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Too Cool To Fool

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It’s always reassuring to see that there are a good number of people among us who aren’t easily manipulated by “the powers that be”.  Let’s take a look at some examples:

Glen Ford is the executive editor of the Black Agenda Report.  On January 11, Mr. Ford discussed how – up until now – the Occupy Wall Street movement has managed to avoid being co-opted by the Democratic Party and MoveOn.org.  Unfortunately, the Obama regime may have succeeded in establishing a grip on OWS.  Glen Ford offered this explanation:

The Democratic Party may have entered the Occupy Wall Street movement through the “Black door,” in the form of Occupy The Dream, the Black ministers’ group led by former NAACP chief and Million Man March national director Dr. Benjamin Chavis and Baltimore mega-church pastor Rev. Jamal Bryant.  Both are fervent supporters of President Obama.

*   *   *

It appears that Occupy Wall Street’s new Black affiliate is also in “lock-step” with the corporate Democrat in the White House, whose administration has funneled trillions of dollars to Wall Street and greatly expanded U.S. theaters of war.

*   *   *

Black ministers in campaign mode routinely depict Obama’s political troubles as indistinguishable from threats to “The Dream,” whose embodiment is ensconced in the White House.  That’s simply common currency among Black preachers pushing for Obama.

*   *   *

It is highly unlikely – damn near inconceivable – that Occupy The Dream will do anything that might embarrass this president.  Its ministers can be expected to electioneer for Obama at every opportunity.  Their January 16 actions are directed at the Federal Reserve, which is technically independent from the executive branch of government – although, in practice, the Fed has been Obama’s principal mechanism for bailing out the banks.  Will the ministers pretend, next Monday, that the president is somehow removed from the Fed’s massive transfers of the people’s credit and cash to Wall Street over the past three years?

*   *   *

At this late stage, there is no antidote to the potential cooptation, except to rev up the movement’s confrontation with the oligarchic powers-that-be – including Wall Street’s guy in the White House.  Let’s see what happens if OWS demonstrators join with Occupy The Dream at Federal Reserve sites on January 16 carrying placards unequivocally implicating Obama in the Fed’s bailouts of the banksters, as Occupy demonstrators have done so often in the past.  Will the Dream’s leadership be in “lock-step” with that?  Maybe so – I’ve heard that miracles sometimes do happen.

Anyone who challenges the Obama administration’s symbiotic relationship with the Wall Street banksters invites accusations of advancing the Republican agenda for regaining control of the White House.  This problem will be solved once a populist third-party or Independent candidate rises to pose a serious challenge to the incumbent.  Beyond that, an African-American commentator who dares to expose Obama as a tool of Wall Street is likely to face harsh criticism.  Glen Ford has demonstrated more courage than most Americans by taking a stand against this venal administration.

Another exemplary individual, whose opinions were never compromised to justify or rationalize the current administration’s tactics, has been economist Joseph Stiglitz – the Nobel laureate who found himself ignored and shut out by the Obama administration ab initio.  Professor Stiglitz recently wrote a commentary entitled, “The Perils of 2012” in which he dared to predict an election year fraught with economic despair.  Such conditions make for an incumbent President’s worst nightmare.  As a result, non-Republican economists are expected to avoid such prognostication.  Nevertheless, Professor Stiglitz proceeded to paint an ugly picture of what we can expect in the near term, after first reminding us that there has been no sound policy advanced for mitigating the devastation experienced by the middle class as a result of the 2008 financial crisis:

The year 2011 will be remembered as the time when many ever-optimistic Americans began to give up hope.  President John F. Kennedy once said that a rising tide lifts all boats.  But now, in the receding tide, Americans are beginning to see not only that those with taller masts had been lifted far higher, but also that many of the smaller boats had been dashed to pieces in their wake.

In that brief moment when the rising tide was indeed rising, millions of people believed that they might have a fair chance of realizing the “American Dream.”  Now those dreams, too, are receding.  By 2011, the savings of those who had lost their jobs in 2008 or 2009 had been spent.  Unemployment checks had run out.  Headlines announcing new hiring – still not enough to keep pace with the number of those who would normally have entered the labor force – meant little to the 50 year olds with little hope of ever holding a job again.

Indeed, middle-aged people who thought that they would be unemployed for a few months have now realized that they were, in fact, forcibly retired.  Young people who graduated from college with tens of thousands of dollars of education debt cannot find any jobs at all.  People who moved in with friends and relatives have become homeless.  Houses bought during the property boom are still on the market or have been sold at a loss.  More than seven million American families have lost their homes.

*   *   *

The pragmatic commitment to growth that one sees in Asia and other emerging markets today stands in contrast to the West’s misguided policies, which, driven by a combination of ideology and vested interests, almost seem to reflect a commitment not to grow.

As a result, global economic rebalancing is likely to accelerate, almost inevitably giving rise to political tensions.  With all of the problems confronting the global economy, we will be lucky if these strains do not begin to manifest themselves within the next twelve months.

Another commentator who has been “too cool to fool” is equities market analyst, Barry Ritholtz.  One of his recent blog postings documented how Ritholtz never accepted the propagandistic pronouncements of the National Retailers Association about Christmas season retail sales.  Once the hype began on Black Friday, Ritholtz began his own campaign of debunking the questionable data, touted to boost unjustified confidence about the direction of our economy.  Ritholtz concluded the piece with this statement:

Those of you who may have downplayed the potential for a recession to start over the next 12-18 months way want to revisit your views on this.  It is far from the low possibility many economists have it pegged at.

Fortunately, not everyone has been as imperceptive as those on the Obama administration’s economic team who admitted that as late as 2009, they underestimated the extent of economic contraction resulting from the 2008 crisis.  It’s time for the voting public to dis-employ the political hacks who have allowed this condition to fester.  One effective path toward this goal involves voting against incumbents in primary elections.  Keep in mind that America’s Congressional districts have been gerrymandered to protect incumbents.  As a result, any plan to defeat those officeholders in a general election could be an exercise in futility.  Voting against current members of Congress during the primary process can open the door for more capable candidates during the general election.  Peter Schweizer’s cause – as expressed in his book, Throw Them All Out, should be on everyone’s front burner during the 2012 primary season.


 

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Congress Under The Microscope

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The November 13 broadcast of 60 Minutes, which featured a piece by Steve Kroft about Congressional insider trading, gave some needed momentum to the effort seeking a ban on the practice.  I originally wrote about this activity in September of 2009:

A recent report by American Public Media’s Steve Henn revealed how the law prohibiting “insider trading” (i.e. acting on confidential corporate information when making a transaction involving that company’s publicly-traded stock) does not apply to members of Congress.  Remember how Martha Stewart went to prison?  Well, if she had been representing Connecticut in Congress, she might have been able to interpose the defense that she was inspired to sell her ImClone stock based on information she acquired in the exercise of her official duties.

