A very good article showing the U.S. is busy offshore outsourcing the most advanced and complex skills jobs and technologies possible, adding to the trade deficit (never mind offshore outsourcing America's future)
Yeah, I read that article this morning and felt the same as you RO. Yves has been getting more and more pointed in her criticism of the O-gang's faux policy "reforms". BTW, did you read any of the comments to her post? The one by commenter "Richard Kline" @ 8:28 am is absolutely right on, IMHO.
Don't worry about what Barney Frank is up to. Come this November he will be voted out of office. Earl Sholley is Barney's challenger, support for Sholley is really taking off!!! check Sholley out:
http://sholleyforcongress.us
These are so silly that I’m astonished anyone is treating this proposal seriously.
I think I hit upon the ignoring of derivatives and that's a huge reason for the financial meltdown by Naked Capitalism really spells it out.
I still think Obama's "Volcker Rule" is better than what we have seen because it might very well break up some of these institutions but I completely agree, as usual, Goldman Sachs is left "untouched".
Anyway, read the post, it's a populist rant that is bullet pointed with detail.
Ummm, the implication being that we should regulate behavior that exacerbates the irrationality of markets?
I don't have any reason to hold that view than I see to hold the view suggested by you question. But, a simple reading of the story that you are quoting would seem to favor my reading over your more sensational interpretation.
"The commission asked the public last April to comment on strategies to cushion the impact of short selling following criticism that hedge funds and other speculators used trading tactics to deepen market retreats that began in 2008."
esp. in claiming there are not enough high skills/educated in the U.S. There is actually a glut of PhDs and that is before this recession.
On your resume, and the overqualified bit, frankly if you need $$, just make up a dumbed down resume and lie. I know that's absurd but the goal is just pay bills, get a paycheck and just match the resume skill level for the job. i.e. if you're applying for "web development" just put down education level, not what degree it is and leave off all positions that are more advanced....going for Home Depot (they hire overqualified unlike other places)....
I love education at the higher level, assuming the institution and professors have integrity, which is also seemingly falling apart, so I wouldn't knock education as a general rule, just that employers are full of it in claiming they want "advanced" skills.
The statement I make above seems to be true as although being educated I am a loser and its obvious to my young son who, sees the obvious hypocrisy in my extolling the virtues of education.
How can I demonstrate the truth without obviously lying to my own son when I tell him he must keep up his grades and go to college when he sees me at home, unemployed and helpless to do anything about it.
But I have degrees, and experience and therefore is perfectly logical that companies used to respond back (this no longer happens) that I am OVERQUALIFIED.
Overqualified?
Come on! I am not that educated that endowed with special talents that I am overqualified. I would say i'm pretty under qualified for what i understood to be the required levels of education necessary for respectable positions in industry etc.
In fact up until the early 90's this seemed to be true and I could provide for my growing family and not worry about how am I going to survive or pay for a simple home repair or any other expenditure beyond a few hundred dollars, without sacrificing my survivability. SURVIVAL....but the government (yeah of the people, for the people and what was that last one ..? by..or lies to the people?
Lies yes..more and more swill from them whose serves which has become an acronym for those who have their hand in the till and our stimulating foreign economies.
Money does not have any borders and so you see they will benefit from more jobs in india whereas we poo folk who lives in this country can't find work!
SO they government has earned an honorary BS.
I am going to rant and rave because this has effected me personally and I am increasingly incensed at the debate when its clear as day as we see and hear and touch those whose lives and livelyhood destroyed by those, representatives?
BS
I am commenting on an opinion stated on this blog purporting that the government is lying to us about there not being enough skilled workers to fill job vacancies presumably in technical fields:
When issues strike home they become personal and when the governments actions effect me at home then I become personally involved because the government is hitting me where it hurts the most: The pocket book let alone my self respect.
With over 30 years of experience in a wide range of disciplines and two degrees in the sciences you would think I would have businesses calling me up and begging me to take a job.
The cold hard reality is that I get zero responses from my resume, zero responses from my phone calls, zero responses from my webpage advertising my skill set on the internet.
