The Great 2008 Collapse

[georgephillip]

The financial crisis of 2008 should have changed your mind about something. From Wiki:

"The output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States—decreased at an annual rate of approximately 6% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009, versus activity in the year-ago periods.[180]

"The U.S. unemployment rate increased to 10.1% by October 2009, the highest rate since 1983 and roughly twice the pre-crisis rate.

"The average hours per work week declined to 33, the lowest level since the government began collecting the data in 1964.[181][182]

"The very rich lost relatively less in the crisis than the remainder of the population, widening the divide between the economic classes. Thus the top 1% who had a share of 34.6% of the nation's wealth in 2007 increased their share to 37.1% by 2009."

The richest 1% of Americans then demanded taxpayer bailouts to ensure their "fair share" of the nation's wealth weren't compromised, and Republicans and Democrats in congress were happy to comply.

What consequences did the crisis and bailout have on our level of national debt?

"In early 2008, the CBO projected that debt as a percent of gross domestic product would fall from 36.8 percent to 22.6 percent at the end of 2018.

"In contrast, the latest CBO forecast has debt soaring to 75.3 percent of GDP in 2018.

"What caused this stunning reversal, which in dollar terms works out to a $10 trillion swing for end-year 2018 debt, from $5.1 trillion to $15.8 trillion?

"Almost all of this increase is due to the severe recession that followed the financial crisis of late 2008.

"This lowered output and employment, and therefore reduced tax revenue."

The financial crisis of 2008 should have changed some conservative minds about how big business, big government and the richest 1% of Americans collaborate to socialize cost and privatize profits.

Fiscal Conservatives Dodge $10 Trillion Debt: Simon Johnson - Bloomberg

 

[midcan5]

OMG you mean republican economic policy of trickle down doesn't work? Seems to be a pattern here here? Reagan/Bush = bailouts / unemployment; Bush Jr = bailouts / unemployment; Coolidge / Hoover = Great depression? Could it be the conservatives missed these things?

Trying to understand income inequality, the most profound change in American society in your lifetime. - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine

 

[Douger]

I escaped in 2005 so me no understanding.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

The financial crisis of 2008 should have changed your mind about something. From Wiki:

.....And, WHAT is it that Republicans/"conservatives"/Teabaggers keep tellin' everyone (ELSE) about....

"Accepting Responsibility For YOUR OWN Actions."????

January 13, 2008​

"The recession-deniers were muzzled by a horrendous last two weeks of December, and the gloom-and-doomers are now out in force. Their key arguments:

* Plummeting housing will now drag down the rest of the economy.

*The "bad debt" problem is not just "sub-prime" folks who should never have have taken out mortgages in the first place. It includes credit card debt, "high quality" mortgages, car loans, and other leverage that have recently become a consumer way of life.

*Pressure on consumers is leading to a reduction in consumer spending (70% of economy), which, in turn, will lead to a reduction in spending by companies that sell stuff to consumers.

*The question now is not "will there be a recession?" but "how bad will it get?"

*The most optimistic forecasts in a NYT gloom-and-doom round-up are for three crappy quarters, regardless of what the Fed does. Less optimistic forecasts suggest that we are, well, screwed.

After blowing the last downturn, we've been worried this one since last summer (see below). We also suspect that, given the importance of housing to the economy and debt to consumer spending, the recession will be deeper and more prolonged than people think."

"U.S. Economy Screwed"​

 

[georgephillip]

OMG you mean republican economic policy of trickle down doesn't work? Seems to be a pattern here here? Reagan/Bush = bailouts / unemployment; Bush Jr = bailouts / unemployment; Coolidge / Hoover = Great depression? Could it be the conservatives missed these things?

Trying to understand income inequality, the most profound change in American society in your lifetime. - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine

Conservatives will always prefer the marketplace of emotions to the marketplace of ideas; however, the contempt Americans feel towards their government seems to be bipartisan:

"Only 44 percent of voters approve of Obama's job performance, while 49 percent disapprove. That was down from 48 percent approval in January, and marked the 17th straight month that his approval has been below 50 percent;

"- Only 34 percent of voters approve, and 61 percent disapprove, of the way he's handling the budget deficit, projected to total about $1.6 trillion this year;

"- Only 30 percent approve of the way Republicans in Congress are doing their job, while 63 percent disapprove.