*   *   *

Mr. Henn’s report went on to raise concern over the fact that there is nothing to stop members of Congress from acting on such information to the detriment of their constituents in favor of their own portfolios.

In February of 2011, I discussed the subject again, including the history of Congressman Brian Baird’s introduction of  H.R.682, the “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act” (STOCK Act) in January of 2009.  On November 14, I was pleased to report that a conservative pundit – Peter Schweizer – a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution – had joined the battle against Congressional insider trading:

A new book by Peter Schweizer – Throw Them All Out – deals with this very subject.  The book’s subtitle is reminiscent of the point I tried to make in my February posting:  “How politicians and their friends get rich off insider stock tips, land deals and cronyism that would send the rest of us to prison”.

On December 28, J.R. Dunn – consulting editor of the conservative American Thinker, enthusiastically weighed-in with a supportive review of Peter Schweizer’s book.  Beyond that, Dunn’s opening remarks addressed the greater problem:

Crony capitalism is the most serious current danger to the American community, a threat not simply to government or the economy, but to our very way of life.  It is the worst such threat since the trusts and monopolies of the early 20th century, and in much the same way. Cronyism is one of the major forces behind the establishment of the corrupt pseudo-aristocracy that has been taking shape in this country over the past two decades, a synthetic privileged class made up in large part of politicians, hustlers, and hangers-on who have become expert in exploiting the rest of us.

Fortunately, we have now reached a point where greater scrutiny is being used to investigate the manner in which Congress-cretins enrich themselves while in office.  David Richards wrote a great piece for the Daily Mail, which focused on the fact that over the past 25 years, the median net worth of a member of Congress has nearly tripled while the income of an average U.S. family has actually fallen:

Against a backdrop of a vast budget deficit and fears of the fragility of the economy, analysis by the Washington Post shows that the median net worth of a member of Congress has nearly tripled over 25 years while the income of an average U.S. family has actually fallen.

It calculated that their median net worth, between 1984 and 2009 and excluding home equity, rose from $280,000 to $725,000.

Over those same 25 years the wealth of the average U.S. family slipped from $20,500 from $20,600, a University of Michigan study shows.

The Daily Mail article went on to point out that members of Congress are actually doing significantly better than America’s most wealthy citizens – who are so zealously defended by critics of the Occupy Wall Street movement:

The New York Times’ report into the wealth of members of Congress found that they were also getting rich compared with affluent Americans.

It found that the median net worth of members of Congress rose 15 per cent from 2004 to 2010 as the net worth of the richest 10 per cent of the country remained for the most part flat.

This disparity between those they represent also translated into a wider gap in their experiences of the economy, the Post found.

It interviewed Gary Myers, the son of a bricklayer, a Republican who entered Congress in 1975. He said his experience of having worked as a foreman in a steel mill shaped his outlook and led him to vote in favour of raising the minimum wage and helped him to understand the need for workers to have a safety net.

‘It would be hard to argue that the work in the steel mill didn’t give me a different perspective,’ he told the Post. ‘I think everybody’s history has an impact on them.’

The same area is now represented by Republican Mike Kelly who was elected last year. After graduating he married the heiress to an oil fortune and took over his father’s car dealership where he had worked as a youngster.

He told the paper he believed he was overtaxed already and that unemployment benefits made some people less willing to look for employment.

On the other hand, there is one Congressman’s investment portfolio, which is being criticized for other reasons.  In fact, I’m sure that many investment analysts are having a good laugh as they read Jason Zweig’s recent posting for his new Total Return blog at The Wall Street Journal:

Yes, about 21% of Rep. Paul’s holdings are in real estate and roughly 14% in cash.  But he owns no bonds or bond funds and has only 0.1% in stock funds.  Furthermore, the stock funds that Rep. Paul does own are all “short,” or make bets against, U.S. stocks. One is a “double inverse” fund that, on a daily basis, goes up twice as much as its stock benchmark goes down.

The remainder of Rep. Paul’s portfolio – fully 64% of his assets – is entirely in gold and silver mining stocks.  He owns no Apple, no ExxonMobil, no Procter & Gamble, no General Electric, no Johnson & Johnson, not even a diversified mutual fund that holds a broad basket of stocks.  Rep. Paul doesn’t own stock in any major companies at all except big precious-metals stocks like Barrick Gold, Goldcorp and Newmont Mining.

*   *   *

Rep. Paul appears to be a strict buy-and-hold investor who rarely trades; he has held many of his mining stocks since at least 2002. But, as gold and silver prices have fallen sharply since September, precious-metals equities have also taken a pounding, with many dropping 20% or more.  That exposes the risk in making a big bet on one narrow sector.

At our request, William Bernstein, an investment manager at Efficient Portfolio Advisors in Eastford, Conn., reviewed Rep. Paul’s portfolio as set out in the annual disclosure statement.  Mr. Bernstein says he has never seen such an extreme bet on economic catastrophe.  “This portfolio is a half-step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds,” he says.

There are many possible doomsday scenarios for the U.S. economy and financial markets, explains Mr. Bernstein, and Rep. Paul’s portfolio protects against only one of them:  unexpected inflation accompanied by a collapse in the value of the dollar.  If deflation (to name one other possibility) occurs instead, “this portfolio is at great risk” because of its lack of bonds and high exposure to gold.

At least Congressman Ron Paul is authentic enough to “place his money where his mouth is” when criticizing Federal Reserve monetary policy.

As election year progresses, the current trend of “turning over rocks” to investigate the financial dealings of those in Congress could make things quite interesting.


 

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More Scrutiny For An Organization Called Americans Elect

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On July 25, I explained that the Republi-Cratic Corporatist Party was being threatened by a new, Internet-based effort to nominate a presidential ticket, which would be placed on the 2012 ballot in all fifty states.  Last summer, that organization – Americans Elect – described itself in the following terms:

Americans Elect is the first-ever open nominating process.  We’re using the Internet to give every single voter – Democrat, Republican or independent – the power to nominate a presidential ticket in 2012.  The people will choose the issues. The people will choose the candidates.  And in a secure, online convention next June, the people will make history by putting their choice on the ballot in every state.

*   *   *

We have no ties to any political group – left, right, or center.  We don’t promote any issues, ideology or candidates.  None of our funding comes from special interests or lobbyists.  Our only goal is to put a directly-nominated ticket on the ballot in 2012.

