Your take on Georgia is right on Robert. I would also add Alabama in this category. The failed banks were largely state chartered banks heavily investing in the residential and commercial construction bubble throughout the Southeast and Arizona. Remember, these are among the reddest of red states (i.e.- laissez faire, tax subsidies, no regulations, etc., etc., ad nauseum). These were ponzi scheme types that attracted a lot of "hot money" which fueled fantastic growth in their organizations in a very short period of time. As we are seeing, these smaller "houses of cards" are now crumbling. The FDIC was ill-prepared to deal with this level of failure and the larger ponzi schemes of Wall Street, the Treasury, and the Fed's QE will be that much more difficult to continue. The government's efforts to deal with the financial crisis during the past year has been a fool's errand at best. At worst, it has been the largest criminal fraud ever perpetrated in human history.
While this isn't the exact report, Sold_Out at wallstreetwtach.org has an excellent breakdown of the financial contributions from Wall Street to congress.
I believe they managed the entire thing. In other words, the management, the staff, the projects.
I believe a lot of contracts were awarded to private companies, extensively, for things like infrastructure but I think the WPA itself has it's own labor pool, direct.
Be nice to find out the details of how that was all managed back then, but that's the little bit I can figure out.
This is what I had in mind many months ago. There is a lot of great reading around the blogosphere that just corroborates what you sense but it is said in a way that is beyond your own words. It is a great public service to highlight these articles for a greater audience. It is also "chicken soup for the soul" for we who fight the populist fight.
I would also suggest that some of the comments made here could be pulled up for the "highlights of the week". Some of James Woolley's comments immediately come to mind; really good stuff that goes unnoticed unless one follows the entire thread. (I do, but I wonder how many lurkers dig this deep).
Anyway, I could suggest several other links that would surely be "food for thought", as well as provide a lightning rod for further comment and discussion. Among them are:
This interview with Noah Raford which delves into his work concerning "Collapse Dynamics: Phase Transitions in Complex Social Systems".
And this interview with Janet Tavakoli, expands further on my instapopulist of last week "It's The Deflation Stupid".
commercial bank is defined, but as I understand it, this means they have a lot of loans in CRE, which is tanking....badly. I don't know what each of these failed banks holdings are, but in the case of Georgia, I believe a host of businesses have failed around real estate. i.e. construction companies, contractors, real estate developers and so on. They were heavily extended, developing a massive amount of properties thinking the housing bubble would just continue.
But there is imploding commercial real estate right now, so you might look to see what percentage of holdings these various failures had.
I'm noticing comments asking a lot of questions I'm asking too. I seriously do not know, it seems funds went off to the states where they then disappeared into some sort of no-bid, crony contract award whatever system that I for one haven't been able to track on.
Each answer is at least a little reading research.
So.....EPers, how about this. When you have these great questions, how about digging around for the answers to them and see if there is some organization, group or some sort of data you can find...that is credible (always a difficult assessment here!) that is tracking on in the real world projects and who really got what and how many U.S. worker hires really happened? It's about $50B supposedly deployed...but dispersed now among the states....so what each state did with this I'm not sure.
Under ARRA, this was supposed to lead to a minimal delay in implementation. Contracts (such as road building/ improvement) already competed (or no-bid to the governor's brother-in-law) could then be funded. Stimulus funds to the states were believed to be fast-track -- but really means why should we use state funds if the feds are writing us a check?
Frank T.
and to execute on any project takes an already formed business structure, at least to do it quickly. Now one can "bring in" under the government, from private contractors a lot of these jobs. Bush was busy outsourcing the government as I recall.
Sure need contractors for design and project management function for infrastructure projects but all labor could come from a government sponsored entity meaning anyone who wanted job would be an employee of this GSE.
Job training would be part of program. School teachers and other who want to teach to elevate the horrible student teacher ratio in public schools.
'According to finance historian Niall Ferguson, "there were just 610 hedge and equity funds with $39 billion in assets in 1990. By the end of 2006, there were 9,462 of such funds with $1.5 trillion in assets under management."' [From Nomi Prins' It Takes a Pillage]
Interesting to note that the chairman of the American Enterprise Institute is also the owner of the one of the largest hedge funds on the planet (was rated the largest for two years running) and individuals from that outfit are forever out pandering for the banksters!
Now that $1.5 trillion is leveraged to how many trillions? Nobody actually knows. The hedge funds and the private equity buyout funds are all about quick turnarounds and quick and dirty bucks -- raping and pillaging companies and employees and the real creators of progress and wealth and social stability!
The government and its fiduciary regulation must be the countervailing power to Wall Street, and at the time of which Prof. Galbraith was writing, the ones on the opposite end were JP Morgan, Warburg, Harriman, and a host of others, with those well-described (by Louis Brandeis in his Other People's Money) interlocking directorates, only more so today.
And today, the economic indicators of concentrated wealth are far worse than at the outset of the Last Great Depression, which can only bode ill for the rest of us.
