Economy
Related: About this forumSTOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 12 June 2012
[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Monday, 12 June 2012[font color=black][/font]
SMW for 11 June 2012
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 11 June 2012
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Dow Jones 12,411.23 -142.97 (-1.14%)
S&P 500 1,308.93 -16.73 (-1.26%)
Nasdaq 2,809.73 -48.69 (-1.70%)
[font color=green]10 Year 1.58% -0.06 (-3.66%)
30 Year 2.70% -0.04 (-1.46%) [font color=black]
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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
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The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
[/center][font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 = [/font][font color=red]12[/font]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
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[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]
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rfranklin
(13,200 posts)The private sector is making record profits. They are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash. But they are not hiring because they have the remaining employees doing the work of three people. Seems like they have the best of all worlds.
Now, if you talk about individuals who are unemployed due to these policies, the economy sucks. But for the corporations life is sweet!
Tansy_Gold
(17,857 posts)
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)Budget cuts, increased workloads, and they expect you to keep up. But, our Republican Governors all managed to cut taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals, right before they declared their budgets in crisis, and have to cut, cut, cut.
tclambert
(11,085 posts)then make up for the shortfall in revenues by laying off police, firefighters, prison guards, teachers, and road maintenance workers. Of course, with all those working people laid off, there aren't as many customers for the restaurants and stores whose taxes got cut. So they don't have any reason to hire more employees, even if their CEO did get a bigger tax refund this year. In fact, to keep their companies lean and efficient, they need to let a few excess employees go. Then, of course, the CEOs give themselves fat bonuses as a reward for putting forth such an effort in cost cutting.
With every company doing the same, they have yet fewer customers. Their company may sadly have to file bankruptcy, hopefully not the Chapter 7 total liquidation kind, but the Chapter 11 reorganization kind, in which the courts allow them to eliminate many of their debts, including pension obligations. Then retirees can't afford to shop at their stores, either. The CEOs of course get an additional bonus for guiding the company through the difficult process of bankruptcy. What to do with all that bonus money? Some of it goes to campaign donations for their favorite Republicans. And that helps create more jobs for Republican politicians.
See, it works!
Plus, if they push this agenda far enough, they will create a much greater demand in the marketplace for torches and pitchforks.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)at least for the next generation or so.
Then maybe everyone will be thin enough to see the enemy they make strong.
Roland99
(53,342 posts)Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)I posted this late in the Monday thread. I'm doing it again for people who may have missed it.
Investors tout 'condemnation' for housing fix
Eminent domain has never been used to seize mortgages of investors or institutions.
By Matthew Goldstein and Jennifer Ablan
updated 6/11/2012 7:36:43 AM ET
NEW YORK — Here's a controversial but intriguing approach to the U.S. housing crisis: keep cash-strapped residents in their homes by condemning their mortgages.
A mortgage firm backed by a number of prominent West Coast financiers is pushing local politicians in California and a handful of other states hardest hit by the housing crisis to use eminent domain to restructure mortgages that borrowers owe more money on than their homes are actually worth.
San Francisco-based Mortgage Resolution Partners, in a presentation reviewed by Reuters, says condemning so-called underwater mortgages and taking them out of the hands of private lenders and bondholders is "the only practical way to modify mortgages on a large enough scale to solve the housing crisis."
Eminent domain is a well-tested power by local government to get a court order to take over a property it deems either blighted or needed for the public good.
Over the years, governments have used eminent domain authority to clear urban slums or seize land to build highways and bridges.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47743780/ns/business-real_estate/#.T9ZS0bVQREM
(snip)
westerebus
(2,976 posts)It has a lot of upside, incentive wise. 
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)
Po_d Mainiac
(4,183 posts)Seizure by use of 'eminent domain' to:
A) Force the banksters to mark assets in real time
B) Allow a bit of sunshine on the unregulated side of 'shadow banking'
C) Trigger a few CDS events
D) Maybe restore a few links in trashed title chains
E) Expose the untold billion$ in 2nd/3rd liens for what they are (worthless)
No wonder the banksters water carriers, on Capital Hill, busted their balls to discredit him (Angelides)
Demeter
(85,373 posts)A stunning decline on Monday in the US which followed a slump in Europe when everybody started to realize they had all been played again.
Then to follow that, the NIKKEI goes even lower.
How much longer can this go on? Until Greece slips away (pun intended) in the election...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)All 27 EU countries should submit their big banks to a single cross-border supervisor as part of a banking union to be enacted as soon as next year, the president of the European Commission has urged.
In an interview with the Financial Times, José Manuel Barroso said the EU needed to go beyond the incremental legislative measures proposed by his institution last week and take “a very big step” towards deeper integration if the bloc is to learn the lessons of the sovereign debt crisis.
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/QM42II/R3K5GR/T10SH/KQBFQB/U1Q5MT/HK/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=11
I'M AFRAID IT'S MUCH TOO LITTLE, AND WAY TOO LATE.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)DO? YOU MEAN, LIKE WORK?
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/06/18/120618fa_fact_lizza#ixzz1xUnBf1y3
...From the inception of his Presidential bid, Obama has sought to present himself as a leader with far-reaching ideas, and has prided himself on his ability to look past the politics of the moment...Every President running for reëlection begins to think about his second term well before victory is assured. In early 2009, Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s first chief of staff, told me that the White House was already contemplating the Presidency in terms of eight years. He said that it was folly to try to accomplish everything in the first term...Obama’s campaign is well aware that he may end up like Jimmy Carter or George H. W. Bush, the two most recent one-term Presidents, who were both defeated despite some notable—even historic—accomplishments, including the Camp David Accords, under Carter, and the Gulf War, under Bush....Many White House officials were reluctant to discuss a second term; they are focussed more on the campaign than on what comes after. But the ostensible purpose of a political campaign is to articulate for the public what a candidate will do if he prevails....
Obama has an ambitious second-term agenda, which, at least in broad ways, his campaign is beginning to highlight. The President has said that the most important policy he could address in his second term is climate change, one of the few issues that he thinks could fundamentally improve the world decades from now. He also is concerned with containing nuclear proliferation. In April, 2009, in one of the most notable speeches of his Presidency, he said, in Prague, “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” He conceded that the goal might not be achieved in his lifetime but promised to take “concrete steps,” including a new treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons and ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty.
