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Several years after receiving my M.A. in social science (interdisciplinary studies) I was an instructor at S.F. State University for a year, but then went back to designing automated machinery, and then tech writing, in Silicon Valley. I've always been more interested in political economics and what's going on behind the scenes in politics, than in mechanical engineering, and because of that I've rarely worked more than 8 months a year, devoting much of the rest of the year to reading and writing about that which interests me most.
Sunday, February 12, 2012 How the Banksters Got Away With the Biggest Crime of the Century (3 comments)
CFMA not only legalized the casino capitalism of super-risky "swaps' and collateralized toxic vapor, but also made it illegal to _regulate_ the casino. Ex-Sen. Phil Gramm had the audacity to accuse Americans of being "whiners" for objecting to the theft of their life savings and homes! He also authored the anti-regulation modification that was tacked on to CFMA before it snuck through the Senate at midnight.
Friday, January 27, 2012 Wall Street's Dirtiest Deals Show Why Our Economy Fell Apart (11 comments)
After cutting a mile-wide swath of losses through the US economy, helping destroy two venerable firms (Bear and Ambac), bilking the taxpayer for untold millions, this man is also named in a lawsuit filed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency for allegedly speeding bad loans onto securitization before they defaulted, and he is now living the contented life of a proud family man, happily spending the millions he stole.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012 Will Predatory Hedge Funds Succeed in Milking Greece for All It's Worth? (3 comments)
Hedge fund sharks are using financial terrorism to extract billions from the Greek people. And they can get away with it for one reason: the EU and America are enormously fearful that a Greek default would lead to a chain reaction of financial defaults that wd bring down the entire global financial system. Hopefully, Occupy Wall Street will one day grow into a movement large enough to end this kind of financial terrorism.
Saturday, January 21, 2012 Will Saving the Environment Require a Shorter Work Week? (11 comments)
Our current economic system, fed by carbon-based energy and other resources consumed at ever faster rates at one end, spews out waste products at rates that cannot be absorbed by Earth's ecosystems at the other, and is unsustainable. What that means is simple: Industrial society as we know it cannot go on as it has. Any rational analysis tells us that the first thing that's "gotta give" is the 40-50 hr. workweek.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012 The Economic and Financial Legerdemain of the Obama & Bush Administrations (4 comments)
By understating inflation, our government has been able to create the illusion of an economic "recovery." In fact, their "positive economic growth" number is created by counting inflation as GDP growth. However, when inflation is measured in the old way (the way it was measured before Clinton's presidency), it becomes clear that the US has experienced no real GDP growth in the 21st century.
Sunday, December 25, 2011 European Economy in Dire Straits, and the US Too. How So, Why So? (10 comments)
Central banks create the easy money & lax regulatory environments where bubbles emerge & provide limitless liquidity so that their bankster pals don't lose money on the inflated value of their assets. That's what the recent $640 billion boondoggle was really about: propping up toxic bonds worth a mere fraction of their original value. Financial theater & the show must go on. The truth wd. bring down the entire house of cards.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011 The coming run on European banks and the resulting crash of the European (and US?) economies (5 comments)
BofA's beleaguered bank's shares crashed through the psychologically important $5 mark yesterday, the lowest they've traded since March 2009. Other bank stocks including Morgan Stanley fell even harder as investors fretted on renewed concerns about bank capital cushions and a darkening economic outlook in Europe. This is like a fire in a 10-story building. It's burning through each floor as investors dump their shares.
Saturday, December 17, 2011 Are the Nazi-linked Backgrounds of Some of America's Biggest Corporations a Clue to the Direction We Are Headed? (17 comments)
Measures contained in the annual military budget bill strip the FBI, federal prosecutors and federal courts of most of their power to arrest and prosecute terrorists and hands it off to the military. The legislation could also give future presidents the authority to throw American citizens into prison for life, without charges or a trial. The bill was attached to the military budget bill to make it harder for Obama to veto.
Friday, December 9, 2011 Republican Misinformation, Scams & Delusions, and the Best Ways to Combat Them (4 comments)
Bring back Glass-Steagall to once again keep investment banks separate from savings banks. Implement Eliot Spitzer's five steps, so that banks are much more tightly regulated, controlled and supervised. Follow northern Europe's example by spending a greater percentage of our GDP on social services. Raise marginal tax rates back up to the level they were at during those periods of US history when economic growth was maximum.
Monday, December 5, 2011 Tea Party Karl Denninger Explains How Banksters Robbed Us and How to Get Some of It Back (3 comments)
We have banksters stealing anything that's not nailed down; we have co-opted Senators trying to give our president unitary authority to essentially become Stalin and establish his own cadre of "disappearance squads" whenever he wants, and we have Congress claiming to want budget discipline but at the same time intending to blow a new $200 billion hole in the deficit before the end of the year -- without creating any new jobs!
Thursday, December 1, 2011 In Both Europe and America the Banksters Are Now Running the Government. Here's Why & How. And What We Can Do About It (12 comments)
The top 1%, whose wealth & income continue to multiply, expects those of us who have lost jobs and homes, and watched our retirement nest eggs disappear, to ignore the fact that our gov't has unlimited resources available for them, the top 1% (including the banksters), but nothing for we the American people?! Sorry, but this ignorance is not gonna continue! Americans are waking up to what's been ever so cleverly done to them
Saturday, November 26, 2011 A Solution for the Mortgage Crisis & Financial Meltdown (6 comments)
According to the U.S. Constitution, Congress is supposed to create and control our money supply. So why doesn't it? The power to create and control the supply of money is the most important human power on earth. So why did the US government, in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution, **give it away** to a privately-owned third party, a cartel euphemistically and misleadingly named the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank?