Now if the government is not lying then .... well the government is just plain lying.
Needless to say there are no jobs for technically competent people and what jobs there are I am as well as many I know; that I am over qualified!
How can that be if there is a lack of trained skilled and educated individuals?
Further the almost cruel hoax is in trying to justify to my 14 year old son that he will find gainful employment through education.
Its that apparent when he sees me becoming increasingly frustrated and disenchanted; spending my days desperately trying to find employment but always with the response:
"We no longer have our facilities here in the US".
OR "most of our manufacturing is now down overseas"
"We just have a small office here in the states and all of our research, development and manufacturing are done elsewhere"
So this is personal and this is about the government selling our economic vitality , actively and openly , selling our economic vitality and future to foreign governments.
I even heard a politician state that , in effect, how can we expect them to cut carbon emissions if we can;t provide them with jobs.
This to me is treason because it is helping a country that is philosophically and ideologically opposed to this country and to democracy.
But then again I am angry and I tend to be that way whenever someone strikes me at home, strikes me so that it hurts and it creates concern and real fear that my future has been compromised and that my son's future is all but forgotten during the exchanges and deals made without our knowledge by our duly elected representatives.
Not one to become outspoken about politics - there is a time to act and if we do not act now there may never be a time to act because we will be too busy trying to survive and people too busy with the details of survival do not have the time or energy to actively stand up for their rights.
That, we all know, is the perfect time for new leaders to emerge who promise us what we are desperate for and as we are lead away deluded we remain unemployed, disenfranchised and more and more helpless as those in power gain more and purchase still more with the lifeblood of this countries wealth.
I know I sound angry and probably irrational. But there is no logic to what is happening its pure and unmitigated greed and abuse of power by those in government.
As long as we pretend and allow those in power to lie to us we are at fault and so we need to stand up and demand accountability.
Who are we but the people to continue to take this crap from the government?
So yes more lies...statistics about unemployment only being 10-12 percent yet we see tent cities...we see more and more of the obvious.
The truth is too painful and as we reel from its sinister implications we lose more ground and more jobs and pretty soon its all academic because there will not be any country to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic. Which by the way is what our REPRESENTATIVES are supposed to defend that document..what is it called..
constipati.. constitution!
if there are any organizations that put the government to task on this where are they?
Information is the key to freedom by lying to us they take our freedoms away
Governments eat money -- it's what they do. Whoever controls the government wants money, and there are taxes in place that provide cash flow. People hate to pay taxes so they figure out tax avoidance strategies -- it's what they do. It costs me about a week's work to pay the taxes on my office, but I do do get a few things in return -- fire, police, roads, ambulance, etc. But get a new tax on the ballot and people will vote it down. So they sneak new ones in that don't require voter approval (read your phone or electric bill and you find some of them).
Then there are the other taxes you don't see. The Fed has figured out a clever one -- tax the savings of ordinary Americans so the banks can have a "free money" subsidy. They do this by keeping interest rates so low that savers are robbed of the time value of money while banks reap a windfall. If that ain't transfer of wealth, I don't know what is. BTW, my understanding is that the discount window is there for banks (like GS?) who "need" the money -- -- the discount window for these birds should have been slammed shut long ago. They;re doing fine on their own.
With these bank failure, estimated cost to FDIC in 2010 has crossed $1 billion.
Check how much it cost to FDIC each month, each state at :
http://portalseven.com/banks/Failed_Banks_FDIC_Cost.jsp
Even better, lets eliminate property taxes all together. They have existed only recently in the timeline of our history. You are only renting from the government if they can seize your property because of property taxes.
10th Amendment needs to be pushed hard here and decentralize govt as the constitution mandates. This will be a huge step to force it to live within means.
Dodd will get a cushy job at Fannie or Fred maybe, like Rahmbo and Gorelick. Rahmbo got $140k for 12 mos of thumb twiddling, and Gorelick a mere $750K bonus + pay, for her Clinton loyalties and bundling - and maybe that wall of seperation that enabled 911, which only govt has benefitted from, per it's usual MO's; the USS Maine, Lusitania, Pearl, Tonkin - every single one a bankster/micc get richer fraud.
