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thinkahol *

Activists Hold Wall Street Accountable for Economic Crisis - 0 views

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    Progressive groups threw a one-two punch at the nation's richest banks on Monday. A coalition of watchdogs and activists released a new report revealing how the wealthiest bailed-out banks have caused the current economic crisis by dodging taxes, and hundreds of demonstrators rallied in Washington, DC, to demand the attorneys general of all 50 states file criminal charges against banks that are suspected of committing foreclosure fraud during the nation's housing crisis.
Skeptical Debunker

Obama, Republicans clash at heated health summit - Yahoo! News - 0 views

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    "We have a very difficult gap to bridge here," said Rep. Eric Cantor, the No. 2 House Republican. "We just can't afford this. That's the ultimate problem." With Cantor sitting in front of a giant stack of nearly 2,400 pages representing the Democrats' Senate-passed bill, Obama said cost is a legitimate question, but he took Cantor and other Republicans to task for using political shorthand and props "that prevent us from having a conversation." And so it went, hour after hour at Blair House, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House - a marathon policy debate available from start to finish to a divided public. The more than six-hour back-and-forth was essentially a condensed, one-day version of the entire past year of debate over the nation's health care crisis, with all its heat, complexity and detail, and a crash course in the partisan divide, in which Democrats seek the kind of broad remake that has eluded leaders for half a century and Republicans favor much more modest changes. With Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, they were left with the critical decision about where to go next. Obama and his Democratic allies argued at Thursday's meeting that a broad overhaul is imperative for the nation's future economic vitality. The president cast health care as "one of the biggest drags on our economy," tying his top domestic priority to an issue that's even more pressing to many Americans.
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    Of course the "we" in "We can't afford this" is the big health care monopolies (pharma, insurance, etc.). Supposedly, the country and people can afford the continued gouging by those special interests (up to 40% in some places this year alone!). Too, if the government were to find a way to "afford it" (disregarding that Medicare and Medicaid savings might pay for it altogether!), that would probably be on the "back" of the richest 5% and by reducing corporate and business subsidies (like those to oil companies, the military industrial complex, "big finance" bailouts and sweetheart Federal funds rates and "liquidity" pumping, non-risk underwriting for things like coastal flood insurance, etc., etc., etc.). Since that is the "invisible hand" that feeds most "conservatives" and Republican politicians, that would never do.
thinkahol *

Ongoing Crisis and Liberal Blindness | Truthout - 0 views

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    The double dip of this crisis is upon us. The latest data agree: the housing market has been in full double-dip mode for five months as home prices keep declining. The foreclosure disaster keeps increasing the combination of homeless families and empty homes. Think capitalist efficiency. Unemployment rose back above 9 % again. The average length of unemployment is now 39.7 weeks, the longest since these records began in 1948. Investments by businesses are decelerating and governments keep dropping workers. 
thinkahol *

Elections Have Consequences - 0 views

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    We are at a pivotal moment in American history, and many Americans watching the deficit talks in Washington are confused, perplexed, angry and frustrated. This country, which has paid its debts from Day 1, must pay its debts. Anyone who says it is not a big deal for this country to default clearly does not understand what he or she is talking about. This is a nation whose faith and credit has been the gold standard of countries throughout the world. Some people simply say we're not going to pay our debt, that there's nothing to really worry about. Those are people who are wishing our economy harm for political reasons, and those are people whose attitudes will have terrible consequences for virtually every working family in this country in terms of higher interest rates, in terms of significant job loss, in terms of making a very unstable global economy even more unstable. Our right-wing friends in the House of Representatives have given us an option. What they have said is end Medicare as we know it and force elderly people, many of whom don't have the money, to pay substantially more for their health care. So when you're 70 under their plan and you get sick and you don't have a whole lot of income, we don't know what happens to you. They forget to tell us that if their plan was passed you're going to have to pay a heck of a lot more for the prescription drugs you're getting today. They we're going to throw millions of kids off health insurance. If your mom or dad is in a nursing home and that nursing home bill is paid significantly by Medicaid and Medicaid isn't paying anymore, they forgot to tell us what happens to your mom or dad in that nursing home. What happens? And what happens today if you are unemployed and you're not able to get unemployment extension? What happens if you are a middle-class family desperately trying to send their kids to college and you make savage cuts to Pell grants and you can't go to college? What does it mean for the nation if we
thinkahol *

Colbert Channels Herman Cain on the Unemployed: Blame President Obama AND Yourselves! |... - 0 views

