA confiscation
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Tax Cuts for the Rich Do Not Generate Jobs
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3 years back, I am ashamed to say, I got hooked up with the good folks selling the Medicare Advantage Plans. The plans are marketed in the "urban" counties (read "poor"). These private plans were designed to supplant fee-for-service Medicare with Private Insurance HMO plans. The Advantage plans were created by that Orwellian bureau called the Center for Medicare Excellence.
The plans had $2500 deductibles before any expenses were paid, unlike the Medicare 80% reimbursement percentage, and other disadvantageous differences too many to name. One noteworthy, though, was the $1 million lifetime limit on expenses (say for the terminally ill).
The Center for Medicare Excellence threw in a sweetner the way car salesmen do. Every customer of the Policies would receive a boost in their Social Security checks of $50. Quite a deal right?
Well, poor people are poor but they are not necessarily stupid. The reaction to the feeble attempts to sell Advantage Plans ranged from icy indifference to angry hostility but no sale. The lesson here is not just about how low-income people can figure the subtleties of the difference in plans to their great and real advantage (in favor or Medicare of course).
Most impressive thing about poor people is that they recognize the idea of large personal liability in the Medicare Advantage plans. Even when tempted by $50 increases in SS checks, many folks living on $1200 per month refuse to buy Medicare Advantage plans.
The Ryans and Sununus and the rest are claiming that "of course people will take private plans". This is plainly a lie. So, if Medicare Advantage plans will not be accepted voluntarily, how will these be forced on the public? Plainly, coercion with have to be used.
So shortly after understanding the Medicare Advantage scam in totality, I bailed.
Nothing changes. It's bad, really bad. The 99% and law-abiding US citizens keep getting poorer and abused, law breakers and 1% get richer on our backs. EP articles and other proof abounds.
Mark Twain's Gilded Age same thing 120+ years on. John Steinbeck would be right at home writing about the unemployed, the desperate, the overqualified but now homeless and wandering the US for work. The part where the bank comes and destroys the Joad farm? Sound familiar? No one's accountable. Sure, the big bankers in NYC have meetings and need to make profit personally, but they are just a corporation, can't hold them accountable, even if they do make a whole lot of money off lies or greed. Influx of new workers used to scare workers protesting work conditions + pay and also to drop wages? Labor arbitrage? 2012 or The Grapes of Wrath? Working conditions getting worse for workers but people desperate for jobs tolerate it? "Troublemakers" blackballed by bosses or HR? 21st Century or 19th or 18th? Lower East Side NYC 1900s, Chicago or Pittsburgh late 19th Century, or coal mines? Police used as tools of the elite to beat down workers that protest? 80+ years on and there isn't massive uproar? Why? Because JPMorgan now has people using SNAP cards (and makes $ from that) and the Internet keeps us away from soup lines where we might start talking like the 1930s? Because the corruption is so massive and the politicians so willing?
A few stories from the past (covered here on EP and elsewhere):
1) Money laundering, banks busted, slap on wrist, cartels and their sock puppet biatches in political offices get richer. 2012 story involving BOA, Standard Chartered, HSBC, Iran, Mexico? No, 2010, BOA, Wachovia/Well Fargo, Mexico. And the comments back then here and on zerohedge and every other site are right on all these years and get ignored by the "elite" corrupt sellouts.
2) 99ers that are brighter than banksters, Mayors, Governors, Congressmen and all sorts of officials, but struggling to survive despite incredible skills and educational backgrounds? And suffering fools' attacks in the press? 2012? Nope, 2010, dealt with here, on "60 Minutes," and elsewhere. Damn.
3) Corporations given slap on wrists for massive bribery overseas? 2012? Nope, 1970s, leading to FCPA that was supposed to stop it. Guess not. Murdoch, what were you up to in the 1970s? Walmart? Koch Brothers?
4) "Yellow" press publishes bogus articles to drum up sales and create news? Early 20th Century, but today I trust the press, really, no lies and agendas there.
5) US arms rebels overseas in the hopes of fighting regimes completely ignoring the risk those arms pose as soon as the regime is toppled? Libya, Syria 2011-2012 or Afghanistan 1980s?