I'm not sure that one can overstate the significance (or should I say ominous forboding) of this ruling. We have 3 branches of government here in USAnistan, and all appear to be controlled and/or occupied by Corporatists.
Yesterday’s decision makes the US a soft fascist state. Roosevelt’s definition of fascism was control of government by corporate interests. Unlimited money means that private interests can dump billions into elections if they choose. Given that the government can, will, and has rewarded them with trillions, as in the bailouts, or is thinking about doing so in HCR, by forcing millions of Americans to buy their products the return on investment is so good that I would argue that corporations have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to buy out government - after all if you pay a million to get a billion, or a billion to get a trillion, that’s far far better returns than are avaiable anywhere else.
{snip}
Add to this the US’s complete inability to manage its economic affairs, and its refusal to fix its profound structural problems, whether in the financial system, the education system, the military, concrete infrastructure, technology or anything else and I cannot see a likely scenario where the US turns things around. The US’s problems in almost every area amount to “monied interests are making a killing on business as usual, and ologopolistic markets and will do anything they can to make sure the problem isn’t fixed”.
Even before they had the ability to dump unlimited money into the political system, they virtually controlled Washington. This will put their influence on steroids. Any congressperson who goes against their interests can be threatened by what amounts to unlimited money. And any one who does their bidding can be rewarded with so much money their reelection is virtually secure.
This decision makes the US’s recovery from its decline even more unlikely than before—and before it was still very unlikely. Absolute catastrophe will have to occur before people are angry enough and corporations weak enough for their (sic) to even be a chance.
(my emphasis added)
What more can I say, except that maybe we should reconsider our hegemonic overreach vis a vis The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It does seem to me that we are approaching the end of American exceptionalism, aka the American Empire.
Smoke and Mirrors
But why? Dig a little deeper.
Who is one of the largest financiers of the Dem Party?
Bob, I respect you like to look at this from a purely objective econ perspective, but we can't discount the power of financing and political parties.
Put another way, I happen to know someone in the upper echelons of the Wall St. ladder who asked me, "Why are W.S, bankers being so demonized by the media?"
To which I said, "Well, you can certainly see it's not so hard to fathom that Wall St was able to buy the regulations they wanted."
Okay, here's what we have to do. We MUST elect a third party candidate if ONLY TO PROVE THAT WE, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO ACT ON OUR FRUSTRATIONS AND DISAPPOINTMENT. Who that candidate is does not matter. No candidate can afford to willingly break the cycle of taking big money from the the corporations. We are fools to think that it will happen on its own. But as long as we sit back and let the cycle continue, then we are impotent, and who wouldn't walk over the impotent if they continue to lay down for you.
A vote for the 3rd party candidate has alwasy been a vote of protest. So let's do it...and as long as we are going down that road, let's support a 3rd party candidate that wants to legalize marijuana (hey...why not)
Geithner is on a roll. He basically went on NPR and undermined the "Volcker rule" almost immediately. Now he's saying that Freddie/Fannie reforms cannot happen (legislatively) until 2011....uh, why, they are hemorrhaging money!
So, if Obama wants to get a clue here and actually get somewhere with his financial reforms.....well, it's becoming increasingly obvious Geithner has got to go.
Will he do it? It's all or nothing if they want to have any effect on real financial reform here....
right now it seems they are putting their big toe into the financial reform (real reform) water and testing the heat but to have blow back almost immediately, publicly from the Treas. Sec. most people following this want gone anyway and under the most intense scandal because of the NY Fed's lack of action/AIG payout....
well.....
It also looks tittering, just another hard blow from public outrage, that Bernanke is not going to get confirmed.
It's pretty obvious that the public outrage is on max high and if this government is going to do something, well, they had better jump off of the fence and do it...
I have no idea why they think they can continue to let the status quo continue and believe anything would change. But they are acting like a bunch of chickens with no balls. They should just do it, and rip it off like a nasty bandage off of a wound. If they did, it would change the entire mindset of Congress and public perceptions on what the gov. can really do ....and the reality that governments, not banks, are supposed to be running the nation.