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    Stephen Colbert took on Herman Cain's conflicting opinions on the cause of the unemployment crisis. Is the crisis unemployed people's fault for not pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, or President Obama's fault for passing lousy legislation? In Herman Cain's world, both things are true, and Wall Street is definitely not to blame. As Colbert notes, unemployed people shouldn't be occupying Wall Street; instead, "You should be out in front of the White House blaming yourself for not having a job." Watch the segment here:
Michael Haltman

The Hallmark Abstract Sentinel: What happens if your title insurance underwriter stops ... - 2 views

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    New Jersey Title, an underwriter of title insurance policies in the northeast, has become a casualty of a financial and real estate crisis that has taken many victims. Some of these casualties might never have occurred if the events of the past few years had not taken place, but because they did there are firms and individuals who now face the need to find alternatives at a time when those alternatives may be difficult to come by.
thinkahol *

Unjust Spoils | The Nation - 0 views

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    The Great Recession could have spawned another era of fundamental reform, just as the Great Depression did. But the financial rescue reduced immediate demands for broader reform. Obama might still have succeeded had he framed the challenge accurately. Yet in reassuring the public that the economy would return to normal, he missed a key opportunity to expose the longer-term scourge of widening inequality and its dangers. Containing the immediate financial crisis and then claiming the economy was on the mend left the public with a diffuse set of economic problems that seemed unrelated and inexplicable, as if a town's fire chief dealt with a conflagration by protecting the biggest office buildings but leaving smaller fires simmering all over town: housing foreclosures, job losses, lower earnings, less economic security, soaring pay on Wall Street and in executive suites.
thinkahol *

YouTube - Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio Duck - 0 views

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    This is a re-imagined Donald Duck cartoon remix constructed using 50 classic Walt Disney cartoons from the 1930s to 1960s. Donald's life is turned upside-down by the current economic crisis and he finds himself unemployed and falling behind on his house payments. As his frustration turns into despair Donald discovers a seemingly sympathetic voice coming from his radio named Glenn Beck.   Will Donald's feelings of disenfranchisement lead him to be persuaded by his radio's increasingly paranoid and divisive rhetoric? Or will our favorite Disney duck decide that this voice is not actually on his side after all? Watch and find out!   * Listen to Glenn Beck's response on his radio show to this remix video: YouTube via stopbeck.org - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHHByFFSh54  * Better yet check out ikat381's remix of Beck's response using Mickey Mouse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbjjTLVrkKA  This transformative remix work constitutes a fair-use of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US copyright law. "Right Wing Radio Duck" by Jonathan McIntosh is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 License - permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.  * Please link back to my website: http://www.rebelliouspixels.com * English captions are now working in case you're not fluent in duck-speak  * Learn about fair-use at the Center for Social Media: http://centerforsocialmedia.org * Learn about transformative works at the OTW: http://transformativeworks.org * Useful Media Matters archive of Glenn Beck clips: http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Jonathan McIntosh http://www.rebelliouspixels.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  List of Cartoons used:  * Window Cleaner - 1940 * Lucky Number - 1951 * Symphony Hour - 1942 (Mickey Mouse Cartoon)  * Put-Put Troubles - 1940 * Donald's Dilemma -19
Arabica Robusta

Keane Bhatt, "Noam Chomsky on Hopes and Prospects for Activism: 'We Can Achieve a Lot'" - 1 views

  • I think he would take it for granted that elites are basically Marxist -- they believe in class analysis, they believe in class struggle, and in a really business-run society like the United States, the business elites are deeply committed to class struggle and are engaged in it all the time.  And they understand.  They're instinctive Marxists; they don't have to read it.
  • In fact, Malaysia also came out of the Asian crisis.  It was imposing capital controls.  Now the economists were all saying it's a disaster.  But they did quite well.  Same with Argentina, the former poster child for the IMF, leading to a serious crisis.  It then disregarded all the warnings and doctrines and the economy did very well, contrary to predictions.
  • using the multidimensional poverty index, there were 645 million poor, or 55 percent of India's population -- more than in the poorest 26 African countries combined. 
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  • there is sometimes dramatic conflict between the developmentalists, like left president Correa, and the indigenous communities affected by mining and dams.  Also, Evo Morales, despite being hugely popular, recently had to deal with a very big general strike in Potosí.  What do you make of these dynamics?  What are the hopes and prospects in Latin America regarding raising living standards, the paths of industrialization, environmental considerations, the role of social movements, and avoiding state coercion?
  • I don't know of any simple general answer to your question of how this will all turn out.  The problems are often not simple.  A great deal is at stake, not just for the people of the countries.  Resource extraction impacts a global environment that is increasingly at severe risk.
  • You said, "It's quite striking that we and other western countries can't reach, can't even approach, can't even dream about the level of democracy they had in Haiti.  That's pretty shocking.  Here's one of the poorest countries in the world.  The population that organized to win that election is among the most repressed and impoverished in the world; they managed to organize enough to enter the electoral arena without any resources and elect their own candidate."  Praising Bolivia at the same time, you asked, "Is it believable that we can't do the same? . . . We can take lessons from them.  Anything they've done we can do a thousand times more easily."
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    The founding fathers were very concerned about the danger of democracy and spoke quite openly about the need to construct the democratic institutions so that threat would be contained.  That's why the Senate has so much more power than the House, to mention just one example.
thinkahol *