"Underlying it all, Americans are in a pessimistic mood. Fewer than one in three - 32 percent of registered voters - think the country's headed in the right direction, while 63 percent think it's headed in the wrong direction.

"Among all adults, including non-voters, the tally is 31-64 percent, the poorest since November 2007 at the onset of the Great Recession.

"'We're going through a period of partisan bickering in Washington, lots of posturing and an economy that has not taken hold the way people want,' said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College in New York, which conducted the poll."

Poll: Best way to fight deficits is to raise taxes on the rich - Politics Wires - MiamiHerald.com

 

[editec]

Terrific think piece. This is definiiely worth the time it takes to read.

It challenges many of my long held beliefs about macro-economic and society while supporting my POV in other cases.

Among other things it shows us that even the EXPECTS can disagree about the data and if they do agree, what the data is telling them.

So it is hardly surprising that we here cannot find agreement about what's happening to our economy, either.

Give yourselves a pat on the back because no matter what you believe, some well known economist is apt to support your pet theory, and others are likely to think it's all wrong.

Here's an encapsulation of the issue under consideration. First what is the threshold income of the very (they call it stinking) rich?

If the top 1 percent are the Rich, the top 0.1 percent (who today earn about $1 million or more) are the Stinking Rich. Since 1979, their income share hasn't doubled; it's quadrupled. In 1973 the top 0.1 percent's share of the national income stood at 2 percent. By 2008 it was 8 percent. The bottom 99.9 percent's share fell from 98 percent to 92 percent.

Is race or gender at the root of the change in income? Apparently not, or at least not much

...the Great Divergence can't be blamed on either race or gender. To contribute to the growth in income inequality over the past three decades, the income gaps between women and men, and between blacks and whites, would have to have grown. They didn't.

STill...I wonder

As women entered the workforce in higher skilled areas, they tend to marry men also working at higher skilled jobs. The difference therefore in family incomes between skilled working families and unskilled can be very signficant

[T]he narrowly economic focus of most previous studies of inequality has caused them to miss what may be the most important single influence on the changing U.S. income distribution over the past half-century—the contrasting policy choices of Democratic and Republican presidents. Under Republican administrations, real income growth for the lower- and middle-classes has consistently lagged well behind the income growth rate for the rich—and well behind the income growth rate for the lower and middle classes themselves under Democratic administrations.

The above doesn't really surprise me at all.

It oughtn't not to surprise anybody who pays attention. Dem admins result in marginally better outcomes for working families than Republican admins.

The number of corporations with public affairs offices in Washington grew from 100 in 1968 to over 500 in 1978. In 1971, only 175 firms had registered lobbyists in Washington, but by 1982, 2,500 did. The number of corporate [political action committees] increased from under 300 in 1976 to over 1,200 by the middle of 1980. […] The Chamber [of Commerce] doubled in membership between 1974 and 1980. Its budget tripled. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) doubled its membership between 1970 and 1979.

The above is really describing the growth of governance by SPECIAL INTEREST bribery. The above is easy to see happening, but I suspect it's damned hard to assign a metric that qualtifies the net effect of this corruption of our goverment on income distributions

President Reagan's 1981 decision to break the air-traffic controllers' union and to slash top income-tax rates killed off Truman's 1945 pact entirely. Although Reagan was a onetime union president, he showed little concern when the 1982 recession rapidly eliminated so many Rust Belt manufacturing jobs that the proportion of private-sector workers who belonged to unions dropped to 16 percent in 1985, down from 23 percent as recently as 1979. Reagan's hostility to unions was further reflected in his choice of Donald Dotson to chair the National Labor Relations Board. Dotson had previously worked as a management-side labor adversary for Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, and (presumably with both lips and heart) believed collective bargaining led to "the destruction of individual freedom." Under Reagan's two terms, the federal minimum wage, which previously had been adjusted upward every year or two, would remain stuck at $3.35 an hour for close to a full decade. Similarly, President George W. Bush, another two-term Republican, later let the minimum wage remain at $5.15 (to which it had risen during the presidencies of his father and Bill Clinton) for two months shy of 10 years, by which time its buying power had reached a 51-year low.

The above also suggests that the GOP's policies are outright hostile to unions and workers generally. Again, how much that is effecting income distribution isn't clearly quantified.

