If Obama is the brilliant politician you think he is, what will he do in the future to show that -- besides get reeelected, that is?
Do you think he can change the minds of the people who feel he's let them down? I don't even know what he could do to reestablish himself with me, for example. During 2010 and this year there's been so many times he hasn't even taken a stand or tried to convince the public about big issues.
I know Blankfein doesn't worry much about inflation, but the rest of us do, because we are playing a game of catch-up, those of us who have jobs or pensions. Somehow, Peter G. Peterson thinks we are to blame for the country's budget woes, and we should take the fall. Yeah, tell it to the Greeks. I keep looking out my window for the crowds carrying pitchforks -- Peter Peterson should do the same. It's too bad Blankfein does not have to speak at town hall meetings across America to crowds of people who have lost their jobs, their retirement, and their homes. For some, Social Security is all they have left and politicians want to tinker with it. At their peril. Inflation + lost hope = Greece. Coming soon to communities near you.
The DLC is now defunct, since they were 'outed' as the little RNC they aspired to be.
But I would disagree about Obama, if the idea is that Obama, as a politician, cannot compare with FDR, LBJ or Clinton. Of course, situations are not comparable, but I think that 'Obama the Politician' will prove to be second to none.
Depends on state law and on practices at the county level.
Often, the first sale is a sale by the bank and the bank buys the property back from itself, but that usually requires payment of at least some of the back taxes. What it accomplishes is a write-down and a simplification of the legalities. Renters or squatters may also be involved.
Banks are reluctant either to negotiate realistically with mortgagees or to actually let auctions proceed on a realistic basis for fear of the hit they would take on all the properties they are holding paper on.
Banks and other corporate interests have been employing all kinds of strategems in order to avoid anything like a general decline in property values to what they would be if a non-manipulated market should be allowed to operate.
"Either team Obama are afraid of their own shadow at that absurd GOP rhetoric or some corporate lobbyists are demanding they tackle the deficit."
It's pretty clear, IMO, what's happened with "Team Obama." They simply never imagined that partisan rhetoric -- elevated to the status of absolutely uncompromisable ideological 'principle' -- could become an overriding force in Congress. Nothing like that ever happened in Chicago!
Now convinced that Washington politics are more whacko than anything he could ever imagine, he is declining all but pro-forma participation in the legislative proceedings of Congress. (That approach is, after all, not incompatible with the separation-of-powers doctrine!)
"Okay," the President has concluded, "if Obama (the individual) is the issue, and that cannot be compromised, let's go!" For all intents and purposes, Team Obama proclaimed the beginning of 2012 almost a full year before the next New Year. Amazingly this proclamation has actually worked to some extent. Republicans too believe that we are already in 2012 -- and they even believe that they can afford to bicker amongst themselves, because they think that victory is theirs in 2012. Maybe Republicans should be thinking more like "2012 is ours to lose"!
Obama is playing it like this: "Okay, you raise with your refusal to increase the debt ceiling, I stand pat, it's up to you ... " Then he steps out of the room and goes off to campaign. "Let me know what you decide."
Barack Obama as a politician should never be underestimated. He has made mistakes and risks losing his base, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he is done.
What does this mean for economic policy? It means that we can forget about reality, forget what we know, forget about sane solutions. Until after November, 2012, it's all going to be the smoke and mirrors of partisan politics. Of course, there will be casualties in the darkness at noon. Maybe blood will flow on the streets.
"The court found a committee of lawmakers was not subject to the state's open meetings law." -- Robert Oak
Without knowing the details, I am nonetheless astounded that Wisconsin's open-meeting law could be given such short shrift. My impression is that Wisconsin's laws on legislative and related proceedings, as in many states, goes back to progressive populism. The whole idea of these laws has always been to strictly subject anything substantial to public observation and prior notice.
It's as though some court had said in a homicide case: "The smoking gun is irrelevant and inadmissible."
Maybe someone here who has studied the record in this case can make some other judgment, but the sniff test says that this decision is as wholly partisan (and therefore corrupt) as was Bush v. Gore (2000).
