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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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House discusses 401k/IRA confiscation
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Tax Cuts for the Rich Do Not Generate Jobs
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I hope all realize, at least on the economic report overviews, EP is a news source. Not that it's a huge deal by itself, but the reason I'm mentioning is we are being deluged with bogus trivial press for the last two weeks, the smoke screen has increased dramatically.
It's like Michael Jackson was on 24/7, but now we have "Mosque" and "people believe Obama is a Muslim" and a rehash of the typical masking types of "headlines" so the real news, which is the U.S. workforce is being pummeled and the government and both political parties will not confront their corporate masters and do something about it.
So, with that, you might consider voicing the real news, like this post does and try to push up the real stories into the headlines.
It's pretty disheartening for we cannot even get confrontation on China's currency manipulation and supposedly that's a bi-partisan issue with almost everyone in the Senate co-sponsoring a bill to do so, yet, magically, it's not brought up for a vote and passed. Lots of examples like this one.
Yes, very true. I was a salaried employee and very seldom kept my working hours down to 40/week. the more I completed, the more i was assigned. and, recently it was made very clear to me that employers can, indeed, abuse their workers as freely as they care to--and, as long as it cannot be directly associated with the legal definition of discrimination or retaliation--bringing into play the legal definition of 'hostile work environment', they can continue to abuse and abuse and abuse. it's perfectly legal...seems it is the american way, today.
Excellent links. Fantastic job of bringing so many interwoven thoughts together.
and some just let everything go to a charge off, don't declare bankruptcy, depending, so that's an amazing (although not because of the job situation), number.
What's the percentage that declared bankruptcy due to medical bills? In the past that's been 50%.
Even when it comes to IRS tax evasion, Tim Geithner gets to be head of the IRS, the Treasury, while "missing" a huge amount of taxes and blames "TurboTax". If that was a regular person on the street, they would have been hammered and no way would the IRS allow "TurboTax" as an excuse.
But the bottom line is when a corporation does it, they can get away with anything. When it comes to them, whatever they want, including obvious crime, such as laundering drug money.
When deficits are discussed, it's ALWAYS screw people out of social security now that pensions have been dismantled and the upcoming boomers have zippo for retirement as it is.
It's always "reduce wages" instead of collect more corporate taxes and stop the loopholes for corporations to not pay taxes and park their money in the Cayman Islands.
We have massive bail outs, yet HAMP (as we've both written about) is a Kafkaesque maze of bureaucratic bullshit, all designed to make sure people really are foreclosed on, or perhaps get as much money out of them before they are foreclosed or die.
We even have corporations taking life insurance policies out on workers, not to pay out to the families if something happens, but to pay out to that corporation. Literally they are playing the numbers game, looking to make profits over the death of employees.
On the drug war, I don't know about you, but it is so obviously stupid at this point, to not immediately legalize, regulate and tax the hell out of marijuana. Imagine the savings. Imagine the cash crop potential. The failure of making marijuana illegal is so obvious, so overwhelming and now we have organized cartels turning Mexico beyond Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of terror and danger and it's also crossing the border into the United States. We have, literally, our national forests and state forests being turned into illegal pot farms. Beyond pollution and destruction, there is one small problem with that....if a hiker happens to go back country....they might just come across a few guys with AK-47s. Oh well, what's another lost hiker?
We literally have the Obama administration giving U.S. taxpayer money to train foreigners abroad in skills, and this is long term training, for FREE, on the U.S. taxpayer dime, to increase offshore outsourcing of U.S. jobs.
So, your overall theme is truly right on, if the super rich/elite/connected powerful and of course any corporation, does anything and even other nations....that's ok, but if it's something for the U.S. workforce, the citiznry, the U.S. middle class, you can be sure it will be all about robbing from their pockets or some sort of sucking more money out of them.
That's when it's becoming obvious, by destroying the U.S. middle class, the U.S. workforce, they literally are creating another global crisis and even a collapse of the U.S. economy as a whole.
The ultimate "bubble" mentality, thinking to continue down this road, the U.S. isn't going to implode.
BTW: As far as the teacher's union goes, I do think education, K12 is seriously screwed up in terms of all of the requirements to even be a teacher. Seriously, so much crap and certifications when many don't even know their subject area well enough to teach it correctly. I'm not sure if that's the state regulations, i.e. government, federal and state requiring so much bureaucracy and crap to teach, but whoever is doing that...they make it a nightmare for anyone to learn anything.
Absurd certifications and bogus "education theories", yet the obvious, uh, it's impossible to teach 40 kids, which switch every 50 minutes to 40 different kids, on top of it...., is ignored. It's psycho politics, who can accomplish anything much in such a FUBAR system?
But your point, they have been putting on the teachers, students costs for years. Demanding a teacher pay for supplies for the entire class, such absurd horror stories...
Well, ummm yeah. Congress is making themselves irrelevant by allowing the President to manipulate them and do what he wants them to do. He thinks they work for him, in reality, they work for us.
What is the job of an independent fiduciary? its to look out for their investors!!! clearly they didn't do that here!! why did they wait until the stock was 1.86 to exchange them out of it...!!! this is not a stock this is a STOCK FUND...... and GM's bad news was all over..... they had to have known GM was going to file bankruptcy...on top of all that, they were GM'S BOND holders also.... isn't that CONFLICT of of interest???
