Steve's Politics Blog

The Real News Network has the article The Fed and the Crisis. This is “a commentary by Jane D’Arista assessing the actions of the Federal Reserve in managing the economic crisis.”

I want to particularly emphasize the following quote even though the commentary is filled with other good information, too.

The configuration which we face now, all the other institutions—mutual funds, investment banks, asset issuers, insurance companies—contribute three times as much credit to the system as does the Federal Reserve—or, excuse me, as does the banking system.

I have been trying to make this point in the blog from its inception, but this is the first time I have heard an expert provide quantitative figures. The factor of three is probably even larger than I have been assuming. Remember the factor of three is not a comparison between the private sector and the Federal Reserve Bank. It is a comparison between the enumerated parts of the private sector — mutual funds, investment banks, asset issuers, insurance companies — and the banking system. The Federal Reserve bank is only part of the banking system. The private sector banks create a lot of the credit that is created by the banking system.

So the next time you hear some politician or some business news medium railing against the Federal Reserve “printing” money, just remember that the private sector “prints” money at more than three times the rate of the Federal Reserve Bank. In other words, less than one third of the credit being created is being created by the Federal Reserve Bank.

In a press release from the University of California San Diego, Facebook Boosts Voter Turnout, there is a description of an interesting experiment.  Do not underestimate the impact you have by liking political articles and Facebook pages on Facebook, and increasing traffic to political web sites.

In 61-million-person experiment, researchers show online social networks influence political participation, with close relationships mattering most
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Published in Nature, the massive-scale experiment confirms that peer pressure helps get out the vote – and demonstrates that online social networks can affect important real-world behavior.

“Voter turnout is incredibly important to the democratic process. Without voters, there’s no democracy,” said lead author James Fowler, UC San Diego professor of political science in the Division of Social Sciences and of medical genetics in the School of Medicine. “Our study suggests that social influence may be the best way to increase voter turnout. Just as importantly, we show that what happens online matters a lot for the ‘real world.’”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, voter participation was about 53 percent of the voting-age population for the presidential election in 2008. For the Congressional election in 2010, which this study focused on, the turnout was 37 percent. The numbers are clear: Many more people in the United States could vote than do.

In the study, more than 60 million people on Facebook saw a social, non-partisan “get out the vote” message at the top of their news feeds on Nov. 2, 2010.

The message featured a reminder that “Today is Election Day”; a clickable “I Voted” button; a link to local polling places; a counter displaying how many Facebook users had already reported voting; and up to six profile pictures of users’ own Facebook friends who had reported voting.

About 600,000 people, or one percent, were randomly assigned to see a modified “informational message,” identical in all respects to the social message except for pictures of friends. An additional 600,000 served as the control group and received no Election Day message from Facebook at all.

Fowler and colleagues then compared the behavior of recipients of the social message, recipients of the informational message, and those who saw nothing.

Users who had received the social message were more likely than the others both to look for a polling place and to click on the “I Voted” button.

Previously, I had received the following in an email from MariaT

From the comfort of our homes, we can improve search results for Warren by visiting her links below.

• ‘Like’ Elizabeth on Facebook www.facebook.com/ElizabethWarren
• Visit her website elizabethwarren.com/elizabeth
• Visit her Wikipedia page en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren
• NY Times news on Elizabeth topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/elizabeth_warren/index.html
• Warren news on Bloomberg topics.bloomberg.com/elizabeth-warren/
• Her YouTube stuff www.youtube.com/results?search_query=elizabeth+warren&oq=eliz&gs_l=youtube.1.3.0l10.5657.6344.0.9121.4.4.0.0.0.0.119.337.3j1.4.0…0.0…1ac.qjfjCLE3Oy0

Bloomberg has produced the story Fed Undertakes QE3 With $40 Billion MBS Purchases Per Month.

I found Mitt Romney’s reaction to this hysterically funny.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said he wouldn’t reappoint Bernanke when his term ends in January 2014. Lanhee Chen, Romney’s policy director, said the announcement of QE3 is “further confirmation that President Obama’s policies have not worked.”

