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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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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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Tax Cuts for the Rich Do Not Generate Jobs
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Of all the things I have read about the current mortgage situation (and I have read volumes), this is by far the most enlightening and most important.
You brought out a fact that I have not seen mentioned and I never thought about - the absence of mortgages being recorded at county level. As you note, the legal implications of this change in the long history of mortgage 'law' is not obvious. Moreover, it seems to me, the economic implications resulting from legal uncertainties doesn't seem to be talked about.
Unlike, the past market debacles, this is not just about money. This is a complex law and legal labor situation. A TARP like money fix is not going to restore the market. Courts are going to have to make decisions and a lot of labor processing and resolving claims will have to be brought to bare.
The de facto change in mortgage law (county recordings) is truly the most telling event in this incredible juncture in economic history
Thank you for the work you did in writing this up.
Yeah, but you have Mr. Corporatist Obama in the White House. And I don't mean to dump just on him. Also all the corporatist shills in Congress and the Supreme Court. They consider corporations to be people.
This is a great idea. But how do you get an unmotivated populace to push their Congresspersons to do right? Especially with that clown Lieberman?
Devalue the dollar the yuan ratio stays the same. The key is to get the ratio higher.
The Fed already has printed money and devalued the dollar and is about to again via QE2.
Thank you for this excellent piece. The best I have read so far on the mortgage mess.
devalue our own currency by printing a shit ton of money and spending it on jobs to rebuild our infrastructure and create a green energy economy? I mean aside from the slight problem that our rulers in the oil industry and on Wall St won't let it happen?
They are scared of the U.S. bankers and this item ( http://michael-hudson.com/2010/10/why-the-imf-meetings-failed/ ) explains why the Chinese, among others, is so afraid. Basically, they don't trust the U.S. bankers. And why should they?
FI is just part of I in the GDP equation, not total Investment, it's a subset. Always define variables so folks can follow along. Remember anything with a number in it makes 98% of America immediately fall asleep.
See Q2 2010 GDP, 3rd revision, where I try to put the calculations online and it seems I should add even more mathematics corresponding to the cryptic BEA releases than what is there now.
here is the Q2 2010 real GDP numbers:
total: 13,194.9
pce: 9275.7
gov: 2540.2
i-x (trade deficit) = -449
I = 1791.5
fixed investment = 1702.5
By percentages, Q2 GDP contributions are:
PCE (C or consumption): 70.2%
gov: 19.3%
fixed invest: 12.9%
exports: 12.5%
imports: -16.9%
So, your numbers are really off. While the trade deficit trashed US GDP, I think in terms of jobs you must look at exports directly and see how much of GDP exports actually are.
I try to put these original reports on this site, along with equations and showing the calculations, so people can figure out for themselves these numbers.
There are two problems, firstly most of the press cannot do basic math and the second is the government, BEA revises numbers so much, there is no doubt if you quote something from the Internets, it will be out of date.
Financial stocks? In theory, they should be getting fatter by the day, but investors are avoiding them -- I think Goldman Sachs is below last year's price level. Yes, some PE contraction, but it has been range-bound all year. Bank of America -- don't ask.
People seem to understand that they do not have the whole story. And yes, you can get more return on utilities, telcos, but regionals and national banks are not loved on Wall Street.
Something is seriously wrong, and the Fed is not in full disclosure.
It seems nothing happens regardless of how much money the fed dumps in. I wrote a piece on money supply velocity, for it's clear, corporations and the super rich are just sitting on their cash.
Yes, it seems COLA is quite the political football, and thanks for the historical insights.
By taking just Q3, when we have a rigged Wall Street game, financial implosions and oil speculators, where you could get such a "hump" in one quarter, it's not giving a real yearly average of comparison.
Also, it seems CPI is really dependent on some sectors deflating, others inflating, so say you're not really dependent on buying a home anytime soon, it looks like your costs have increased more than the norm. Not driving a car in 2008? You were in the chips by comparison. Heating your home with oil?..the list goes on and on.
I'm just note sure, beyond globally devaluing the dollar, is going to happen with this QE2 at this point.
I remember QE1 and we all flipped out with Bernanke printing money like snow...
yet that intuitively was all wrong, which shows me we all need to brush up on our monetary theory. ;)
I wrote there goes the dollar, when mentioning money velocity and could use some feedback, insights.
You're right, it's completely crashed. I sent off some emails to some of the folks associated with that group to find out what's happening. Hopefully it's just a crash.
Ya know, we need people to pipe up on the sham, their experience, what they saw. This is classic to claim someone "isn't qualified" for a job, to actually offshore outsource jobs, discriminate and so on. (because if they confessed the real reason, they would be sued)..
He was talking about the outrageous AIG scam before it ecploded. CDOs and Default Swaps -- he was quick to point out that this amounted to writing insurance on bets at a casino, except AIG did not have the assets to cover the "insurance" they were writing. He was brave enough to ask "Why aren't these guys in jail?" when it was considered not polite to mention such things. And the taxpayer got stick with the bill for their bonuses. Dylan, will you please run for office?