Thursday, November 10, 2011 Will Europe's Growing Debt Crisis Drag the U.S. into Another Major Recession (or Worse)? (22 comments)
Just as the collapse of the U.S. housing market three years ago and Wall Street's subsequent credit crunch sent shock waves around the world, federal officials in the U.S. fear that the European debt crisis could hurt big banks there and trigger major problems here, perhaps dragging the U.S. into another major recession or worse. Like Europe was vulnerable in the crisis of '08, the U.S. is vulnerable now.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011 Reclaim The Monetary System From The Fed And Stop It From Further Destroying Our Economy For The 99% (5 comments)
A new House bill proposes elimination of the private control of our monetary system by the Fed, as well as restoration of the government's constitutional authority to, a) create money without creating additional national indebtedness, and b) spend that money into circulation in a way that will rebuild the productive economy for the 99%. This is a revolutionary proposal. Here's why.
Thursday, October 27, 2011 Economist Ravi Batra Offers Some Political-Economic Insights To The Occupywallstreeters (2 comments)
OWS protesters, your efforts can not only determine the outcome of the 2012 elections, they could also end the brutality of the rich & powerful, who are responsible for the sorry state you (and most Americans) are now in. The change you can bring would be tantamount to what Abraham Lincoln did for black Americans. With enough pressure and support from you, Mr. Obama will be moved to help you change this country.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 Have Two Dying Banks Managed To Trick Us Into Paying For Their Next Bailout? (6 comments)
The Bank of America's holding company, BAC, has directed the transfer of a large number of "troubled' financial derivatives from its Merrill Lynch subsidiary to the federally insured Bank of America. Even worse, the Federal Reserve has supported this transfer even though the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) opposed it. This outrageous action puts the public at substantially increased risk of loss.
Saturday, October 22, 2011 Harvard Professor Jeffrey Sachs Sets Charlie Rose Straight On Our Current Economic Predicament And How To Get Past It (15 comments)
Rightwingers say that if we just turn the free enterprise system loose, it will automatically create the kind of civilized society we want. But this is akin to a kind of blind, religious faith. What they fail to understand is that the society will not then have public schools that teach our children, and it will not build the roads and the other infrastructure that a smooth working economy depends on.
Thursday, October 20, 2011 How And Why Our Federal Reserve Has Been Forced To Bail Out European Banks (16 comments)
Goldman Sachs arranged swaps that allowed Greece to borrow 1 billion Euros without adding to its official public debt. While it arranged the swaps, Goldman also sought to buy insurance on Greek debt and engage in other trades to protect itself against the risk of a default on those swaps. Eventually, Goldman sold the swaps to the national bank of Greece. Despite all this, Goldman has no exposure to a default on Greek debt.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011 Why Are the Powers-that-be in America So Afraid of Cuba? (5 comments)
Declassified U.S. intelligence cables reveal that Luis Posada Carriles had spoken of plans to "hit" a Cuban airliner only days before his comrades, Ricardo and Lugo, blew it up just off the coastline of Barbados. The CIA informed Washington, but no one uttered a word of warning to the Cuban government. Why not? And why does the man who our government knows planned the attack continue to live freely and openly in Miami?
Tuesday, September 27, 2011 How the Greek economy and IMF might help banksters -- and defeat Obama next year (11 comments)
The depression in the 30s wasn't just about a market crash; there were some folks who were prepared to make _money_ from the crash. Governments don't rule the world; Goldman Sachs rules the world. And Goldman does not care about this rescue package. From manipulating food prices that cause a hunger crisis around the world, to distorting oil prices that trigger recessions for us, it's all part of a day's work for banksters.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 What/Who Caused the Economy to Tank (for everyone except big corporations & the rich)? (15 comments)
The stimulus bill and the financial rescue of the big banks are not the cause of today's record deficits. Those costs pale in comparison to the costs of tax cuts and war, which _have_ greatly swollen our deficits. These costs may be less conspicuous now, because many were enacted years ago and they have long since been absorbed into the budget projections of the Congressional Budget Office, but we should not forget them.
Saturday, September 17, 2011 Synopsis of a Wide-ranging, Recent, and Spot-on Chomsky Commentary (1 comments)
Chomsky here covers and ties together a wide range of issues, including the true cost of America's empire, the significance of Obama's recent jobs proposal, and the real reasons why corporate interests and conservatives are intent on demolishing extremely successful public programs like Social Security.
Friday, September 2, 2011 How Real is the Threat from Islamic Terrorism in the U.S.? (7 comments)
The anthrax attacks on two Dem senators were traced to US scientists at Fort Detrick, MD who were viciously anti-Muslim. These attacks had absolutely nothing to do with al Qaeda, and everything to do with causing enough hysteria to enable the administration's plans to repeal the Bill of Rights piecemeal without anyone daring to protest. Blaming these attacks on Muslim terrorists is simply the worst kind of disinformation.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 How Oligopoly Plus Oligarchy is Leading to "Corporate Communism" in America (15 comments)
We reject communism because it has always allowed a tiny group of people to consolidate control over national resources (including people), in the process ending competition, freedom and choice. It leaves its citizens stagnating under perpetually broken systems with no motivation to innovate, improve services or reduce costs. Lack of choice, unresponsive customer service, a culture of exploitation. Does this sound familiar?