A very good article showing the U.S. is busy offshore outsourcing the most advanced and complex skills jobs and technologies possible, adding to the trade deficit (never mind offshore outsourcing America's future)
industry week.
This week is a host of important economic indicators, the biggest being GDP on Friday.
Because last week had so much wild news, a host of EIs were not looked at. So to keep the site consistent, I'm going through them now and posting.
Housing data is coming out this week, so I'll do all of those in one shot.
Yeah, I read that article this morning and felt the same as you RO. Yves has been getting more and more pointed in her criticism of the O-gang's faux policy "reforms". BTW, did you read any of the comments to her post? The one by commenter "Richard Kline" @ 8:28 am is absolutely right on, IMHO.
Don't worry about what Barney Frank is up to. Come this November he will be voted out of office. Earl Sholley is Barney's challenger, support for Sholley is really taking off!!! check Sholley out:
http://sholleyforcongress.us
the real nasty is a cramer bit about 7:50 minutes into the thing. Title is Indecision 2010 - the Re-enchanging.
The whole thing is a scream but this is particularly amusing.
This is a must read, Proposed Restrictions on Proprietary Trading are a joke.
I think I hit upon the ignoring of derivatives and that's a huge reason for the financial meltdown by Naked Capitalism really spells it out.
I still think Obama's "Volcker Rule" is better than what we have seen because it might very well break up some of these institutions but I completely agree, as usual, Goldman Sachs is left "untouched".
Anyway, read the post, it's a populist rant that is bullet pointed with detail.
Ummm, the implication being that we should regulate behavior that exacerbates the irrationality of markets?
I don't have any reason to hold that view than I see to hold the view suggested by you question. But, a simple reading of the story that you are quoting would seem to favor my reading over your more sensational interpretation.
"The commission asked the public last April to comment on strategies to cushion the impact of short selling following criticism that hedge funds and other speculators used trading tactics to deepen market retreats that began in 2008."
esp. in claiming there are not enough high skills/educated in the U.S. There is actually a glut of PhDs and that is before this recession.
On your resume, and the overqualified bit, frankly if you need $$, just make up a dumbed down resume and lie. I know that's absurd but the goal is just pay bills, get a paycheck and just match the resume skill level for the job. i.e. if you're applying for "web development" just put down education level, not what degree it is and leave off all positions that are more advanced....going for Home Depot (they hire overqualified unlike other places)....
I love education at the higher level, assuming the institution and professors have integrity, which is also seemingly falling apart, so I wouldn't knock education as a general rule, just that employers are full of it in claiming they want "advanced" skills.
The statement I make above seems to be true as although being educated I am a loser and its obvious to my young son who, sees the obvious hypocrisy in my extolling the virtues of education.
How can I demonstrate the truth without obviously lying to my own son when I tell him he must keep up his grades and go to college when he sees me at home, unemployed and helpless to do anything about it.
But I have degrees, and experience and therefore is perfectly logical that companies used to respond back (this no longer happens) that I am OVERQUALIFIED.
Overqualified?
Come on! I am not that educated that endowed with special talents that I am overqualified. I would say i'm pretty under qualified for what i understood to be the required levels of education necessary for respectable positions in industry etc.
In fact up until the early 90's this seemed to be true and I could provide for my growing family and not worry about how am I going to survive or pay for a simple home repair or any other expenditure beyond a few hundred dollars, without sacrificing my survivability. SURVIVAL....but the government (yeah of the people, for the people and what was that last one ..? by..or lies to the people?
Lies yes..more and more swill from them whose serves which has become an acronym for those who have their hand in the till and our stimulating foreign economies.
Money does not have any borders and so you see they will benefit from more jobs in india whereas we poo folk who lives in this country can't find work!
SO they government has earned an honorary BS.
I am going to rant and rave because this has effected me personally and I am increasingly incensed at the debate when its clear as day as we see and hear and touch those whose lives and livelyhood destroyed by those, representatives?