Regardless of your view of Bush, of Gore and of the Florida results and ballot practices, the Bush v. Gore decision of December 2000 -- in the (5-4) part of the decision where the SCOTUS usurped powers given by the Constitution to the people and state of Florida -- was nothing but pure partisan politics. It now appears that far from being the exceptional practice claimed by the 5-4 majority, partisan judicial activism is becoming an accepted norm for the U.S..
How long can habitually partisan activist courts be credible within a political environment within which the people are polarized? When courts lose their credibility, are we on the verge of a constitutional crisis?
But EP is about economics. From the point of view of economics and investment, are we tumbling down the slippery slope of rampant political corruption toward a chaotic business/financial environment? Will investors hesitate to invest in the U.S. until, according to the Nathan Rothschild rule, "blood flows in the streets"?
Socio-economic stability -- including something like full employment policy -- must become a goal accepted as a consensus of the people and their elected leaders. We cannot afford to be distracted by delusions of partisan ideologies.
Drown out is an established idiom. I don't understand why people focus on spelling or grammar mistakes instead of commenting on the intent and content of the materials. I've seen this before, not only online, but in professional situations and it's like some sort of brain freeze. I get it when there are massive spelling and grammar mistakes and some of the comments blow any sort of credibility for that person cannot write a sentence.
That said, why focus in on some trivial error that in this case is not one? Why not focus in on what the post is bringing to your attention?
The St. Louis Federal Reserve enables me to graph these up fast as hell. If they weren't around, I'd have to maintain a set of graphs that I originally created and hand update them with new data.
I really think, in terms of public tools made available, the St. Louis Fed databases and graphing tools are truly a public service. You'll see all sorts of economists use them, including Paul Krugman, Brad Delong, to explain or at least graph out their points.
To me, reading a table and data entries, to see a pattern in raw numbers is very hard and most people cannot do it.
Graphs give a much better feel for monthly economic reports and for the most part, our "lost decade" or bad economy really is in this data. Pops up plain as day and also dismisses some of the huge lies out their in pundit and corporate lobbyist media plan spin land.
There are some places where I think there is a lot of denial and then in terms of raw data collection, statistics, I think there are still great problems. Some things are not easy to see, such as outsourcing, guest workers, globalization, labor arbitrage and so on, which could be improved by improvements in raw data collection, but for the most part the data really does reflect the sad state of affairs we are in.
Not only does the White House and Congress almost ignore these economic reports, they sure are not proscribing policy, legislation in response. All one needs to do is look at any manufacturing graph for the last 30 years and they should be jumping all over themselves to formulate a national manufacturing policy in response.
So, I think amplifying graphs, data battles the special interests/politicians as well by amplifying how not in reality they are in terms of any policies or legislative agendas!
That drives me nuts for these branches of government were set up so they had a better understanding what was happening on a macro-economic, even international scale.
So, watch out there are GOP, tea parties, politicians who want to privatize or remove these statistical branches of government, believe that or not. They also play with their funding continuously.
Just what we need, even less insight into what's really happening, right?
In order to preserve their collateral, the bank will pay the taxes, or strategically decide to let the property be sold. Then the highest bidder at tax sale takes the property free of the mortgage. Perhaps the buyer at sale is an LLC controlled by the foreclosed borrower who has saved enough after strategic default to buy it!! Hmmm
It's a huge task to keep up with this stuff and then to try to explain it. Plus you spend hours on preparing your posts and adding the charts.
Thanks for all your efforts. I really appreciate what you do here. Economic Populist is truly a spot of sanity in an ocean of incomplete information, competing misinformation, incompetent commentary and a government that's increasingly blind to our real problems.
I agree that, politically and economically, there are broad similarities between Obama and Clinton. New Democrats--gotta hate 'em. Including their hires on WH staff, cabinet, etc. The main difference being that Obama lacks Clinton's adeptness. So not only is Obama not FDR or LBJ, he's not even Bill Clinton.
Why they don't just restructure this debt and get over it is all about the banks and their lovely CDSes, never should have happened in the first place.
Austerity means stickin' it to the middle classes and workers, EOM.