The automatic COLA adjustment got rid of a sticky political problem for Congress in the mid-1970s when it was enshrined in law. Before that, there was an annual ritual between Congress and the President, and in 1973 (it may have been 1972) Nixon threatened to veto the COLA increase in that year's bill. Of course, when Congress overrode his veto, he made sure a message (with portrait of himself) went out with the checks saying how pleased he was to be helping America's retirees cope with inflation.
Now a new question seeme to be emerging. Not quite deflation, not quite inflation (unless you track the small increment price increases on restaurant menus and such), and I think it was Barry Ridholz who coined the term recently "demi-inflation." If inflation continues at small increments, it could conceivably creep along below the half-percent threshold for some time. But the Fed is cranking up the presses and trying to resuscitate the Inflation Monster that seems to be sleeping on the job.
The Tea Party drops by in campaign season and tells me they want to 'cut Government'.
I ask "So how much are you prepared to cut GDP?" I explain the simple identtity
GDP = C + G + FI + NI.
Cut the Government and have no plan and GDP drops, that simple. 1950-54 economies are exeptions to the rule when each part of the equation of GDP are increasing at double digit percentages. Some other part of the economy can take up the slack. Not now. Not the Consumer, not Trade and not Fixed Private Investment.
Of course they said, "Cut taxes and Fixed Private Investment will increase". We have shown on these pages that the idea has proven historically false since the middle 1950s. Tax Rates are cut and private investment does not increase. Why?
Consider the dynamics of Trade and Fixed Private Investment in this economy. Buy a laptop produced by our comrades at FoxCon and Fixed Investment Increases and so does the Trade Deficit. Effect on GDP = Zero. Or, General Motors buys a robot from Fanuc, same zero effect on GDP. Anecdotes only? No.
Consumer = 70 %
Government = 25 %
Trade = Negative 4 %
FPI = 9 %
Trade Deficit negates any positive outcomes of Fixed Private Investment. So GDP hardly grows at all. Govermment spending change is near zero, same for the consumer.
Consumer expectations are depressed. Cut Government and you cut GDP.
I was "overqualified" 40 years ago. Labor shortage has always been a sham.
P.S.
Tradereform.org shut down?
The requested URL /wp-content/plugins/mailpress/mp-includes/action.php was not found on this server.
Apache/2.0.52 (CentOS) Server at www.tradereform.org Port 80
All the QE2s will not matter one iota. The fact is that QE is pushing on a rope with interest rates. If you lower the rates to zero there is no borrowing because 1) banks won't lend and 2) people will not want to go into debt. Marginalization may be the greatest existential consequence.
Federal Reserve of the future will provoke a universal yawn.
There is just too much debt, too much housing, too much over-capacity of almost everthing world wide and until that changes QE will never work.
That said, there are still shortages of important new tech in the energy patch. There is global hunger, disease and unemployment. Capacity is relative the the need and market.
The FDIC completed auditing your IRA and 401K accounts in Feb., 2010. According to insiders, the plan is to wait until the market crashes and then through scare tactics, offer an option of a voluntary fixed annuity of 3%. If it is refused, then it becomes mandatory. The SS Trust was the biggest ponzi scheme ever implemented by the democratic party. Every negative impact to the Trust was created an implemented during a democratic administration. FDR created the SS Trust during his administration; however, the Trust was never to be depleted. Now that is gone, and as liberal as he was, he would turn over in his grave if he knew what his party did to the Trust. He did enough damage on his own. The GRA's are to be administered by SSA, so what makes you think the same thing will not happen again, since it is their plan in the first place. If you think this can't happen, look at what happened in the spring when computer traders made a wrong trade and sent the Dow down 600 pts in one day. The 60 Minutes episode, 10-10-10 showed exactly how this could happen, accidently or otherwise. This has happened to two countries in the recent past, do think BO is above doing this to our nation? If you think not, think again.
I hope folks realize that how the cost of living adjustments are actually done is almost never discussed. About a year ago, when the first zero adjustment happened, a host of retirees and others dependent upon government payments left questions on the site about how they could deny an adjustment and how it all works and what could they do to increase the adjusment.
This post attempts to answer that, abet a year late.
Sure, anytime. Just not complete articles or posts without explicit author permission. Teasers are fine even.
I would not claim Ratigan is a "sell out" by any stretch, more this is just one little clip and this argument is a common trojan horse, so in order words, unless one is familiar with the history of corporate lobbyists shouting labor shortage or "skills mismatch" and so on, might not get it initially.
I like Ratigan, he left CNBC when he saw the beyond belief Ponzi scheme going on in the financial meltdown and is clearly trying to get the issues out there.
Maybe he doesn't hit a home run every time, but that's what blogs are for.
;)
Thank you, Robert, for doing this research for us.
May I quote you and run links to your site at my blog?
Suzan
Dylan Ratigan is not "normally sane." His show always makes me want to throw my shoes at the TV screen.
Other than that, I agree with you.
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