*   *   *

The goal of Americans Elect is to nominate a presidential ticket that answers to the people – not the political system.  Like millions of American voters, we simply want leadership that will work together to tackle the challenges facing our country.  And we believe a direct nominating process will prove that America is ready for a competitive, nonpartisan ticket.

Since that time, there has been a good deal of scrutiny focused on Americans Elect.  Justin Elliott recently wrote a comprehensive piece for Salon, highlighting the numerous sources of criticism targeting Americans Elect.  Mr. Elliott provided this summary of the controversies surrounding the organization:

The group is hoping to raise $30 million for its effort. It has already raised an impressive $22 million as of last month.  So where is all that money coming from?  Americans Elect won’t say. In fact, the group changed how it is organized under the tax code last year in order to shield the identity of donors.  It is now a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” group whose contributors are not reported publicly.

What we do know about the donors, largely through news reports citing anonymous sources, suggests they are a handful of super-rich Americans who made fortunes in the finance industry. (More on this below.)  But it’s impossible to fully assess the donors’ motives and examine their backgrounds and entanglements – important parts of the democratic process – while their identities and the size of their donations remain secret.

*   *   *

Americans Elect officials often tout their “revolutionary” online nominating convention, which will be open to any registered voter. But there’s a big catch.  Any ticket picked by participants will have to be approved by a Candidate Certification Committee, according to the group’s bylaws.

Among other things this committee will need to certify a “balanced ticket obligation”  – that the ticket consists of persons who are “responsive to the vast majority of citizens while remaining independent of special interests and the partisan interests of either major political party,” according to the current draft of Americans Elect rules.  Making these sorts of assessments is, of course, purely subjective.

Jim Cook of Irregular Times has been keeping a steady watch over Americans Elect, with almost-daily postings concerning the strange twists and turns that organization has taken since its inception (and incorporation).  Mr. Cook’s December 11 update provided this revelation:

The 501c4 corporation Americans Elect is arranging for the nation’s first-ever privately-run online nomination of candidates for President and Vice President of the United States in 2012.  As with any other corporation in the United States, it has a set of bylaws.  On November 18, 2011 the Americans Elect corporation held an unannounced meeting at which it amended its previous bylaws.

A month later, Americans Elect has not posted changes to the bylaws, or posted any notice of the changes, on its website for public review.  Furthermore, Americans Elect has generally made it a practice to post its documents as images that cannot be indexed by search engines or searched by keyword.  For these reasons, Irregular Times has retyped the bylaws into an easily searchable text format, based on a pdf file submitted to the Florida Secretary of State on November 22, 2011.  You can read the full text of the amended bylaws here.

Just a day earlier (on December 10) Jim Cook had been highlighting one of the many transparency controversies experienced by the group:

On the Americans Elect’s “Candidates” web page it rolled out last month, various numbers were tossed up without explanation.  A reference to a wildly error-prone slate of candidates’ supposed policies drawn up by Americans Elect contractor “On the Issues” appeared next to various politicians’ names, but the actual calculation by which Americans Elect came up with its “National Match” for each politician has never actually been published.  I’ll repeat that in bold:  Americans Elect’s system for calculating its numerical rankings of politicians was never shared with the public.

Another problem for Americans Elect concerns compliance with its bylaws by individual directors, and the lack of enforcement of those bylaws, as Cook’s December 9 posting demonstrates:

She’s done it five times before; this is the sixth.

The Americans Elect bylaws are very specific, as an Americans Elect Director, Christine Todd Whitman is not supposed to “communicate or act in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for President or Vice President at any time before the adjournment of the online nominating convention of Americans Elect.”

But here she is this week nevertheless, appearing on national television via FOX News to communicate in favor of presidential candidate Jon Huntsman   .   .   .

*   *   *

The bylaws say that when the neutrality provision is violated, there must be some sort of sanction.  But Christine Todd Whitman is getting away with it again and again and again where the whole country can see it.  Is the Americans Elect corporation inclined to follow its own rules?  If not, how much trust should we place in it as it gets ready to run its own private presidential nomination in less than five months’ time?

Richard Hansen, a professor at the University of California at Irvine Law School, wrote an essay for Politico, which was harshly critical of Americans Elect.  He concluded the piece with these observations:

But the biggest problem with Americans Elect is neither its secrecy nor the security of its election.  It is the problems with internal fairness and democracy.  To begin with, according to its draft rules, only those who can provide sufficient voter identification that will satisfy the organization – and, of course, who have Internet access – will be allowed to choose the candidate.  These will hardly be a cross section of American voters.

In addition, an unelected committee appointed by the board, the Candidates Certification Committee, will be able to veto a presidential/vice presidential ticket deemed not “balanced” – subject only to a two-thirds override by delegates.

It gets worse.  Under the group’s bylaws, that committee, along with the three other standing committees, serves at the pleasure of the board – and committee members can be removed without cause by the board.  The board members were not elected by delegates; they chose themselves in the organization’s articles of incorporation.

The bottom line:  If Americans Elect is successful, millions of people will have united to provide ballot access not for a candidate they necessarily believe in – like a Ross Perot or Ralph Nader – but for a candidate whose choice could be shaped largely by a handful of self-appointed leaders.

Despite the veneer of democracy created by having “delegates” choose a presidential candidate through a series of Internet votes, the unelected, unaccountable board of Americans Elect, funded by secret money, will control the process for choosing a presidential and vice presidential candidate – who could well appear on the ballot in all 50 states.

Forget about Tom Friedman’s breathlessly-enthusiastic New York Times commentary from last summer, gushing praise on Americans Elect.  It’s beginning to appear as though this movement is about to go off the rails, following the Cain Train into oblivion.


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Hurricane Rick

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Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, there has been plenty of criticism directed at efforts by the media to amp-up the danger threat during the days before the storm made landfall.  Despite the fact that eleven people were killed by the hurricane, a wide assortment of commentators has seen fit to complain about the “hurricane hype”.  Here is a bit of what Howard Kurtz had to say at The Daily Beast:

But the tsunami of hype on this story was relentless, a Category 5 performance that was driven in large measure by ratings.  Every producer knew that to abandon the coverage even briefly – say, to cover the continued fighting in Libya – was to risk driving viewers elsewhere.  Websites, too, were running dramatic headlines even as it became apparent that the storm wasn’t as powerful as advertised.

The fact that New York, home to the nation’s top news outlets, was directly in the storm’s path clearly fed this story-on-steroids. Does anyone seriously believe the hurricane would have drawn the same level of coverage if it had been bearing down on, say, Ft. Lauderdale?