Daily Kos: Over 150,000 Protesters Take to the Streets in Israel as Pressure on Netanya... - 0 views

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    Over 100,000 protesters swarmed the streets of 11 cities across the country, dancing to performances by some of Israel's most popular musicians and screaming angry slogans at PM Binyamin Netanyahu. The protests, which began as a response to the country's housing crisis, and have since spread to a host of social and economic complaints, are posing the greatest threat to  Netanyahu's rule as he grapples, unsuccessfully, to quell the growing discontent.
Bakari Chavanu

Capitalism's Self-inflicted Apocalypse - 0 views

  •  The present economic crisis, however, has convinced even some prominent free-marketeers that something is gravely amiss. Truth be told, capitalism has yet to come to terms with several historical forces that cause it endless trouble: democracy, prosperity, and capitalism itself, the very entities that capitalist rulers claim to be fostering.
  • Some eighty  years ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis commented, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” Moneyed interests have been opponents not proponents of democracy.
  • In the early days of the Republic the rich and well-born imposed property qualifications for voting and officeholding. They opposed the direct election of candidates (note, their Electoral College is still with us). And for decades they resisted extending the franchise to less favored groups such as propertyless working men, immigrants, racial minorities, and women.
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  • The conservative plutocracy also seeks to rollback democracy’s social gains, such as public education, affordable housing, health care, collective bargaining, a living wage, safe work conditions, a non-toxic sustainable environment; the right to privacy, the separation of church and state, freedom from compulsory pregnancy, and the right to marry any consenting adult of one’s own choosing.
  • About a century ago, US labor leader Eugene Victor Debs was thrown into jail during a strike. Sitting in his cell he could not escape the conclusion that in disputes between two private interests, capital and labor, the state was not a neutral arbiter. The force of the state--with its police, militia, courts, and laws—was unequivocally on the side of the company bosses.
  • Any nation that is not “investor friendly,” that attempts to use its land, labor, capital, natural resources, and markets in a self-developing manner, outside  the dominion of transnational corporate hegemony, runs the risk of being demonized and targeted as “a threat to U.S. national security.”
  • Most of the world is capitalist, and most of the world is neither prosperous nor particularly democratic. One need only think of capitalist Nigeria, capitalist Indonesia, capitalist Thailand, capitalist Haiti, capitalist Colombia, capitalist Pakistan, capitalist South Africa, capitalist Latvia, and various other members of the Free World--more accurately, the Free Market World.
  • Corporate investors prefer poor populations. The poorer you are, the harder you will work—for less. The poorer you are, the less equipped you are to defend yourself against the abuses of wealth.
  • In the corporate world of “free-trade,” the number of billionaires is increasing faster than ever while the number of people living in poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world’s population. Poverty spreads as wealth accumulates.
  • To the extent that life is bearable under the present U.S. economic order, it is because millions of people have waged bitter class struggles to advance their living standards and their rights as citizens, bringing  some measure of humanity to an otherwise heartless politico-economic order.
  • There is a third function of the capitalist state seldom mentioned. It consists of preventing the capitalist system from devouring itself.  Consider the core contradiction Karl Marx pointed to: the tendency toward overproduction and market crisis. An economy dedicated to speedups and wage cuts, to making workers produce more and more for less and less, is always in danger of a crash. To maximize profits, wages must be kept down. But someone has to buy the goods and services being produced. For that, wages must be kept up. There is a chronic tendency—as we are seeing today—toward overproduction of private sector goods and services and underconsumption of necessities by the working populace. 
  • Instead of trying to make money by the arduous task of producing and marketing goods and services, the marauders tap directly into the money streams of the economy itself. During the 1990s we witnessed the collapse of an entire economy in Argentina when unchecked free marketeers stripped enterprises, pocketed vast sums, and left the country’s productive capacity in shambles. The Argentine state, gorged on a heavy diet of free-market ideology, faltered in its function of saving capitalism from the capitalists.
  • These thieves were caught and convicted. Does that not show capitalism’s self-correcting capacity? Not really. The prosecution of such malfeasance— in any case coming too late—was a product of democracy’s accountability and transparency, not capitalism’s. Of itself the free market is an amoral system, with no strictures save caveat emptor.
  • Perhaps the premiere brigand was Bernard Madoff. Described as “a longstanding leader in the financial services industry,” Madoff ran a fraudulent fund that raked in $50 billion from wealthy investors, paying them back “with money that wasn’t there,” as he himself put it. The plutocracy devours its own children.
  • The classic laissez-faire theory is even more preposterous than Greenspan made it.  In fact, the theory claims that everyone should pursue their own selfish interests without restraint.
  • Capitalism breeds the venal perpetrators, and rewards the most unscrupulous among them.  The crimes and crises are not irrational departures from a rational system, but the converse: they are the rational outcomes of a basically irrational and amoral system.
  • Worse still, the ensuing multi-billion dollar government bailouts are themselves being turned into an opportunity for pillage. Not only does the state fail to regulate, it becomes itself a source of plunder, pulling vast sums from the federal money machine, leaving the taxpayers to bleed.
  • But the 2008-09 “rescue operation” offered a record feed at the public trough. More than $350 billion was dished out by a right-wing lame-duck Secretary of the Treasury to the biggest banks and financial houses without oversight--not to mention the more than $4 trillion that has come from the Federal Reserve.  Most of the banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of New York Mellon, stated that they had no intention of letting anyone know where the money was going.
  • In sum, free-market corporate capitalism is by its nature a disaster waiting to happen.
  • If the paladins of Corporate America want to know what really threatens “our way of life,” it is their way of life, their boundless way of pilfering their own system, destroying the very foundation on which they stand, the very community on which they so lavishly feed.
Skeptical Debunker