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 The Bogus Debt Crisis as a Diversion From the Jobs Crisis (6 comments)
The budget crisis is an artificial crisis, and the current Washington "solution" will only guarantee a deeper recession and more widespread suffering. Rather than obsessing over deficits and debt, the government needs to turn its focus to jobs and the corresponding growth in spendable income, which will lead to increased sales, more hiring & a generally improved quality of life in America. We need more than a pep talk, Obie.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011 Dylan Ratigan: Three Ways Our Government Could Trigger the Creation of Many More Private Sector Jobs in America (15 comments)
There are three main components of the US economy that affect and determine the flow of money in or out of our country and thus the number of good jobs that will be generated. They are: Trade, Taxes, and Banking. Let's examine each one and ask what the government might do with each one to trigger the creation of more jobs.
Monday, July 25, 2011 The Kucinich Plan for National Economic Reform and Recovery (13 comments)
Rep. Kucinich says Congress must direct the Treasury Department to issue US Notes (like Abe Lincoln's Greenbacks, but which would also be issued in electronic deposit form) to pay off the National debt. He says the US must also increase the reserve ratio that private banks are required to maintain from 10% to 100%, thereby ending bankster ability to create money out of thin air and then loan this funny money out at interest.
Friday, July 22, 2011 President Obama's Obscenity: Cuts for Social Security, but No Taxes for Wall Street?! (9 comments)
Those who manage and regulate the economy were either unable or unwilling - willful blindness? - to see the gradual formation of an $8 trillion housing bubble. They weren't bothered by the doubling of house prices in many areas, nor by the dodgy mortgages that were sold to finance these purchases. Somehow, willfully blind people like former Fed Chair Greenspan told themselves and everyone else that everything was just fine.
Thursday, July 14, 2011 The Ultimate Goal of the Bankster-led Political-economic Warfare Being Waged Against Us Is . . . ? (22 comments)
Foreign Policy magazine recently ran an article entitled "The Next Big Thing: Neomedievalism," arguing that the power of nations is declining, and is being replaced by banks and other corporations, wealthy individuals, the sovereign wealth funds of monarchs, and city-regions. Meanwhile, leading progressive economists say that the true purpose of the bank rescue plans was "a massive redistribution of wealth, to the rich."
Monday, July 11, 2011 What's Wrong With This Economy? (17 comments)
The usual anti-recessionary move by the Fed is to lower interest rates until they get some traction in investment, home buying, etc. But that hasn't worked; industry has too much excess production capacity, inventory & excess corporate cash reserves (as a result of corps and the rich having systematically taken the lion's share of national income for so long). Result: workers lack the $ to buy what the economy needs them to.
Friday, July 8, 2011 America's Road to Fascism? (20 comments)
The downward spiral for America's great middle class is being forced to continue, so that ever more of the nation's capital and wealth can be directed to the top 1% of income receivers and wealth holders, who already own an unprecedented share of the nation's wealth and assets. This process, which now seems almost unstoppable, will inevitably lead to open rebellion, if not to outright fascism in the following clampdown.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011 American Exceptionalism, Narcissism, and National Decay. How are they related? (6 comments)
We are number #1 in a lot of categories that are not so good. If we ever want to turn this country around, we need to to take a long hard look in the mirror and realize that we are #1 in divorce, drug addiction, debt, obesity, car thefts, murders and total crimes. The truth is that we have become a slothful, greedy, decadent nation that is exhibiting signs of advanced decay. This cries out for better understanding.
Sunday, July 3, 2011 Should the Federal Reserve be Nationalized and Fractional Reserve Banking Ended? (34 comments)
"Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin. Bankers own the earth. Take it all away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it all back again. However, take the power to create money away from them, and all the great fortunes will disappear - and they ought to disappear, for this would then be a happier and better world." - Josiah Stamp
Saturday, July 2, 2011 From Democracy to Kleptocracy: What's Being Stolen From Us and How (8 comments)
The domination of the political process and the economy, by a financial cartel, was masked by a welter of purposefully obfuscating legislation. This is of course the exact same trick Wall Street used to cloak the risk of the mortgage-backed derivatives it sold as "low risk" AAA rated securities: By design, the instruments were so complex that only the originators understood how they worked. Banks now rule & own ever more.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011 Health & Food Cutbacks For the Poor to Continue, So As To Keep Taxes Low For the Rich (2 comments)
The $17 billion appropriations bill for the Department of Agriculture includes major cuts in nutrition programs like food stamps and WIC, a program that provides food commodities for pregnant and nursing women and their children--cuts that wd cause 1 million recipients of emergency food to go hungry! The bill also calls for a cut in the number of federal food safety inspectors. Possible cuts for the Pentagon are off the table.
Sunday, June 26, 2011 Could state-owned banks have prevented our financial crisis? (19 comments)
A state-owned public bank partners with community banks, credit unions and bigger banks to supply affordable credit to local economies. This translates into ever more loans -- for business start-ups, for farmers, and for high-tech companies and builders -- all in your home state. And much of the profits these folks make then circulates around the state, the same money being spent again and again, from one person to the next.
