The Economic Populist
Speak Your Mind 2 Cents at a Time
Most Popular
US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
- 134955 reads
Site Upgrade!
- 79813 reads
4th Quarter GDP Grew at 2.9% Rate on Increased Inventories, Personal Services, and Government
- 62387 reads
Employee Abuse Runs Rampant In America
- 138770 reads
VAT or Value Added Tax is Getting a Look in D.C.
- 330038 reads
Blame the Real Cause of this Crisis
- 39569 reads
User login
Recent comments
Poll
US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
- 134955 reads
Site Upgrade!
- 79813 reads
4th Quarter GDP Grew at 2.9% Rate on Increased Inventories, Personal Services, and Government
- 62387 reads
Employee Abuse Runs Rampant In America
- 138770 reads
VAT or Value Added Tax is Getting a Look in D.C.
- 330038 reads
Blame the Real Cause of this Crisis
- 39569 reads
The Golden Rule
- 1821973 reads
Will the NY Attorney General Bring Doomsday Charges Against Wall Street? If So, How Long Will He Survive?
- 1209130 reads
New York Post Claims Census Falsifies Unemployment Figures
- 938362 reads
How Many Jobs Are Needed to Keep Up with Population Growth?
- 347662 reads
VAT or Value Added Tax is Getting a Look in D.C.
- 329284 reads
U3 and U6 Unemployment during the Great Depression
- 311820 reads
House discusses 401k/IRA confiscation
- 301122 reads
The war on the middle class
- 299033 reads
Tax Cuts for the Rich Do Not Generate Jobs
- 275200 reads
.
1. In addition to the 30% of Americans who are "bitter renters", there is another 30% who are homeowners who have paid off their mortgages. These people must also wonder why they bothered to do the responsible thing. There are ~7% of Americans who are in trouble on their mortgages now. leaving about 33% of Americans with mortgages. Now, we don't know how many have refinanced or got "fog-the-mirror" loans, but let's just guess that half of this 33% have never taken out HELOCs or are current with their suitable mortgages. Bottom line: something like 75%-80% of Americans who have been prudent one way or the other are being told to bail out greedy or irresponsible misbehavior.
2. I know it's unintentional, but your essay makes it appear that the Bush malAdministration is the primary tout of tapping federal agencies for the bailout. Unfortunately, this one is bipartisan. Even Barney Frank, many of whose proposals are good ones, has also proposed this loot of the Federal agencies.
3. Don't forget the Federal Home Loan Banks. Remember the one it Atlanta turned out to be buying something like $52 Billion (!!!) of Countrywide's toxic stuff a few months ago as it was spiraling into bankruptcy.
4. As usual, the bailout is being given without the reforms to prevent the next catastrophe from being put in place. That's always for "later", and the lobbyists and campaign contributors always make sure that "later" never comes.
n/t
Go read cactus' blog entries on Angry Bear. I've linked to 3 of them. I believe there were 6 in all.
You don't need for there to be a conscious conspiracy. But cactus' data suggests there's much more than random chance.
Cactus' blogs were over a year ago. The Fed this year is behaving exactly as would be predicted by those blogs.
Show me more years of data
......this post shows it quite clearly.
No, no snark here. This what I call 'good stuff' and I will spread the word.
While people argue and mischaracterize the working class and the supposed creative class, there is assuredly a new class emerging that rewards each other regardless of what travesties one of them does. That's the Executive Class.
The AFL-CIO has an entire website and action center devoted to watching this new gang of thugs give each other millions and billions with no correlation whatsoever to actual job performance.
Executive PayWatch
Why don't you register (right hand column), here since you are commenting on most of the blog posts. It means the letters you have to type to make a comment go away and you wouldn't go into a comment approval queue. Welcome to EP!
Will ring true for those voters in PA/OH/FL/MI and so on...
if the Democrat actually has policy positions which they want.
Just saying that one is going to put "environmental and labor standards" into trade agreements is just not enough to truly dramatically change direction or create a new trade strategy in the national interest.
That's the issue here with Obama, he is simply not talking about actual policy change that is what the people want. He describes the problems sure, but in terms of solutions, well, take health care for example, I think most people know that making sure every single person in the nation has health insurance is a key element for it to actually work.