In 2010, Obama negotiated a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russians and won its passage in the Senate. But, despite his promise to “immediately and aggressively” ratify the C.N.T.B.T., he never submitted it for ratification. As James Mann writes in “The Obamians,” his forthcoming book on Obama’s foreign policy, “The Obama administration crouched, unwilling to risk controversy and a Senate fight for a cause that the President, in his Prague speech, had endorsed and had promised to push quickly and vigorously.” As with climate change, Obama’s early rhetoric and idealism met the reality of Washington politics and his reluctance to confront Congress.
Obama’s advisers say it is more likely that the President would champion an issue with greater bipartisan support, such as immigration reform. Obama has also said that he hopes to have the time and the attention to address a more robust aid agenda for developing countries than he was able to muster in his first term. These issues will loom over his potential second term, awaiting a push from the President. So, too, will the lingering question of who Obama “really” is: an aspiring compromiser, a lawyerly strategist, or a bold visionary willing to gamble to secure his legacy.
Whatever goal Obama decides on, his opportunities for effecting change are slight. Term limits are cruel to Presidents. If he wins, Obama will have less than eighteen months to pass a second wave of his domestic agenda, which has been stalled since late 2010 and has no chance of moving this year. His best opportunity for a breakthrough on energy policy, immigration, or tax reform would come in 2013. By the middle of 2014, congressional elections will force another hiatus in Washington policymaking. Since Franklin Roosevelt, Presidents have lost an average of thirty House seats and seven Senate seats in their second midterm election. By early 2015, the press will begin to focus on the next Presidential campaign, which will eclipse a great deal of coverage of the White House. The last two years of Obama’s Presidency will likely be spent attending more assiduously to foreign policy and shoring up the major reforms of his early years, such as health care and financial regulation.
As William Daley, who served for a year as Obama’s chief of staff, put it, “After 2014, nobody cares what he does.”
THIS ARTICLE IS TEN TIMES LONGER THAN IT NEED BE, AND FULL OF SPECULATION NOT SUPPORTED BY FACT. ALSO SINGS THE PRAISES OF REAGAN A LITTLE TOO MUCH FOR MY NERVES....
Tansy_Gold
(17,857 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)I could never watch that show...it had no basis in my pre-grade school reality. I like him much better in Gilligan's Island.
Tansy_Gold
(17,857 posts)Work! was identified with Maynard G. Krebs. I never liked Gilligan, only watched it when it was in rerun after school and the kids liked it. But I'm just that much older than you are.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)But I don't hold it against you....
Tansy_Gold
(17,857 posts)The list of actors who were featured is pretty impressive, not least of which is Sheila James Kuehl, who went on to become not just a graduate of Harvard Law, but California Assemblywoman and Senator, the first openly gay elected legislator in that state.
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)I think my birthday and yours are within a year of each other....
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Europe's plan to lend money to Spain to heal some of its banks may not work because the government and the country's lenders will in effect be propping each other up, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said.
"The system ... is the Spanish government bails out Spanish banks, and Spanish banks bail out the Spanish government," Stiglitz said in an interview...
THAT DIDN'T TAKE LONG, DID IT? ALMOST INSTANTANEOUS, ACTUALLY
Tansy_Gold
(17,857 posts)
Po_d Mainiac
(4,183 posts)Spain's gov't issued debt burden was not in FUBAR territory.
But with the addition of the underwater mortgage paper to the public ledger, the border just got jumped.
The CDS on the toxic notes will get triggered, eventually. And it don't take much imagination to figure out what the nationalities of those counter parties are.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)It's that time again.
Three cycles (225 years) ago, in the years before the French Revolution, inequality was at one of its highest points ever. While it's estimated that the top 10% of the population took almost half the income, as they do today, the Gini Coefficient was between .52 and .59, higher than the current U.S. figure of .47. The French Revolution began a surge toward equality that lasted well into the 19th century.
Two cycles ago, in Dickens' day of the 1860s, European inequality was again at a nearly intolerable level. It took the second industrial revolution and the U.S. Civil War to start correcting the economic injustices.
One cycle ago was the Great Depression. The New Deal, World War 2, and the laborious process of war recovery put an end to this third period of extreme inequality.
Now, nearly 75 years after we started World War 2 production, we again feel the agony of a wealth gap expanding, like grotesquely stretched muscle, to intolerable limits. If history repeats itself, we will be part of another revolution of long-subjugated people. Indeed, it has already begun, in Europe and Canada and with the Occupy Movement.
MORE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The financial rule of the world has moved elsewhere to the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Davos, Bilderberg, etc. The world is being carved up by the global elites into trade and low-wage manufacturing zones that benefit the wealthiest of the earth.
Certain nations are still victims of predatory wealthy measures by wealthier countries to invoke austerity measures. The World Bank does this repeatedly to southern nations by making the cutting back of social safety nets a requirement for loans - and then sticking the countries with onerous interest rates.
But, in reality, we are really talking about a financial overlay of the global oligarchy over the poorer regions of the world, whatever their arbitrary national boundaries, and the forcing of austerity measures even on prosperous nations.
The irony is that the right-wing of America has long despised the United Nations, but the current reality of economic management of the earth is falling into the hands of a few elite institutions, developed regions (call them nations if you will), and international financial firms and corporations. Call it the United Global Elite instead of the United Nations...
MORE
girl gone mad
(20,634 posts)Po_d Mainiac
(4,183 posts)Cheap money pumps volatile hydrogen into debt bubbles
Krugman's interpretation of Keynesian theory ain’t Nobel worthy (at best)
Panic inspired government policies have benefited banksters and the bondholders thereof, with dire consequences for the general population
C4C, First time buyers credits, etc and other stimulus packages only kick the can a bit. Each punt becoming less effective.
The moral hazard from not allowing the banksters to suffer real pain leads to even more riskier behavior by the same bad actors
A paniced elotorate does not vote rationally
Good luck if you think holding PM paper is covering your ASSets
girl gone mad
(20,634 posts)It’s a testament to the mixed signals of the Democratic Party on taxes and the end-of-the-year fiscal situation that Matt Yglesias can talk to the same Senator on the same weekend as I and get a completely different impression. He basically saw no appetite for letting the Bush tax cuts expire completely and then coming back with an “Obama tax cut” package, while I did, particularly from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.
It is worth pointing out, however, that while Matt and I and others were reading tea leaves in Providence with Senators on the more liberal side of the spectrum, the ones more interested in using the fiscal slope as an opportunity to put together a massive deficit reduction package were making their move:
In an ornate room in the Capitol last Wednesday night, the Democratic senators who could hold the key to preventing a fiscal train wreck gathered for dinner and a talk with economists about their options for dealing with nearly $8 trillion in combined tax increases and spending cuts that are to be put in place automatically in January [...]