In fact, here in south Florida, we have become accustomed to the scare-mongering, which runs ahead of any tropical depression appearing west of the Cape Verde Islands.  Our local newscasters have an incentive to overstate the threat:  If they can scare the local politicians into ordering a mandatory evacuation – the story goes national and the networks provide some face time for the local correspondents.  At The Weather Channel, the incessant drumbeat warns:  Keep watching us or die!  I would be more than happy to cooperate if only they would feature Stephanie Abrams as often as they have Jim Cantore or Bryan Norcross on camera.

A similar fear-mongering strategy is becoming apparent in the Presidential campaign.  Before Rick Perry jumped into the race, disgruntled former Obama supporters saw the 2012 campaign as a choice between two nearly-indistinguishable corporatists.  With the ever-increasing likelihood that Rick Perry could become the Republican nominee, those ex-Obama fans are being constantly bombarded with reasons to be afraid  … be very afraid.  Are you going to just sit back and watch when President Perry declares war on Switzerland?

The most-frequently quoted observation about Rick Perry came from Bruce Bartlett, who served as deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department, in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.  During a recent appearance on CNN’s American Morning, Bartlett remarked:

“Rick Perry is an idiot, and I don’t think anybody would disagree with that.”

At the Huffington Post, the fixation on Rick Perry’s intellectual limitations resulted in the publication of some information from the candidate’s college transcript:

A source in Texas passed The Huffington Post Perry’s transcripts from his years at Texas A&M University.  The future politician did not distinguish himself much in the classroom.  While he later became a student leader, he had to get out of academic probation to do so.  He rarely earned anything above a C in his courses — earning a C in U.S. History, a D in Shakespeare, and a D in the principles of economics.  Perry got a C in gym.

Perry also did poorly on classes within his animal science major. In fall semester 1970, he received a D in veterinary anatomy, a F in a second course on organic chemistry and a C in animal breeding.  He did get an A in world military systems and “Improv. of Learning” — his only two As while at A&M.

Josh Harkinson wrote an article for Mother Jones, recounting some episodes from Perry’s tenure as Governor of Texas.  In addition to discussing the infamous Trans-Texas Corridor fiasco, the essay provided these factoids:

In 2004, whistleblowers repeatedly informed Perry’s office that the Governor’s Texas Youth Commission hires and protects “known child abusers.”   His office ignored the warnings.  Three years later, the story broke that top officials with the TYC had learned of and done nothing to stop widespread child molestation at a juvenile detention facility in West Texas.

*   *   *

Last year, Perry called the BP oil spill an “act of God.”

*   *   *

Perry has accepted $1.2 million from Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, who is building a nuclear waste dump in West Texas over the objections of some of the state’s own environmental regulators.  In January, Texas’ Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission opened the door to allowing the dump to accept nuclear waste from around the country.  Six of of the commission’s seven members were appointed by Perry.

The passage from Harkinson’s article, striking fear into the hearts of Democrats, concerns a bit of history, which might repeat itself in the event that progressives should decide to support a third-party candidate:

Perry’s political associates, including top adviser Dave Carney, have been repeatedly accused of helping the Green Party qualify for the ballot in order to siphon votes away from Democratic candidates.

Could something similar happen in November of 2012?  Rick Perry is counting on it — and the media will incessantly remind you of that.

You’ve been warned!


 

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GOP Unable To Wash Away Santorum

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After his disappointing loss to Michele Bachmann in the Iowa Straw Poll, Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty officially withdrew from the 2012 Presidential campaign.  Pawlenty finished third with 14% of the votes.  Bachmann picked up 28% and Congressman Ron Paul was right behind her with 27%.  Despite the fact that Rick Santorum finished fourth with a paltry 9.8%, the Pennsylvanian has not discussed abandoning his own Presidential bid.

Santorum has not held public office since his humiliating defeat in the 2006 election, at which point he lost his Senate seat to Democrat Bob Casey, Jr. by a 59%-41% margin – the worst defeat for an incumbent Senator since 1980.  One might assume that such a bidetory washout would forever purge Santorum from that zone within the Beltway.  Nevertheless, Santorum apparently believes he will have greater success with a national campaign in post-Tea Party America.

Strangely enough, Santorum’s fourth-place finish in the Ames Straw Poll is being spun as a victory.  Dan Hirschhorn reported for Politico that Santorum’s fourth-place showing helped grease the candidate’s fundraising efforts:

Still underfunded, the campaign enjoyed its strongest overnight online money haul in the hours after the straw poll, and is planning to step up its fundraising efforts in Pennsylvania, his financial home base after two Senate terms.

Nevertheless, as Daniel Larison discussed in The American Conservative, Santorum’s fourth-place finish was solely a result of the candidate’s persistent, lingering presence in Iowa:

The reality is that Santorum has been living and campaigning full-time in Iowa for weeks, he ought to be rallying social conservatives to him in much larger numbers than he does, and his fourth-place finish out of a field of six direct competitors is confirmation that his campaign is going nowhere.  Beating out Herman Cain and Thad McCotter on the ground does not mean much at all.  His presidential bid has always seemed to be a vain effort to re-fight the battles of his failed 2006 re-election campaign.

Michael Falcone of ABC News observed that Santorum “has been languishing near the bottom of national polls”.  The question remains as to whether a candidate, whose agenda is so tightly focused on conservative “values voters” could gain momentum in a campaign dominated by financial issues.  As George Will pointed out, Santorum has repeatedly emphasized that “… America’s debt crisis is, at bottom, symptomatic of a failure of self-control  …”

Dan Hirschhorn noted at the conclusion of his Politico report, that Santorum’s “end game” remains a mystery.  I suspect that Santorum’s true objective could be to secure the number two place on the Republican ticket as the GOP’s Vice-Presidential candidate.

It’s reasonable to assume that the presence of Santorum on the back end of the Republican ticket could provide their campaign with a frothy mixture of enthusiasm, including support from social conservatives who would not otherwise vote for a less-polarizing Presidential nominee.

Meanwhile, Santorum continues to swim upstream, while jumping down the throat of the hard right’s newest rising star, Texas Governor Rick Perry, who refused to advocate a relativistic interpretation of the Tenth Amendment.  Governor Perry provided this response to Santorum’s blast:

“You either have to believe in the 10th Amendment or you don’t,” Perry told reporters after a bill signing in Houston Wednesday.  “You can’t believe in the 10th Amendment for a few issues and then [for] something that doesn’t suit you say, ‘We’d rather not have states decide that.’”

You can probably see the problem exposed by this dust-up.  If the Republican Party can’t wash out Santorum, the remaining GOP Presidential hopefuls will begin to appear liberal.