Saturday, June 18, 2011 How and Why Is a Real Democratic Agenda Being Suppressed? (5 comments)
Behind the smoke screen of the news cycle, there are several genuinely excellent pieces of legislation that remain more or less entirely shrouded from public view. The bills described below are among the more progressive efforts underway in our 112th Congress, with sponsors and co-sponsors representing both sides of the aisle. And they warrant far greater attention than they're getting. So why aren't they getting it?
Thursday, June 16, 2011 Is Our Leftist/Socialist Military Setting an Example That Many of Us Don't Want to Admit? (15 comments)
Our armed forces live by a very liberal ethos and it works. Our military helped lead the way in racial desegregation, and today does more to provide equal opportunity to working-class families than any social program. It has been an escalator of social mobility in our society because it invests in soldiers and gives them skills and opportunities. A general earns just 10X what a private makes, a CEO 300X what a janitor makes.
Sunday, June 12, 2011 In Romantic Relationships, Who Are More Accomplished and Successful as Manipulators? Men or Women? (29 comments)
Here are two parallel stories that are meant to be compared and discussed. The first one is about an older man who temporarily reunites with a younger and very attractive, but manipulative woman with whom he was once romantically involved. The second story, following it, has the exact same wording, and describes the exact same events, but the roles of the man and the woman are reversed. Your thoughts please.
Saturday, June 11, 2011 Will Obama and the Supply-siders Inadvertently Drag Us Into Another Great Depression? (36 comments)
Even as another Great Depression looms, our political/media system seems incapable of honestly addressing the crisis. Instead, the old partisan and lobbying games dominate politics, and obsession with trivia commands the media's limited focus. Creditor-friendly policies are crippling our economy: The attempt to protect the banksters from any losses is inflicting very large costs on everyone else. But can we stop this in time?
Monday, June 6, 2011 Tracking, Explaining and Understanding the Cleverly Organized Crimes of Banksters (18 comments)
As America girds itself for another round of lunatic political infighting over which barely-breathing social program or urgently necessary federal agency must have their budgets put on the chopping block, so as to enable billionaires to keep their third boats and fourth homes in top shape, it's important to point out just how scarce money **isn't** when it comes to socialism for the rich.
Saturday, May 28, 2011 The Wall Street Meltdown: Origins and Implications (12 comments)
More than four years after the cracks in the financial foundation could no longer be ignored, people remain bewildered about the causes of the steepest economic downturn since the Great Depression. And they wonder why we are still mired in it, as we are forced to watch the maddening aftermath: hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars being spent to rescue some of the very institutions that drove the country into the ditch!
Sunday, May 22, 2011 Must Globalization & Computerization Lead to Ever Fewer Good Jobs for American Workers? (22 comments)
Without more workers paying taxes, we will never have the tax revenues we need to fund even limited government. We squander far too much on tax breaks for the rich, subsidies for oil companies, wars conducted by our "Defense" Department, and tax exemptions and deductions for the upper-middle and upper classes. Meanwhile we spend far too little on the investment programs that will create good new jobs for the future.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011 America's Shrinking Middle Class & the Banksters Who Are Helping the Process (8 comments)
Corporate stealing has become a kind of national pastime for the financial elite, and Goldman Sachs is far from the only company getting away with it. If the Justice Department fails to give us a chance to judge this case, and if Goldman skates without so much as a trial, it will confirm once and for all that the law in America has become subjective, and that crime is now defined not by what you did, but by who you know.
Saturday, April 30, 2011 Has the Great American Apocalypse Begun? (18 comments)
Insane government spending, massive debts, out-of-control money printing, and almost unimaginable political cowardice are about to exact a heavy toll from each of us. And now, as our massive debts begin to implode, and as the US dollar plunges in value worldwide, everything in your life is set to change--radically. Millions more Americans are about to lose their income, their savings, their buying power, and their homes.
Monday, April 11, 2011 To What Extent Was Mossad Involved in the Events Leading to 9/11? (43 comments)
British intelligence reported in February 2002 that Mossad ran the Arab hijacker cells that were later blamed by the US government's 9/11 Commission for carrying out the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon. A Mossad unit consisting of six Egyptian- and Yemeni-born Jews infiltrated al Qaeda cells in Hamburg, south Florida, and the UAE in the months before 9/11. Mossad gave them specific orders that would culminate in the attack.
Monday, April 4, 2011 How We Could Create 15 Million Jobs and Eliminate the Federal Deficit (16 comments)
Corporate America now wants a much higher level of unemployment than was considered normal in years past. They say that the 'normal' of the past, 4.5%, is now obsolete. The 'new normal' is to be 8-9%. We must reject this. And if corporations flush with trillions in cash refuse to hire sufficiently to reduce unemployment to 4.5%, then the government must, to whatever extent necessary, become the replacement employer.
Sunday, March 27, 2011 How Might We Avert the Economic & Environmental Catastrophe That Approaches (16 comments)
We need a law requiring all utility companies to buy (for 7x the going rate) any excess electricity generated by homeowners and businesses that have their roofs covered with PhotoVoltaic cells--just as is now done in Germany, where such measures have so far eliminated the need to build & operate eight additional nuclear reactors. Where to get some of the money for such compensation to those who cover their roofs with PV cells?
