Here is a refreshing take on what is going on in Europe. It answers the quetion that Sharon and I have been asking since the story broke, “Why can’t they tax the rich people in Greece instead of taking it out on the rest of the citizens?”
Here is another gem from Robert Reich, The Austerity Death Trap. I am hoping that if we all repeat this story enough times, it might drown out the fiction from the other side.
I’ll single out just one paragraph from the article because it is right on target for one of the things I keep focusing on. While I am at it, I’ll throw in the next paragraph from the article after my focus paragraph. That second paragraph explains Reich’s answer for how to get out of the death trap.
Can we just put ideology aside for a moment and be clear about the facts? Consumer spending (70 percent of the economy) is flat or dropping because consumers are losing their jobs and wages, and don’t have the dough. And businesses aren’t hiring because they don’t have enough customers.
The only way out of this vicious cycle is for the government – the spender of last resort – to boost the economy. The regressives are all calling for the opposite.
The comment I posted on the Truth Out web page for this article was as follows:
What I can never understand is that when Nightly Business Report asks CEO’s about their most important need to start investing again, they never mention “We need more customers.” Maybe they think it is so obvious, it is not worth mentioning. Just once, I’d like NBR to ask a CEO, “Would having more customers get you to start investing again?”
For a business program, you’d think one or two of their reporters might understand the importance of customers to a business.
I have suggested to NBR that the question about customers seems so obvious to me, I cannot figure out why they won’t ask it.
Peter Kim read my blog and emailed this poster to me.
You can control the size of the image below by changing the width of your browser window. In other words, just use your mouse (if you have one) to drag one side of your browser to make it smaller or larger, or you can just click on the icon that enlarges your browser to full screen or shrinks it to an adjustable size.
The book Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It has the following explanation for political apathy:
The old and tired oscillations between “liberals” and “conservatives,” between Democrats and Republicans, remain the basis of mainstream US politics. Pendulum swings work now for Republicans, now for Democrats. What the swings leave unchallenged and unchanged is the class structure of the country – the capitalist arrangements of production that divide people and products into workers versus capitalists and wages versus profits. No significant political force connects this capitalist system of production to social problems. No such force advocates changing the class structure as part of a solution to those problems.
When class structures neither change nor even seem open to change, the endless political oscillations eventually convey their superficiality to the public. Politics then loses all contact with basic questions of choosing among alternative social structures and among alternative goals and strategies for social change. At best, politics interests specific sub-groups only if, when, and so long as some specific issue of immediate personal concern is at stake (abortion, gun control, gay marriage, oil prices, etc.). At worst – and the worst is what we increasingly experience – politics pits irrelevant tweedledums against tweediedees, cynically advertised candidate #1 vs public-relations-driven #2. People then turn away first from political activism, then from participation and information, and finally even from the passivity of mere voting. A mass alienation from politics altogether deepens, immune to the vapid exhortations to civic duty. Politics descends into a special branch of business where politicians make money and advance careers by mutually profitable relations with other businesses. This alienation – and the caricature politics it both reflects and enables – will remain unless and until a class-based politics emerges to contest for power.
In this video, Robert Reich explains how the OWS movement has already succeeded.
The very fact that I am reading Capitalism Hits The Fan and The “S” Word is a direct result of hearing about these things from OWS.
The video below was interesting enough.
I found one comment on the post to be eye-opening about a previously unrecognized by me valuable impact of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
gypski, Wouldn’t you like to know!!!
Well now the academics are coming out with the truth and an honest assessment of what happened. The banks and financial institutions are the cause and should be facing criminal charges. Shake the tree, fruit is bound to fall out.
NJOsprey Collapse
Not as long as Tim Geithner is Treasury Secretary.
Citibank just paid a $280 million fine to the SEC. One junior employee is under further investigation. No executives are under investigation. OWS is having an effect. The comment above was made by Charles Osgood on WCBS, a New York news station.
Slowly, the mainstream media is starting to talk about the Wall Street scandals. Its like the coverage of the Vietnam war; slowly the media was forced to see it for what it was in response to all the demonstrations and calls for withdrawal.
Like the Vietnam “anti-war,” this will take years to correct. Hang in there and we will be able to “hang” the banksters.
The article from Nation Of Change is Leaked Memo: The Corporate Board Rooms Fear the Occupy Movement Occupying Their Board Rooms Targeting Individual Executives.
Corporations fear their leaders being held personally accountable for the actions of concentrated corporate interests. They especially fear their names and addresses being known and their board rooms being invaded by OccupyTheBoardroom.org.
Do you think this is a sign that the Occupy Movement is having an impact? If it doesn’t have a direct impact on some politicians, it may be having a direct impact on the people who supply funds to these politicians. I think they will deliver the message to the politicians they own.
I always felt that the attempts to accuse China of currency manipulation were phoney baloney. Watch the video below to see exactly how phoney it is.
Michael Hudson: Senate proposal based on junk economics and is illegal under international law
Between what Michael Hudson and Richard Wolff in Capitalism Hits the Fan are saying, the days of US dominance are numbered.
I found this video in the article Romney: ‘Don’t Try And Stop The Foreclosure Process’.
If you had any doubts about my title for this post, look at the video
Besides being an a$$hole, he doesn’t know what he is talking about.
For instance, Medicare has a managed care program run by private insurers called Medicare Advantage. I know because I use it. It costs the government 15% more to get the private insurers to do the same job that Medicare does.
As for the trouble in the housing industry, Romney seems to be unaware that a big problem was the liar loans that the largest banks in this country foisted on unsuspecting borrowers. According to William Black, 90% of the lying was done by the mortgage brokers, not the borrowers. One authority calls this a fraudulent conveyance that got the borrower to put a house up for collateral for a loan that was designed to be unsustainable. His solution would be to make the contract null and void and just wipe out the debt owed to the originator of the fraud.
From a bank officer’s point of view, a liar loan had a lot going for it. It had a low, introductory, teaser rate of interest so the buyer could afford a home beyond his or her wildest dreams. The mortgage could then be packaged into a derivative and sold as if the mortgage had been issued at the final rate (which the buyer would never be able to afford). The bank’s officers got wonderful bonuses for making it look like the bank and the investors were making huge profits while the borrower didn’t have to pay much. When the whole thing collapsed, the bank’s officers got to keep the bonuses and the banks, the investors, and the borrowers were left holding the bag.
You may or may not think much of the analysis in the article, Dems In Tug-Of-War Over Occupy Wall Street, however, I believe the following quote explains the necessity of the Occupy Movement.
As time goes on individual Democrats will be the object a tug of war, with the corporate and business wing of the party pulling one arm, and progressives and grassroots activists yanking at the other.
If we don’t tug on our side of the rope, where do you think the Democratic Party will go?
