Isaac is one of the good guys, but I would point out that the bank failures have not significantly escalated in 2010 from 2009, but not for the reasons given by the TARPsters:
The massive liquidity boost shoved into the banking system via effectively free Fed borrowing led to the formation of a number of investment pools which in turn have been buying up failing banks like mad.
Some examples of these pools:
Community and Southern Bank
NAFH Bank
Premier Bank
These 3 are actually backed by investment pools - and have purchased 11 failed banks in 2010 (out of 157 total).
It is unknown to me just how many others exist, nor how many banks did not failed due to acquisition and partial recapitalization.
Sterling bank in particular is an example of one which should have failed but did not. Others included Flagstar and South Financial.
Bernie's fillibuster had reference to a study James Kwak
called "13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown.” Kwak lays out how the same 13 top corporate chieftains sit on the Fed and made the decisions on bailouts and commercial paper lending. We learned from recent Fed disclosure that $9 Trillion was lent out in in commercial paper in 2008-2009.
I for one cannot oppose creation of a substitute for a banking system which freezes and makes no credit. At the same time, there is the question of control. What about the rest of us who need credit in small business struggling to survive? 5 million small businesses failed (deaths net of births) in 2008. Not one of the 13 Oligarchs came from a small business background.
The words deomcracy and oligarchy are opposites. Either you accept the rule of the few or you at least desire the rule of the many - the 'DEMOS' or the 'OLIGOS'.
No one who reads these pages will be surprised how the next disaster has its seeds in the current crisis. The news James Kwak has for us is that we can name names and we know who the conspirators are. No more nursery rhymes about Mr. Market, please.
A big problem is the "fall off the chart" effect of the 99 ers, those who have exhausted all 5 tiers of UE compensation.
For persons who have been longterm unemployed their existence drags down the numbers as long as they collect, then they stop collecting and the graph shows them going away,ecause the agencies don't report them as collecting and including them in the totals anymore.
The numbers are worrisome for another reason, the amounts of people laid off stays at 400,000 plus every month, yet the job creation numbers bounce from 139,000 to 50,000 and so on.
There is a steady mismatch between people being hired and people being laid off. And that doesn't include the added entrants into the workforce, typically in June but also at the end of the year or in January from part timers or former students looking now for full time jobs to cover retirements and deaths. Where are the new hirings coming from?
The 135,000 new net jobs each month would be needed to cover the added labor available, but in this Great Recession 2007-
economy all the ratings and descriptions are skewed.
The numbers don't match up. Even as UE declines slightly month to month the hirings simply don't show up to soak up former labor available. The economy on balance keeps shedding jobs overall, not just workers.
Because there are 50 states, plus D.C., I just gave links on where to look up state data.
The official unemployment rate of CA is 12.4%, with the LA area being 12.9%. Bear in mind the BLS often counts illegals in these numbers. The CPS doesn't determine immigration status, which is also a real problem in high tech, due to guest worker Visas.
There are some occupational area graphs from California in the St. Louis FRED database, here. If that's not enough info, you must dig out the specific tables for CA and make up graphs.
During the holidays when economic news turns to a trickle, I plan on looking deeper into a lot of unemployment statistics, especially for the 2010 Census will be out this Tuesday, with assuredly tons of new data to examine.
Make a request and I'll see what I can dig up for you. CA was heavily negatively impacted in construction jobs.
I might just wade into the political charged ethnicity demographic data, in spite of the blow back that will surely follow, regardless of findings.
Now the attack on social security is mentioned by the Wall Street Journal. At least their numbers are accurate and without social security, we've got a whole generation of old people, homeless, starving in the street.
This isn't exactly economics but finally the Senate just did something that is common sense, which is to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. On the financial side, this doesn't cost a dime, and finally opens the door to I think about 10% of Americans who have a varying range of abilities, skills, who were denied those opportunities.
Michael Collins: I am not the author of this piece.
Fair enough. As I noted, it seemed strange compared to your previous posts.
Michael Collins: I think it's excellent, regardless of whose ox is being gored, politically.
The facts are indubitably true, but the message is obscured by its rabid anti-Republican partisanship.
I also note that the article in question focuses on ridiculous things like the 'shadow banking' and 'Wall Street' redaction.