Saturday, March 26, 2011 Tracking Our Downward Spiral: the Ways in Which America Still 'Leads' the World (45 comments)
America is bringing back debtors' prisons! Millions of us have been screwed over by predatory lenders and fine-print credit card contracts, and now, partly because of that, many of us are swimming in debt. Those who can't pay off their credit cards can now be thrown in jail in a third of the states in our nation. Since the start of 2010, over 5,000 arrest warrants have been issued against people who owe as little as $1000.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011 The War On Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Real 'Terrorists' in America (12 comments)
This report tars the CIA & FBI, the US & UK, claiming that they either knowingly or unwittingly supported, aided, and abetted terrorists, and that the main purpose for allowing 9-11 to happen was so that it could serve as a rationale and/or cover for:
the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the trashing of the Bill of Rights, the clamp down on civil liberties, and
the continuing transfer of wealth to the top 1%.
Thursday, March 17, 2011 The End of Economic Growth (7 comments)
The economic crisis that began in 2007-2008 was both foreseeable and inevitable, and it marks a permanent, fundamental break from past decades -- a period during which most economists adopted the unrealistic view that perpetual economic growth is necessary and also possible to achieve. But there are now fundamental barriers to ongoing economic expansion, and the modern world is increasingly colliding with those barriers.
Friday, March 11, 2011 Four Ticking Time Bombs That Will Soon Ignite a Revolution (52 comments)
Forget jailing Wall Street's dictators. It's naïve and too late. We missed that opportunity. But a revolution will do the trick, giving us a second chance to jail the bastards. Until then, remember: The following four factors are building to a head, merging into a critical mass that will accelerate into a revolution and destroy Wall Street from within.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011 Would That We Could Have Wisely Invested the Money Stolen From Us by Banksters and Not Let Unions Be Crippled (6 comments)
Michael Moore: "There has been a massive transfer of wealth to the rich from the rest of us. It has been the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers, to the banks and the portfolios of the uber rich. Those in charge have diverted that wealth into a deep well that sits on their well-guarded estates. They know. They know that they have committed crimes to make this happen."
Monday, March 7, 2011 With Ever Growing Productivity, Why Must We Keep Working 40-50 Hours a Week For So Many Years of Our Life? (15 comments)
There are other kinds of wealth besides those that have to do with the maximized consumption of resources, fuel, & consumer goods. In a famous essay, Bertrand Russell explained it something like this: Modern industrial techniques have made it possible to diminish enormously the amount of labor required to secure the necessities of life for everyone. This was obvious as far back as World War II & is more true today than ever.
Thursday, March 3, 2011 The "Budget Crisis" is the Product of Tax Avoidance Scams By The Very Rich (7 comments)
Reduced taxes on the rich leave them with ever more money to buy politicians. This wins them further tax reductions, which give them still more money to put to political use. Then, when the loss of tax revenue from the rich worsens already strained government budgets, the rich and powerful press politicians to cut public services and government jobs and not even debate a return to the higher taxes the rich used to pay.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 All Wars Are Begun With Lies, Continued With Lies, and Later Explained With Lies (4 comments)
Behind the fear-mongering, flag-waving and lies of George W. Bush and the blandishments of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama lies the ugly reality that our leaders have been seduced by political ambition, delusions of military superiority, and the promise of secrecy and impunity. This enables them to commit otherwise unthinkable war crimes, all on the basis of lies.
Saturday, February 26, 2011 Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? -- a synopsis of Matt Taibbi's recent article and interview (14 comments)
The financial-crisis era is one in which we've seen virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that have impoverished millions of people and collectively destroyed trillions of dollars of the world's wealth. It's also one in which the American people have been systematically defrauded by Wall Street companies operating in conjunction with Congress and the Fed.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011 The Continuing Republican Effort to Fracture and Thereby Politically Disable America's Great Middle Class (13 comments)
Repub strategy: a budget battle to shrink government, focused on programs the middle class depends on; state efforts to undermine public employees whose services the middle class depends on; a Supreme Court dedicated to bending the Constitution so as to enlarge and entrench the politicaleconomic power of the wealthy. The goal: pit working Americans against one another & call attention away from wealth concentrated at the top.
Sunday, February 20, 2011 Why didn't any banksters go to jail? -- and other mysteries of the U.S. political economy (6 comments)
Millions of Americans went into foreclosure and a great many lost their homes, just as millions more will. Millions lost their jobs, in part because of the falling real estate values and the greatly reduced spending of those who either lost homes or feared they might. Meanwhile, the banksters who sold these predatory loans and the bogus securities based on them, are living like kings and will in all likelihood continue to
Monday, February 14, 2011 Here Comes Another Bubble, and a Crash That Will Dwarf the Last One, Unless . . . (16 comments)
The bubblenomics game is back on. Two years of essentially zero interest rates, limitless guarantees, and a $2 trillion I.V. drip-feed from the Fed, has lifted Wall Street up off its back and put the greed-head speculators back in the center of things. It's a miracle: Who would have thought that Bernanke could engineer another bubble this fast after the disaster the last one led to? But he pulled it off!