What separated the unannounced Wednesday session, organized by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, from the earlier ones was the collective weight of the participants: the Senate’s No. 2 and No. 3 Democrats, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Charles E. Schumer of New York; the chairman of the Finance Committee, Max Baucus; and the chairman of the Budget Committee, Kent Conrad.
This looks like Jeff Merkley’s worse nightmare coming to pass, with a top-level secret huddle rather than a public process. Max Baucus, who confirmed the meeting, also said that the Senate needs to not “box itself out” with legislation too quickly. Meaning that the meetings will continue in back rooms without public scrutiny. One Senator, Johnny Isakson (R-GA), said that even talking about the talks’ existence would be a problem.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)
Demeter
(85,373 posts)and we aren't getting another dose, either.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)and do i EVER love that dance sequence from Kiss Me Kate!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)it's a lot better than Ann Margaret's...
Roland99
(53,342 posts)Saw the entire sky light up a blue/teal when lightning hit a nearby transformer.
had non-stop lightning for about 90 min.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)The Germans have taken a lot of abuse in recent months for not being willing to do more to halt the European crisis (either by using its own finances to backstop everyone else's, or by encouraging the ECB to fight the fire with a spray of money).
And it's obvious that the Germans are getting increasingly irritated as being portrayed as the villains in all this (Just look at the illustration in the German newspaper Handelsblatt).
But a new meme is emerging, which might be characterized as the backlash to the anti-German backlash.
In the FT, Gideon Rachman writes: We isolate and overload Germany at our peril. The demands being placed on Germany are "unrealistic."
Consider just one of the proposals on the shopping list: a Europe-wide bank deposit insurance scheme. As a senior Dutch politician who shares the German view, puts it: “We cannot push through a banking union when the French have just cut their retirement age to 60 and we have raised ours to 67.” From the Dutch and German point of view, it is unfair for their citizens to underwrite the banks of countries using their own money to pay social benefits that are more generous than those on offer in Germany or the Netherlands.
This dilemma illustrates why a relatively technical-sounding exercise such as bank-deposit insurance has profound implications for national sovereignty. Once you take a big step towards the mutualisation of debt across Europe, you are forced towards much deeper political union. It is not just the much-discussed need for a European “minister of finance”, with the power to override national governments. To avoid bitter disputes over fairness, you would also need to harmonise European social-security systems. That would be the work of decades.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/der-spiegel-merkel-is-now-preparing-germany-for-huge-changes-to-come-2012-6#ixzz1xZgMKX9N
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Last edited Tue Jun 12, 2012, 08:40 AM - Edit history (1)
Turnabout is fair play. Germany was benefiting all along; now that it's payback time, they call it 'unrealistic".
xchrom
(108,903 posts)***SNIP
SocGen FX strategist Sébastien Galy lists several things to worry about in a note tonight.
They include:
The ESM (European bailout fund) doesn't work. It makes sovereign bondholders less senior, and therefore is toxic.
Greece is about to have a potential "cliff-jumping" event, in the form of its election coming up on Sunday.
There are leaks coming out from the EU about imposing capital controls in Europe post Grexit. Not helpful.
A major downgrade of the US financial system could come any day now. Banks are getting pummeled.
There are some worries about Switzerland holding the line on the EURCHF floor.
Note that these are all acute things. Other worries like the US fiscal cliff and the Chinese hard landing are bigger issues. Also unmentioned is any spillover into Italy, which has mostly enjoyed calm the last few weeks.
Says SocGen's Galy: "It all feels very early 1980s when police would stop folks carrying suitcases of cash into Switzerland."
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/negative-headlines-june-11-2012-6#ixzz1xZhCMhX1
xchrom
(108,903 posts)There is a perverse logic unfolding. Spain is the fourth of the euro zone members to require external assistance. Cyprus is likely to be next, especially if Russia does not come to its aid as it did last year with a $2.5 bln loan.
That leaves the Italy as the last of southern debtor countries to be standing on its own in the face of end of a global credit cycle. Italy's problem is not a deficit. It is likely to be near 4% this year. It is also only debtor to be running a primary budget (excluding debt servicing costs) surplus.
The challenge stems from the accumulation of prior deficits. It debt is approximately 2 trillion euros. The refinancing costs require it to borrow something on the scale of 35 bln euros a month by selling bonds and bills. The market's appetite is waning and even the head of Debt Agency warned last week that foreign investors are pulling back from the auctions.
Ironically, Italian banks appear to have accumulated Italian bonds faster than the government has been issuing, suggesting they are also absorbing foreign sales. Italy holds a bill sale on Wednesday and a bond sale on Thursday. Yields have backed up sharply in recent days, but it is unlikely to be sufficient to appease international investors given the current environment and ahead of the Greek elections.
Read more: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarcToMarket/~3/3NFzXBS57k0/why-italy.html#ixzz1xZi6U6Oo
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The fight against unjust evictions just got fiercer as the national Occupy movement joins forces with community anti-foreclosure groups.
Since the real estate bubble burst, conditions for a national fight against foreclosures and evictions have seemed ideal. "Too big to fail" banks have refused to offer homeowners struggling with high mortgage payments any meaningful relief, despite receiving billions of dollars in public bailouts. More than one in five home mortgages in the country are "underwater" —with the mortgage greater than the market value of the home—resulting in about $700 billion in negative equity. Overall, more than 4 million homes were lost due to foreclosure between 2006 and 2011. In response, community organizations in cities throughout the country ramped up their work to keep families in their homes through local direct action.
Yet even though all of these elements were in place, no broad-scale movement to address the foreclosure crisis had captured the public spotlight.
That changed with the dramatic emergence of the Occupy movement this past fall. The movement provided an opportunity for a broader, coordinated approach to the foreclosure problem. Occupy set its sights firmly on abuses by the banking system and pointed to foreclosures as a main grievance. This winter, a national call to "Occupy Our Homes" and join in anti-foreclosure and anti-eviction efforts became a popular proposal for one of the movement's next steps.
In recent months, Occupy Our Homes has given community groups that have organized around housing issues for years a chance to link with a unified, national effort and to share knowledge gained from local fights. The Occupy movement, in turn, has benefited from joining forces with anti-foreclosure and anti-eviction organizers. While Occupiers' arguments about inequality and corporate greed may sometimes seem abstract, the foreclosure issue has allowed activists to make their complaints about the U.S. economy more concrete. It gives the Occupy movement an opportunity to stake out a specific realm in which change can take place.
