I was watching CNBC the other day and the anchor got all bubbly because the market went up over 100 points and the GDP figures were in and it expanded by 2.5%, which is pretty good since the last two quarters sucked bad…..
The US’ total economic output shot up 2.5% from July through September, after two dismal quarters of rising just 0.4% and 1.3%, according to a new GDP report released today. Consumers amped up their spending on both durable goods and services, and business investments soared 16.3%—indicating that we may not be in for a second recession after all.
The numbers were also boosted by federal government spending, though drops in state government spending dampened that effect. And there’s some more moderately positive news: New jobless claims fell 2,000 this week, after dropping 7,000 last week. But that still leaves claims at 402,000—economists think claims must fall below 400,000 for job growth to outpace job losses.
All the pundits are jerking off at the news….but there is still no jobs! There are still millions of Americans that are unemployed! Then for whom is all this good news? Apparently, investors and by investors I mean hedge funds and by hedge funds I mean the same thieves that help tank the economy in the first place……those figures will be seasonal adjusted……which means in the final analysis….it will NOT be as good as they want it to be….
Let’s review……..0.1% of the population controls 34% of the country’s wealth, and owned as much much money as the bottom 42%. Corporate profits are up by 62%, and the earnings of the top percentage almost doubled, while the average raise for workers only rose about 9%. The Prez and the Congress gave massive tax cuts and even the Supreme Court got involved in politics………(pause here to re-read)……Wait! That was the crash of 1929, not 2008! And just like 1929 the economic crisis spread worldwide…..
My point here that all this has happened before and for the same reasons, well almost the same reasons, The Prez was Coolidge in1926….and the Supreme Court got involved in the process by ruling the minimum wage law was unconstitutional (they were controlled by business kinda like today and the ruling in the “People United” thing)…..why allow the same things to occur over and over and do nothing to change the vicious cycle?
And just like the crisis in 1929….Tax cuts and deficit debate will do NOTHING to repair the failing economy…..Bold new ideas must be found and I do not see that possible with a Congress owned by special interests….and yes…that could mean a bit of socialism….
I suggest if you truly want change then find another path….they are there…you just have to want it!
I know it’s fashionable to demonize hedge fund managers — but tell me one hedge fund manager, just one, who broke the rules in the process of allegedly “tanking the economy.” Congress and the SEC created the rules. Hedge fund managers played by them. Granted, some got too enthusiastic and bet the farm on mortgage-backed securities. They didn’t account for the prospect of sudden massive defaults on loans mandated and jaw-boned by Congress, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to massive numbers of borrowers who couldn’t afford them — ironically because that mandate and jaw-boning was supposed to create a steady supply of new mortgages that could be safely bundled. They thought they had the risk of default covered by securitization, i.e., the bundling of mortgages and spreading of the risk of default, which was a pretty clever market response to the ridiculous recklessness of Congress, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The origin of this recession is a short-sighted insistence — by Congress — that mortgage rules be drastically relaxed and many, many more people be extended mortgages, even though they couldn’t ultimately afford them. And then there was the market-corrosive disconnect of mortgage companies securing mortgages and then promptly selling them to the companies that bundled them, ostensibly to spread the risk of default, such that there was no incentive by the early predatory mortgage companies — i.e., the ones doing Congress’ bidding and securing as many mortgages as possible, in the name of “home ownership” — to actually check whether their mortgagers could afford what they were getting into. They didn’t care, because they were promptly selling the mortgages to someone else, so they didn’t confront any risk. This is a perverse system created by Congress. Everyone played by the rules, the rules were ill-conceived, and the rules screwed us. But make no mistake about where the rules came from.
And make no mistake that simplistic demonization of “rich people,” going forward, will massively and dangerously miss the point about how we fashion appropriate rules that don’t screw us.
And who exactly bought and paid for the rules to change from pre Ronald R?
Morning Q……I would say those who benefited most from the rules changes……and a good question…..
Morning Kendrick nice to see you again and pleasure as always……I agree that it was Congress and the Prez that brought about this whole thing and it terminated with Clinton and the repeal of Glass/Steagall…..and that Dodd/Frank is a toothless animal that will do little to curb the mis-practices of people that gave us this problem……..but I disagree that we must lay a lion share of the problem at Fannie and Freddie….I am NOT saying that is not a major part of it but there is more to it than just people wanting a home……I realize that most conservs hate the idea of regulation but I believe this will happen all over again until something substantial is done…other than pointing fingers…..it has happened before and it may well happen again…
The problem with so many people, Lobotero, is that they are inherently greedy and suffer from the delusion that one day they’ll be rich and included in the 1%, and so they vote like their future self would. All those who recognize the delusion are called socialists.