“We should be creating wealth, not printing dollars,” Chen said in a statement.

Looking at my own investment portfolio and multiplying by how much larger than mine is  Mitt Romney’s portfolio, if Mitt Romney is no better an investor than I am, he made $3,500,000 today.  I guess with Romney’s net worth of $250 million,  making $3.5 million a day isn’t considered real wealth.

All I can say is WOW!!.

Art Ramalho of Ramalho’s West End Gym says we need a fighter like Elizabeth Warren in the United States Senate.

The Boston Globe has the article Brown pushed STOCK Act, but bill Obama signed in ad was not his.

Brown has said that he does his homework and that he reads the bills that come before Congress. But in this instance, Brown’s measure was so hastily drafted that it contained exact language lifted from an earlier House bill on the same subject. And even after Brown’s draft was set aside by the Homeland Security Committee in favor of another version, Brown continued to claim credit in an encounter with President Obama. In January, Brown intercepted the president as he departed the House after his State of the Union speech.

In the greater scheme of things, this would not be a big deal.  However, if Brown is pushing the dishonesty meme on Elizabeth Warren for something that may be even a lesser deal than this, then I thought people ought to know.

At the very least, Scott Brown is claiming credit for something that others accomplished.  In the working world of engineers, having your boss take credit for your work is a pretty obnoxious thing for your boss to do.  When I had engineers reporting to me, I was extremely careful to give credit to the people who deserved the credit.  If something was accomplished by an engineer reporting to me, I thought that would reflect well enough on my management, that I had no need to claim credit for the work myself.

If I felt upper management was attributing work to me that was actually achieved by someone reporting to me, I went out of my way to disabuse upper management from their mistaken notion.  In one instance, that might have been instrumental in keeping someone who was worth keeping instead of potentially letting him look for a job elsewhere.

If I couldn’t keep my job based on the work that I did, then I was not worth keeping.  I felt confident enough never to have to work in a place where I wasn’t wanted.

While I am catching up with my postings on the Democratic National Convention, I really ought to post the most important speech of the convention. As President Obama has begun to call him, Bill Clinton is the administration’s Secretary for Explaining Stuff.

If there is one word of this speech to remember, it is “Arithmetic”.

I was mystified at some of the negative reaction I read about Elizabeth Warren’s DNC speech in the ensuing days afterwards. I was wondering if these people watched the same convention that I did.

Here is a little mix-tape put together by the campaign about the reaction on the night of the speech. Apparently at the time of the speech, the commentary was not all that bad.

If you want to see for yourself, look at my previous post Elizabeth Warren’s DNC Speech.

As I said there, since I watch these events on C-SPAN, I don’t get the displeasure of hearing the words of the commentariat class. If I must hear those words at all, then it is much better to hear them in a context that won’t set my blood to boil.

I listened to this speech on C-SPAN, so I didn’t get to hear any extraneous commentary from the talking-headitariat. I was also watching at a watch party at a bar in Southbridge, so I am not sure I got the full impact. I thought it was a very good speech.

The Real News Network has produced the report Chicago Teachers Strike Rooted in Community Struggle.

I figure that this side of the story might not get adequate coverage in the lame stream media. Now you know what the teachers are saying the strike is all about.

I have read comments about this story to the effect that the teachers are asking for money that is just not there. From another point of view, you might say that the money is there, but the government has decided to give that money to the wealthy instead of paying adequate salaries to their employees. The private sector is driving down wages in the name of profit and the governments are doing it in the name of not taxing the “job creators”. If people don’t band together to fight for their own interests, how do you think this story ends?

I leave it up to your built in biases to decide which side to believe.

I think we are starting to see the change in tone in Elizabeth Warren’s advertising as she moves into the final phase of her campaign.

For anyone whose had to take the extra shift to make ends meet, for everyone who planned for a secure retirement but is facing a struggle, for all the people who played by the rules but find the system is rigged again them, know this: your fight is Elizabeth Warren’s fight.