6) Banksters endanger entire global economy leading to Glass-Steagall and FDIC program - 1920s. Banksters endanger global economy because Glass-Steagall is now history. 1990s and 2000s.
Bill Murray, are you in this movie, because it's no longer funny.
Seriously, any men of integrity? Any women? Sophie Scholl? Facing certain death, she took on the Nazis with pamphlets only as a member of the White Rose Movement and went to her death without any regrets or apologies. And our politicians can't do more for American citizens in the face of losing a wee bit of money or losing office? This isn't taking on Nazis as an unarmed young woman, just looking out for Americans, and still it's too hard. Wow, that's pathetic.
These corporations put millions into this B.S., viral marketing, shadow agenda, with fake "think tanks", fake "white papers" and bought and paid fors. Finding real sites who have real workers, real STEM to point out the fallacy of this B.S. are spread around the Internets, but basically do not have millions to pour into a "lie infrastructure".
Check out the Partnership for a New American Economy website - it will make you sick because they want more visas and fewer restrictions so that, obviously, labor arbitrage will face no hurdles whatsoever and the rich get richer and our middle class can be wiped out with the people in power not losing a moment of sleep or a cent of their ill-gotten wealth. In 2012 and this is still allowed?
I could understand corporate shills, but some of these people are elected officials, including in cities with extremely high unemployment. Sounds to me like a betrayal of constituents, but that's why politicians are needed, to confuse the obvious and make lies seem like the truth.
Unbelievable! They are organizing groups to kill us even quicker and working together and our govt., composed of some of these people, controls our policies and holds offices? Are you kidding me? No wonder the media they control spouts lies and they have access we can never get. No one is looking out for us, no one except ourselves.
Bloomberg (the man who thinks of himself so highly he had to change the laws so he could stay Mayor - reminds people of other places where oligarchs change the rules to stay in office) - the man who doesn't criticize banksters or the fact that they are helping terrorists and international drug cartels because he made all his money by catering to banksters. But he will tolerate macing New Yorkers in the face that stand up for the average American and have a problem with people getting rich off terrorism and drug violence around the world (including in your own city, Mayor Mikey). Mikey, is it okay if I don't want my FDIC taxpayer money to support drug cartels and terrorists? If you want to be an accomplice, fine Mayor, but I follow the laws of the US.
Murdoch - the man that is hated in the UK for hacking thousands of phone and email accounts, bribed and stalked police officers, interfered in a child-murder investigation by having his people listen into voice mails, etc. Clear cut FCPA violations because News Corp. is US based. And he's still lobbying DOJ (I'm sure that played no part in him not being charged) and Congress - crime $ put to good use lobbying our govt.
You have the mayors of Philly, LA, CEOs of Boeing, HP, Disney, Microsoft, and the other usual cast of characters. They are now known to us.
And on their website: "the two business giants expressed the need for sensible reforms that could create new American jobs."
2012 and they want American citizens to suffer more? Murdoch, rumor has it you aren't too popular in Australia or the UK - good thing you found a govt. you could buy off along with a citizenship. More competition is good for us, damn it, how much more can we take? What completely amoral, greedy, egomaniacal psychopaths.
Mr. Mikey "Living in a 1%'er Bubble" Bloomberg is by no means out of the media. He uses his companies and connections to still carry messages that he creates and wants. A control freak like that never leaves the game despite conflicts of interest with Americans he is supposed to serve. He constantly appears in front of cameras in NBC, CNN, uses his own press machine, networks, etc. to continue the lie and propaganda regarding more H-1B and other visas, more illegals needed to come in because this guy simply cannot find enough Americans to wash his dishes, cook his food, and wipe his ass. Just like Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, they are only nominally out of the game. They use all the $ they made through corruption and normal business, all their friends in the media, and their foundations to keep punishing American citizens so that labor rates drop to paying people to work for them. They have it made, they and their idiot relatives are set 1000X over for life, but still they make it impossible for American citizens with every degree and experience to even survive. Remember, he wanted waves of illegals to go into Detroit because in his minute mind and body, he thought the people of Detroit and Michigan needed more competition for jobs and they just weren't smart enough or good enough to start businesses or work themselves or deserve American businesses to hire them. Never mind the fact that sounds awfully close to inviting people to break national and state laws by someone in a position of power/trust that lives 700+ miles away in luxury. He's not clueless, he knows what he's doing and just doesn't care about who he screws over, ever. And as long as he has puppets who worship the almighty dollar, he'll keep lying and utterly destroying Americans (I'd say fellow, but he's not my fellow and I doubt he shares much in common with most of us) and America as we know it.