 

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Secret Phone Call

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I’ve been reading a great number of articles by commentators who have expressed outrage concerning President Obama’s shocking capitulation in the negotiations involving the debt ceiling bill.  Despite the Democratic Party’s tactic of blaming the “Tea Party terrorists” for the all cuts – no revenue, pro-billionaire legislation, a few pundits have seen through this fog to point out that Obama actually got the bill he secretly wanted all along.  Glenn Greenwald presented a solid case for this theory at Salon.

Polling guru Nate Silver wrote two items on August 1, in which he analyzed the Congressional voting and demonstrated that President Obama – despite having been afforded the opportunity to include provisions in the bill to make it more economically stimulative and less onerous for those experiencing the greatest hardship from the economic crisis – decided to leave some available provisions “on the table”.

Nate Silver initially made this observation:

Fiscal austerity at a time of economic distress, and on largely Republican terms, is not what Democrats thought they were getting when they elected Mr. Obama in 2008.  Mr. Obama might have done more to make short-term stimulus – like further reductions to the payroll tax, which would not have violated the Republicans’ ostensible goals – the  price for long-term austerity.

Although it is impossible to prove one way or the other, I am not persuaded by the notion that Mr. Obama could not have delivered a better result to Democrats had he done more to stand his ground.  Despite the dissent in the Republican caucus, which had originally seemed like a tactical victory for Democrats, the compromise wound up looking more like Mr. Boehner’s original bill than Mr. Reid’s.

Later that evening, Mr. Silver provided an analysis, which exposed Obama’s abandonment of the objectives he was elected to promote:

These results seem to suggest that Mr. Obama left something on the table.  That is, Mr. Obama could have shifted the deal tangibly toward the left and still gotten a bill through without too much of a problem.  For instance, even if all members of the Tea Party Caucus had voted against the bill, it would still have passed 237-to-193, and that’s with 95 Democrats voting against it.

Specifically, it seems likely that Mr. Obama could have gotten an extension of the payroll tax cut included in the bill, or unemployment benefits, either of which would have had a stimulative effect.

*   *   *

With that payroll tax cut, the deal becomes a much easier sell to Democrats – and perhaps also to swing voters, particularly given that nobody spent much time during this debate talking about jobs.  Plus, it would have improved growth in 2012 and, depending on how literally you take the economic models, improved Mr. Obama’s re-election chances.

As many observers have noted, the plutocracy has been able to accomplish much more with Obama in the White House, than what would have been achievable with a Republican President.  This latest example of a bipartisan effort to trample “the little people” has reinforced my belief that the fake “two-party system” is a sideshow – designed to obfuscate the insidious activities of the Republi-Cratic Corporatist Party.

What follows is the transcript of an imaginary telephone conversation between President Obama and Roger Ailes of Fox News:

Obama:  Hi Rodge!

Ailes:  Hi Barry!  Congratulations on the debt ceiling bill!  Great work!

Obama:  Thanks.  I won’t have to renew the Bush tax cuts again until after the election.  That’s a relief!  Unfortunately, we’re getting some bad polling numbers now.  Problems with the base.  I need you guys to lean on the “liberal” stuff a little harder.  Both O’Reilly and Hannity have been doing OK on it – but I just wish they would get back to some more of the “socialist” accusations.  That would really help rehabilitate my cred with my estranged base.

Ailes:       The “socialist” shtick was more Beck’s routine – but I’ll get them on it.

Obama:   I found some old pictures of myself with Bill Ayers that you guys might want to use    . . .

Ailes:       Ayers is sooooo 2008!  We need something new.  We need to get you to Syria for a meeting with Bashar al-Assad.  When you shake hands with him – make sure you bow!  We can get a lot of mileage here from that!

Obama:   No!  That will piss off too many liberals – especially the Jews.  I’m trying to keep the smart people in my corner!

Ailes:       OK.  OK.  We just really need to get you on some sort of apology tour or something.  You could start traveling around to abortion clinics and promising them some federal aid  .  .  .

Obama:   Great one, Rodge!  I love that!

Ailes:       I’ll plant some of our protesters along the way – the ones who’ve already been cleared by the Secret Service.

Obama:   Yeah!  Bring back that guy with the fake assault rifle!  He was a trip!

Ailes:       I have someone better.  This guy has been posing as a “Tea Party activist” at “town meetings”.  He’s a great new talent!

Obama:   We could set up another “Joe the Plumber”-type of confrontation with that guy!

Ailes:       Definately!  I’ll have my people put a script together.  That story will have some legs that will carry us all the way to the election!  . . .  Speaking of legs – I’m getting some good numbers in on Bachmann!

Obama:   How’s our girl doing?

Ailes:       Great!  She’s really gonna’ kick some ass in Iowa!

Obama:   I saw her on with Sean the other day.  She’s doing a great job!  Are you guys going to start a scandal involving Mitt?

Ailes:       I need to maintain plausible deniability about what Rupert’s operatives are up to.  You know  .  .  .

Obama:   Gotcha!  ‘Nuff said!

Ailes:       Well, I’ll let you get back to work.  You must have loads of angry campaign donors trying to bend your ear right about now  . . .

Obama:   Yeah  . . .  But that’s not where the real money is.

Ailes:       Amen!


 

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Time For Some Serious Pushback

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The American people are finally getting angry.  I thought it would never happen.  In case you haven’t heard about it yet, the most popular topic on Twitter right now is:  #FuckYouWashington.  (For those who don’t like typing dirty words on their computer – there is the alternative #FYW.)  If you’re looking for some refreshing reading, which will reinforce your confidence in the people of this great country (especially after excessive exposure to the depressing, “debt ceiling” debate) be sure to check in on it.

Meanwhile, our fake, “two-party system” is facing a fresh challenge.  The Republi-Cratic Corporatist Party is being threatened by an Internet-based organization called, Americans Elect.  Here’s how the group describes itself:

Americans Elect is the first-ever open nominating process.  We’re using the Internet to give every single voter – Democrat, Republican or independent – the power to nominate a presidential ticket in 2012.  The people will choose the issues. The people will choose the candidates.  And in a secure, online convention next June, the people will make history by putting their choice on the ballot in every state.

*   *   *

We have no ties to any political group – left, right, or center.  We don’t promote any issues, ideology or candidates.  None of our funding comes from special interests or lobbyists.  Our only goal is to put a directly-nominated ticket on the ballot in 2012.

*   *   *

The goal of Americans Elect is to nominate a presidential ticket that answers to the people – not the political system.  Like millions of American voters, we simply want leadership that will work together to tackle the challenges facing our country.  And we believe a direct nominating process will prove that America is ready for a competitive, nonpartisan ticket.