Where does that leave us? Trade does not appear to have contributed much to the Great Divergence through the mid-1990s. Since then, it may have contributed to it more significantly, though we don't yet have the data to quantify it. With trade more than with most topics, the economics profession is struggling to interpret a reality that may not fit the familiar models.

The above truly challenges my POV about this economy.

Of course I remember clearly what it was like when factory work paid well and was plentiful, too.

Who are the Stinking Rich? Their average annual income is about $7 million. Most of them likely work in finance, a sector of the U.S. economy that saw its share of corporate profits rise from less than 10 percent in 1979 to more than 40 percent in the aughts. The rest of the Stinking Rich are in good measure likely divided between the corporate and entertainment worlds. Among the latter two, the Rich and especially the Stinking Rich are often beneficiaries of the Winner Take All phenomenon (Kaus calls it the "Hollywood Effect"), in which those deemed best in their field are, thanks to improved technology, able to disseminate praise for their work across a broader geographic area and sell their services to many more people than they ever could in the past. Where once an accomplished chef presided over a single successful restaurant, today he can aspire to become a celebrity chef on the Food Network, which in turn can help him sell a cookbook and open additional restaurants around the country.

So the two paths to great wealth apparently are now, become the baddest corporate tool so you can be an highly paid CEO or go into showbusiness.


Now that's just plain sad.

Throughout the first three-quarters of the 20th century a growing supply of better-educated workers met the demand created by new technologies. The 1944 G.I. Bill, which paid tuition for returning servicemen, played an important role; so did the Sputnik-inspired National Defense Education Act, which increased federal spending on schools at all levels and created (at the suggestion of Milton Friedman!) a student-loan program for colleges. With the passing of each decade, the average 24-year-old had close to one additional year of schooling. These gains virtually halted starting with 1976's cohort of 24-year-olds. Educational attainment started growing again in the 1990s, but at a much slower rate. Here's another way to put it: The average person born in 1945 received two more years of schooling than his parents. The average person born in 1975 received only half a year more of schooling than his parents.

And the above is truly tragic. My generation got a much better education and much more opportunity to get a hihger education than my son's generation is getting.

That is a VERY foolish thing to allow to happen. Of course our right wing cranks like to blame teacher for it, but that's absurd on it face.

In 1976 the Harvard economist Richard B. Freeman published a book titled The Overeducated American that arguedthe monetary return on a college education—what economists call the "college premium"—had dropped to its lowest level since World War II. But with the Vietnam draft gone and the last of the baby boomers graduating from college, that trend began to reverse itself. It was no longer necessary to enroll in college if you wanted to stay out of Khe Sanh, and fewer kids were reaching college age. As a result, the college premium began to grow. It's been growing ever since. Goldin and Katz calculate that it accounts for two-thirds of the increase in income inequality during the Great Divergence.

The above seems fairly logical. But it really doesn't remotely address the income distribution changes between the lower 90% and the tope 10%, and it makes even less sense when comparing the top 10% to the top 1`$ and even LESS sense when evaluating the top 1% to the top 1/10th of 1%.

We have now reviewed all possible causes of the Great Divergence—all, at least, that have thus far attracted most experts' attention. What are their relative contributions? Here is a back-of-the-envelope calculation, an admittedly crude composite of my discussions with and reading of the various economists and political scientists cited thus far:

• Race and gender are responsible for none of it, and single parenthood is responsible for virtually none of it.
• Immigration is responsible for 5 percent.
• The imagined uniqueness of computers as a transformative technology is responsible for none of it.
• Tax policy is responsible for 5 percent.
• The decline of labor is responsible for 20 percent.
• Trade is responsible for 10 percent.
• Wall Street and corporate boards' pampering of the Stinking Rich is responsible for 30 percent.
• Various failures in our education system are responsible for 30 percent.

Not a whole lot of confidence about their percentage estimates, but I'm on board with the theories behind their estimates

The United States' economy is currently struggling to emerge from a severe recession brought on by the financial crisis of 2008. Was that crisis brought about by income inequality? Some economists are starting to think it may have been. David Moss of Harvard Business School has produced an intriguing chart that shows bank failures tend to coincide with periods of growing income inequality. "I could hardly believe how tight the fit was," he told the New York Times. Princeton's Paul Krugman has similarly been considering whether the Great Divergence helped cause the recession by pushing middle-income Americans into debt. The growth of household debt has followed a pattern strikingly similar to the growth in income inequality (see the final graph). Raghuram G. Rajan, a business school professor at the University of Chicago, recently argued on the New Republic's Web site that "let them eat credit" was "the mantra of the political establishment in the go-go years before the crisis." Christopher Brown, an economist at Arkansas State University, wrote a paper in 2004 affirming that "inequality can exert a significant drag on effective demand." Reducing inequality, he argued, would also reduce consumer debt. Today, Brown's paper looks prescient.

