Tainted Saints

In the tens of BILLIONS, folks. Because the only people still making money hand over fist are the people who gamed the system and engineered the collapse…

“Every generation of Americans should live better than its predecessor. That’s Americans’ core definition of economic “progress.”

But for today’s young, it may be a mirage. Higher health spending, increasing energy prices and stretched governments at all levels may squeeze future disposable incomes—what people have to spend—and public services. Are we condemning our children to downward mobility?…”

“In a departure from prevailing economic theory, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science was awarded Monday to two social scientists for their work in demonstrating that business people — co-workers as well as competitors — often find ways to mutually resolve problems that arise from free-market competition.

The prize committee cited Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons,” and Oliver E. Williamson of the University of California, Berkeley, “for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm.”

Excerpt from last Friday’s episode of Bill Moyer’s Journal:

“Bill Moyers: Let’s look at this story that I just read from the Associated Press this week about how Treasury Secretary Geithner is on the phone several times a day with a select group of very powerful Wall Street bankers, especially Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs. He will talk to them when Members of Congress have to leave a message on the answering machine. And these are the bankers who helped bring on this calamity and who are now benefiting from it. What does that say to you?

Rep. Marcy Kaptur: That says to me that Wall Street and Washington is a circuit. And because Mr. Geithner headed the New York Fed that that historic relationship, unfortunately, continues. And it gives them special access and special power to influence policy…”

Read more…

“Central banks flush with record reserves are increasingly snubbing dollars in favor of euros and yen, further pressuring the greenback after its biggest two- quarter rout in almost two decades.”

Read more…

Demand from first-time buyers will plummet if the tax credit isn’t renewed, and “…massive losses in commercial real estate loans will add to the problem, forcing banks to raise more capital.”

Roubini knows of what he speaks, since he was in the small minority of economists who predicted the dramatic bursting of the housing bubble to begin with…

What always, always, always happens in a severe (and not-so-severe) economic downturn is that mindless white people born without the ability to see beyond the ends of their noses (or look in the mirror) start blaming non-white people  and anyone else who is different from them for their own, as well as the rest of the country’s, problems.

And that, children, is how the suburbs were born…

“It’s natural for Michael Moore to behave like someone who thinks he’s taking on the world alone. Because he is, sort of. If we want him to stop behaving like this, it’s kind of on us to do something about it. At some point we’re going to have to make a commitment to giving up our escapist entertainments for a while while we fix our actual lives…”

This story from Robert Fisk surfaced a couple of days ago, to a chorus of denials from those in the know in the U.S. and Britain. But the story isn’t going away, and it’s also no secret that most of the world would love to dump the dollar. But major players like China also have a lot invested in the dollar, so only time will tell…

For all the naysayers who are convinced that spending money now and increasing the budget deficit will cause negative repercussions down the road when “the bill comes due,” I say that you’re either:

1. Someone who is still making a lot of money, is not being impacted much by the recession, and doesn’t want to pay higher taxes to pay for more federal spending because you’re in the bracket that would; OR,
2. Not in the first group, but you listen to Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, etc. religiously, and believe every bogus, alarmist thing they say to increase their ratings.

The reality is that the market got us into this mess, and isn’t going to get us out of it, so the federal government must spend to get people back to work, and to keep state governments from collapsing altogether.  Once the economy improves, the deficit will be paid back down again (at least to the point it was when George W. left office…) Don’t believe me? Robert Reich explained this really well in his column on 10/1/2009:  

“When I was a small boy my father told me that I and my kids and my grand-kids would be paying down the debt created by Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Depression and World War II…

My father was right about a lot of things, but he was wrong about this. America paid down FDR’s debt in the 1950s, when Americans went back to work, when the economy was growing again, and when our incomes grew, too. We paid taxes, and in a few years that FDR debt had shrunk to almost nothing.”

Leonard and others do question HOW the money is being spent in some areas, but I’ll leave that to the experts.

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2009/10/06/time_for_a_second_stimulus/index.html