The real problems are systemic fraud - it would be far more productive to rail against the combination of a complete lack of prosecution (not a single indictment has yet occurred over MBS/mortgage/ratings agency/appraisal fraud) and subsidies for home ownership.
In these two areas - the Republicans are no better nor worse than their Democrat counterparts.
For every Bachus, there is a Barney Frank.
Another premise of the article is also false: that somehow the GSE's are blameless in the housing debacle.
This is patently untrue. The very existence of Fannie and Freddie - drafting behind the 'full faith and credit of the sovereign United States' - was very much a factor in the housing bubble and subsequent collapse.
The supposed replacement of the role of the GSE's by shadow banking is a complete fantasy - Fannie and Freddie loan portfolios grew steadily throughout the 2002-2007 period.
Equally so, the supposed cleanliness of Fannie and Freddie loans from NINJAs is also a fantasy. The GSEs went into receivership in September 2008 - simply insufficient time for large numbers of 'good credit' loans to sour due to unemployment and/or housing price falls.
Both GSEs were suffering losses long before their receivership - even in the tail end of the housing bubble.
Once again, the over-focus on both rabid partisanship and largely irrelevant but hot button issues obscures what really happened and what really needs to happen.
I am not the author of this piece. It's by inernet poster Numerian. I think it's excellent, regardless of whose ox is being gored, politically. The private banks taking up the housing bubble banner when Fannie and Freddie were sidlined in 2004 is a great point, imho. It was a government-private sector partnership. Interesting how both sides of the equation were rewarded for their mistakes. The Fannie and Freddie stories have yet to be told. I'm looking forward to that!
Since the Obama administration began, I've laid off the Republicans since they had little power. They are a definite threat to any form of capitalism and freedom, that's for sure. They were simply collaborators in the damage from 2008-2010. However, Ii've been most bipartisan in my narrative of the grand betrayal. This piece (which I'll reference more often in the fugure) starts with Glass-Steagall and the Commodities Modernization Act, both passed during the Clinton era and signed with gusto by the former president. See:
You are so right that so many depend on SS to live day to day. Those about to retire should feel swindled. Anyone 55 to 66 has paid big taxes to support the last generation and now will see their benefits cut. This is what they must do when they defunded SS.
Social contract in the U.S. Constitution was advanced in the Federalist Papers and understood by all signers of the Constituion. Paine, Jefferson, Franklin, Monroe,
Washington all read and understood Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau.
To betray the social contract is to destroy the foundation of civil government itself.
It was astounding, simply astounding the speech on signing off on these tax cuts. It's clear, Michael Collins and many in Congress are right, they are targeting social security for reductions/privatizations after running up a massive deficit due to tax cuts for the rich (in part).
So many people have already had their retirement decimated, all that is left is social security, so if this agenda is allowed, imagine millions of destitute homeless old people, everywhere, thrown to the dogs.
I'm sorry, but I think that's what we're looking at, just like all of the homeless, destitute people right now, due to a lack of a job, are swept under the rug.
The Saint Louis FRED database has individual state charts on unemployment and a few per sector (such as manufacturing in Detroit and Construction in California). If you're looking for more details on one of the 51 state, D.C. employment statistics, that's a good place to start, for they have already created the graphs from the data for you.
Cutting the payroll tax from to 4.2% is quite a big deal. Social Security is defunded. The 7.2% will not come back in a Presidential Election Cycle. To understand the attack on public pensions fully, we need to take a loner view of public pensions. The deal is absolutely not compromise, Obama caved, McConnell won.
Something very rare in modern (post 1500) history on Thursday. The forces of anti-compromise triumphed on the American political scene. The consequences of destruction of 150 years of reform from Bismark to FDR are impossible to exaggerate.
In the U.S. and around the globe, all public pensions are being systematically gutted. In the U.S., the forces are Darkness are truly on horseback.
Let's simplify a big piece of history and observe that the modern state in present form, survived because of the reforms designed to thwart it's most vocal usurpers. FDR told all who would listen that he did not want other Huey Longs or Minnesota Farmer Labor Party to sieze more state governments. FDR started the move to Social Security with reform and counter revolution in mind, just like Bismark.
