The perfect poster city for (in actuality, against) globalization: Ciudad Juarez, where that incredible number of drug-related killings occur multiple times daily.
Thanks goes to all those banksters, corporate thieves and criminals, who can all be described economically as "debt-financed billionaires."
(Hate to sound so depressing, but reality can be a bummer.)
With what's going to be happening over the next several years I'll be surprised if there's even a presidency left to aspire to (speaking to any and all crooks, that is).
Nope, it's over. As John Kenneth Galbraith wryly noted in one of his books, there's never been a scandal in the Fed, least none that's ever been reported (my paraphrasing).
The Fed, as everyone who has been paying attention has observed, is one galactic black hole, where no light nor transparency ever escapes from.
When everything is rigged, the system becomes obvious. Those who rig it at the lowest end, in order to survive, end up in jail, while those who rig it at the highest end, walk away with millions, billions and trillions, and thrive.
Same old story: Sen. Obama received the largest donations of any candidate from the healthcare/insurance industry, and President Obama delivers.
Plus, it sets a legislative legal precedent for allowing the federal government, at the behest of whatever industry is paying it bribes, to mandate future purchases from private companies and corporations.
Plus, by adding that executive order verbiage on anti-abortion, it allows an ungodly amount of lattitude in refusing pregnant mothers (by the insurance companies, that is) a number of treatments as it "might" induce a "possible" miscarriage, i.e., "abortion."
Plus, of course, on the financial end, much super-leveraging can now be done by health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry with the promise of mandated future remittances.
(Securitizations gone wild!!!!)
Now that was a very crucial, and overlooked, economics point!
They've done for the health insurance industry exactly what the Bush administration (with the help of Sen. Kennedy - who voted for it) did for the pharmaceutical industry when they put in that legislation (Medicare Part or Section D) for the pharmaceutical price-fixing, as well as legislate against incoming cheaper medical drugs from Canada (or elsewhere).
Once the Supreme Court privatized emminent domain with that decision of theirs regarding that Connecticut neighborhood, the writing was most definitely on the wall.
"Gallup classifies Americans as underemployed if they are unemployed or working part-time but wanting full-time work. "
So the engineer that is now working full-time at WalMart is NOT considered UNDERemployed??
Or the college grad that is employed full time in a minimum wage job is NOT considered UNDERemployed??
Gallup's definition of underemployed is obviously wrong. If underemployment is 20% using Gallup's definition then what would it be - maybe 35% - using the correct definition.
And some clowns in Congress can say - with a straight face - there's a skills shortage!!!
is bullshit. That, was not part of corporate strategy during the height of the U.S. economy, yet first up to increase profits and reduce costs they squeeze workers.
and money. Wall Street holds all the cards including allies in Congress and White House. For this to work, WH was going to have take sides and fight for real reform. Something they are not capable of and frankly didn't want to do.
Should we be surprised based on the players in game? Obama Administration loaded with Hamilton Project thinkers and Congress owned by Wall Street. The game was fixed from the start. The only questions were how to get something passed that appeared like reform but really wasn't and how to craft a strong enough band-aid to prevent something happening again before Obama can finish his second term (assuming he wins one)?
About a month ago, both Invictus, over at the Bonddad blog, and Mish thought that a Connecticut school district teacher’s union agreement to accept pay cuts was good news. I wrote a comment to Invictus noting how interesting it was, given the ideological spread (left to right) between him and Mish, that both were in agreement on the reduction of wages.
A similar convergence in thinking between left and right can be seen comparing this note on Chicago Fed National Activity Index with Mish’s on the same subject.
Not to worry: Bondadd is still seeing a ‘chicken in every pot’. See: “The stimulus did work Virginia”.
These here economic times is get’n curious’er and curious’er – sur’nuf!
Yup, anything for the national interest, general welfare, public domain is under attack. I'm so surprised libraries haven't been privatized.
On health care "reform", while Democrats are pleased as punch, I'm torn. Is it really that tough to pass anything, anything at all, that is not written 100%, with "here's a campaign contribution/book deal/job for relative x/whatever deal" in Congress and that is why they are so pleased?
Myself, when I starting thinking about credit ratings agencies literally being able to control, through downgrades, the interest on sovereign debt, it hit me just how powerful these corporations are. I know many have evaluations/revenues larger than most countries GDP.
I've written probably 100 pieces at this point on what needs to happen, digging into every detail I can find on Financial Armageddon.