BS
I am commenting on an opinion stated on this blog purporting that the government is lying to us about there not being enough skilled workers to fill job vacancies presumably in technical fields:
When issues strike home they become personal and when the governments actions effect me at home then I become personally involved because the government is hitting me where it hurts the most: The pocket book let alone my self respect.
With over 30 years of experience in a wide range of disciplines and two degrees in the sciences you would think I would have businesses calling me up and begging me to take a job.
The cold hard reality is that I get zero responses from my resume, zero responses from my phone calls, zero responses from my webpage advertising my skill set on the internet.
Now if the government is not lying then .... well the government is just plain lying.
Needless to say there are no jobs for technically competent people and what jobs there are I am as well as many I know; that I am over qualified!
How can that be if there is a lack of trained skilled and educated individuals?
Further the almost cruel hoax is in trying to justify to my 14 year old son that he will find gainful employment through education.
Its that apparent when he sees me becoming increasingly frustrated and disenchanted; spending my days desperately trying to find employment but always with the response:
"We no longer have our facilities here in the US".
OR "most of our manufacturing is now down overseas"
"We just have a small office here in the states and all of our research, development and manufacturing are done elsewhere"
So this is personal and this is about the government selling our economic vitality , actively and openly , selling our economic vitality and future to foreign governments.
I even heard a politician state that , in effect, how can we expect them to cut carbon emissions if we can;t provide them with jobs.
This to me is treason because it is helping a country that is philosophically and ideologically opposed to this country and to democracy.
But then again I am angry and I tend to be that way whenever someone strikes me at home, strikes me so that it hurts and it creates concern and real fear that my future has been compromised and that my son's future is all but forgotten during the exchanges and deals made without our knowledge by our duly elected representatives.
Not one to become outspoken about politics - there is a time to act and if we do not act now there may never be a time to act because we will be too busy trying to survive and people too busy with the details of survival do not have the time or energy to actively stand up for their rights.
That, we all know, is the perfect time for new leaders to emerge who promise us what we are desperate for and as we are lead away deluded we remain unemployed, disenfranchised and more and more helpless as those in power gain more and purchase still more with the lifeblood of this countries wealth.
I know I sound angry and probably irrational. But there is no logic to what is happening its pure and unmitigated greed and abuse of power by those in government.
As long as we pretend and allow those in power to lie to us we are at fault and so we need to stand up and demand accountability.
Who are we but the people to continue to take this crap from the government?
So yes more lies...statistics about unemployment only being 10-12 percent yet we see tent cities...we see more and more of the obvious.
The truth is too painful and as we reel from its sinister implications we lose more ground and more jobs and pretty soon its all academic because there will not be any country to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic. Which by the way is what our REPRESENTATIVES are supposed to defend that document..what is it called..
constipati.. constitution!
if there are any organizations that put the government to task on this where are they?
Information is the key to freedom by lying to us they take our freedoms away
HELL YES THEY ARE LYING
Governments eat money -- it's what they do. Whoever controls the government wants money, and there are taxes in place that provide cash flow. People hate to pay taxes so they figure out tax avoidance strategies -- it's what they do. It costs me about a week's work to pay the taxes on my office, but I do do get a few things in return -- fire, police, roads, ambulance, etc. But get a new tax on the ballot and people will vote it down. So they sneak new ones in that don't require voter approval (read your phone or electric bill and you find some of them).
Then there are the other taxes you don't see. The Fed has figured out a clever one -- tax the savings of ordinary Americans so the banks can have a "free money" subsidy. They do this by keeping interest rates so low that savers are robbed of the time value of money while banks reap a windfall. If that ain't transfer of wealth, I don't know what is. BTW, my understanding is that the discount window is there for banks (like GS?) who "need" the money -- -- the discount window for these birds should have been slammed shut long ago. They;re doing fine on their own.
Frank T.
If this is just a swiss cheese mask for 'reform' rather than real reform Obama exposes himself as the biggest con man in US history.
If he institutes real reform and starts cleaning out the scumbags from his circle he could still have a huge positive effect on the country's future.
With these bank failure, estimated cost to FDIC in 2010 has crossed $1 billion.