He should also mention how he hates poor people and they need to go live over there in the Bronx, take the train in as "the help". Of course he loves immigrants, can't get enough, else where is he gonna get that super cheap labor to be their nannies and wash their cars? NYC sounds like a police state for the super-rich. Rail on fat people and empty calorie soda, but hey, don't mess with my foie gras!
That is pure bullshit. Anyone who has looked at any STEM ads in Detroit knows right in that area, there are hundreds of thousands STEM workers who cannot get a job.
Bloomberg should be admonished for putting out bogus article plants per the demands of lobbyists. That said, so should the Huffington Post, who allows lobbyists to write "articles" that are pure statistical fiction per their agenda.
Same is true in the New York Times, AP, a host of sites putting out propaganda as "fact".
H-1B is one of the biggest "paid" for promotions, pushing out lobbyist spin as "articles". Even PBS gets into the game and it's despicable.
All people with technical backgrounds reading this, I dare you to apply to any job in Michigan and Detroit and write a comment back here on the response. Did they even respond, much less hire you in 3 days? I didn't think so.
We get requests, demands for article plants almost daily, it's like spam. These people are everything from lobbyists to self-promoters to even malware sites. They try to get this crap for free too, although some offer "payment".
Needless to say we do not allow any of this crap on this site. We have nothing but our words as credibility and all ads must clearly be marked as ads. So, anyone reading this liking EP, consider a donation because we turn all of that bullshit away.
But this is how I know about lobbyists planting fake articles. It's disgusting.
A new Bloomberg article states that according to a guy named "Recruiter Watt" there exists a major shortage of IT professionals and engineers in Michigan. Salaries are now over 100K to start!
Hurry up everybody, retrain! But no, the article's underlying assumption is that the US education system does not produce engineers. More h1-b visas please!
I laughed at the IT professional pay. Do the companies pay Bloomberg to post this dribble? If 100,000 people retrain for 20,000 engineering jobs, we'd still have 80,000 unemployed people. The Bloomberg article alludes to the fact there may be as few as 1000 empty positions.
How does this article pass editorial muster? It is not journalism.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-15/michigan-begs-for-100-000-engin...
This is from July, 19, 2012, at the same time banks were breaking many, many laws making billions from real cartels and still are. Directly from nyc.gov, a quote from the Manhattan Borough Pres:
"If public health is our goal and obesity our enemy, we must be creative and aggressive to fight and win this war. That's why I commend Mayor Bloomberg for drawing a line in the sand and taking on the soda cartel which is driving the obesity epidemic in this country."
Soda cartel? Win this war? Line in the sand? Is this SNL or Monty Python? Now they're creating new wars and new cartels to avoid anything that will affect the 1%'s pocketbooks? They are slightly creative, not bright, but slightly creative.
What's the next thing to be banned without a vote by the people? Not using a TBTF bank? Beer? Darts? Workouts that might injure people like martial arts, boxing, yoga, swimming, ice skating? Sports of any kind? Too little or too much exercise? Hobbies like skydiving or mountain climbing? Watching too much TV? Eating too little or too much? The "wrong kinds" of music? Talking about banksters and corruption? New wars, new enemies, new distractions. Leave us alone and stop creating distractions, we know what you're not doing and why.
I will say it until I'm blue in the face and eventually get booted from civilized society, we are being sold out by the people earning six-figures to enforce the laws and regulations we are held to - there is no "Equal Before the Law" - that concept is dead and every settlement proves it.