In Europe of the 1870s, the reformers who created the public pensions never denied the motive of stopping the Socialists and especially the Paris Commune of 1870. Public Pensions in Germany are the product of Bismark and Metternick who created pensions to stop revolutions. History is straightforward about the motives of public pension reformers.
When Social Security is defunded, we go back to the days of Orphan Annie and Daddy Warbucks, alms houses and orphanages, a world that's the wet dream of the reactionary plutocrat. Daddy Warbucks got his tax cuts and we are moving into a very dark age.
Let's look at the A-List of history's No-Compromise guys. Top of the list is Oliver Cromwell. Architect of the Puritan Revolution just did not budge and it got him the position of Brittain's only dictator and a reign of terror exceeding even Richard III.
Next without doubt is Robbespiere, when Neccar and the the Grand Compromise failed in June of 1789, the French Revolution followed in July. Neccar pleaded with Louis XV
to return to the democratic constitution of 1614 and an Assemblee Nationale. The result of the failure of compromise was kind of a big deal. Robbespiere blunted every move toward compromise and used all of Louis XV blunders to his advantage.
Lenin was the kind of guy who could take over any meeting or board room. The agents of Kaiser Wilhelm knew what they were doing when he was sent back to Russia. In the Duma in 1917, Lenin allowed no deals, undermined Kerinsky in every turn and played out his hand perfectly in street theater.
Lenin's best student A. Hitler wrote his Mein Kampf giving Lenin huge credit. So when the election of 1933 was stalemated, the National Socialsts never waivered and never gave in to the Communists. It fell to the Chirstian Democrats, von Hindenberg to throw in with the National Socialists and annoint Hitler.
So now we come to our own Von Hidenberg, advised by the great sage of the Democratic Party, William Jefferson Clinton, who gave us Graham-Leach, NAFTA, Health Scare. Our Von Hindenberg has handed us over to the forces of darkness.
History by the same token has happy outcomes, like Christian V of Denmark, George Washington and famously Cincinnatus in ancient Rome. Each of these men believed in good government and put the nation above personal ambition to the point of sacrificing all political power for the sake of the republic.
Is the corporate agenda is going on full stream, both parties. By just giving in on the omnibus bill, they clear the way for an attack on social security again. Instead of jobs, we're streaming towards a direct attack on the middle class. Notice how the dialog doesn't even mention any other taxes, or cutting the defense budget, killing military bases overseas.
I agree, banning words like shadow banking, they are trying and I guess winning, at pushing the facts under the rug.
It is odd that your previous 'Money Party' statements are suddenly subsumed by anti-Republican sentiment.
You failed to note the Rubin/Clinton/Geithner/Summers/Obama angle - the repeal of Glass Steagall by a Republican Congress with Clinton's assistance is as much a factor in the housing/tech bubbles as anything else.
That Fannie and Freddie were less complicit due to somewhat lower foreclosure rates is completely misleading - the lack of subprime itself would be enough to balance the perspective.
While subprime loans themselves were not the prime reason for the real estate bubble and subsequent financial crisis, they did very much skew the overall foreclosure rates.
The same could be said for 2nd mortgages or HELOCs - neither of which Fannie and Freddie engage in.
So let's not take our eye off the 'Money Party' by stooping to kabuki theatre pseudo partisanship.
With the Republican censorship of words - "shadow banks," "Wall street" etc., we're ad DEFCON 4 on the Decadence Scale. That's simply beyond words. Wait until that story gets around. The public is in for a real shock treatment. The sad thing is that the Republican majority was a punishment of the Democrats for doing nothing. The rightists are taking this as an endorsement. Will they ever be surprised. While everyone at the top fiddles, Rome burns.
They have not been reformed at all, I can't recall the bail out figures at the moment, but they potentially are more than TARP, and there is no end in sight. They need to be reformed. That said, ignoring CDSes, derivatives and securitization is a direct result of the Banksters and their agenda.
Isaac is one of the good guys, but I would point out that the bank failures have not significantly escalated in 2010 from 2009, but not for the reasons given by the TARPsters:
The massive liquidity boost shoved into the banking system via effectively free Fed borrowing led to the formation of a number of investment pools which in turn have been buying up failing banks like mad.