Check how much it cost to FDIC each month, each state at :
http://portalseven.com/banks/Failed_Banks_FDIC_Cost.jsp
Even better, lets eliminate property taxes all together. They have existed only recently in the timeline of our history. You are only renting from the government if they can seize your property because of property taxes.
10th Amendment needs to be pushed hard here and decentralize govt as the constitution mandates. This will be a huge step to force it to live within means.
Dodd will get a cushy job at Fannie or Fred maybe, like Rahmbo and Gorelick. Rahmbo got $140k for 12 mos of thumb twiddling, and Gorelick a mere $750K bonus + pay, for her Clinton loyalties and bundling - and maybe that wall of seperation that enabled 911, which only govt has benefitted from, per it's usual MO's; the USS Maine, Lusitania, Pearl, Tonkin - every single one a bankster/micc get richer fraud.
I'm not sure that one can overstate the significance (or should I say ominous forboding) of this ruling. We have 3 branches of government here in USAnistan, and all appear to be controlled and/or occupied by Corporatists.
To wit, please consider Ian Welsh's observation today, The Unvarnished Truth About The US.
{snip}
(my emphasis added)
What more can I say, except that maybe we should reconsider our hegemonic overreach vis a vis The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It does seem to me that we are approaching the end of American exceptionalism, aka the American Empire.
Smoke and Mirrors
But why? Dig a little deeper.
Who is one of the largest financiers of the Dem Party?
Bob, I respect you like to look at this from a purely objective econ perspective, but we can't discount the power of financing and political parties.
Put another way, I happen to know someone in the upper echelons of the Wall St. ladder who asked me, "Why are W.S, bankers being so demonized by the media?"
To which I said, "Well, you can certainly see it's not so hard to fathom that Wall St was able to buy the regulations they wanted."
Okay, here's what we have to do. We MUST elect a third party candidate if ONLY TO PROVE THAT WE, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE WILLING TO ACT ON OUR FRUSTRATIONS AND DISAPPOINTMENT. Who that candidate is does not matter. No candidate can afford to willingly break the cycle of taking big money from the the corporations. We are fools to think that it will happen on its own. But as long as we sit back and let the cycle continue, then we are impotent, and who wouldn't walk over the impotent if they continue to lay down for you.
A vote for the 3rd party candidate has alwasy been a vote of protest. So let's do it...and as long as we are going down that road, let's support a 3rd party candidate that wants to legalize marijuana (hey...why not)
Geithner is on a roll. He basically went on NPR and undermined the "Volcker rule" almost immediately. Now he's saying that Freddie/Fannie reforms cannot happen (legislatively) until 2011....uh, why, they are hemorrhaging money!
So, if Obama wants to get a clue here and actually get somewhere with his financial reforms.....well, it's becoming increasingly obvious Geithner has got to go.
Will he do it? It's all or nothing if they want to have any effect on real financial reform here....
right now it seems they are putting their big toe into the financial reform (real reform) water and testing the heat but to have blow back almost immediately, publicly from the Treas. Sec. most people following this want gone anyway and under the most intense scandal because of the NY Fed's lack of action/AIG payout....
well.....
It also looks tittering, just another hard blow from public outrage, that Bernanke is not going to get confirmed.
It's pretty obvious that the public outrage is on max high and if this government is going to do something, well, they had better jump off of the fence and do it...
I have no idea why they think they can continue to let the status quo continue and believe anything would change. But they are acting like a bunch of chickens with no balls. They should just do it, and rip it off like a nasty bandage off of a wound. If they did, it would change the entire mindset of Congress and public perceptions on what the gov. can really do ....and the reality that governments, not banks, are supposed to be running the nation.
According to phone logs Geithner spoke to Warren Buffett - a big investor in Goldman Sachs and Lloyd Blankfein the day of the AIG bailout.
Do you think they were planning a golf trip? Hell NO.
Geithner was getting wiring instructions for the $33 BILLION that want to Goldman Sachs!
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
Totally restructure home finance system. A combined entity can start the process as Mortgage Credit Institution.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
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