Just when the Obama Administration was getting comfy with the idea that it could take the voters for granted  …  along came this new threat in the form of Americans Elect.  The timing couldn’t have been more appropriate.  A recent CNN poll revealed that Obama’s support among liberals has dropped to “the lowest point in his presidency”.  The man whom I characterized as the “Disappointer-In-Chief” during his third month in office, is now being referred to by The Nation as the “Compromiser-in-Chief”.  Ari Melber’s essay in The Nation provides a great summary of the criticism directed against Obama from the Left.  One example came from economist Paul Krugman, who described Obama as “President Pushover”.

In order to resist any new challenges to the status quo, the Republi-Cratic Corporatist Party is taking advantage of the proposed “debt ceiling” legislation to cement its absolute control over the United States government.  Ryan Grim of The Huffington Post provided us with the revelation of a bipartisan effort to create an authoritarian governing body, designed to circumvent Constitutionally-prescribed legislative procedures:

This “Super Congress,” composed of members of both chambers and both parties, isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, but would be granted extraordinary new powers.  Under a plan put forth by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his counterpart Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), legislation to lift the debt ceiling would be accompanied by the creation of a 12-member panel made up of 12 lawmakers — six from each chamber and six from each party.

Legislation approved by the Super Congress — which some on Capitol Hill are calling the “super committee” — would then be fast-tracked through both chambers, where it couldn’t be amended by simple, regular lawmakers, who’d have the ability only to cast an up or down vote.  With the weight of both leaderships behind it, a product originated by the Super Congress would have a strong chance of moving through the little Congress and quickly becoming law.  A Super Congress would be less accountable than the system that exists today, and would find it easier to strip the public of popular benefits.  Negotiators are currently considering cutting the mortgage deduction and tax credits for retirement savings, for instance, extremely popular policies that would be difficult to slice up using the traditional legislative process.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has made a Super Congress a central part of his last-minute proposal, multiple news reports and people familiar with his plan say.

Independents and “Third-Party” members of Congress would be excluded from this “Super Congress”, thus subverting any attempts by the “little people” to steal control of the government away from the Republi-Cratic Corporatist Party.  Concern about the upstart Americans Elect organization could have been the motivating factor which inspired the “Super Congress” plan.  Tom Friedman’s recent New York Times commentary must have set off a “treason alert” for the Congressional kleptocrats, who read this:

Write it down:  Americans Elect.  What Amazon.com did to books, what the blogosphere did to newspapers, what the iPod did to music, what drugstore.com did to pharmacies, Americans Elect plans to do to the two-party duopoly that has dominated American political life – remove the barriers to real competition, flatten the incumbents and let the people in.  Watch out.

The Republi-Cratic Corporatist Party is already watching out.  That’s why they are moving to create a new, imperial “Super Congress”.  Be sure to express your opposition to this power grab by logging-on to Twitter and sharing your feelings at #FuckYouWashington.


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John Ashcroft Was Right

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Many commentators have expressed surprise about the extensive criticism directed against President Obama by liberals.  During the new President’s third month in office, I pointed out how he had become the “Disappointer-In-Chief” – when he began to elicit groans from the likes of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.  President Obama has continued on that trajectory ever since.  More recently, Obama’s mishandling of the economic crisis resulted in a great cover story for New York Magazine by Frank Rich, entitled, “Obama’s Original Sin”.  Although Frank Rich may have been a bit restrained in his criticism of Obama, Marshall Auerback didn’t pull any punches in an essay he wrote for the New Economic Perspectives website entitled, “Barack Obama:  America’s First Tea Party President”:

Cutting public spending at this juncture is the last thing the US government should be doing.  Yet this President is pushing for the largest possible cuts that he can on the Federal government debt.  He is out-Hoovering the GOP on this issue.  He is providing “leadership” of the sort which is infuriating his base, but should endear him to the Tea Party.  This is “the big thing” for Barack Obama, as opposed to maximizing the potential of his fellow Americans by seeking to eliminate the scourge of unemployment.  Instead, his big idea is to become the president who did what George Bush could not, or did not, dare to do:  cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.  What more could the Tea Party possibly want?

Glenn Greenwald of Salon has been a persistent critic of President Obama for quite a while.  Back in September of 2010, I referenced one of Glenn Greenwald’s exceptive essays about Obama with this thought:

Glenn Greenwald devoted some space from his Salon piece to illustrate how President Obama seems to be continuing the agenda of President Bush.  I was reminded of the quote from former Attorney General John Ashcroft in an article written by Jane Mayer for The New Yorker.  When discussing how he expected the Obama Presidency would differ from the Presidency of his former boss, George W. Bush, Ashcroft said:

“How will he be different?  The main difference is going to be that he spells his name ‘O-b-a-m-a,’ not ‘B-u-s-h.’ ”

John Ashcroft’s prescient remark could not have been more accurate.  Who else could have foreseen that the Obama Presidency would eventually be correlated with that of President George W. Bush?  Although it may have seemed like a preposterous notion at the time, it’s now beginning to make more sense, thanks to a very interesting piece I read at the Truthdig website entitled, “If McCain Had Won” by Fred Branfman.  Branfman began with a list of “catastrophes” we would have seen from a McCain administration, followed by this comment:

Nothing reveals the true state of American politics today more, however, than the fact that Democratic President Barack Obama has undertaken all of these actions and, even more significantly, left the Democratic Party far weaker than it would have been had McCain been elected.

More important, the sentence immediately following that remark deserves special attention because it forms the crux of Branfman’s analysis:

Few issues are more important than seeing behind the screen of a myth-making mass media, and understanding what this demonstrates about how power in America really works – and what needs to be done to change it.

From there, Branfman went on to explain how and why McCain would have made the same decisions and enacted the same policies as Obama.  Beyond that, Branfman explained why Obama ended up doing things exactly as McCain would have:

Furious debate rages among Obama’s Democratic critics today on why he has largely governed on the big issues as John McCain would have done. Some believe he retains his principles but has been forced to compromise by political realities. Others are convinced he was a manipulative politico who lacked any real convictions in the first place.

But there is a far more likely – and disturbing – possibility.  Based on those who knew him and his books, there is little reason to doubt that the pre-presidential Obama was a college professor-type who shared the belief system of his liberalish set …

*   *   *

Upon taking office, however, Obama – whatever his belief system at that point – found that he was unable to accomplish these goals for one basic reason:  The president of the United States is far less powerful than media myth portrays.  Domestic power really is in the hands of economic elites and their lobbyists, and foreign policy really is controlled by U.S. executive branch national security managers and a “military-industrial complex.”