(be nice if you linked to a few! ;))
But the bottom line is people need to wake up real fast and realize we aren't getting the reforms needed on the biggest theft yet of the general public.
Even some of our advocates are getting sucked into the CFPA instead of focusing in on derivatives as well as the credit ratings agencies.
He already has kept control of the banks that own the Fed now he is making his play for keeping control of the rest by saying that without that control the Fed will not have enough of a view of the market to foresee problems.
Sure just like they 'saw' the problems in 2008?
History is being rewritten at break neck speed these days.
Frank has already said any bill that puts some new entity under Federal Reserve control is dead on arrival there.
Derivatives should be regulated as an insurance rather than a financial instrument. No talk of strict federal insurance regulation either despite $185 billion doled out to AIG and aid to a few more big insurance companies also.
All this is an after thought to appease the ignorant masses.
which is to take excessive risk. Capitalism is inherently unstable because of that. Regulation is suppose to make it relatively stable. It is no surprise that de-regulation or no regulation led to various crises in our history. How easily we forget the Great Depression and S&L crisis?
American capitalism is even worse because it allows for excessive risk but then bails out the risk takers instead of the victims of the risk takers.
Doesn't mean we just lay down, at least this is the reason EP exists in a large part. A place to scream bloody murder and scream loudly on this one everyone should!
But in terms of the Banksters not only owning this government, I suspect they own the world....
Magically believing they would be interested in saving the global or U.S. economy, in spite the fact they will go down themselves on the next Economic Armageddon....no, I didn't expect it.
These guys remind me of addicts. Get their junk at all costs, even when it means their own demise.
Financial oligarchy owns Washington. Derivatives reform and braking up TBTF was never going to happen with current line up in Washington. But the fight is not over - maybe it will take another financial crisis to realize the error of our ways. It will happen again because nothing in the legislation stops the causes of the crisis.
That said, if it's not seriously changed on the Senate floor we are seriously screwed. I also am parsing through the manager's amendment and as expected, there are hundreds of references to other bills, so tracing out what changed what, unless we can find a financial legislative analysis speed reader, I doubt anyone will find the changes in time.
That's the image when I read especially DOL/BLS statistics on labor. God. First up, before any policy, anywhere tries to increase the labor supply, I'm sorry, this entire agency's data methods needs to be completely overhauled and also put in real time.
Odds are they would need legislation to change a host of things but of all of the government stats publicly available, this is the one which is most hosed. And it's critical because a host of other policies are based on this data....how can one make sane policies (which of course is a joke, we have lobbyist written policies and bills) but still, how can one stand a chance with bad data?
This is the first decade with negative job growth. The total number of tech jobs has declined.
What they are doing now is trying to claim that immigration helps the economy and raises wages....in order to advance that global migration agenda....
i.e. cannot offshore outsource the job, import the labor instead.
The dual of offshore outsourcing. It's really bad, I've seen some amazing white papers as of late where literally they are manipulating at the equation level. Stuff like trying to claim there is no substitution effect at all...
literally try to set those variables to zero in the equations so it comes out the way they wish to spin it.
STEM jobs, the total number has declined in the past decade, significantly. So, of course that's the #1 target area for this agenda.
Whenever John Boehner refers to anyone as "punks" it is important to recall that he never made it through Navy basic training back in 1968 (during Vietname and the draft), although later feloniously claimed that he had served in the US military during Vietnam.
To have lawfully claimed he served in the US military, he would have had to have served at least six months of active duty.
Yes, John Boehner (a k a, John "the bedwetter" Boehner - the reason his fellow basic trainees gave for his failure)should know an awesome amount about punkdom.
Disclaimer: the comments above are in no way intended to offend any citizen suffering from incontinence, it is only intended to offend rodger-dodger Boehner.
I recall reading the very same prediction for the early years of the 21st century, as predicted some years back by Peter G. Peterson (Blackstone Group, Council on Foreign Relations, NY Fed, Concord Coalition, Peterson Institute, Peter G. Peterson Foundation, etc.); therefore, he believed all American jobs should be offshored.
Since this has come to pass, one wonders what their next solution will be?
An excellent new book, Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields, by Charles Bowden excellently details the future.
The perfect poster city for (in actuality, against) globalization: Ciudad Juarez, where that incredible number of drug-related killings occur multiple times daily.
Thanks goes to all those banksters, corporate thieves and criminals, who can all be described economically as "debt-financed billionaires."