Even more importantly, it makes clear the stake that ordinary Americans have in challenging the power of financial titans. By offering a chance for people to connect their personal troubles with larger social issues, Occupy Our Homes is creating an opening for the millions of Americans facing distress over their housing situations to join in collective action.
SPECIFICS AT LINK
Demeter
(85,373 posts)There are places in the world where the majority of people are doomed to live no better than their parents and grandparents did. Places where a poor child from the slums might as well dream of being an astronaut as dream of having a decent middle-class job. Places where the children of the rich get even richer while the children of the poor stay poor.
Places like Burma and Kenya and the United States.
Well, at least if you're a poor Kenyan your son just might grow up to be president of the United States. For most poor Americans, even state senator is out of reach. You'd be lucky to find the money to send your child to college, never mind law school.
As that son of a Kenyan said in his most recent State of the Union address, America is becoming "a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by." The numbers back him up. Both executive compensation and the poverty rate are at or near all-time highs.
While Democrats have a reputation for caring about poverty and inequality, Republicans usually focus on the idea that in America anyone who works hard can succeed. America is the country of entrepreneurs. The rags-to-riches story is one of the foundations of our national identity.
The only problem is that it's not true - or, at least, it's not true anymore....MORE AT LINK
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Los Angeles has an ordinance that fines banks for leaving foreclosed homes in disrepair. So why are so many of them blighted, dragging down whole neighborhoods? We know the foreclosure crisis began with the lies. The banks gave home loans to anyone with a pulse, provided they had another sucker institution lined up to buy the loan. How did they make these loans in the first place? By committing every kind of lending fraud imaginable—particularly by entering fake data on home loan applications magically turning minimum wage janitors into creditworthy wage earners...In 2006, according to report by Credit Suisse, a whopping 49 per cent of the nation’s subprime loans were “liar’s loans,” meaning that lenders could state the incomes of borrowers without requiring any proof of employment.
n May 2010, the City of Los Angeles passed a Foreclosure Registry Ordinance designed to “protect neighborhoods from becoming blighted.” The ordinance requires banks to register properties with the city of Los Angeles that they have foreclosed on or as soon as they begin the foreclosure process by issuing a Notice of Default (NOD). It imposes tough fines of up to $1000 per day on banks that fail to maintain those properties.
Two years later, bank-induced blight continues to ravage our neighborhoods, yet not even one bank has been fined for violating the ordinance. Because of a major loophole which lets banks register for free with a banking industry-created private service known as the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS), only about 21% of foreclosed and foreclosing properties in Los Angeles have even been registered with the city. MERS does not provide the city lists of the properties registered with it, depriving officials of the information needed to police bank-induced blight. Examples from other cities demonstrate that stronger enforcement could produce much better results than we have seen in Los Angeles...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The University of Missouri-Kansas City economics department is featured in an article in the current Playboy that discusses the failure of what IT callED "theoclassical" economics and ASKED economists to admit their theoretical and policy errors. The devotion of theoclassical economists to those errors has proven so dogmatic that their disastrous policies have created the ever more criminogenic environments that drive our recurrent, intensifying financial crises. The title of the article is: "These Rogues Of The Dismal Science Have Been Vindicated By The Economic Crash. How Much Longer Can Mainstream Economists Ignore The Heterodox?" You now have a valid excuse to purchase Playboy, care of the UMKC economics department. Tim Schultz, the author of This article sets out his purpose in attending the 2011 annual meeting of economists in Denver.
Schultz asked one of America’s leading quants, John Cochrane, to critique heterodox economics.
To review the bidding, Cochrane hasn’t read any of our work. Like all of us “he’s busy.” He reads “what is considered interesting and valid.” The key word in that phrase is “considered.” It means by him and like-minded colleagues. In plainer English, Cochrane doesn’t read anything we write because the people he hangs with don’t read anything we write. They know without reading anything we write that our work is not “interesting and valid.”
A prominent economist at an even more prominent university recently denounced ad hominem criticisms made by Paul Krugman because he alleged that Krugman criticized without taking the time to read the works of the economists he was criticizing. The economist wrote that “many colleagues” at one of the most prestigious universities in the world helped him draft his denunciation of Krugman, but that he needed to keep their names secret “for obvious reasons” so that they would not also be criticized.
Krugman wants people to swallow his arguments whole from his authority, without demanding logic, or evidence. Those who disagree with him, alas, are pretty smart and have pretty good arguments if you bother to read them. So, he tries to discredit them with personal attacks.
This is the political sphere, not the intellectual one. Don’t argue with them, swift-boat them. Find some embarrassing quote from an old interview. Well, good luck, Paul. Let’s just not pretend this has anything to do with economics, or actual truth about how the world works or could be made a better place.
It gets worse Krugman hints at dark conspiracies, claiming “dissenters are marginalized.”
Any astute reader knows that personal attacks and innuendo mean the author has run out of ideas.
That’s the biggest and saddest news of this piece: Paul Krugman has no interesting ideas whatsoever about what caused our current financial and economic problems, what policies might have prevented it, or what might help us in the future, and he has no contact with people who do (emphasis in original).”
That extended quotation comes from Cochrane’s response to Paul Krugman’s column September 6, 2009 article entitled “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?” Cochrane exemplifies our family’s rule that one cannot compete with unintentional self-parody. I am proposing to my colleagues that we create a new economic medal for hypocrisy: The Cochrane. Cochrane is so logically inconsistent (violating what he terms in his article “the first siren of beauty”) that in his statements to the author of the Playboy article he proves the point he had so recently mocked Krugman for advancing: economic “dissenters are marginalized” by Cochrane and his colleagues. Dissenters are dismissed without ever being read – automatically “considered” beyond the pale. Again, here is what Cochrane told Schultz:
This is what passes for “rigorous” “crystal-clear” “logic” in Cochrane’s world. He denounced Krugman for failing to understand that Cochrane’s views are driven by ineluctable logic, for Cochrane claims that economics as practiced by Cochrane is a “discipline that requires crystal-clear logical connections.” Does Cochrane know how many crashes we predicted? No, because he has never read any of our work. He, a leading neo-classical quant, made up his numbers to support his conclusion – an all too revealing demonstration of how purportedly “modern mathematical tools” are abused. Cochrane is to logic as “truthiness” is to truth.