Friday, February 11, 2011 Our Founding Fathers Would Be Proud of the Egyptian People & Disgusted at the Spineless Sheep Most Americans Have Become (25 comments)
Our founding fathers stood up for their freedom, winning it from the British. The Egyptian people have stood up for their freedom, winning it from a dictatorship, finding courage even when Mubarak's thugs flew fighter jets low overhead, beat and murdered protesters, and otherwise threatened violence. Americans, on the other hand, have been cowed into passivity by an irrational fear of terrorism, laziness and mindlessness.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011 Can We Stop the Continuing Decimation of America's Middle Class in Time? If So, How? (19 comments)
Employers faced with reduced demand for their products or services can either lay off workers or reduce their work hours. If they reduce their hours, the German government replaces most of the lost pay for these reduced hours. The worker keeps his job, with reduced hours, but his monthly pay is not appreciably reduced. The gov't uses unemployment insurance funds to cover much of the cost of such a work sharing program.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011 Where is This Economy Headed, Really? (14 comments)
The "recovery" is a sham -- a temporary respite bought and paid for by Washington. Obama's appointed wizards from Wall Street will keep this sham recovery going until he is reelected next year. With enough Fed purchasing of Treasury bonds and toxic mortgages, and mortgage-backed securities from banks, using money created out of thin air at the Fed, it can in all likelihood be done. But then watch out!
Monday, January 31, 2011 Wall Street's "Inside Job," as laid out in a documentary film
From the early 1980s, when Ronald Reagan deregulated banks, through the two Bushes, Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama, each administration has endorsed -- and each Congress has helped tweak -- laws and rules that made systemic financial industry criminality and the economic meltdown not only possible but inevitable.
Saturday, January 29, 2011 Double Dip In Housing Market Caused By Failure to Prosecute Mortgage Fraud (18 comments)
As economists such as William Black and James Galbraith have repeatedly said, we cannot solve the economic crisis unless we throw the criminals who committed fraud in jail. And Nobel prize winning economist George Akerlof has demonstrated that failure to punish white collar criminals -- and instead bailing them out -- creates incentives for more economic crimes and further destruction of the economy in the future.
Friday, January 28, 2011 Toward a better understanding of exactly how the banksters are stealing trillions from us (6 comments)
At least eight U.S. states are considering proposals to start state-run banks in the wake of an economic crisis where many private banks ceased or greatly decreased their lending, literally shrinking the money pool available in state economies.
Economist Ellen Brown, author of "Web of Debt", has been writing commentaries on various websites and runs a Google Group that has been pushing the idea of state-run banks.
Sunday, January 23, 2011 China is eating our lunch. What might we do about it? (3 comments)
Unlike China the US doesn't have a national economic strategy. Instead, we have global corporations that happen to be headquartered here. Their goal is to maximize profits, wherever they can make the most money. They'll make things in America for export to China when that's most profitable, and they'll make it in China and give the Chinese their know-how when that's the best short-term way to boost their bottom line.
Monday, January 17, 2011 Will banksters, corporados & their handmaidens in Congress wreck America? (13 comments)
The window for possible change is rapidly closing. Healthcare, Afghanistan and the terrorism panic have exhausted Washington's already limited capacity, especially in an election year. The White House's chief economist, Lawrence Summers, repeatedly announced that "everybody agrees that the recession is over" -- which is technically true from an economist's perspective and certainly true on Wall Street. But not on Main Street
Saturday, January 15, 2011 A simplified explanation of America's banking crisis and how it might be fixed (18 comments)
When a bank is insolvent, it doesn't have enough capital to cover its losses. In that situation, banks wd be doing the RIGHT thing by keeping the bailout money that we're giving them -- not loaning it out. An insolvent bank needs to hold onto their capital because that's how they fix their balance sheets. If they loaned the money out, they'd be in danger of returning to the very situation we're trying to rescue them from
Sunday, January 9, 2011 Monumental insider bank robberies and the ongoing decimation of America's great middle class (4 comments)
Are millions of American taxpayers the victims of a Wall Street criminal conspiracy? To begin to answer that question, we must first pose several others: Who benefits from the weak American social safety net? Who profited from the taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailout? Why is the American criminal justice system sitting on its hands and doing nothing about what Der Spiegel correctly calls a "monumental insider bank robbery"?
Wednesday, January 5, 2011 Why are so many Americans unemployed and underemployed? And what could we do about it? (33 comments)
No able bodied person in the US should be denied either employment or the basic necessities of life, especially housing, food, medical care, primary education, electricity, water and the like. Anyone should have the opportunity to work in these various fields of cooperative endeavor. Assume that reasonable standards of efficiency and organization could (with the help of modern technology) be maintained. Here's how.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010 Is an economic collapse being prepared? If so, for whose benefit? (26 comments)
Because of their entrenched way of perceiving things, it is difficult to convince most people that the economic system in which they live is actually being used, by persons unknown, in ways that are preparing the destruction of both their economy and their futures.
Sunday, December 26, 2010 The psychological, cultural & societal disintegration of America under post-industrial capitalism (11 comments)
What we're doing is trying to correct a massive socioeconomic problem, that results in disconnection and the loss of nurturing, by feeding our kids chemicals! Yes these stimulant drugs do seem to work, and a lot of kids are, in the short run, helped by them. The question is not so much whether these drugs should be used or not; the problem is that 80% of the time a kid is prescribed a medication, that's _all_ that happens.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 Two U.S. presidents implicated by ex-CIA black-ops assassin (10 comments)
Taped recording of Mossad's Latin American station chief, Mike Harari: "Look, a kilo of "product" is about $1,000. We credit the Contras $1,500 for every kilo. That's top dollar for a kilo of cocaine. It's equivalent to the American K-Mart special: "Buy four, get one free." We spend $1,200 for a kilo and sell it for $12,000 to $15,000. Now, that's a profit center. It's just good business sense, understand?"