Top Fed Official Warns Jobs Will Be Scarce As 'Paradigm Shift' Slows Hiring - 0 views

  • In remarks at the University of San Diego, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Janet Yellen said that rather than experiencing a "V-shaped recovery," the economy will continue to be sluggish and won't be operating at its full potential until 2013. As reasons, she cited consumer anxiety due to the high unemployment rate; a housing sector that "could weaken again"; "very nervous and exceedingly cost-conscious" businesses; and a commercial real estate market that won't contribute to growth "for some time." For workers, though, her prognosis was particularly dire: the labor market will be slow to recover because businesses have learned that they can cut workers yet maintain output.
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    A top Federal Reserve official warned Monday that even as the economy starts to grow again, employers are likely to continue squeezing more productivity out of workers rather than start hiring new ones, thereby prolonging the economic crisis for the millions of unemployed.
Levy Rivers

Joseph A. Palermo: Defeating the Bailout Looks Like Another Republican Ploy - 0 views

  • House Republican leaders did not put much pressure on their rank-and-file members to back the rescue package." John Boehner, Roy Blunt and other "leaders" of the House Republicans thought they could strike a public pose as if they really cared about the credit seizure that looms over the country while secretly hoping to pin the bill's passage on Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, (and by association, Barack Obama).
  • They wanted Speaker Pelosi to pass the bill without much Republican cover so they could tell their constituents that the Democrats were just "picking the taxpayers' pockets again."
  • I agree with the critical flaws in the bill that Dennis Kucinich articulated this morning on Amy Goodman's show, Democracy Now! I don't believe in a government welfare program for Wall Street swindlers who had the audacity to pump up the paper value of one of their hidden, unregulated derivatives, "credit default swaps," from $631 billion in 2001 to $62 trillion in 2008! I think some people should be indicted; some people should go to jail.
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  • Whenever you hear the word "bi-partisan," even during the waning hours of the Bush years, it usually means something very bad is about to happen.
  • All of a sudden I hear Bush Administration mouthpieces such as the billionaire Henry Paulson, who in the past have told us that we are all on our own and we shouldn't rely on government for anything, speak about "our" financial markets as if working people have been the ones swapping "collateralized debt obligations" and "hybrid debt instruments."
  • It is my hope we can seize the opportunity this crisis presents, hold President Obama's feet to the fire, and construct a new social compact in this country, a New New Deal.
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