The ugly truth strikes again!  The seemingly “all-powerful” President of the United States is nothing more than a tool of the plutocracy.  It doesn’t matter whether the White House is occupied by a Democrat or a Republican – the policies (domestic, foreign, economic, etc.) will always be the same – because the people calling the shots are always the same plutocrats who control those “too big to fail” banks, the military industry and big pharma.  As Branfman put it:

.   .   .   anyone who becomes president has little choice but to serve the institutional interests of a profoundly amoral and violent executive branch and the corporations behind them.

Perhaps in response to the oft-cited criticism that “if you’re not part of the solution – you’re part of the problem”, Fred Branfman has offered us a proposal that could send us on the way to changing this intolerable status quo:

But however important the 2012 election, far more energy needs to be devoted to building mass organizations that challenge elite power and develop the kinds of policies – including massive investment in a “clean energy economic revolution,” a carbon tax and other tough measures to stave off climate change, regulating and breaking up the financial sector, cost-effective entitlements like single-payer health insurance, and public financing of primary and general elections – which alone can save America and its democracy in the painful decade to come.

Wait a minute!  Didn’t Obama already promise us all of that stuff?

Perhaps the only way to achieve those goals is by voting for Independent political candidates, who are not beholden to the Republi-cratic Corporatist Party or its financiers.  When the mainstream media go out of their way to pretend as though a particular candidate does not exist – you might want to give serious consideration to voting for that person.  When the media try to “disappear” a candidate by “hiding” that person “in plain sight”, they could be inadvertently providing the best type of endorsement imaginable.

The same level of energy that brought Obama to the White House could be used to bring us our first Independent President.  All we need is a candidate.


 

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Discipline Problem

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At the conclusion of a single, five-year term as Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Sheila Bair is calling it quits.  One can hardly blame her.  It must have been one hell of an experience:  Warning about the hazards of the subprime mortgage market, being ignored and watching the consequences unfold . . .  followed by a painful, weekly ritual, which gave birth to a website called Bank Fail Friday.

Bair’s tenure at the helm of the FDIC has been – and will continue to be – the subject of some great reading.  On her final day at the FDIC (July 8) The Washington Post published an opinion piece by Ms. Bair in which she warned that short-term, goal-directed thinking could bring about another financial crisis.  She also had something to brag about.  Despite the efforts of Attorney General Eric Hold-harmless and the Obama administration to ignore the malefaction which brought about the financial crisis and allowed the Wall Street villains to profiteer from that catastrophe, Bair’s FDIC actually stepped up to the plate:

This past week, the FDIC adopted a rule that allows the agency to claw back two years’ worth of compensation from senior executives and managers responsible for the collapse of a systemic, non-bank financial firm.

To date, the FDIC has authorized suits against 248 directors and officers of failed banks for shirking their fiduciary duties, seeking at least $6.8 billion in damages.  The rationales the executives come up with to try to escape accountability for their actions never cease to amaze me.  They blame the failure of their institutions on market forces, on “dead-beat borrowers,” on regulators, on space aliens.  They will reach for any excuse to avoid responsibility.

Mortgage brokers and the issuers of mortgage-based securities were typically paid based on volume, and they responded to these incentives by making millions of risky loans, then moving on to new jobs long before defaults and foreclosures reached record levels.

The difference between Sheila Bair’s approach to the financial/economic crisis and that of the Obama Administration (whose point man has been Treasury Secretary “Turbo” Tim Geithner) was analyzed in a great article by Joe Nocera of The New York Times entitled, “Sheila Bair’s Bank Shot”.  The piece was based on Nocera’s “exit interview” with the departing FDIC Chair.  Throughout that essay, Nocera underscored Bair’s emphasis on “market discipline” – which he contrasted with Geithner’s fanatic embrace of the exact opposite:  “moral hazard” (which Geithner first exhibited at the onset of the crisis while serving as President of the Federal Reserve of New York).  Nocera made this point early in the piece:

On financial matters, she seemed to have better political instincts than Obama’s Treasury Department, which of course is now headed by Geithner.  She favored “market discipline” – meaning shareholders and debt holders would take losses ahead of depositors and taxpayers – over bailouts, which she abhorred.  She didn’t spend a lot of time fretting over bank profitability; if banks had to become less profitable, postcrisis, in order to reduce the threat they posed to the system, so be it.  (“Our job is to protect bank customers, not banks,” she told me.)

Bair’s discussion of those early, panic-filled days during September 2008 is consistent with reports we have read about Geithner elsewhere.  This passage from Nocera’s article is one such example:

For instance, during the peak of the crisis, with credit markets largely frozen, banks found themselves unable to roll over their short-term debt.  This made it virtually impossible for them to function.  Geithner wanted the F.D.I.C. to guarantee literally all debt issued by the big bank-holding companies – an eye-popping request.

Bair said no.  Besides the risk it would have entailed, it would have also meant a windfall for bondholders, because much of the existing debt was trading at a steep discount.  “It was unnecessary,” she said.  Instead, Bair and Paulson worked out a deal in which the F.D.I.C. guaranteed only new debt issued by the bank-holding companies.  It was still a huge risk for the F.D.I.C. to take; Paulson says today that it was one of the most important, if underrated, actions taken by the federal government during the crisis.  “It was an extraordinary thing for us to do,” Bair acknowledged.

Back in April of 2009, the newly-appointed Treasury Secretary met with similar criticism in this great article by Jo Becker and Gretchen Morgenson at The New York Times:

Last June, with a financial hurricane gathering force, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. convened the nation’s economic stewards for a brainstorming session.  What emergency powers might the government want at its disposal to confront the crisis? he asked.

Timothy F. Geithner, who as president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank oversaw many of the nation’s most powerful financial institutions, stunned the group with the audacity of his answer.  He proposed asking Congress to give the president broad power to guarantee all the debt in the banking system, according to two participants, including Michele Davis, then an assistant Treasury secretary.

The proposal quickly died amid protests that it was politically untenable because it could put taxpayers on the hook for trillions of dollars.

“People thought, ‘Wow, that’s kind of out there,’ ” said John C. Dugan, the comptroller of the currency, who heard about the idea afterward.  Mr. Geithner says, “I don’t remember a serious discussion on that proposal then.”

But in the 10 months since then, the government has in many ways embraced his blue-sky prescription.  Step by step, through an array of new programs, the Federal Reserve and Treasury have assumed an unprecedented role in the banking system, using unprecedented amounts of taxpayer money, to try to save the nation’s financiers from their own mistakes.

Geithner’s utter contempt for market discipline again became a subject of the Nocera-Bair interview when the conversation turned to the infamous Maiden Lane III bailouts.