And because of your sacrilege (which is one of the reasons The Economic Populist exists, so one can post and say sacrilege without getting some sort of cultist mob mentality attacking you and instead get some real consideration)....I'm going to talk about another thing that is going to hurt.
That's immigration. By electing McCain, they took this issue off because all three of them are doing the US Chamber of Commerce's bidding. That said, there are degrees, because the issue is actually complex. Hillary has recognized wage repression as a result, Obama has not. Even worse he calls people xenophobic and when they are having their jobs cut short, especially in construction, meatpacking and so on, that doesn't go over too well.
In other words, I think you're right, they are going to pump up the economy just enough so once again people vote on some perceived national figurehead but I lay the blame at the feet of the Democrats who also do Corporate lobbyists bidding and don't in a very concrete way put forth policy change in favor of what the majority of Americans want that would over ride some temporary illusion that the economy is ok by these sorts of manipulations.
In his book "Hot Commodities" Jim Rogers believes we're partway into a commodities bull market compounded by an ever shrinking dollar. Add to this artificial scarcity, self fulfilling prophecy, market speculation and global panic disorder and throw in some China phobia, and the next thing you know you've got a peak oil theory and a resource war with the pentagon in the back pocket of the oil companies. And it just so happens that the war is killing the dollar. And at least with the "peak oil theory" it's not the only game in town just the one that gets the most air time. The Russian Ukranian theory of Deep abiotic oil Genesis would be another one.
http://www.gasresources.net/Introduction.htm
As someone who thinks of himself as a Populist I don't like advocating more taxation for anybody (or corporate entities either) at the same time am vehemently opposed to corporate welfare, and loopholes as well as the "revolving door", no-bid contracts, corporate fascism, and a host of other ills that occur when politicians and CEOs get in bed together.
Is what that graph looks like to me. I'm curious if there has ever been that kind of slope before? Thing might be comparable to Dutch tulip bulbs!
the newsletter referred to in that front page cbsmarket watch story, I'd like to see it (predicting hyper inflation). No links to justify or explain why it was front page.
I don't see hyperinflation anywhere on the horizon for the US.
I've actually done a fair amount of historical reading about hyperinflation, and you don't get there directly from a low inflation environment. There has to be a transition period of a sustained amount of time with double and triple digit inflation before hyperinflation sets in. In Latin America, that has often been a decade or more.
Interesting you should mention "decoupling" too. I hope to post on that issue shortly....
I don't recall who said it, but I heard 20% of the increases in oil were due to speculators in the hedge funds.
On the other hand, did you see the forum post I made about someone saying "economic Armageddon" as the US will experience hyperinflation?
Another question I have about all of this is the dollar and a possible decoupling from that I've read so much about.
http://www.whitehouseforsale.org/
....to be found in the proselytizing, from such as Kos, Bowers, and Marshall...and others, indeed others in the 'Democrat' Party, of ID politics.
That is, the politics of identification. Women will vote for HIllary, blacks for Obama and as you get more fine grained populists for populists. Only, you never get to the lever of 'populism' as this is next door to policy. And discussions of policy are not what most members of the corporate state, corporatist press nor corporations themselves want.
The last thing the CEO of GE wants to have to do is defend his company's shameful record as the the amount of taxes it has paid while extracting billions and billions from the commons. So we get....
See the black man run....
See the uppity woman....
I've posted about this quite a bit and talked myself hoarse about it.
ID politics is a tool of the existing hegemony to thwart needed change and those who engage in it are no more than willing flunkies with nothing to offer but....
'More of the same'.
I believe until Obama is utterly destroyed by McCain or cast aside by the Democratic Party to avoid that happening we will see nothing but ignorant bloviating by our 'leaders'. The self-appointed ones anyway.
You don't see Krugman or John Dean or Angry Bear, nor Bonddad falling for this tired line of bs. So there is hope for real change once folks rediscover.....
What matters in a politician is the policies they want to implement; not...
Who they say they are.
A new op-ed about the OPT extension explains why Chertoff and the DHS broke their own rules and violated the Constitution:
The Search for Internships Just Got Tougher
Here is my contribution to this analysis:
http://takeaction.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=1191
Keep up the good work Robert!
A populist would represent the people rather than big government or big corporations. A quick look at which candidate had zero bundlers would tell you who the populist is in the Presidential race. (Ron Paul)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism
for almost identical reasons.
Here's his article over at Economist's view.
Pages