Monday, December 20, 2010 The continuing hold of a failed doctrine over our politics. How and why? (7 comments)
Republicans, soon to take the House, are already talking about spending cuts -- Social Security, Medicare? -- that would grossly offset any positive effects from the tax cut deal. How effectively will Obama be able to oppose these demands after he himself has embraced the rhetoric of belt-tightening? It's one thing to make deals to advance your goals; it's quite another to set the country up for right-wing victories.
Saturday, December 18, 2010 Corporate America's New Plan to Loot Our Pensions and Shred Our Social Safety Net (7 comments)
The main beneficiaries will of course be the wealthy and super-wealthy, who will gain both from tax cuts (as the social sector is chopped up and largely done away with) and from much higher corporate profits (as wages and benefits are slashed ever more deeply).
Friday, December 17, 2010 The Leveraged Buy Out of America by its Kleptocratic Elite (4 comments)
At some point over the next five years, Stockman grimly states, the Fed and Treasury will have to sell a combined $5 trillion in debt, and that alone will destroy the supply/demand equilibrium and send interest rates surging, which will result in either debt repudiation or outright bankruptcy. The only consolation is that the great experiment of LBOing America by its kleptocratic elite is coming to its (sad) conclusion.
Thursday, December 16, 2010 How an Obscure & Quasi-legal Outfit Called MERS Is Subverting Our System of Property Rights, & what we can do about it (5 comments)
On November 17, Congress quietly rammed through a sneaky, vaguely worded bill that would have legalized MERS' dealings retroactively. And while the bill didn't pass, we can expect Wall Street's lackeys in Congress to continue their efforts. After all, if courts continue to rule against MERS -- and it looks like they might -- many homes may become foreclosure proof, and that would prove very costly to banksters.
Sunday, December 12, 2010 Olbermann's tirade on how Obama has betrayed both his base and his country (14 comments)
It is not disloyalty to tell a Democratic president he is wrong. It is not disloyalty for the unemployed to rally in the streets of Washington. It is not disloyalty to remind the president that he was elected by people to whom he had given a clear outline of what he would do for them, and if he does not steer out of the skid of of what he is doing to them, he will not only not be re-elected, he may not even be renominated.
Sunday, December 5, 2010 Griftopian thievery, Tea Party ignorance, and the disappearance of the American dream (14 comments)
Forget about the $700 billion dollars in federal aid known as TARP that went to the banksters back in 2008 -- that was just the tip of the iceberg. According to new secret documents recently released by the Federal Reserve, between 2007 and this year the Fed pumped more than $3 trillion into the hands of banks and businesses. Most of that money came in the form of short term lending, at near zero percent rates of interest.
Thursday, November 25, 2010 The New Civil War: Banksters vs. Middle-class Homeowners and Workers (14 comments)
Property rights are the very foundation of America's capitalist system, yet for many Americans those property rights are being taken away by banks that are in collusion with Congress by way of the money-bearing lobbyists the banksters hire to essentially buy the legislation they need from Congress. If it becomes the prerogative of banks and Congress to give and take away property rights, what will have become of America?
Sunday, November 21, 2010 As the US spirals downward, a growing percentage of Americans seem all too willing to turn a blind eye (24 comments)
Why is America such a paradise for high-class thieves? Just look at the way a manufactured movement like the Tea Party corrals and neutralizes public anger that otherwise should be sending pitchforks in the direction of downtown Manhattan. There are two reasons why Tea Party voters will probably never get wise to the Ponzi-scheme reality of bubble economics. One has to do with the basic sales pitch of Tea Party rhetoric
Wednesday, November 10, 2010 To what shrinking extent do the rich any longer need the rest of us? (46 comments)
As large corporations and the rich increasingly rely on cheap labor in and from other countries, how is their disappearing need for American middle class workers damaging our society? And what if anything can be done to reverse this process? Between 2001 and 2008, about 40,000 US manufacturing plants closed. Six million manufacturing jobs -- one out of every three -- disappeared over the past dozen years. What can be done?
Thursday, October 28, 2010 The basic problem our economy faces is a lack of effective demand (2 comments)
Extremely skilled counterfeiters could provide an enormous boost to GDP and create millions of jobs. It makes no difference whether the counterfeiters spend, say, $2 trillion of counterfeit money, or if big corporations were to suddenly start investing/spending the $2 trillion that they've accumulated, or if Americans were to find $2 trillion that had been dropped from helicopters. The effect on the economy would be the same.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 Who maimed the economy, and how? Was it an "inside job"?
"Inside Job" is a briskly paced film telling the story of a crime of unparalleled proportions, a crime that is, so far, without punishment. It's the story of an outrage that has so far escaped broad understanding, as well as much in the way of societal stigma and legal sanction. The betrayal of public trust and collective values that Mr. Ferguson chronicles was far more brazen and damaging than anything in American history.
Thursday, October 21, 2010 Banksters to be forced to repurchase billions of dollars in mortgage-backed securities? What are the implications? (12 comments)
In doing what they did, banksters had to sever the chain of ownership of the repayment note formerly attached to the mortgage, and it's that note, which is signed at a closing, that entitles its holder (e.g. the bank) to either collect payments on the mortgage or, in the case of a cessation of payments by the mortgagee/homeowner, to foreclose on the property, as the mortgage goes into default. No note, no legal foreclosure.