What about ERISA? didn't they breach that also???
THEY DID NOT MANAGE THE FUNDS WELL AT ALL!!!WHAT IS OUR GOVERNMENT DOING ABOUT THIS??............NOTHING!!!....... SO SAD!!!!
I don't know who you are and I'm not too big on chasing down people's real identities either.
Censoring on EP has to be direct personal attacks, posting complete Economic Fiction or threat of site sabotage will get someone into trouble (i.e. trying to delete a host of posts or something to that effect).
For example, posting a lobbyist white paper that is a bunch of spun up numbers that one needs to dig deep to see it's complete spin, the stats are not real, is a favorite activity of lobbyists and one reason they get the big bucks.
So, posting one of their papers and claiming it's fact is an EP no no.
there is more info in the FAQ and forum.
That is one amazing stat.
I'm watching cable and the press the most trivial is once again in the headlines. Now it's "Mosqueqate", but the point is because frankly we've lost at ever turn, the attention onto real legislation and policy changes the U.S. needs, desperately, are not even being mentioned.
We already have absurd statements in the press and TV, public arena that are pure spin, confusing the American public on what economic policy does what.
Take "tax cuts", we have uber rich tax cuts being promoted as middle class tax cuts.
Social security, we have the Obama administration saying one thing, doing another.
Even worse is manufacturing and U.S. jobs. Literally while Obama proclaims the great U.S. workers, we know his administration, nothing to do with Congress, is funding the training of foreigners to offshore outsource your job to.
Yes it's harder to wrap your head around these topics, but public awareness is not increasing, it's decreasing and that's not good.
But look, this site takes CT types of videos, like the Obama deception, with a highly critical eye.
That's not saying the complaints about the Federal Reserve are not real, they assuredly are, but there is a fine line between fact and conspiracy.
These yields are far below the yields of the 1932 - 3.4 v 2.7 for 10 year.
But then we have an equally bad credit crunch.
BTW I would publish my name if I thought my comments would not be censored.
We need to give control back to congress
The obama deception
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw
Just found your blog. Liking it!
Whether you lean to the left, right or mixed bag, that's the real issue. We have a government, regardless of party that is completely bought and paid for, run, by corporate lobbyists.
"focused on Wall Street and the rest of the country be damned, except for UI extensions."
Seems that we will never get out of the constant money flowing in the same direction. I think the people that voted for "change" should really have learned the lesson of money. Next time they need to see where and who a candidate is giving support money.
Billionaires and the associations they put together to elect a President won't give money and expect nothing back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_Omen
It indicates a stock market crash (what a great name!) and it triggered on August 12.
The financial press are all ablaze on this but the article says it must hit 3x in a month.
I've never heard of it until now, so hopefully someone who follows this can write up more about it.
But, a stock market crash wouldn't surprise me in the least. I've been more shocked at how high it is considering the suffering of the real economy.
Austerity is always someone else's , not me, of course, I got mine and let me be saved and one of the elect. But the Revolution part shows he and his class is starting to get it. The instability of the system and the rending of the social contract is not indefinite.
On gold, just use Jefferson's playbook - gold standard with a National Bank (Fed) under strict political control. Not the Hanna Republican gold conspiracy of 1896.
As in Jefferson's time, the nation's finances were equally disastrous. All the Founders loathed 'Free Trade'. Does any one want to see the French repeat what they did to the gold based dollar in 1968? Just continue to convert dollars to gold until Nixon gave up in 1971 ( I was in London when the gold window closed, holding Amex dollar traveler's checks!). No can do gold until you get trade working for us not against us.
and Tonelson is no "rookie", he's been around forever, books on Japan manufacturing and trade policy. His main point, Germany has a trade surplus (and the U.S. has a trade deficit w/ EU I might add), is something completely ignored in the U.S. press.
They ignore the U.S. trade deficit.
But, getting numbers confusion is quite easy, very good point that U.S. GDP is annualized, so people realize they are not comparing Apples to Apples. GDP trade data has price multipliers too.
In #6 , Alan Tonelson belittles Vivesh Kumar of AOL’s Daily Finance for his lack of understanding of the effect of trade flows on economic growth. He then demonstrates why he's in no postion to criticize :
Tonelson:
"Meanwhile, Germany’s GDP growth is projected to be two percent for the last quarter – the highest level since Germany’s reunification in 1990. That figure, of course, is no great shakes by recent U.S. standards, even since the crisis."
Here Tonelson makes the mistake that labels him as a rank rookie among financial columnists. Kumar must be grinning.
The U.S. financial press is virtually unique in reporting GDP growth figures in annual terms , even when reporting quarterly data. The GDP growth in Germany that Tonelson scoffs at is actually close to 9% in annual terms. I'd call that "great shakes" , especially compared to the moribund U.S. economy.
Four Deformations of the Apocalypse is an op-ed that reads like Stockman is reading this site.
He goes through how destruction of the U.S. economy started with Nixon and then goes through the major events which got us to this point.
Paul Farrell, over at Market Watch picked it up and expanded in Reagan Insider: How the GOP destroyed the U.S. economy.
They also blast Democrats, but as many on this site will say, we haven't had a real Democrat, what the party supposedly stood for, since LBJ for the most part, a New Deal Democrat.
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