UMKC economists, white-collar criminologists, financial regulators, public administration scholars, and law enforcement officials have given the world “new data and new ideas” for decades, but since Cochrane refuses to read the “new data and new issues” he gets to display his “crystal-clear logic” by claiming in an exasperated tone that he has not read any “new data and new ideas” from us. Heterodox views will always fail Cochrane’s test – because he will not read their “new data and new ideas” he will not receive “new data and new ideas” from those with heterodox views.
Po_d Mainiac
(4,183 posts)with a stout piece of lumber.
And that someone ain't Sr. Black
xchrom
(108,903 posts)For as much as Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy tried to present the European “loan” to sort out Spain’s ailing banking sector as a triumph, the “men in black” -- as Finance Minister Cristóbal Montoro described them last week -- will be coming to Spain after all.
European Commission sources on Sunday described Rajoy’s presentation of what is likely to be a 100-billion-euro bailout to clean up Spain’s banks as a “domestic political” maneuver, and insisted that the loan will be “strictly linked to fulfilling the European Stability and Growth Pact, no matter what the government says.”
Economy Minister Luis de Guindos had said over the weekend that there was “no conditionality” on the new “credit line” being prepared by Brussels.
But as the spokesman for the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, Amadeu Altafaj, on Monday pointed out, the increase in Spain’s indebtedness will have implications for its commitments to reining its public deficit and bringing it back within the ceiling of three percent of GDP by 2014. “Every euro that goes to debt that is growing is a euro that does not go to productive spending,” the spokesman said.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)SINGAPORE (AP) -- After supplying European customers for more than 40 years with neon bright ornamental fish, Shirley Lim is now looking elsewhere for sales.
Lim, whose business in Singapore and Malaysia grows aquatic plants and breeds colorful fish such as the Checkered Rainbow and Butterfly Barb, said orders from Europe are down by a fifth this year.
"The situation in Europe seems so unpredictable," said Lim of the debt stricken and economically ailing continent that once accounted for as much as 80 percent of her South Island Aquarium company's business. "I'm looking at other Asian markets instead of just concentrating on the EU."
Lim's story is an increasingly familiar one in Asia, for companies big and small. The family run business flourished by operating in a low-cost location and selling its products to countries that while far away, were rich and dependable. Now, those big markets in Europe and the U.S. no longer seem so rich or reliable and Asian countries, while fast-growing, cannot pick up all the slack.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)
Demeter
(85,373 posts)An unusual study of traders’ spit may offer a taste of the future in how we understand what drives markets -- and why they aren’t as stable and efficient as we might hope.
Several years ago, two neuroscientists undertook an experiment on the trading floor of a major investment bank in London. Over eight consecutive business days, at both 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., John Coates and Joe Herbert took samples of saliva from the mouths of 17 traders. With these samples, taken before and after the bulk of the day’s trading activity, they measured the rising and falling levels of a number of steroid hormones, including testosterone, adrenaline and cortisol.
The data revealed physiological changes not evident to the eye. To begin with, Coates and Herbert found that when traders did well and made money, they didn’t do it solely through cleverness and cerebral dexterity. Guts also played a role, although “testicles” would actually be more accurate. Traders performed better on days in which they registered higher morning levels of the hormone testosterone, which is mostly produced in the testes.
This isn’t actually surprising. After all, testosterone increases the level of hemoglobin in the blood, enabling it to carry more oxygen. Experiments in both animals and humans show that it boosts searching persistence, fearlessness and appetite for risk, qualities that obviously help any trader exploit real opportunities in the market. Athletes preparing for a competition produce more testosterone, which helps bring them to an optimal state of readiness for intense action...
TalkingDog
(9,001 posts)Let me clear this up for the human race once and for all: EVERYTHING WE DO IS A DERIVATION OF WHAT WE DID WHILE WE WERE LIVING IN CAVES.
If men can't find some way to hunt it, fuck it, kill it or eat it, either literally or metaphorically, they probably don't find it interesting. And if they can hunt it, fuck it, kill it or eat it, they will always try to make the hunting, fucking, killing or eating more interesting and exciting to them. That's how evolution wired them.
And no offense to men as individuals, but there is no freakin' way you should be running the world.
Po_d Mainiac
(4,183 posts)BTW, you left out bowel movements.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)TalkingDog
(9,001 posts)n/t
Tansy_Gold
(17,857 posts)TalkingDog
(9,001 posts)n/t
Demeter
(85,373 posts)FIRST, WE PUMP THE SEC FULL OF SUPPLEMENTAL TESTOSTERONE...
http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-sec-could-pursue-case-against-jpmorgan-051811693--sector.html
JPMorgan Chase's failure to timely disclose a major change in how it measured risk could become the centerpiece for an enforcement action by U.S. securities regulators as they probe the bank in connection with its multibillion dollar trading loss. By omitting the change from its earnings release in April, the bank disguised a spike in the riskiness of a particular trading portfolio by cutting in half its value-at-risk number.
JPMorgan did not tell investors that the model for its Chief Investment Office had been changed until May 10, the same day it revealed the failed hedging strategy had produced a loss of at least $2 billion.
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro said last month that her agency is probing the bank's financial reporting and made a vague reference to banks' obligation to publicly disclose changes to their risk model. Experts say that regulators' strongest potential case is one focusing on whether JPMorgan should have disclosed the risk model change earlier. But at the same time, they say it may be difficult to prove that the change in the risk model was material to shareholders' interests, which could limit the SEC's ability to use the JPMorgan investigation to appear tough on big banks playing fast and loose after the financial crisis.
"I would think this is a case that gets down to questions about just how aggressive the SEC wants to be," said Jim Cox, a professor at the Duke University School of Law...
I REST MY CASE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Concerns grew on Monday that Italy could be the next victim of Europe’s financial infection, leading nervous investors to sell Italian stocks and bonds and damping euphoria over a weekend deal to bail out Spain’s banks. Italian officials privately expressed concern that the 100 billion euros, or $125 billion, that Europe pledged to Spanish banks might not stop the troubles from spreading.
Italy’s main stock index was Europe’s worst performer on Monday, a day when United States stocks were also dragged down and investors flocked yet again to the safe harbor of American and German government bonds. Even the Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, a European technocrat who came to office after the euro crisis forced out Silvio Berlusconi last November, has begun to acknowledge the dangers posed to his country’s 1.56-trillion-euro economy ($1.95 trillion).
