Medicines for an anti-toxin and a vaccine for the economy:

1) Stop bundling and sales of mortgages;

2) Re-instate Glass-Steagall regs;

3) Create infrastructure investment pool of revenues for Federal Government;

4) Increase Social Security Incomes and

5) Raise interest rates on 10 year Treasury Notes to 10%.

by Matoska (22 articles, 1 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 33 comments) on Wednesday, Nov 12, 2008 at 8:21:12 PM

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I have a lot of respect for the thoughts, intelligence, and research of Paul Craig Roberts.

But, what about basic math that might get the average person onboard to understand where our country really stands?

I happened to do a search on unemployment rates and the breakdown of what percentages of jobs that were available in various states. From the results, it seems that more than one out of five workers, “works” for the government.

There are kids, the unemployed, the elderly, and those that can’t work who also need to be supported by the less than four out of five working.

So, these same four workers have to pay for their retirement, those who have already retired, their health care, everyone’s health care, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, care of the roads, for police, NASA, courts, the government, waste, supplies, and everything else.

These 4 people working have not been able to pay for all that is now going on. What about the growing prison population and all the money needed just for that?

A friend of mine had grandparents who worked at a shoe factory. They got a month off for vacation, had lots of kids, a lake house, and a comfortable life. Try working at a shoe factory, if there is even one anywhere in the US, and then live like that now …

[my blog]

by Steven G. Erickson (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 57 diaries, 218 comments [3 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Wednesday, Nov 12, 2008 at 10:00:43 PM

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to Treason and War Crimes, while the wife and political party swappin B rated senile sap Ronald Reagan administration fomented the weapons for cocaine Iran-Contra scandle.

This pathetic GOP "Greed & Oppression Party" Reagan administration helped facilitate the financial quagmire the USA currently finds itself in, spending trillions of dollars on "Star Wars" missile defense that can't hit a thing without pre-trajectory information.

Just WTF do they mean when they talk about a "Peace Dividend" when the Pentagon budget has always had increases, while the Reagan administration had not one iota to do with the collapse of the former USSR,  bloating the size of government and wasteful deficit spending your great-grandchildren of "Loved Ones" will still only be paying a fraction of the interest of the total debt.

Russia is now a leaner, meaner fighting machine and is beginning to bite back at a cash-strapped, military demoralized US fighting force, under the self-appointed leadership of an AWOL/Deserter convicted drunk driver who won't disclose the last time he's done cocaine, and his multi-convicted drunk driving 5 Vietnam deferment Buckshot Dick. Who would not be the VP if this felon had been in jail where he belonged with his being a part of the unpatriotic Reagan administration.

Then there was the championing of deregulation by the criminal Reagan administration that caused the S & L scandle and Junk bond scandle that followed on its heels, and the rest of the dot.com, sub-prime, and the present 700+ billion $ bailout to boot. 

Rewarding golden parachutes to the "Financial Wizards" who should be in prison.

If the felons of the Reagan administration had been in prison as "Enemy Combatant's" then the Bu$h II self-appointed administration would have never materialized to wreck such havoc and mayhem upon the law abiding, tax paying patriotic American citizen.

by Stanimal (2 articles, 226 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 1254 comments [234 recommended, 2 rejected]) on Wednesday, Nov 12, 2008 at 11:29:43 PM

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We are blessed indeed to have your clear and forceful thoughts expressed here on OpEdNews.

 My question to you:  Do you have any thoughts on the American Monetary Act promoted by the American Monetary Institute and, if so, then would you share them with us?

 For those not familiar with AMI -- see http://www.monetary.org/

by Alan Donelson (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 86 comments [5 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Nov 13, 2008 at 2:22:54 AM

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Very good article..

Here is one I wrote yesterday at http://www.KeepAmericaAtWork.com titled "Polls"

Polls,

You love them or you hate them or in my case, you distrust them because they don't provide the detail so that you can verify the accuracy of the data.

But on the other hand, I'm noticing some interesting things in the "Employed" poll that I am running this month.

As of right this minute we have:

• 19 employed for 57.6 %
• 7 unemployed for 21.2 %
• 5 looking for 15.2%
• 2 gave up for 6.1 %

Now according to the cia's web site we have about 300 million people in america, so lets divide that into 3 age groups.

Lets make the assumption that 100 million are under the age of 18 which leaves 200 million.

So we have an age group from 18 - 98 and 200 million people

A lot of people either retired at 65 or possibly were forced to retire at 65 which leaves from a total of 70 working years:

• 33 years of retired people and
• 37 years of working people

That is awful close to 50 % this early in the morning.

So these rough numbers tell me we should have 100 million working and 100 million retired as approximate numbers.

Now I read in one of the government reports a while back that our government uses 150 million workers which makes me wonder how they arrived at that number, but thats another topic at a later date.