I've been writing essantially the same on this board ever since I got here.

DEBT is pernicious, not benign. Compound interest is a soubel edged swaord that exacerbates income inequity as one small but smugly happy class reaps the benfits of compounding interest while the vast majority of society takes it on the neck paying that interest.

And compounding debt doesn't just mean a lack of money today, but paying it off tdoay, means that it has an OPPOPRTUNITY COST that cannot ever be recovered, too.

 

[auditor0007]

The financial crisis of 2008 should have changed your mind about something. From Wiki:

"The output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States—decreased at an annual rate of approximately 6% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009, versus activity in the year-ago periods.[180]

"The U.S. unemployment rate increased to 10.1% by October 2009, the highest rate since 1983 and roughly twice the pre-crisis rate.

"The average hours per work week declined to 33, the lowest level since the government began collecting the data in 1964.[181][182]

"The very rich lost relatively less in the crisis than the remainder of the population, widening the divide between the economic classes. Thus the top 1% who had a share of 34.6% of the nation's wealth in 2007 increased their share to 37.1% by 2009."

The richest 1% of Americans then demanded taxpayer bailouts to ensure their "fair share" of the nation's wealth weren't compromised, and Republicans and Democrats in congress were happy to comply.

What consequences did the crisis and bailout have on our level of national debt?

"In early 2008, the CBO projected that debt as a percent of gross domestic product would fall from 36.8 percent to 22.6 percent at the end of 2018.

"In contrast, the latest CBO forecast has debt soaring to 75.3 percent of GDP in 2018.

"What caused this stunning reversal, which in dollar terms works out to a $10 trillion swing for end-year 2018 debt, from $5.1 trillion to $15.8 trillion?

"Almost all of this increase is due to the severe recession that followed the financial crisis of late 2008.

"This lowered output and employment, and therefore reduced tax revenue."

The financial crisis of 2008 should have changed some conservative minds about how big business, big government and the richest 1% of Americans collaborate to socialize cost and privatize profits.

Fiscal Conservatives Dodge $10 Trillion Debt: Simon Johnson - Bloomberg

And this is exactly why we should have cut taxes even more for the wealthy, so they could create more jobs for us poor folk.

 

[percysunshine]

I guess people are finally figuring out that Obama is a fascist.

 

[initforme]

It all comes down to the fact, the cold hard fact.


America = Management and Corporations VERSUS their workers. It always has. It's nothing more than this. Right now Corporations are winning. Will this lead to more jobs? Not a chance. As a small business owner its very easy to see.

 

[georgephillip]

The financial crisis of 2008 should have changed your mind about something. From Wiki:

.....And, WHAT is it that Republicans/"conservatives"/Teabaggers keep tellin' everyone (ELSE) about....

"Accepting Responsibility For YOUR OWN Actions."????

January 13, 2008​

"The recession-deniers were muzzled by a horrendous last two weeks of December, and the gloom-and-doomers are now out in force. Their key arguments:

* Plummeting housing will now drag down the rest of the economy.

*The "bad debt" problem is not just "sub-prime" folks who should never have have taken out mortgages in the first place. It includes credit card debt, "high quality" mortgages, car loans, and other leverage that have recently become a consumer way of life.

*Pressure on consumers is leading to a reduction in consumer spending (70% of economy), which, in turn, will lead to a reduction in spending by companies that sell stuff to consumers.

*The question now is not "will there be a recession?" but "how bad will it get?"

*The most optimistic forecasts in a NYT gloom-and-doom round-up are for three crappy quarters, regardless of what the Fed does. Less optimistic forecasts suggest that we are, well, screwed.

After blowing the last downturn, we've been worried this one since last summer (see below). We also suspect that, given the importance of housing to the economy and debt to consumer spending, the recession will be deeper and more prolonged than people think."