(Hate to sound so depressing, but reality can be a bummer.)
With what's going to be happening over the next several years I'll be surprised if there's even a presidency left to aspire to (speaking to any and all crooks, that is).
Nope, it's over. As John Kenneth Galbraith wryly noted in one of his books, there's never been a scandal in the Fed, least none that's ever been reported (my paraphrasing).
The Fed, as everyone who has been paying attention has observed, is one galactic black hole, where no light nor transparency ever escapes from.
When everything is rigged, the system becomes obvious. Those who rig it at the lowest end, in order to survive, end up in jail, while those who rig it at the highest end, walk away with millions, billions and trillions, and thrive.
Same old story: Sen. Obama received the largest donations of any candidate from the healthcare/insurance industry, and President Obama delivers.
Everythis is rigged and screwed.
This article by Greenwald really nails it with regard to this legislation.
Plus, it sets a legislative legal precedent for allowing the federal government, at the behest of whatever industry is paying it bribes, to mandate future purchases from private companies and corporations.
Plus, by adding that executive order verbiage on anti-abortion, it allows an ungodly amount of lattitude in refusing pregnant mothers (by the insurance companies, that is) a number of treatments as it "might" induce a "possible" miscarriage, i.e., "abortion."
Plus, of course, on the financial end, much super-leveraging can now be done by health insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry with the promise of mandated future remittances.
(Securitizations gone wild!!!!)
Now that was a very crucial, and overlooked, economics point!
They've done for the health insurance industry exactly what the Bush administration (with the help of Sen. Kennedy - who voted for it) did for the pharmaceutical industry when they put in that legislation (Medicare Part or Section D) for the pharmaceutical price-fixing, as well as legislate against incoming cheaper medical drugs from Canada (or elsewhere).
Once the Supreme Court privatized emminent domain with that decision of theirs regarding that Connecticut neighborhood, the writing was most definitely on the wall.
"Gallup classifies Americans as underemployed if they are unemployed or working part-time but wanting full-time work. "
So the engineer that is now working full-time at WalMart is NOT considered UNDERemployed??
Or the college grad that is employed full time in a minimum wage job is NOT considered UNDERemployed??
Gallup's definition of underemployed is obviously wrong. If underemployment is 20% using Gallup's definition then what would it be - maybe 35% - using the correct definition.
And some clowns in Congress can say - with a straight face - there's a skills shortage!!!
is bullshit. That, was not part of corporate strategy during the height of the U.S. economy, yet first up to increase profits and reduce costs they squeeze workers.
and money. Wall Street holds all the cards including allies in Congress and White House. For this to work, WH was going to have take sides and fight for real reform. Something they are not capable of and frankly didn't want to do.
Should we be surprised based on the players in game? Obama Administration loaded with Hamilton Project thinkers and Congress owned by Wall Street. The game was fixed from the start. The only questions were how to get something passed that appeared like reform but really wasn't and how to craft a strong enough band-aid to prevent something happening again before Obama can finish his second term (assuming he wins one)?
As for mortgages, this was another rigged game. The warnings were there as far back as May 2009 and actually much later that financial conglomerates were holding out for such a deal from Treasury. The home mortgage system needs to be totally restructured and could be a means to make these TBTF institutions smaller but it will take political will and courage to pull it off - the proposal are out there.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
About a month ago, both Invictus, over at the Bonddad blog, and Mish thought that a Connecticut school district teacher’s union agreement to accept pay cuts was good news. I wrote a comment to Invictus noting how interesting it was, given the ideological spread (left to right) between him and Mish, that both were in agreement on the reduction of wages.
A similar convergence in thinking between left and right can be seen comparing this note on Chicago Fed National Activity Index with Mish’s on the same subject.
Not to worry: Bondadd is still seeing a ‘chicken in every pot’. See: “The stimulus did work Virginia”.
These here economic times is get’n curious’er and curious’er – sur’nuf!
It's a french word. Voilà.
Yup, anything for the national interest, general welfare, public domain is under attack. I'm so surprised libraries haven't been privatized.
On health care "reform", while Democrats are pleased as punch, I'm torn. Is it really that tough to pass anything, anything at all, that is not written 100%, with "here's a campaign contribution/book deal/job for relative x/whatever deal" in Congress and that is why they are so pleased?
Myself, when I starting thinking about credit ratings agencies literally being able to control, through downgrades, the interest on sovereign debt, it hit me just how powerful these corporations are. I know many have evaluations/revenues larger than most countries GDP.