So we have 100 million workers, now lets deal with the numbers above and we'll add the 19 employed and the 5 looking for a total of 24 working and we'll add the numbers of 7 unemployed and 2 gave up for a total of 9

So now we have the numbers of 24 and 9 which gives us 33

So now we will divide 100 million by 33 and we get 3,030,303 per number

So now we're going to multiply 3,030,303 times 24 and we get a working population of 72,727,273

And now we're going to multiply 3,030,303 times 9 and we get a unemployed populaton of 27,272,727

Damn, does that give us an unemployed percentage of 28 % instead of the 6 % our experts are telling us.

Now do you see why our economy and the economy of all the democratic countries is suffering right now ?

As for you other democratic countries, run the numbers on your own country and if your leaders have followed America's lead and sent your jobs offshore, then that will explain why you're going through the same problems we are.

by Virgil Bierschwale (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4 comments) on Thursday, Nov 13, 2008 at 5:38:48 AM

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The crisis is beyond the reach of traditional solutions because the crisis is deeper than the traditional economic problems that can be addressed by tweaking policy. The crisis is in the foundation of the system itself. As Bill McKibben's book "Deep Economy" argues, the issue lies in the economy's requirement for endless growth; that growth is always good. Endless growth is necessitated by our banking system, which creates money through debt then multiplies the debt through interest. The crisis is beyond the reach of traditional solutions because criticism of the banking system is always "off the table". Mike Montagne identifies interest as the essence, the core, of our economy's destiny of self-destruction, since, as he says, "any monetary system subject to 'interest' ultimately terminates itself by inherently and irreversibly multiplying debt in proportion to a circulation until sustainable commerce can no longer afford to service a terminal sum of debt". www.perfecteconomy.com. We can't grow the economy out of this predicament because that requires infinite monetization of goods and services: "The crisis we are facing today arises from the fact that there is almost no more social, cultural, natural, and spiritual capital left to convert into money. Centuries, millennia of near-continuous money creation has left us so destitute that we have nothing left to sell. Our forests are damaged beyond repair, our soil depleted and washed into the sea, our fisheries fished out, the rejuvenating capacity of the earth to recycle our waste saturated. Our cultural treasury of songs and stories, images and icons, has been looted and copyrighted. Any clever phrase you can think of is already a trademarked slogan. Our very human relationships and abilities have been taken away from us and sold back, so that we are now dependent on strangers, and therefore on money, for things few humans ever paid for until recently: food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, child care, cooking. Life itself has become a consumer item. Today we sell away the last vestiges of our divine bequeathment: our health, the biosphere and genome, even our own minds. This is the process that is culminating in our age. It is almost complete, especially in America and the "developed" world. In the developing world there still remain people who live substantially in gift cultures, where natural and social wealth is not yet the subject of property. Globalization is the process of stripping away these assets, to feed the money machine's insatiable, existential need to grow. Yet this stripmining of other lands is running up against its limits too, both because there is almost nothing left to take, and because of growing pockets of effective resistance." ["Money and the Crisis of Civilization" by Charles Eisenstein at www.hopedance.org/cms/content/view/556/113/]

by Jim Eldon (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 253 comments [15 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Nov 13, 2008 at 8:24:25 AM

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One of the main things we could do is get rid of the FED. We get our money back we can tell Paulson and his ilk we have a jail cell waiting for them.

END the FED - Nov 22nd

http://www.endthefed.us/

by Mr M (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 66 diaries, 2845 comments [654 recommended, 27 rejected]) on Thursday, Nov 13, 2008 at 2:14:43 PM

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For years i have been predicting a depression.Reagans global economy has finally killed America.We do not produce much except weapons our biggest export.The result of the global economy is millions out of work,incomes drastically cut and a permanent trade deficit we can 't afford.Roberts is right we must bring the conmpanies back to the US or we are forever doomed.If we can"t get the greedy sob's to come back the government should finance building our own companies and putting a high tariff on foreign imports  we are making in the US.military and foreign aid should be slashed to the bone.I do disagree with not supporting massive building programs to put Americans to work until we can rebuild our industries.Tax rebates won"t help,they give momentary relief but further add to our debt

by liberalsrock (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 257 comments [53 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Nov 13, 2008 at 3:42:58 PM

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Both parties bought in to free trade which resulted in American jobs being sent overseas to countries where people work for food.  The real wage has declined steadily since the free trade policy began. 

I agree that businesses should have incentives to employ Americans, but a value added tax is much harder, more expensive, and more burdensome than the traditional incentive of tariffs.  All imports should be taxed at higher rates, and goods produced in America should not be taxed at the corporate level as that is passed on to the consumer just like a regressive sales tax. 

Both parties also have undermined our justice system and allowed a bloated, overly expensive, corrupt, and intrusive government to dampen the incentive to invest much as high tax rates once did.  A just, responsible, and streamlined government must be restored.  For the quickest way to do this, see the first comment to Senate Bailout a.k.a. Bank Robbery Bill

Finally, both parties have allowed cartels to develop in virtually every market.  Cartels extract monopolistic prices from their consumers and lead to a less efficient allocation and distribution of resources.  The Anti-Trust laws need to be enforced, and the cartels need to be broken up in every industry.   

by Mark Adams (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 312 comments [39 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Nov 13, 2008 at 6:02:16 PM

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