Every time an asshat claims they are trying to protect us against terrorism and Iranian proxies, laugh in their face and pull the freaking American flag pin off their stupid chest because they are disgracing it with their greed and selfishness. Write in to their offices because they are apparently not busy doing anything except counting payoffs. They are corrupt liars, whether they are Mayor Bloomberg, a TV host/teleprompter reader, banksters, DOJ officials, Treasury officials, WH officials, AGs, or DAs. They are not protecting you. If they were, they would be fired up and pissed off. They would want to tear these banks apart. Bloomberg and his predecessor Mayor 9/11 would be outraged because these terrorists need money laundering to commit their crimes. But instead they have time to mace American citizens expressing their First Amendment rights against these very same bankers and defend those macing and punching the innocent expressing those rights? That's pathetic and contemptible. The evidence is there in mountains of documents. Literally thousands of witnesses. All waiting to be ignored by the corrupt while people on the front lines battling drug cartels and terrorism and corruption are risking their lives and dying - quite a contrast in heroism, the real kind that never gets covered vs. the TV studio/political office/makeup-wearing/good income kind.
Thousands of people, including govt. officials, regulators, Congressmen and their staffs, every single US Attorney and their AUSAs, AGs, DAs/County Prosecutors, and law enforcement officers and analysts are paid to monitor this across the US and across the globe, be alert to the tricks of cartels, terrorists, and corrupt regimes. This isn't brain surgery, but it does require people to give a sh*t. They earn their money, in this time of massive unemployment by honest citizens who know how to combat money laundering and terrorism who are "overqualified" and unemployed. If they are too stupid to do their jobs, then they need to have a modicum of integrity and quit (I ask too much). If they are too corrupt to do their jobs, then quit or get arrested, or both. They have abdicated their oaths of office and professional duties.
Once again, every honest American should demand that these banksters and their defenders visit American soldiers maimed by Iranian-built IEDs and justify their inaction. Visit the families of those killed and justify your salaries and bonuses. Visit border towns torn apart by cartel violence. Live in American neighborhoods that are torn apart by guns and drugs purchased with laundered funds the banksters and their government enablers allow and profit from. Go live in nations where the rulers steal billions from their own populations and the people are left perpetually fighting to survive for one more day. Yeah, meet those people, leave your Manhattan penthouses, your country estates and private vineyards, and go live among your victims.
Both parties allow this and profit from it.
If these people are too lazy + ignorant to prosecute cases of money laundering, use RICO and FCPA statutes, or do anything resembling law enforcement and the pursuit of justice against people because they have more money and power exactly because they are more corrupt than the average American, then prosecute banksters for filing false forms and/or lying to govt. officials and/or tax evasion (taxes are due on criminal proceeds). Any entry-level prosecutor with a day's experience could figure that out. If not, go look it up.
We are not protected, and to insult us even more, we are purposely ignored and locked out of the system by those who profit from our loss of national security. The current situation is vile except to those who profit from it and think that we should just accept it.
Looks like I picked the wrong decades to stop sniffing glue. CNN reporting Paul "I know hard work - ha! just kidding, I suck at lobbyists' teats like Iran traders Koch Brothers that aid that regime" Ryan is a Gen X'er and drinks beer and listens to grunge music. Awesome!
Every unemployed and overqualified Gen Xer has so much in common with this spoiled asswipe. You know, never having to work a real job, working in Congress, and getting super rich through investments that somehow beat the returns every other American gets (how does that happen? curious). But he's just like everyone else!
So the meme is presented for the unthinking out there - sure, he's a pure insider that will always be rewarded for doing what his masters tell him, but he's just like Gen X, and baby boomers, and people right out of college, etc. because he can walk and talk.
Now, let's go ask Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and the remaining members of Nirvana how they feel about this douche being a grunge fan. Let's go visit the homeless GenXers and those with $150,000 in college debt that have been outsourced. How about vets of all generations that cannot get hired still after 99weeks because they are called "overqualified" for everything, but Fox and Paul Ryan mock the unemployed because the jobs are out there, somewhere, out there, in some country, you know, where there aren't officially 4 people per opening, with few of those spots legitimate and many, many more applicants per job. Let's go ask the parents of kids who killed themselves because they ran out of unemployment benefits and couldn't live with the pain one more day.
But hey, he's just like all of us. Hey, MSM and the puppetmasters, go screw off after you stop collecting paychecks from your corporate and political bosses. Old journalism is dead due to self-inflicted wounds.
Romney-Ryan are the embodiment of that.
Alan Greenspan tested one, that the "self-interest will correct market error, and thus markets are rational."
His testimony: "I was wrong."
This article was updated with the settlement. Notice how fast that was and the pressure, the NY office was under from the Federal Reserve, treasury.