But I find it interesting that they are all leaving and it's getting even worse. Larry Summers was a chief architect of the seeds which wrought our disaster and I'm thinking NAFTA, more importantly China trade agreement, along with the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
So, for him to write this op-ed, I will assume that even he is disgusted with what's going on in the White House and since he was chief economic adviser that tells me at least this must be coming from Obama and the political branch.
Either team Obama are afraid of their own shadow at that absurd GOP rhetoric or some corporate lobbyists are demanding they tackle the deficit. Sure, cut the waste but then the Stimulus had loads of waste and we railed on it at the time. But we wailed over TARP and wanted them to follow the plan Sweden did when they had their bubble/banks run amok.
In Congress, it's astounding the co-sponsors of bills imposing tariffs on China for currency manipulation, both parties, yet magically those are never called up for a vote on the floor. How can one have almost every member of Congress be a bill co-sponsor yet it never comes up for a vote?
Geithner, White House, refusal to do anything or are the bills stuck buried just for show?
But even in the GOP debate, shock of all shocks, I heard some plans to give a 100% tax holiday for anyone who manufactures in the United States for a period and government investment in manufacturing as well.
That was pretty Keynesian.
Don't forget to rate up posts to the front page folks.
It seems Romer, Summers, Jared Bernstein formerly in Biden's office -- since leaving their old jobs at the White House, the high level people in charge of economic policy are saying JOBS-JOBS-JOBS.
Were they saying that at the White House?
I am interested to see what Austan Goolsbee will say about "the vexing problem" of the 99ers [the still unemployed folks who've run out of unemployment], once he's no long being paid to try to solve it.
Can it be that the last one standing -- Geithner -- has been putting the deficit before employment?
This is a great story. A couple paid their mortgage on their house for a year to have BoA tell them they don't actually own it. Business Insider.
If Obama is the brilliant politician you think he is, what will he do in the future to show that -- besides get reeelected, that is?
Do you think he can change the minds of the people who feel he's let them down? I don't even know what he could do to reestablish himself with me, for example. During 2010 and this year there's been so many times he hasn't even taken a stand or tried to convince the public about big issues.
Where's the leadership?
I know Blankfein doesn't worry much about inflation, but the rest of us do, because we are playing a game of catch-up, those of us who have jobs or pensions. Somehow, Peter G. Peterson thinks we are to blame for the country's budget woes, and we should take the fall. Yeah, tell it to the Greeks. I keep looking out my window for the crowds carrying pitchforks -- Peter Peterson should do the same. It's too bad Blankfein does not have to speak at town hall meetings across America to crowds of people who have lost their jobs, their retirement, and their homes. For some, Social Security is all they have left and politicians want to tinker with it. At their peril. Inflation + lost hope = Greece. Coming soon to communities near you.
The DLC is now defunct, since they were 'outed' as the little RNC they aspired to be.
But I would disagree about Obama, if the idea is that Obama, as a politician, cannot compare with FDR, LBJ or Clinton. Of course, situations are not comparable, but I think that 'Obama the Politician' will prove to be second to none.
Depends on state law and on practices at the county level.
Often, the first sale is a sale by the bank and the bank buys the property back from itself, but that usually requires payment of at least some of the back taxes. What it accomplishes is a write-down and a simplification of the legalities. Renters or squatters may also be involved.
Banks are reluctant either to negotiate realistically with mortgagees or to actually let auctions proceed on a realistic basis for fear of the hit they would take on all the properties they are holding paper on.
Banks and other corporate interests have been employing all kinds of strategems in order to avoid anything like a general decline in property values to what they would be if a non-manipulated market should be allowed to operate.
Anyway, that's my 2¢.
"Either team Obama are afraid of their own shadow at that absurd GOP rhetoric or some corporate lobbyists are demanding they tackle the deficit."
It's pretty clear, IMO, what's happened with "Team Obama." They simply never imagined that partisan rhetoric -- elevated to the status of absolutely uncompromisable ideological 'principle' -- could become an overriding force in Congress. Nothing like that ever happened in Chicago!
Now convinced that Washington politics are more whacko than anything he could ever imagine, he is declining all but pro-forma participation in the legislative proceedings of Congress. (That approach is, after all, not incompatible with the separation-of-powers doctrine!)