“I’ve always wondered why none of A.I.G.’s counterparties didn’t have to take any haircuts.  There’s no reason in the world why those swap counterparties couldn’t have taken a 10 percent haircut.  There could have at least been a little pain for them.”  (All of A.I.G.’s counterparties received 100 cents on the dollar after the government pumped billions into A.I.G.  There was a huge outcry when it was revealed that Goldman Sachs received more than $12 billion as a counterparty to A.I.G. swaps.)

Bair continued:  “They didn’t even engage in conversation about that.  You know, Wall Street barely missed a beat with their bonuses.”

“Isn’t that ridiculous?” she said.

This article by Gretchen Morgenson provides more detail about Geithner’s determination that AIG’s counterparties receive 100 cents on the dollar.  For Goldman Sachs – it amounted to $12.9 billion which was never repaid to the taxpayers.  They can brag all they want about paying back TARP – but Maiden Lane III was a gift.

I was surprised that Sheila Bair – as a Republican – would exhibit the same sort of “true believer-ism” about Barack Obama as voiced by many Democrats who blamed Rahm Emanuel for the early disappointments of the Obama administration.  Near the end of Nocera’s interview, Bair appeared taken-in by Obama’s “plausible deniability” defense:

“I think the president’s heart is in the right place,” Bair told me.  “I absolutely do.  But the dichotomy between who he selected to run his economic team and what he personally would like them to be doing – I think those are two very different things.”  What particularly galls her is that Treasury under both Paulson and Geithner has been willing to take all sorts of criticism to help the banks.  But it has been utterly unwilling to take any political heat to help homeowners.

The second key issue for Bair has been dealing with the too-big-to-fail banks. Her distaste for the idea that the systemically important banks can never be allowed to fail is visceral.  “I don’t think regulators can adequately regulate these big banks,” she told me.  “We need market discipline.  And if we don’t have that, they’re going to get us in trouble again.”

If Sheila Bair’s concern is valid, the Obama administration’s track record for market discipline has us on a certain trajectory for another financial crisis.



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The Monster Is Eating Itself

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Back on February 10, 2009 – before President Obama had completed his first month in office – two students at the Yale Law School, Jeffrey Tebbs and Ady Barkan, wrote an article which began with the point that the financial crisis was caused by the recklessness and greed of Wall Street executives.  Tebbs and Barkan proposed a “windfall bonus tax” on those corporate welfare queens of Wall Street, at the very moment when budget-restrained states began instituting their own economic austerity measures so that The Monster could be fed:

Last week, Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell proposed a state budget that slashes crucial public services, including deep cuts to health care for kids and pregnant women, higher education and consumer protection.  She says that the cuts are necessary to close our state’s budget shortfall, but she’s apparently unwilling to increase taxes on Connecticut’s millionaires.

That is to say, while your hard-earned tax dollars are funding Christmas bonuses for Wall Street’s jet-set, Connecticut’s government will be cutting the programs and services that are crucial to your health and safety and to the vitality of our communities.

Since that time, “reverse Robin Hood” economic policies, such as the measures proposed by Governor Rell, have become painfully widespread.  As an aside:  Despite the fact that Governor Rell announced on November 9, 2009 that she would not seek re-election, the conservative Cato Institute determined that Rell was the only Republican Governor worthy of a failing grade on the Institute’s 2010 Fiscal Policy Report Card.

The entity I refer to as “The Monster” has been on a feeding frenzy since the financial crisis began.  Other commentators have their own names for this beast.  Michael Collins of The Economic Populist calls it “The Money Party”:

The Money Party is a very small group of enterprises and individuals who control almost all of the money and power in the United States.  They use their money and power to make more money and gain more power.  It’s not about Republicans versus Democrats.  The Money Party is an equal opportunity employer.  It has no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests.  Democrats are as welcome as Republicans to this party.  It’s all good when you’re on the take and the take is legal.  Economic Populist

*   *   *

The party is also short on compassion or even the most elementary forms of common decency.  It’s OK to see millions of people evicted, jobless, without health care, etc., as long as short term profits are maintained for those CEO bonuses and other enrichment for a tiny minority.  It’s perfectly acceptable for this to go on despite available solutions.  If you don’t look, it’s not there should be their motto.

Beyond that, The Monster’s insensitivity has increased to the point where it has actually become too numb to realize that the tender morsel it is feasting on happens to be its own foot.  Until last year, The Monster had nearly everyone convinced that America would enjoy a “jobless recovery”, despite the fact that the American economy is 70 percent consumer-driven.  Well, the “jobless recovery” never happened and the new “magic formula” for economic growth is deficit reduction.  As I discussed in my last posting, Bill Gross of PIMCO recently highlighted the flaws in that rationale:

Solutions from policymakers on the right or left, however, seem focused almost exclusively on rectifying or reducing our budget deficit as a panacea. While Democrats favor tax increases and mild adjustments to entitlements, Republicans pound the table for trillions of dollars of spending cuts and an axing of Obamacare.  Both, however, somewhat mystifyingly, believe that balancing the budget will magically produce 20 million jobs over the next 10 years.

Simon Johnson, who formerly served as Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund, conducted a serious analysis of whether such “fiscal contraction” could actually achieve the intended goal of expanding the economy.  The fact that the process has such an oxymoronic name as “expansionary fiscal contraction” should serve as a tip-off that it won’t work:

The general presumption is that fiscal contraction – cutting spending and/or raising taxes – will immediately slow the economy relative to the growth path it would have had otherwise.

*   *   *

There are four conditions under which fiscal contractions can be expansionary.  But none of these conditions are likely to apply in the United States today.

*   *   *

The available evidence, including international experience, suggests it is very unlikely that the United States could experience an “expansionary fiscal contraction” as a result of short-term cuts in discretionary domestic federal government spending.

Economist Stephanie Kelton explained that the best way to lower the federal budget deficit is to reduce unemployment:

The bottom line is this:  As long as unemployment remains high, the deficit will remain high.  So instead of continuing to put the deficit first, it’s time get to work on a plan to increase employment.

Here’s the formula:  Spending creates income.  Income creates sales.  Sales create jobs.

If you think you can cut the deficit without destroying jobs, dream on.

Dr. Kelton has identified the problem:  Deficit reduction schemes which disregard the impact on employment.  Nevertheless, The Monster is determined to press ahead with a “deficits first” agenda, regardless of the consequences.  The Monster will have its way because its army of lobbyists has President Obama under control.  As a result, we can expect increased unemployment, a diminished tax base, less consumer spending, less demand, decreased corporate income, lower GDP and more deficits.  The Monster’s gluttony has placed it on a course of self-destruction.  Perhaps that might be a good thing – if only it wouldn’t cause too much pain for the rest of us.


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