Some examples of these pools:
Community and Southern Bank
NAFH Bank
Premier Bank
These 3 are actually backed by investment pools - and have purchased 11 failed banks in 2010 (out of 157 total).
It is unknown to me just how many others exist, nor how many banks did not failed due to acquisition and partial recapitalization.
Sterling bank in particular is an example of one which should have failed but did not. Others included Flagstar and South Financial.
Bernie's fillibuster had reference to a study James Kwak
called "13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown.” Kwak lays out how the same 13 top corporate chieftains sit on the Fed and made the decisions on bailouts and commercial paper lending. We learned from recent Fed disclosure that $9 Trillion was lent out in in commercial paper in 2008-2009.
I for one cannot oppose creation of a substitute for a banking system which freezes and makes no credit. At the same time, there is the question of control. What about the rest of us who need credit in small business struggling to survive? 5 million small businesses failed (deaths net of births) in 2008. Not one of the 13 Oligarchs came from a small business background.
The words deomcracy and oligarchy are opposites. Either you accept the rule of the few or you at least desire the rule of the many - the 'DEMOS' or the 'OLIGOS'.
No one who reads these pages will be surprised how the next disaster has its seeds in the current crisis. The news James Kwak has for us is that we can name names and we know who the conspirators are. No more nursery rhymes about Mr. Market, please.
A big problem is the "fall off the chart" effect of the 99 ers, those who have exhausted all 5 tiers of UE compensation.
For persons who have been longterm unemployed their existence drags down the numbers as long as they collect, then they stop collecting and the graph shows them going away,ecause the agencies don't report them as collecting and including them in the totals anymore.
The numbers are worrisome for another reason, the amounts of people laid off stays at 400,000 plus every month, yet the job creation numbers bounce from 139,000 to 50,000 and so on.
There is a steady mismatch between people being hired and people being laid off. And that doesn't include the added entrants into the workforce, typically in June but also at the end of the year or in January from part timers or former students looking now for full time jobs to cover retirements and deaths. Where are the new hirings coming from?
The 135,000 new net jobs each month would be needed to cover the added labor available, but in this Great Recession 2007-
economy all the ratings and descriptions are skewed.
The numbers don't match up. Even as UE declines slightly month to month the hirings simply don't show up to soak up former labor available. The economy on balance keeps shedding jobs overall, not just workers.
Because there are 50 states, plus D.C., I just gave links on where to look up state data.
The official unemployment rate of CA is 12.4%, with the LA area being 12.9%. Bear in mind the BLS often counts illegals in these numbers. The CPS doesn't determine immigration status, which is also a real problem in high tech, due to guest worker Visas.
There are some occupational area graphs from California in the St. Louis FRED database, here. If that's not enough info, you must dig out the specific tables for CA and make up graphs.
During the holidays when economic news turns to a trickle, I plan on looking deeper into a lot of unemployment statistics, especially for the 2010 Census will be out this Tuesday, with assuredly tons of new data to examine.
Make a request and I'll see what I can dig up for you. CA was heavily negatively impacted in construction jobs.
I might just wade into the political charged ethnicity demographic data, in spite of the blow back that will surely follow, regardless of findings.
I don't need to know who has been looking for jobs in the last 4 weeks, but rather the actual rate of the unemployed people in CA. at present
Two states are suing Bank of America now. Let's hope the other states join in!
Article here.
Now the attack on social security is mentioned by the Wall Street Journal. At least their numbers are accurate and without social security, we've got a whole generation of old people, homeless, starving in the street.
They did it and the earth didn't open and consume us all for our sins. Great movie!
This isn't exactly economics but finally the Senate just did something that is common sense, which is to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. On the financial side, this doesn't cost a dime, and finally opens the door to I think about 10% of Americans who have a varying range of abilities, skills, who were denied those opportunities.
Michael Collins: I am not the author of this piece.
Fair enough. As I noted, it seemed strange compared to your previous posts.
Michael Collins: I think it's excellent, regardless of whose ox is being gored, politically.
The facts are indubitably true, but the message is obscured by its rabid anti-Republican partisanship.
I also note that the article in question focuses on ridiculous things like the 'shadow banking' and 'Wall Street' redaction.