"Okay," the President has concluded, "if Obama (the individual) is the issue, and that cannot be compromised, let's go!" For all intents and purposes, Team Obama proclaimed the beginning of 2012 almost a full year before the next New Year. Amazingly this proclamation has actually worked to some extent. Republicans too believe that we are already in 2012 -- and they even believe that they can afford to bicker amongst themselves, because they think that victory is theirs in 2012. Maybe Republicans should be thinking more like "2012 is ours to lose"!
Obama is playing it like this: "Okay, you raise with your refusal to increase the debt ceiling, I stand pat, it's up to you ... " Then he steps out of the room and goes off to campaign. "Let me know what you decide."
Barack Obama as a politician should never be underestimated. He has made mistakes and risks losing his base, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he is done.
What does this mean for economic policy? It means that we can forget about reality, forget what we know, forget about sane solutions. Until after November, 2012, it's all going to be the smoke and mirrors of partisan politics. Of course, there will be casualties in the darkness at noon. Maybe blood will flow on the streets.
Oh my, I'm pretty sure Michael Collins would have a whole lot to say about that. It sure does reek of partisan politics on the court.
Ever notice GOP rhetoric often is accusing the left of precisely what they are doing? (Activist judges)
"The court found a committee of lawmakers was not subject to the state's open meetings law." -- Robert Oak
Without knowing the details, I am nonetheless astounded that Wisconsin's open-meeting law could be given such short shrift. My impression is that Wisconsin's laws on legislative and related proceedings, as in many states, goes back to progressive populism. The whole idea of these laws has always been to strictly subject anything substantial to public observation and prior notice.
It's as though some court had said in a homicide case: "The smoking gun is irrelevant and inadmissible."
Maybe someone here who has studied the record in this case can make some other judgment, but the sniff test says that this decision is as wholly partisan (and therefore corrupt) as was Bush v. Gore (2000).
Regardless of your view of Bush, of Gore and of the Florida results and ballot practices, the Bush v. Gore decision of December 2000 -- in the (5-4) part of the decision where the SCOTUS usurped powers given by the Constitution to the people and state of Florida -- was nothing but pure partisan politics. It now appears that far from being the exceptional practice claimed by the 5-4 majority, partisan judicial activism is becoming an accepted norm for the U.S..
How long can habitually partisan activist courts be credible within a political environment within which the people are polarized? When courts lose their credibility, are we on the verge of a constitutional crisis?
But EP is about economics. From the point of view of economics and investment, are we tumbling down the slippery slope of rampant political corruption toward a chaotic business/financial environment? Will investors hesitate to invest in the U.S. until, according to the Nathan Rothschild rule, "blood flows in the streets"?
Socio-economic stability -- including something like full employment policy -- must become a goal accepted as a consensus of the people and their elected leaders. We cannot afford to be distracted by delusions of partisan ideologies.
He's stepping down and once again anything involving sex is the only way to get most of these politicians out of office.
Drown out is an established idiom. I don't understand why people focus on spelling or grammar mistakes instead of commenting on the intent and content of the materials. I've seen this before, not only online, but in professional situations and it's like some sort of brain freeze. I get it when there are massive spelling and grammar mistakes and some of the comments blow any sort of credibility for that person cannot write a sentence.
That said, why focus in on some trivial error that in this case is not one? Why not focus in on what the post is bringing to your attention?
The St. Louis Federal Reserve enables me to graph these up fast as hell. If they weren't around, I'd have to maintain a set of graphs that I originally created and hand update them with new data.
I really think, in terms of public tools made available, the St. Louis Fed databases and graphing tools are truly a public service. You'll see all sorts of economists use them, including Paul Krugman, Brad Delong, to explain or at least graph out their points.
To me, reading a table and data entries, to see a pattern in raw numbers is very hard and most people cannot do it.
Graphs give a much better feel for monthly economic reports and for the most part, our "lost decade" or bad economy really is in this data. Pops up plain as day and also dismisses some of the huge lies out their in pundit and corporate lobbyist media plan spin land.