Also, those looking for economic statistical release overviews of today, I had the "death of a laptop", so I'm busy repairing it. Yes, we do have more than one computer. ;) Hopefully I can write up anything meaningful. Looked them over by percentage change, nothig earth shattering. That's business inventories, PPI and retail sales.
The claim one must reduce benefits, destroy social safety nets to balance the budget is a false choice. There is a sure fire way to save Medicare and that's universal single payer health care, the same as Canada, the U.K., Sweden, Norway, and about over 100 other industrialized nations.
Social security has it's funds pillaged and the fix for social security is well known, remove the top income rate cap.
They set up these false choices to convince people they should vote against their own economic interests on some lie this will save the nation down the road.
Snake oil and Brooklyn Bridge sales pitches.
Time to take on Obama's politics by supporting people who have vision on what is happening outside the bubble that has been solidly in place for 30 years. Destroying "entitlements" is not new. Jobs issues are even more important. Ivy League Colleges, Wall Street and DC are supporting an economic system that has proven to fail for those outside their small world. They are perhaps more "compassionate" than Romney/Ryan, but their effect is powerful. Obama sees himself in their circle. Obama, within the White House, can make negative changes. It would take Congress to destroy "entitlements".
I have a perfectly useful college education but have never been allowed to do even 1 job requiring a B.A., let alone my education, and to start my career. I don't see people like me in the news stories, because most of the problem for me is peremptory job discrimination - and a corrupt system in the niche I should be getting lots of work in, which results in no help-wanted ads put out. Enough about me. I've got some key parts of the solution for all Americans who are long-term unemployed, underemployed, and even, as I was before I ran out of unemployment compensation, destitute from a benefit amount too low for survival. Here's the URL to my online petition: http://www.change.org/petitions/demand-workforce-guided-job-creation. Will everybody please just sign it now? If it gets a critical mass of signatures, it will rock the election. So far, both political parties prefer a blame-the-victim, trickle-down approach which hasn't worked. Nitpickers who won't sign my petition are advised to post their own, write their Congressman, and see how much good that does. I think I've got a plank for everyone.
The propaganda machine is out there, in full throttle. Everyday there are "non stories" to create a blizzard of bullshit so people are unaware of real agendas, legislation, policy and donors.
Happens every day and why sites like this are important. There is no way you will see a "Michael Jackson" headline on this site.
And right on cue showing that thinking American citizens really have no one to look to but themselves for their own safety and protection and welfare, the media asks the truly important question, "What is Paul Ryan's workout routine and is it right for me?" And people get paid for this? And they have jobs? Please, no more. I had no idea Paul Ryan's workout mattered one iota to the Republic, especially in these dark days. It would be funny except every second spent on this madness is a second the real issues are ignored and minimized.
Hey, Paul and the media, that's fascinating. Now go try to find a roofing job or work in a warehouse midnight shift or dig ditches (like Tesla did - and he was a wee bit brighter than you and knew real struggles from Day 1) for a real workout that might just feed and house one person for one day. Just make sure you can find that open job wherever it may be located, they will hire you despite the fact that you are "overqualified" and don't have any experience following college in anything outside Congress, and you can last more than a few days (hopefully you can last until 80+ and don't need any benefits and never get injured). And if you can't, don't come whining to us, it's every man and woman for themselves, that's what you keep telling us.
The air is rarefied in DC and boardrooms, no struggles, no brains needed by anyone, and the media kisses their asses and asks questions that will stroke their egos. Forget banker crimes, the Middle East never-ending conflicts, outsourcing and the loss of the middle class, massive unemployment, endemic corruption in our own country, we really need to know - does Paul like chocolate or vanilla ice cream? Pathetic, truly.
The rule of being a good puppet in either party is that you don't bite the hand up your rectum. That would just be wrong. No matter what party you belong to, a good puppet knows where its allegiance lies. And that's why puppets are treated well and get so rich throughout their lives, they don't dare bite that all-powerful hand. One hand controls the puppet, and the other gives the puppet the goodies like money and jobs for the puppet's unqualified friends and relatives. Puppets must read what their told, do what their told, and ignore what their told. Punch and Judy were more educational, cheaper, and more honest than these puppets.
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