The real problems are systemic fraud - it would be far more productive to rail against the combination of a complete lack of prosecution (not a single indictment has yet occurred over MBS/mortgage/ratings agency/appraisal fraud) and subsidies for home ownership.
In these two areas - the Republicans are no better nor worse than their Democrat counterparts.
For every Bachus, there is a Barney Frank.
Another premise of the article is also false: that somehow the GSE's are blameless in the housing debacle.
This is patently untrue. The very existence of Fannie and Freddie - drafting behind the 'full faith and credit of the sovereign United States' - was very much a factor in the housing bubble and subsequent collapse.
The supposed replacement of the role of the GSE's by shadow banking is a complete fantasy - Fannie and Freddie loan portfolios grew steadily throughout the 2002-2007 period.
Equally so, the supposed cleanliness of Fannie and Freddie loans from NINJAs is also a fantasy. The GSEs went into receivership in September 2008 - simply insufficient time for large numbers of 'good credit' loans to sour due to unemployment and/or housing price falls.
Both GSEs were suffering losses long before their receivership - even in the tail end of the housing bubble.
Once again, the over-focus on both rabid partisanship and largely irrelevant but hot button issues obscures what really happened and what really needs to happen.
I am not the author of this piece. It's by inernet poster Numerian. I think it's excellent, regardless of whose ox is being gored, politically. The private banks taking up the housing bubble banner when Fannie and Freddie were sidlined in 2004 is a great point, imho. It was a government-private sector partnership. Interesting how both sides of the equation were rewarded for their mistakes. The Fannie and Freddie stories have yet to be told. I'm looking forward to that!
Since the Obama administration began, I've laid off the Republicans since they had little power. They are a definite threat to any form of capitalism and freedom, that's for sure. They were simply collaborators in the damage from 2008-2010. However, Ii've been most bipartisan in my narrative of the grand betrayal. This piece (which I'll reference more often in the fugure) starts with Glass-Steagall and the Commodities Modernization Act, both passed during the Clinton era and signed with gusto by the former president. See:
ENABLING ACTS FOR AN ERA OF GREED - The Money Party at Work
You are so right that so many depend on SS to live day to day. Those about to retire should feel swindled. Anyone 55 to 66 has paid big taxes to support the last generation and now will see their benefits cut. This is what they must do when they defunded SS.
Social contract in the U.S. Constitution was advanced in the Federalist Papers and understood by all signers of the Constituion. Paine, Jefferson, Franklin, Monroe,
Washington all read and understood Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau.
To betray the social contract is to destroy the foundation of civil government itself.
It was astounding, simply astounding the speech on signing off on these tax cuts. It's clear, Michael Collins and many in Congress are right, they are targeting social security for reductions/privatizations after running up a massive deficit due to tax cuts for the rich (in part).
So many people have already had their retirement decimated, all that is left is social security, so if this agenda is allowed, imagine millions of destitute homeless old people, everywhere, thrown to the dogs.
I'm sorry, but I think that's what we're looking at, just like all of the homeless, destitute people right now, due to a lack of a job, are swept under the rug.
The Saint Louis FRED database has individual state charts on unemployment and a few per sector (such as manufacturing in Detroit and Construction in California). If you're looking for more details on one of the 51 state, D.C. employment statistics, that's a good place to start, for they have already created the graphs from the data for you.
Huffington Post, seems Obama was personally calling House members to get them to pass it.
If only he fought this hard for a real stimulus program, to confront China on currency manipulation, for a real health plan that reduces costs....
36 Republicans, 128 Democrats voted against it. Roll call vote is here.
Cutting the payroll tax from to 4.2% is quite a big deal. Social Security is defunded. The 7.2% will not come back in a Presidential Election Cycle. To understand the attack on public pensions fully, we need to take a loner view of public pensions. The deal is absolutely not compromise, Obama caved, McConnell won.
Something very rare in modern (post 1500) history on Thursday. The forces of anti-compromise triumphed on the American political scene. The consequences of destruction of 150 years of reform from Bismark to FDR are impossible to exaggerate.
In the U.S. and around the globe, all public pensions are being systematically gutted. In the U.S., the forces are Darkness are truly on horseback.