Problems with your proposition: (1) confusing the desire to be rich with “inherently greedy”; (2) treating “inherently greedy” (or the desire to be rich) as a per se undefined evil, which presumably only you know how to parse in picking people for heaven and hell; (3) identifying a “delusion,” which presumably only socialists know how to identify, and which “so many people” suffer, such that the majority of Americans are inferior to socialist psychological acumen; (4) assuming, falsely, that the pursuit of wealth is always delusional and can never be actualized; (5) assuming, falsely, that because the pursuit of wealth can never be actualized, any voting behavior predicated on the opportunities to gain wealth must be “delusional”; (6) assuming, falsely, that aspirational voting — that is, the belief in creating an economy of opportunities in which a person might acquire wealth — is necessarily delusional, because, well, that never happens; and (7) creating a class of super-psychologists, “called socialists,” who know better — which is precisely the condescension against which all those benighted Americans push back when they vote their future — in that “delusional” way.
Kendrick,
I apologize for the delay in my reply. My primary source of WordPress access is either my Android phone or tablet, and neither run WordPress all that well. I been too lazy and busy to get on my computer.
Anyway…
I realize lawyers may find this a bit disconcerting, but people do use their common sense from time to time. You’re in the business that requires one to put on a show
iIgnore that comment above. I had more to say, as you’ll see below, but it posted for some reason becauseI thinkI hit the wrong button.
Focus on the comment at the botom of the page.
Sorry and Thx.
HI Terrance…..and the media is leading that sales job….I agree and a post soon to come…..
Lot of interesting parallels between now and 1929 and the early thirties. If you follow the Stock market, I find it best to watch CNBC without the sound. The Market and the ‘tape’ say it all in a real unbiased way.
Hansi, like minds….I watch it just that way at 1200 and 3:00
Kendrick,
I apologize for the delay in my reply. My primary source of WordPress access is either my Android phone or tablet, and neither run WordPress all that well. I been too lazy and busy to get on my computer.
Anyway…
I realize lawyers may find this a bit disconcerting, but people do use their common sense from time to time…I realize you’re trying to show my statement of opinion – and it is only an opinion – as one big argumentative fallacy. But we are not in front of the Supreme Court, or any court but one of public opinion. Here common sense, while not supported by hard evidence, reigns supreme.
I watched The Rain Maker the other day and it comes to mind now. While it’s a fictional story, it highlights a part of American society and that is, to those interested in being honest with themselves, the greed. Corporations will sacrifice the health and safety of others to make or save a buck. And those goung after those companies – the lawyers – argue against tort reform not because of justice, but too because of greed.
It’s simply part of society, and perhaps even a fundamental part of humanity. The lingering of the reptilian brain or something. I don’t know.
“Socialist” has become a dirty word; an insult slung by rightwing malcontents. Suxh rhetoric cheapens political discourse, don’t you find?
Terrance, I’m not sure what to make of this. If your point is to contrast law and common sense, that only gets you so far because law is ultimately predicated on common sense, to wit common law. If your point is to demonize lawyers like me, and celebrate common sense, then you must do so with better common sense. Simply stating a hostility to law or lawyers doesn’t suffice for adequate argument against them. If your point is that corporations do greed, agreed! Corporations exist to make money, which is why we have an economy, such as it is, which is why we have jobs, and people able to pay their bills. Why should this be a mystery, that corporations exist to make money? And so much more profoundly, why should this be evil? Remove the corporate form — the engine of capital formation and industrialization — and you remove much of the 19th and 20th century growth that brings us to here, with the 21st century luxury to chat leisurely via the internet about the corporate form.
And I can’t even fathom whatever your point may be about “socialist” becoming a dirty word. I certainly didn’t use it as a dirty word; in fact, I used it only and precisely as you used it. To the extent it may be a “dirty word” in other contexts, perhaps that has something to do with socialists relentlessly using other people’s money for social engineering until other people’s money runs out (there being ever less incentive among the other people to actually make money), and then there is poverty. But I take your point to be something about current “rightwing malcontents,” whomever they may be, and I grant you that “socialist” gets used too easily. Both parties are loathe to advocate “socialism,” which, since you imply it shouldn’t be a dirty word, is interesting. But one party has been relentlessly advocating policies that resemble the word that shouldn’t be dirty.
Kendrick,
I’m confused. I state my opinion that people, by and large, are greedy, and then provide a slight taste of anecdotal evidence to support my opinion, and you seem to have missed the point. Instead you go off on a tangent about companies and the employed! Of course companies are greedy and then should be, but not at the expense of people’s health and safety. You can make money without losing your moral clarity. But I must say how distasteful it is to read your defense of the corporations I’m talking about. You cannot justify greed that steals lives, though you seem to have tried.
Also, accusing me of disliking lawyers – because I pointed out that we are not in a court of a law, no less – is laughable, considering I’ll be taking the LSAT next year. But my point about lawyers was simply their learned ability to make people think what they want them to think, common sense and the law be damned. It’s common sense to me that people arw inherently greedy and any serious student of history and the human condition wouldn’t argue different. Even in socialist regimes, greed is rampant.
Perhaps I see the glass as broken, not just half-empty. I dunno.
I wasn’t accusing you of using the word as an insult. I’m simply saying it is used as such by the rightwing, and that is the point I was making in my original reply. Look at all the absurd, ridiculous stuff said about the OCW movement. The common theme is socialists.