Strongly recommend Nomi Prins' book, BTW (It Takes a Pillage --- having read pretty much all the books published to date on the economic meltdown (far too many of which were subsidized by Wall Street to proclaim that no one was responsible, and all this stuff "just happened") it is the absolute best!
an analysis of the structure, dispersion of funds that happened in the 1930's should be examined and then adopted.
One thing for sure is they must require U.S. citizenship, perm residency at minimum.
Obviously just using the current nobid contract award as well as the states is leading to corruption, waste, money being offshore outsourced....so all of that needs to be cleaned up, else it's just throwing more good money after bad.
This is a major institutional problem in our financial structure. This kind of outright thievery has destroyed savings of millions of Americans. Imagine the damage to investment portfolios when massive short selling drives prices to a point where margin calls are triggered. Artificially depressed prices make it difficult to raise capital.
A second major source of looting is the deliberate distorting of interest rates to enable this same financial system to accumulate capital at the expense of savers. Savers are deprived of the "time value of money" through Fed manipulation of interest rates. The spread between what savers are paid vs. what they must pay in interest to banks and non-bank financials is obscene. Older Americans are major victims of this massive transfer of wealth from savers to financial banksters.
This systematic looting of American savings is why we need major change in Washington. Not politicians bought and paid for by K St., but people who are outraged enough to confront this cynical and pervasive abuse of the American people. Alan Grayson, I hope you are reading this -- we need you and more like you.
Frank T.
John K. Galbraith developed this idea in his book "American Capitalism". I totally forgot about it but it is absolutely applicable today.
But what makes the imbalance of power worse is that we have a financial oligarchy running wild and a corporate oligarchy dead set on maximizing profits regardless of implications for society as a whole while owning a huge share of the government and corporate media.
I am not a history buff and I don't have much context for when Galbraith wrote "American Capitalism". My sense is that the imbalance of power is far worse now than at the time of his writing the book.
Michigan Unemployment Trend Heat Maps:
A map of Michigan Unemployment in August 2009 (BLS data)
http://www.localetrends.com/st/mi_michigan_unemployment.php?MAP_TYPE=cur...
versus Michigan Unemployment Levels 1 year ago
http://www.localetrends.com/st/mi_michigan_unemployment.php?MAP_TYPE=m12_ue
Your take on Georgia is right on Robert. I would also add Alabama in this category. The failed banks were largely state chartered banks heavily investing in the residential and commercial construction bubble throughout the Southeast and Arizona. Remember, these are among the reddest of red states (i.e.- laissez faire, tax subsidies, no regulations, etc., etc., ad nauseum). These were ponzi scheme types that attracted a lot of "hot money" which fueled fantastic growth in their organizations in a very short period of time. As we are seeing, these smaller "houses of cards" are now crumbling. The FDIC was ill-prepared to deal with this level of failure and the larger ponzi schemes of Wall Street, the Treasury, and the Fed's QE will be that much more difficult to continue. The government's efforts to deal with the financial crisis during the past year has been a fool's errand at best. At worst, it has been the largest criminal fraud ever perpetrated in human history.
While this isn't the exact report, Sold_Out at wallstreetwtach.org has an excellent breakdown of the financial contributions from Wall Street to congress.
that Tavakoli interview is esp. precious. You could have lifted that summary straight from this site too.
But it's very succinct on what's really going on, great, it's all swept under the rug!
I believe they managed the entire thing. In other words, the management, the staff, the projects.
I believe a lot of contracts were awarded to private companies, extensively, for things like infrastructure but I think the WPA itself has it's own labor pool, direct.
Be nice to find out the details of how that was all managed back then, but that's the little bit I can figure out.
This is what I had in mind many months ago. There is a lot of great reading around the blogosphere that just corroborates what you sense but it is said in a way that is beyond your own words. It is a great public service to highlight these articles for a greater audience. It is also "chicken soup for the soul" for we who fight the populist fight.
I would also suggest that some of the comments made here could be pulled up for the "highlights of the week". Some of James Woolley's comments immediately come to mind; really good stuff that goes unnoticed unless one follows the entire thread. (I do, but I wonder how many lurkers dig this deep).
Anyway, I could suggest several other links that would surely be "food for thought", as well as provide a lightning rod for further comment and discussion. Among them are:
This interview with Noah Raford which delves into his work concerning "Collapse Dynamics: Phase Transitions in Complex Social Systems".
And this interview with Janet Tavakoli, expands further on my instapopulist of last week "It's The Deflation Stupid".
commercial bank is defined, but as I understand it, this means they have a lot of loans in CRE, which is tanking....badly. I don't know what each of these failed banks holdings are, but in the case of Georgia, I believe a host of businesses have failed around real estate. i.e. construction companies, contractors, real estate developers and so on. They were heavily extended, developing a massive amount of properties thinking the housing bubble would just continue.
But there is imploding commercial real estate right now, so you might look to see what percentage of holdings these various failures had.
Of failed banks a huge majority of those failed banks were classified as "State charter Fed nonmember commercial bank supervised by the FDIC".
Was there or is there a problem w/ FDIC regulatory scheme?