I've written probably 100 pieces at this point on what needs to happen, digging into every detail I can find on Financial Armageddon.
(be nice if you linked to a few! ;))
But the bottom line is people need to wake up real fast and realize we aren't getting the reforms needed on the biggest theft yet of the general public.
Even some of our advocates are getting sucked into the CFPA instead of focusing in on derivatives as well as the credit ratings agencies.
He already has kept control of the banks that own the Fed now he is making his play for keeping control of the rest by saying that without that control the Fed will not have enough of a view of the market to foresee problems.
Sure just like they 'saw' the problems in 2008?
History is being rewritten at break neck speed these days.
Frank has already said any bill that puts some new entity under Federal Reserve control is dead on arrival there.
Derivatives should be regulated as an insurance rather than a financial instrument. No talk of strict federal insurance regulation either despite $185 billion doled out to AIG and aid to a few more big insurance companies also.
All this is an after thought to appease the ignorant masses.
which is to take excessive risk. Capitalism is inherently unstable because of that. Regulation is suppose to make it relatively stable. It is no surprise that de-regulation or no regulation led to various crises in our history. How easily we forget the Great Depression and S&L crisis?
American capitalism is even worse because it allows for excessive risk but then bails out the risk takers instead of the victims of the risk takers.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
Doesn't mean we just lay down, at least this is the reason EP exists in a large part. A place to scream bloody murder and scream loudly on this one everyone should!
But in terms of the Banksters not only owning this government, I suspect they own the world....
Magically believing they would be interested in saving the global or U.S. economy, in spite the fact they will go down themselves on the next Economic Armageddon....no, I didn't expect it.
These guys remind me of addicts. Get their junk at all costs, even when it means their own demise.
Financial oligarchy owns Washington. Derivatives reform and braking up TBTF was never going to happen with current line up in Washington. But the fight is not over - maybe it will take another financial crisis to realize the error of our ways. It will happen again because nothing in the legislation stops the causes of the crisis.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
That said, if it's not seriously changed on the Senate floor we are seriously screwed. I also am parsing through the manager's amendment and as expected, there are hundreds of references to other bills, so tracing out what changed what, unless we can find a financial legislative analysis speed reader, I doubt anyone will find the changes in time.
That's the image when I read especially DOL/BLS statistics on labor. God. First up, before any policy, anywhere tries to increase the labor supply, I'm sorry, this entire agency's data methods needs to be completely overhauled and also put in real time.
Odds are they would need legislation to change a host of things but of all of the government stats publicly available, this is the one which is most hosed. And it's critical because a host of other policies are based on this data....how can one make sane policies (which of course is a joke, we have lobbyist written policies and bills) but still, how can one stand a chance with bad data?
This is the first decade with negative job growth. The total number of tech jobs has declined.
What they are doing now is trying to claim that immigration helps the economy and raises wages....in order to advance that global migration agenda....
i.e. cannot offshore outsource the job, import the labor instead.
The dual of offshore outsourcing. It's really bad, I've seen some amazing white papers as of late where literally they are manipulating at the equation level. Stuff like trying to claim there is no substitution effect at all...
literally try to set those variables to zero in the equations so it comes out the way they wish to spin it.
STEM jobs, the total number has declined in the past decade, significantly. So, of course that's the #1 target area for this agenda.
Whenever John Boehner refers to anyone as "punks" it is important to recall that he never made it through Navy basic training back in 1968 (during Vietname and the draft), although later feloniously claimed that he had served in the US military during Vietnam.
To have lawfully claimed he served in the US military, he would have had to have served at least six months of active duty.
Yes, John Boehner (a k a, John "the bedwetter" Boehner - the reason his fellow basic trainees gave for his failure)should know an awesome amount about punkdom.
Disclaimer: the comments above are in no way intended to offend any citizen suffering from incontinence, it is only intended to offend rodger-dodger Boehner.
I recall reading the very same prediction for the early years of the 21st century, as predicted some years back by Peter G. Peterson (Blackstone Group, Council on Foreign Relations, NY Fed, Concord Coalition, Peterson Institute, Peter G. Peterson Foundation, etc.); therefore, he believed all American jobs should be offshored.
Since this has come to pass, one wonders what their next solution will be?
Zerohedge has a great piece on the coming LBO bubble.
How to Capitalize on the Upcoming, Irrationally Exuberant LBO Bubble. Good follow up on this piece.
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