The main fear is that Italy cannot grow its way out of a recession fast enough to pay a mountainous national debt. Other concerns include the fact that Italy, with the third-largest euro zone economy after those of Germany and France, will have to shoulder a large portion of the bailout bill even as it grapples with its own sharp economic downturn. Because Italy does not have enough economic growth to generate the money itself, the government will probably have to borrow it at high interest rates, adding to an already heavy debt load.
“There is a permanent risk of contagion,” Mr. Monti told an economics conference near Venice over the weekend, speaking by telephone. “That is why strengthening the euro zone is of collective interest.”
Prices of Italy’s government bonds reached their lowest level in months. Investors apparently found little assurance that the euro currency union was any closer to solving its underlying problems — not with parliamentary elections in Greece this weekend that could determine whether the currency union is strong enough to retain its weakest members...
TO STRENGTHEN THE EUROZONE, YOU HAVE TO CLIP THE WINGS OF THE EUROZONE BANKSTERS...
xchrom
(108,903 posts)India's industrial output rose by less than expected in April, adding to concerns about the health of the country's economy.
Output rose by 0.1% from a year earlier, much less than projected growth of 1.7%.
It comes a day after ratings agency Standard & Poor's warned that India may lose its investment grade status.
Analysts said the weak numbers may prompt the central bank to introduce fresh measures to boost growth.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)India has dismissed a warning from rating agency Standard & Poor's that it could be the first Bric nation to lose its investment grade status.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the agency's report was "not based on a fresh rating action".
He said the government was "aware of the situation" and confident that "there will be a turnaround in the growth prospects in the coming months".
The agency blamed political leadership for the poor state of the economy.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)ECONOMICS: OH, WOW – another bank bailout, this time in Spain. Who could have predicted that? The answer, of course, is everybody. In fact, the whole story is starting to feel like a comedy routine. Yet again the economy slides, unemployment soars, banks get into trouble, governments rush to the rescue – but somehow it’s only the banks that get rescued, not the unemployed.
Just to be clear, Spanish banks did indeed need a bailout. Spain was clearly on the edge of a “doom loop” – a well-understood process in which concern about banks’ solvency forces the banks to sell assets, which drives down the prices of those assets, which makes people even more worried about solvency. Governments can stop such doom loops with an infusion of cash; in this case, however, the Spanish government’s own solvency is in question, so the cash had to come from a broader European fund.
So there’s nothing necessarily wrong with this latest bailout (although a lot depends on the details). What’s striking, however, is that even as European leaders were putting together this rescue, they were signalling strongly that they have no intention of changing the policies that have left almost a quarter of Spain’s workers – and more than half its young people – jobless.
Most notably, last week the European Central Bank (ECB) declined to cut interest rates. This decision was widely expected, but that shouldn’t blind us to the fact that it was deeply bizarre. Unemployment in the euro area has soared, and all indications are that the continent is entering a new recession. Meanwhile, inflation is slowing, and market expectations of future inflation have plunged. By any of the usual rules of monetary policy, the situation calls for aggressive rate cuts. But the ECB won’t move.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)ANALYSIS: YESTERDAY MORE people sold Spanish government bonds than were prepared to buy them. That is exactly the opposite of what the European bailout of that country’s banks was designed to do.
If the markets were not impressed by Spain’s weekend rescue at first glance, they are unlikely to be more positive in their evaluation any time in future.
That brings Spain closer to being shut out of the bond market and towards a full bailout (the mini-rescue it received at the weekend only covers the costs of propping up its banks). That, in turn, would leave Europe with little ammunition to fight another flare-up in the crisis – and one looks certain to erupt in Cyprus before the end of the month.
European minimalism fails again. That is as depressingly familiar as the consequences of further failure are frightening.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The €100bn borrowed from the eurozone will carry preferred status to Madrid’s existing sovereign debt, Germany's finance minister says
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/2SRI11/MSMA8D/WH2F8/C4NYQX/ORXVKG/KI/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=12
THIS IS NOT THE TIME OR PLACE TO DISCUSS MY PERSONAL PREJUDICE CONCERNING GERMANY'S BEHAVIORS...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Analysts have cautioned that the underlying weakness of the Spanish economy will be a drag even on banks deemed the strongest by the IMF
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/2SRI11/MSMA8D/WH2F8/C4NYQX/B56POR/KI/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=12
YOU THINK?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The drag on Spanish sentiment is the refusal of policy makers to recognise the link between the fortunes of the country and those of its banks
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/2SRI11/MSMA8D/WH2F8/C4NYQX/PFK2DL/KI/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=12
THE PROBLEM IS---
BANKS SHOULD BE SUBSERVIENT TO THE NATION AND THE PEOPLE THAT OWN IT
NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND
Demeter
(85,373 posts)There is a delicious moment in the HBO film “Too Big to Fail” when Christine Lagarde, then France’s minister of finance, calls Hank Paulson, the U.S. Treasury secretary. It’s September 2008, and Lehman Brothers has just imploded after the government refused to bail it out. Panic is in the air.
“Hank,” she scolds him. “How could you let Lehman fail? What on earth were you thinking?” She pleads with him to save A.I.G., which appears to be the next domino poised to fall. “This is not just an American problem,” she concludes. (Note: I served as a consultant on the movie.)
Oh, the irony! Here we are, more than three-and-a-half years later, during which time the euro zone has repeatedly flirted with financial catastrophe. Lagarde now leads the International Monetary Fund, which exists, in large part, to help countries survive such catastrophes. Yet neither she nor anyone else in Europe has been willing or able to do more than use Band-Aids to stanch the bleeding.
A euro-zone meltdown, if it comes to that, would be devastating to the already battered economies of Europe, leading to widespread credit contraction, mass unemployment and depressed economies across the Continent. But it would undoubtedly take a toll on our economy as well — and it would be a huge blow to President Obama’s re-election prospects. To paraphrase Lagarde, this is not just a European problem.
The American and European responses to their respective financial crises are studies in contrast. The Bush administration and the Federal Reserve took an “all-hands-on-deck” approach: not just saving A.I.G. and recapitalizing the banks, but buying billions of dollars worth of subprime mortgages that were poisoning the banking system, and guaranteeing virtually all bank debt. Say what you will about the moral hazard that comes with bailing out too-big-to-fail banks, the strategy worked. By announcing to the world that it would serve as the lender of last resort, the federal government prevented a banking collapse, and, quite possibly, a depression...