"U.S. Economy Screwed"​

Ask the question why we had such a severe recession with such crippling fiscal consequences and Republicans AND Democrats go mute.

"When you press politicians and their advisers on this, you will hear three kinds of responses in candid moments.

"First is the notion that banking crises are rare. This is a favorite of the Treasury Department. Perhaps that was true in the past, but our big banks have become bigger, and too-big-to- fail banks have major incentives to take on very high levels of risk. After all, the downside isn’t their problem.

Second is the idea that we fixed it with the Dodd-Frank Act, a line heard most often from Democrats on Capitol Hill. Almost no one holds to that view, including William Dudley, president of the New York Federal Reserve, and Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

"Both have expressed concerns that the roadmap for closing a large troubled bank remains elusive...

"Third, 'Let the markets evolve the way the markets evolve.' This was a recent quote from Anthony Santomero, former president of the Philadelphia Fed and current Citigroup Inc. director.

"Citigroup has blown up repeatedly in the past 30 years, not surprising for a complex and unwieldy megabank with 260,000 employees worldwide.

"Each time, it was saved through some form of external assistance, usually from the government, in part because responsible policy makers feared what Citigroup’s collapse would do the broader economy.

"Do we really think that the next time a bank with 200 million clients worldwide gets in trouble that the U.S. will let it go bankrupt, regardless of the consequences? Is that what Vikram Pandit, the chief executive officer, or Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary, argued for in 2008 or will argue for next time?"

During the much smaller looting of the S&Ls in the 1980s hundreds of bankers were prosecuted and more than a few went to prison for their crimes.

Why aren't we seeing the same reaction from government today?

And what does that mean for the next Wall Street crime wave?

Fiscal Conservatives Dodge $10 Trillion Debt: Simon Johnson - Bloomberg

 

[LordBrownTrout]

It was Clinton and the Rs who blew up the dam for trade with China and also Nafta. Our deficit problems have compounded from then.

 

[whitehall]

Which political party was in the majority when the collapse happened? The first thing on the democrat agenda (aside from seroid use in baseball) when they gained the majority in both houses was the ruination of the financial system starting with the collapse of Fannie Mae which was supervised by congress. What do you think Barney Frank meant when he said he had "ideological blinders" on when Fannie went down? He wanted it to happen because of his ideological differences with republicans and capitalism. Democrats let it happen to pave the way for the "hope and change" of socialism.

 

[georgephillip]

Terrific think piece. This is definiiely worth the time it takes to read.

It challenges many of my long held beliefs about macro-economic and society while supporting my POV in other cases.

Among other things it shows us that even the EXPECTS can disagree about the data and if they do agree, what the data is telling them.

So it is hardly surprising that we here cannot find agreement about what's happening to our economy, either.

Give yourselves a pat on the back because no matter what you believe, some well known economist is apt to support your pet theory, and others are likely to think it's all wrong.

Here's an encapsulation of the issue under consideration. First what is the threshold income of the very (they call it stinking) rich?

If the top 1 percent are the Rich, the top 0.1 percent (who today earn about $1 million or more) are the Stinking Rich. Since 1979, their income share hasn't doubled; it's quadrupled. In 1973 the top 0.1 percent's share of the national income stood at 2 percent. By 2008 it was 8 percent. The bottom 99.9 percent's share fell from 98 percent to 92 percent.

Is race or gender at the root of the change in income? Apparently not, or at least not much

...the Great Divergence can't be blamed on either race or gender. To contribute to the growth in income inequality over the past three decades, the income gaps between women and men, and between blacks and whites, would have to have grown. They didn't.

STill...I wonder

As women entered the workforce in higher skilled areas, they tend to marry men also working at higher skilled jobs. The difference therefore in family incomes between skilled working families and unskilled can be very signficant




The above doesn't really surprise me at all.

It oughtn't not to surprise anybody who pays attention. Dem admins result in marginally better outcomes for working families than Republican admins.



The above is really describing the growth of governance by SPECIAL INTEREST bribery. The above is easy to see happening, but I suspect it's damned hard to assign a metric that qualtifies the net effect of this corruption of our goverment on income distributions




The above also suggests that the GOP's policies are outright hostile to unions and workers generally. Again, how much that is effecting income distribution isn't clearly quantified.



The above truly challenges my POV about this economy.

Of course I remember clearly what it was like when factory work paid well and was plentiful, too.