Let's simplify a big piece of history and observe that the modern state in present form, survived because of the reforms designed to thwart it's most vocal usurpers. FDR told all who would listen that he did not want other Huey Longs or Minnesota Farmer Labor Party to sieze more state governments. FDR started the move to Social Security with reform and counter revolution in mind, just like Bismark.
In Europe of the 1870s, the reformers who created the public pensions never denied the motive of stopping the Socialists and especially the Paris Commune of 1870. Public Pensions in Germany are the product of Bismark and Metternick who created pensions to stop revolutions. History is straightforward about the motives of public pension reformers.
When Social Security is defunded, we go back to the days of Orphan Annie and Daddy Warbucks, alms houses and orphanages, a world that's the wet dream of the reactionary plutocrat. Daddy Warbucks got his tax cuts and we are moving into a very dark age.
Let's look at the A-List of history's No-Compromise guys. Top of the list is Oliver Cromwell. Architect of the Puritan Revolution just did not budge and it got him the position of Brittain's only dictator and a reign of terror exceeding even Richard III.
Next without doubt is Robbespiere, when Neccar and the the Grand Compromise failed in June of 1789, the French Revolution followed in July. Neccar pleaded with Louis XV
to return to the democratic constitution of 1614 and an Assemblee Nationale. The result of the failure of compromise was kind of a big deal. Robbespiere blunted every move toward compromise and used all of Louis XV blunders to his advantage.
Lenin was the kind of guy who could take over any meeting or board room. The agents of Kaiser Wilhelm knew what they were doing when he was sent back to Russia. In the Duma in 1917, Lenin allowed no deals, undermined Kerinsky in every turn and played out his hand perfectly in street theater.
Lenin's best student A. Hitler wrote his Mein Kampf giving Lenin huge credit. So when the election of 1933 was stalemated, the National Socialsts never waivered and never gave in to the Communists. It fell to the Chirstian Democrats, von Hindenberg to throw in with the National Socialists and annoint Hitler.
So now we come to our own Von Hidenberg, advised by the great sage of the Democratic Party, William Jefferson Clinton, who gave us Graham-Leach, NAFTA, Health Scare. Our Von Hindenberg has handed us over to the forces of darkness.
History by the same token has happy outcomes, like Christian V of Denmark, George Washington and famously Cincinnatus in ancient Rome. Each of these men believed in good government and put the nation above personal ambition to the point of sacrificing all political power for the sake of the republic.
Is the corporate agenda is going on full stream, both parties. By just giving in on the omnibus bill, they clear the way for an attack on social security again. Instead of jobs, we're streaming towards a direct attack on the middle class. Notice how the dialog doesn't even mention any other taxes, or cutting the defense budget, killing military bases overseas.
I agree, banning words like shadow banking, they are trying and I guess winning, at pushing the facts under the rug.
It is odd that your previous 'Money Party' statements are suddenly subsumed by anti-Republican sentiment.
You failed to note the Rubin/Clinton/Geithner/Summers/Obama angle - the repeal of Glass Steagall by a Republican Congress with Clinton's assistance is as much a factor in the housing/tech bubbles as anything else.
That Fannie and Freddie were less complicit due to somewhat lower foreclosure rates is completely misleading - the lack of subprime itself would be enough to balance the perspective.
While subprime loans themselves were not the prime reason for the real estate bubble and subsequent financial crisis, they did very much skew the overall foreclosure rates.
The same could be said for 2nd mortgages or HELOCs - neither of which Fannie and Freddie engage in.
So let's not take our eye off the 'Money Party' by stooping to kabuki theatre pseudo partisanship.
With the Republican censorship of words - "shadow banks," "Wall street" etc., we're ad DEFCON 4 on the Decadence Scale. That's simply beyond words. Wait until that story gets around. The public is in for a real shock treatment. The sad thing is that the Republican majority was a punishment of the Democrats for doing nothing. The rightists are taking this as an endorsement. Will they ever be surprised. While everyone at the top fiddles, Rome burns.
They have not been reformed at all, I can't recall the bail out figures at the moment, but they potentially are more than TARP, and there is no end in sight. They need to be reformed. That said, ignoring CDSes, derivatives and securitization is a direct result of the Banksters and their agenda.
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