Monday, October 11, 2010 For how much longer will America's infrastructure remain crippled so as to further increase the wealth of the rich? (6 comments)
For how much longer will America be so stupid as to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars from other countries (principally China and Japan), so as to provide immense and continuing tax breaks for the already obscenely rich -- instead of using that money to create millions of jobs repairing our disintegrating infrastructure?! Millions of Americans have been laid off their jobs because of this lack of government stimulus.
Saturday, October 9, 2010 Mounting evidence that BushCo knew well in advance that the 9/11 attack was being planned (98 comments)
After buying up the first 10,000 copies of his book, The D.I.A. recently demanded that all references to a meeting between Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, the book's author, and the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, be removed from the book. In that meeting, Col. Shaffer alleges that the head of the 9/11 Commission was told, well in advance of 9/11, about the identification of Mohammed Atta as a terrorist.
Friday, October 8, 2010 Foreclosuregate (5 comments)
Could tens of thousands of Americans soon stop making payments on their mortgage and yet be able to remain in their homes because banks are legally powerless to foreclose? In anticipation of this possibility, some banks are already taking the law into their own hands and, even without a foreclosure, are breaking and entering the homes they think they own, to change the locks on the house when the "owner" is not home.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 How, exactly, did banksters swindle trillions from the middle class? (6 comments)
Over the last decade our government has essentially "de-supervised' America's financial sector and turned it over to the perpetrators of one of the largest swindles in history. This swindle originated with the securitization of tens of thousands of fraud-based mortgages, i.e. near-worthless mortgages that were fraudulently bundled together and (thanks to government deregulation and no supervision) sold, criminally.
Thursday, September 23, 2010 How we can take stolen profits back from banksters (12 comments)
Main points from Rob Kall's talk with Ellen (WebOfDebt) Brown, J.D. --
Public projects funded by low-cost loans from state banks, green banks, or city owned banks, would cost only half of what they would cost if funded through loans from private banks that charge much higher rates of interest on those loans. Thus, many green energy projects currently deemed too expensive to be viable would suddenly become viable.
Friday, September 17, 2010 Why are the pundits, pols, and Wall Street fat cats lying to us? (7 comments)
Politicians and bureaucrats need us to believe they're saving the day; otherwise they could lose their jobs. Financial fat cats and CEOs need us to believe it's OK to buy their stocks again; otherwise their shares in their companies might very well crash in value. Rating agencies like S&P, Moody's & Fitch need us to believe their ratings are reliable; otherwise the companies they rate will stop paying them for their ratings.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010 The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street (7 comments)
Bundling mortgages, packaged together and made into securities to sell far and wide, targeting naïve and trusting investors who foolishly thought that their triple-A ratings meant something, comprised a large part of what encouraged all the wild subprime and Alt-A financing. Mortgage brokers couldn't find people fast enough to set up with mortgages. No job, no problem.
Monday, September 13, 2010 Why most Americans work ever more hours for ever less pay, while for most Europeans it has been exactly the opposite (2 comments)
Corporations reaped huge profits from the combination of rising productivity and newly flat wages. Then they realized that they could lend a portion of those profits back to a working class traumatized by now-stagnant wages, so as to enable them to continue consuming more. Instead of paying workers their normally rising wages, they flooded very profitable loans onto desperate but also often financially naive workers.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010 Our Long National Nightmare Isn't Over, It's Just Beginning (17 comments)
The Dems will get slaughtered in November's election. This will happen not so much because of the "socialist' crimes they are alleged by the right to have committed -- which are of course utter nonsense -- but simply because of what they have *not* done, which is to aggressively pursue real solutions to the nation's problems. Then Obama will be hounded by congressional investigations into all manner of bogus issues.
Friday, September 3, 2010 An analysis and expose' of the ongoing bank bail-out and associated rip-off (13 comments)
The Fed creates money out of thin air, uses it to buy toxic assets from the big banks, and a good portion of this money is then returned by the big banks to the Fed, as deposits, where it earns large amounts of interest for the big banks, courtesy of the American tax payer. The rest of the money received from the Fed is used by these banks to gamble (successfully so far) in the stock and derivatives markets.
Monday, August 30, 2010 Can our economy be saved by having the Fed print ever more money and buy ever more mortgage bonds and Treasury bonds (13 comments)
Through the first quarter of this year, the Fed printed $1.5 trillion of paper money and bought $1.5 trillion in mortgage bonds, government agency bonds, and Treasury bonds. And yet the entire effort was a dismal failure; the U.S. economy is still sinking and most large American banks are still weak. The underlying reason for this failure is that meanwhile nearly everyone else has embarked on unprecedented debt liquidations!
Saturday, August 28, 2010 Why is America suffering so much from a recession that Germany largely bypassed? (27 comments)
What triggered all the outsourcing? Something you will never hear about or read about in the mainstream media: a simple change in tax law that occurred during President Reagan's first term: a huge gift to the corporate bigwigs who helped get him elected. As a result, the importation of products made in American factories located in low-wage countries was no longer taxed the way it was before Reagan took the White House.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010 Have Republican economic policies once again made a Great Depression inevitable? (13 comments)
What began three months ago as a $50 billion emergency spending bill limped to the president's desk at half that size and was largely paid for -- "offset'' in the clinical terminology of the budget -- by cutting $12 billion from the food stamp program! In other words, a measure designed to help one group struggling in the recession came at the expense of another group that is even worse off -- and getting worse rapidly!