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
I'm noticing comments asking a lot of questions I'm asking too. I seriously do not know, it seems funds went off to the states where they then disappeared into some sort of no-bid, crony contract award whatever system that I for one haven't been able to track on.
Each answer is at least a little reading research.
So.....EPers, how about this. When you have these great questions, how about digging around for the answers to them and see if there is some organization, group or some sort of data you can find...that is credible (always a difficult assessment here!) that is tracking on in the real world projects and who really got what and how many U.S. worker hires really happened? It's about $50B supposedly deployed...but dispersed now among the states....so what each state did with this I'm not sure.
Under ARRA, this was supposed to lead to a minimal delay in implementation. Contracts (such as road building/ improvement) already competed (or no-bid to the governor's brother-in-law) could then be funded. Stimulus funds to the states were believed to be fast-track -- but really means why should we use state funds if the feds are writing us a check?
Frank T.
If the facts you are citing are part of the secondary school syllabus in the UK, it's common knowledge, at least outside the US.
Were the workers employees of the WPA? Who did the design, planning & project management?
Part of the hold up now is that some of the money is being funneled to the states - many of them have very slow procurement processes.
Just thinking out loud.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
and to execute on any project takes an already formed business structure, at least to do it quickly. Now one can "bring in" under the government, from private contractors a lot of these jobs. Bush was busy outsourcing the government as I recall.
Sure need contractors for design and project management function for infrastructure projects but all labor could come from a government sponsored entity meaning anyone who wanted job would be an employee of this GSE.
Job training would be part of program. School teachers and other who want to teach to elevate the horrible student teacher ratio in public schools.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
maybe you would like to put together for Oct. 31st, a "top 10 horror stories from the economic world". Make a nice theme post.
'According to finance historian Niall Ferguson, "there were just 610 hedge and equity funds with $39 billion in assets in 1990. By the end of 2006, there were 9,462 of such funds with $1.5 trillion in assets under management."' [From Nomi Prins' It Takes a Pillage]
Interesting to note that the chairman of the American Enterprise Institute is also the owner of the one of the largest hedge funds on the planet (was rated the largest for two years running) and individuals from that outfit are forever out pandering for the banksters!
Now that $1.5 trillion is leveraged to how many trillions? Nobody actually knows. The hedge funds and the private equity buyout funds are all about quick turnarounds and quick and dirty bucks -- raping and pillaging companies and employees and the real creators of progress and wealth and social stability!
The government and its fiduciary regulation must be the countervailing power to Wall Street, and at the time of which Prof. Galbraith was writing, the ones on the opposite end were JP Morgan, Warburg, Harriman, and a host of others, with those well-described (by Louis Brandeis in his Other People's Money) interlocking directorates, only more so today.
And today, the economic indicators of concentrated wealth are far worse than at the outset of the Last Great Depression, which can only bode ill for the rest of us.
Strongly recommend Nomi Prins' book, BTW (It Takes a Pillage --- having read pretty much all the books published to date on the economic meltdown (far too many of which were subsidized by Wall Street to proclaim that no one was responsible, and all this stuff "just happened") it is the absolute best!
an analysis of the structure, dispersion of funds that happened in the 1930's should be examined and then adopted.
One thing for sure is they must require U.S. citizenship, perm residency at minimum.
Obviously just using the current nobid contract award as well as the states is leading to corruption, waste, money being offshore outsourced....so all of that needs to be cleaned up, else it's just throwing more good money after bad.
Any ideas?
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
This is a major institutional problem in our financial structure. This kind of outright thievery has destroyed savings of millions of Americans. Imagine the damage to investment portfolios when massive short selling drives prices to a point where margin calls are triggered. Artificially depressed prices make it difficult to raise capital.
A second major source of looting is the deliberate distorting of interest rates to enable this same financial system to accumulate capital at the expense of savers. Savers are deprived of the "time value of money" through Fed manipulation of interest rates. The spread between what savers are paid vs. what they must pay in interest to banks and non-bank financials is obscene. Older Americans are major victims of this massive transfer of wealth from savers to financial banksters.
This systematic looting of American savings is why we need major change in Washington. Not politicians bought and paid for by K St., but people who are outraged enough to confront this cynical and pervasive abuse of the American people. Alan Grayson, I hope you are reading this -- we need you and more like you.
Frank T.
John K. Galbraith developed this idea in his book "American Capitalism". I totally forgot about it but it is absolutely applicable today.
But what makes the imbalance of power worse is that we have a financial oligarchy running wild and a corporate oligarchy dead set on maximizing profits regardless of implications for society as a whole while owning a huge share of the government and corporate media.
I am not a history buff and I don't have much context for when Galbraith wrote "American Capitalism". My sense is that the imbalance of power is far worse now than at the time of his writing the book.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
Michigan Unemployment Trend Heat Maps:
A map of Michigan Unemployment in August 2009 (BLS data)
http://www.localetrends.com/st/mi_michigan_unemployment.php?MAP_TYPE=cur...
versus Michigan Unemployment Levels 1 year ago
http://www.localetrends.com/st/mi_michigan_unemployment.php?MAP_TYPE=m12_ue
Pages