WELL, THAT'S ONE EXPLANATION...PERSONALLY, I THINK THE PROBLEM WAS JUST KICKED DOWN THE ROAD A PIECE, AND UNFORTUNATELY, NOT QUITE FAR ENOUGH FOR ROBAMA'S RE-ELECTION...(ASSUMING HE ISN'T THE ONE CALLED OROMNEY...I NEVER DID FIGURE OUT WHICH WAS WHICH).
WHY ANYONE WOULD WANT TO GET RE-ELECTED TO PRESIDE OVER THE GREATER DEPRESSION ELUDES ME...BUT THE MALE EGO HAS ALWAYS BEEN SOMETHING OF A MYSTERY....
Demeter
(85,373 posts)AND THAT'S ONLY THE AVERAGE...CONSIDERING THAT THE RICH MADE A QUICK, TREASURY BUBBLE-FILLED RECOVERY...YOU WORK IT OUT.
DETAILS AT LINK, IF YOU CAN READ IT.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Hong Kong should review its peg to the US dollar and consider linking to the renminbi, according to Joseph Yam, former head of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
Mr Yam, who famously waged war against George Soros and other speculators to protect the peg during the Asian financial crisis, said Hong Kong might be better served by adopting a flexible exchange rate regime.
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/UXDMSS/FK0OQH/204L2/KQBFP6/2OPRYV/YT/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=12
AND SO IT STARTS--THE GREAT REALIGNMENT OF GLOBAL POWER
AND WE HAVE PREDATOR DRONEBOY AT THE HELM, THE REINCARNATION OF W.
MY DAY, WEEK, YEAR AND LIFE ARE COMPLETE.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Everyone hopes that the €100bn bailout of Spanish banks will calm the eurozone financial crisis and buy enough time for the further fiscal, banking and other integration that is required. That is possible but, unfortunately, it isn’t likely, says Roger Altman.
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/5F39HH/8ZTLAL/B49CK/DW3F43/PFK5V6/ZH/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=12
AND ROGER ALTMAN SHOULD KNOW--AS A LEHMAN BROS ALUMNUS (AMONG OTHER WINNING CAREER STEPS...WHAT A RESUME! HIS MAKES MINE LOOK GOOD--IF PERSONAL INTEGRITY IS YOUR GOAL)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Altman
Demeter
(85,373 posts)UnitedHealthcare, Aetna and Humana will maintain some popular aspects of the healthcare reform law regardless of the Supreme Court’s ruling
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/2SRI11/MSMA8D/WH2F8/C4NYQX/C4OU0B/KI/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=12
SOUNDS LIKE THE TEA LEAVES HAVE BEEN READ...AND OBAMACARE IS TOAST
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Several US lenders want to tap the value of the intellectual property holdings of their borrowers as a way of trimming their capital requirements
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/A1TNOO/DW6GDM/IEP5S/MS831T/EXCL2K/9A/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=12
YES FOLKS, THEY ARE OUT OF THEIR FREAKING MINDS.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Mark Schwartz, who retired from the bank in 2001, takes over from Mike Evans and will be based in Beijing
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/A1TNOO/DW6GDM/IEP5S/MS831T/2OPE1S/9A/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=12
PULLING PEOPLE OUT OF RETIREMENT? BLANKFEIN MUST BE SWEATING BULLETS AS HE TESTIFIES...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Industry body predicts combined net losses at European air carriers set to be nearly twice as big as expected because of the eurozone crisis
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/A1TNOO/DW6GDM/IEP5S/MS831T/AM83OO/9A/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=12
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)They broadcast a speech and Q&A by Dennis Kucinich last night. He was awesome , as usual. It will be re broadcast Friday night at midnight.
He pretty much said that the entire system is broken, and all fucked up by money.
It's a fundraising week, and they have a lot of good shows featuring Chris Hedges, Greg Palast, Paul Krugman, Howard Zinn, Michael Moore, Richard Wolff, and more.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)Those would certainly be worthwhile shows.
Do those programs ever turn up on YouTube? or even a podcast for the audio?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Cheap summer reruns--$1 seats.
Basically, the mayor is squeezing out the townpeople by shutting off the water, so he can make big bucks redeveloping their lands. Rango stops him, opens the cutoff valve, and water gushes through. Our hero!
Looks like Uncle Ben saw that movie, too, and opened the spigot and a flood of QE is raising all boats of the yacht size...
And can anyone tell me why gas is up 15 cents since Friday, in the face of declining crude?
On a Tuesday, no less?
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)I don't know what the hell is going on. We're usually higher than everyone else.
I've been putting off buying tickets for a trip to Cleveland in October, with the expectation that fuel prices (thus airfare) will drop even more.
Maybe I should jump now.
Po_d Mainiac
(4,183 posts)FL 35.....not good.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)It has been put out of its misery, at least....
Demeter
(85,373 posts)China has essentially recruited our business leaders to fight against our own government...We used to make things here, and then came free trade and then China opened up, and we moved a lot of manufacturing there, especially electronics. We say Apple here, because Apple is the most obvious, and because the supposed values of Apple conflict dramatically with what we now know about the working conditions of the people who make their products. But we mean ALL OF THEM...We used to think that China got so much business because labor was cheap. The elites, benefiting from that, said take advantage of the low prices, and our workers can move on to better, more productive pursuits.
Of course, intentionally undercutting the wages of our own workers was bad enough. And using that as a wedge to break unions was bad enough. But the story of our trade deal with China is much worse than that. Not too long ago stories about the working conditions of Chinese electronics workers started to be heard. We started hearing about protests, strikes, and then about suicides at these factories. The reports reached wide audiences from a New York Times report, How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work. This report highlighted Steve Jobs telling President Obama that these jobs are never coming back, and the reason was not the lower cost of labor. The reason was that in China they could make workers do things that they can’t make them do here. They can make them live in dorms where they wake them up at midnight to stand for hours on assembly lines, or use neurotoxins that let them clean many more screens in a day. They can dump horrible stuff into the environment. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Ask Chen Guangcheng, the blind lawyer who just arrived in the US, about how people are treated there.
The business advantage China offers is not low wages -- it is that in China the people do not have a say, and here people have a say. When people have a say they say they want better pay, health care, retirement, vacations, sick pay, protections, worker safety, clean environment and taxes to support the country – things like that – the very things China offers to let our businesses escape from. So what China offers is that China is “business-friendly.” Because people there do not have a say, so they can’t ask for the things people should have.
BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE, WORSE NEWS TO COME! SEE LINK!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Many a right-winger, and sadly, even some self-styled liberals, accuse those on the left of not loving America. Blogger and organizer Joe Costello loves America, and he loves it so much that he is willing to shout from the rooftops to wake us up to its awesome heritage and formidable potential – the potential that is being stolen away by a rapacious financial industry and its pocketed politicians.
Costello has been involved in communications, energy and political economy for three decades. He was communications director for Jerry Brown's innovative 1992 presidential campaign and was a senior adviser for Howard Dean's effort in 2004. He has compiled his riffs on our economy and political systems in new book, OF, BY, FOR: The New Politics of Money, Debt & Democracy, in which he calls for the American people to reclaim their rights and responsibilities.”
AlterNet caught up with Costello to find out more about what that means and how he envisions the quest for 21st century democracy...
"I found as I looked through history, as Larry Goodwyn says in his excellent book The Populist Moment, Americans have a lot less democracy than they're led to believe, and then further as Gore Vidal says, self-government is an historical anomaly.
Finally, over the last couple decades as all the new, call it quantum or information technology evolved, I concluded that democracy, or distributed order, is in fact necessary for the stability of the system. For example, we're having important lessons regarding that with the financial system right now.
People should have power over their lives, not imposed by large centralized forces. It's a lot more interesting that way. John Lydon put it best a few years back, saying he didn't want large impersonal forces fucking up his life -- he was completely capable of that himself, thank you very much. That's a good and humorous democratic ethic."
"we have a legacy of institutions of self-government. The problem is they became stuck in time. We don't need to overthrow them as much as reform, revitalize and evolve them. For example, I advocate people getting involved in government at the local level, because many of the changes we need will be decided there. Once people get involved there, they'll find how much power has been lost or never gained, and that whether they're in Omaha, Chicago or Birmingham, they're up against the same large nefarious impersonal national and global forces.
We need to literally re-form government...What the left doesn't come to grips with is the growth of DC was not just instrumental, but a necessity in the growth of the mega-corporation, while the “right” doesn't acknowledge the growth of the mega-corporation necessitated the growth of DC.
What we all have in common is that this process has completely corrupted our politics and made us all less powerful, less equal, and less involved as citizens."
MORE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Of the 22 members on the Congressional hearing charged this week with questioning JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon over his bank’s $2 billion trading loss, 7 members, including the Chairman and a ranking member, have JPMorgan as one of their top five political contributors.
As AlterNet reported, Tim Johnson, the Senate Banking’s chair, has JPMorgan as his single largest contributor (from 2005-2010). But there’s more to the story. Six other members on the supposed watchdog committee enjoy sizeable contributions from JPMorgan as well (numbers from 2007-2012), totaling $351,582.
They include:
- Richard Shelby (R-AL) — $72,950 (Ranking Member)
- Jack Reed (D-RI) – $29,850
- Robert Corker (R-TN) – $61,000
- Michael Crapo (R-ID) — $33,982
- Jon Tester (D-MT) – $45,000
- Mark Warner (D-VA) – $108,800
What’s more alarming, the entire Congressional panel is fraught with political donations from the “Securities and Investment” industry. The grand total? $13,423,762.
They include:
- Tim Johnson (D-SD; Chairman) – $350,652
- Richard C. Shelby (Ranking Member) – $819,788
- Jerry Moran (R-KS) — $138,000
- Roger Wicker (R-MS) — $285,016
- Jack Reed — $421,200
- Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) — $2,765,764
- Robert Menendez (D-NJ) — $481,651
- Sherrod Brown (D-OH) — $166,100
- Jon Tester — $360,190
- Mark Warner – $1,414,929
- Jeff Merkley (D-OR) — $353,767
- Michael F. Bennet (D-CO) — $1,126,674
- Kay Hagan (D-NC) — $315,045
- Jim DeMint (R-SC) — $227,133
- David Vitter (R-LA) — $211,040
- Mike Johanns (R-NE) — $138,904
- Patrick Toomey (R-PA — $1,028,078
- Mark Kirk (R-IL) — $1,639,497
- Bob Corker — $782,621
- Mike Crapo – $397,713
How can we expect a fair outcome when the Congressional committee charged with holding Dimon accountable is bought and paid for by his bank and industry?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)EMAIL MESSAGE:
Hi Nixle User,
This month the Better Business Bureau reports two new scams have hit the internet. The first Offers Debit Card Cash back and has been published on Facebook. This offer appears to come from a trusted friend, but this scam uses the social media to infect a victims’ computer with malware used to commit bank fraud. It entices Facebook users, by offering 20% cash back when they link their Visa or MasterCard debit card to their Facebook account.
The 2nd scam hitting the internet, claims President Obama will pay your utility bills through a new federal program. Energy companies are issuing warnings to customers regarding this scam. Consumers are contacted through social media, text messages, flyers and in person claiming that President Obama is providing credit or applying payments to utility bills. Consumer social security and bank routing numbers are requested to receive money. These customers are then given a phony bank routing number that will supposedly pay their utility bills. After signing up customers believe that they have paid their bills, but they have not, and they have compromised their identity and their economic security.
Avoid becoming a victim to these and other scams:
• Never provide SS #, credit card numbers or banking information unless you initiate contact without being solicited
• Do not install an application you are not sure is legitimate
• If you receive a call from your utility company and they are pressuring you for payment or personal information; hang up and contact the customer service number provided on your utility bill.
• Do not let anyone in your home to check wiring, natural gas pipes or appliances unless you have an appointment or you reported the an incident.
• Never click on social media posts in order to find who has viewed your profile. It is impossible to find out who is viewing your Facebook profile.
• If you happen to install a suspect application, click on the “home” icon, go to “Account Settings”, click on the con that says “Apps” & uninstall the suspect app.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Greece returns to the polls on Sunday in another attempt to elect a viable government, and the outcome of the election remains highly uncertain. Despite the broad-based support for euro membership among all major Greek parties and the general public, S&P is of the view that there is at least a one-in-three chance that Greece will exit.
A Greek exit could be brought about almost by accident. A Syriza-led government that fundamentally rejects the reforms agreed with the “troika” – the International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank – could lead to a suspension of external financial support.
Read more >>
http://link.ft.com/r/ZE9K33/4CP38Q/OFBYP/5VEMWN/TUEKI4/50/t?a1=2012&a2=6&a3=12
I SINCERELY DOUBT THAT GREECE WILL LEAVE THE EURO "BY ACCIDENT"