There are some places where I think there is a lot of denial and then in terms of raw data collection, statistics, I think there are still great problems. Some things are not easy to see, such as outsourcing, guest workers, globalization, labor arbitrage and so on, which could be improved by improvements in raw data collection, but for the most part the data really does reflect the sad state of affairs we are in.
Not only does the White House and Congress almost ignore these economic reports, they sure are not proscribing policy, legislation in response. All one needs to do is look at any manufacturing graph for the last 30 years and they should be jumping all over themselves to formulate a national manufacturing policy in response.
So, I think amplifying graphs, data battles the special interests/politicians as well by amplifying how not in reality they are in terms of any policies or legislative agendas!
That drives me nuts for these branches of government were set up so they had a better understanding what was happening on a macro-economic, even international scale.
So, watch out there are GOP, tea parties, politicians who want to privatize or remove these statistical branches of government, believe that or not. They also play with their funding continuously.
Just what we need, even less insight into what's really happening, right?
In order to preserve their collateral, the bank will pay the taxes, or strategically decide to let the property be sold. Then the highest bidder at tax sale takes the property free of the mortgage. Perhaps the buyer at sale is an LLC controlled by the foreclosed borrower who has saved enough after strategic default to buy it!! Hmmm
It's a huge task to keep up with this stuff and then to try to explain it. Plus you spend hours on preparing your posts and adding the charts.
Thanks for all your efforts. I really appreciate what you do here. Economic Populist is truly a spot of sanity in an ocean of incomplete information, competing misinformation, incompetent commentary and a government that's increasingly blind to our real problems.
The problem is they are drown out,
You mean "drowned Out."
Here they are, downgrading the United States while pleading no contest in rating CDOs. Wunderbar!
They're disgraced but it doesn't matter. The financial markets just roll along as thought there's nothing happening.
How about a downgrade for Goldman for such lousy advice. They're a toxic asset in drag.
I agree that, politically and economically, there are broad similarities between Obama and Clinton. New Democrats--gotta hate 'em. Including their hires on WH staff, cabinet, etc. The main difference being that Obama lacks Clinton's adeptness. So not only is Obama not FDR or LBJ, he's not even Bill Clinton.
No surprise, Business Insider seems to be running an update.
Why they don't just restructure this debt and get over it is all about the banks and their lovely CDSes, never should have happened in the first place.
Austerity means stickin' it to the middle classes and workers, EOM.
But I find it interesting that they are all leaving and it's getting even worse. Larry Summers was a chief architect of the seeds which wrought our disaster and I'm thinking NAFTA, more importantly China trade agreement, along with the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
So, for him to write this op-ed, I will assume that even he is disgusted with what's going on in the White House and since he was chief economic adviser that tells me at least this must be coming from Obama and the political branch.
Either team Obama are afraid of their own shadow at that absurd GOP rhetoric or some corporate lobbyists are demanding they tackle the deficit. Sure, cut the waste but then the Stimulus had loads of waste and we railed on it at the time. But we wailed over TARP and wanted them to follow the plan Sweden did when they had their bubble/banks run amok.
In Congress, it's astounding the co-sponsors of bills imposing tariffs on China for currency manipulation, both parties, yet magically those are never called up for a vote on the floor. How can one have almost every member of Congress be a bill co-sponsor yet it never comes up for a vote?
Geithner, White House, refusal to do anything or are the bills stuck buried just for show?
But even in the GOP debate, shock of all shocks, I heard some plans to give a 100% tax holiday for anyone who manufactures in the United States for a period and government investment in manufacturing as well.
That was pretty Keynesian.
Don't forget to rate up posts to the front page folks.
It seems Romer, Summers, Jared Bernstein formerly in Biden's office -- since leaving their old jobs at the White House, the high level people in charge of economic policy are saying JOBS-JOBS-JOBS.
Were they saying that at the White House?
I am interested to see what Austan Goolsbee will say about "the vexing problem" of the 99ers [the still unemployed folks who've run out of unemployment], once he's no long being paid to try to solve it.
Can it be that the last one standing -- Geithner -- has been putting the deficit before employment?
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