So the two paths to great wealth apparently are now, become the baddest corporate tool so you can be an highly paid CEO or go into showbusiness.


Now that's just plain sad.



And the above is truly tragic. My generation got a much better education and much more opportunity to get a hihger education than my son's generation is getting.

That is a VERY foolish thing to allow to happen. Of course our right wing cranks like to blame teacher for it, but that's absurd on it face.



The above seems fairly logical. But it really doesn't remotely address the income distribution changes between the lower 90% and the tope 10%, and it makes even less sense when comparing the top 10% to the top 1`$ and even LESS sense when evaluating the top 1% to the top 1/10th of 1%.

We have now reviewed all possible causes of the Great Divergence—all, at least, that have thus far attracted most experts' attention. What are their relative contributions? Here is a back-of-the-envelope calculation, an admittedly crude composite of my discussions with and reading of the various economists and political scientists cited thus far:

• Race and gender are responsible for none of it, and single parenthood is responsible for virtually none of it.
• Immigration is responsible for 5 percent.
• The imagined uniqueness of computers as a transformative technology is responsible for none of it.
• Tax policy is responsible for 5 percent.
• The decline of labor is responsible for 20 percent.
• Trade is responsible for 10 percent.
• Wall Street and corporate boards' pampering of the Stinking Rich is responsible for 30 percent.
• Various failures in our education system are responsible for 30 percent.

Not a whole lot of confidence about their percentage estimates, but I'm on board with the theories behind their estimates

The United States' economy is currently struggling to emerge from a severe recession brought on by the financial crisis of 2008. Was that crisis brought about by income inequality? Some economists are starting to think it may have been. David Moss of Harvard Business School has produced an intriguing chart that shows bank failures tend to coincide with periods of growing income inequality. "I could hardly believe how tight the fit was," he told the New York Times. Princeton's Paul Krugman has similarly been considering whether the Great Divergence helped cause the recession by pushing middle-income Americans into debt. The growth of household debt has followed a pattern strikingly similar to the growth in income inequality (see the final graph). Raghuram G. Rajan, a business school professor at the University of Chicago, recently argued on the New Republic's Web site that "let them eat credit" was "the mantra of the political establishment in the go-go years before the crisis." Christopher Brown, an economist at Arkansas State University, wrote a paper in 2004 affirming that "inequality can exert a significant drag on effective demand." Reducing inequality, he argued, would also reduce consumer debt. Today, Brown's paper looks prescient.

I've been writing essantially the same on this board ever since I got here.

DEBT is pernicious, not benign. Compound interest is a soubel edged swaord that exacerbates income inequity as one small but smugly happy class reaps the benfits of compounding interest while the vast majority of society takes it on the neck paying that interest.

And compounding debt doesn't just mean a lack of money today, but paying it off tdoay, means that it has an OPPOPRTUNITY COST that cannot ever be recovered, too.

Do you think the "Fall of Man" is a metaphor for the creation of the first private fortunes?

Chris Hedges:

"The two most destructive forces of human nature—greed and envy—drive the financiers, the bankers, the corporate mandarins and the leaders of our two major political parties, all of whom profit from this system.

"They place themselves at the center of creation.

"They disdain or ignore the cries of those below them. They take from us our rights, our dignity and thwart our capacity for resistance. They seek to make us prisoners in our own land. They view human beings and the natural world as mere commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse.

"Human suffering, wars, climate change, poverty, it is all the price of business.

"Nothing is sacred.

"The Lord of Profit is the Lord of Death.

"The pharisees of high finance who can see us this morning from their cubicles and corner officers mock virtue.

"Life for them is solely about self-gain.

"The suffering of the poor is not their concern. The 6 million families thrown out of their homes are not their concern. The tens of millions of pensioners whose retirement savings were wiped out because of the fraud and dishonesty of Wall Street are not their concern. The failure to halt carbon emissions is not their concern. Justice is not their concern. Truth is not their concern. A hungry child is not their concern."

Hopefully, that last sentence will be their epitaph.

Chris Hedges: Throw Out the Money Changers - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

 

[georgephillip]

The financial crisis of 2008 should have changed your mind about something. From Wiki:

"The output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States—decreased at an annual rate of approximately 6% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009, versus activity in the year-ago periods.[180]

"The U.S. unemployment rate increased to 10.1% by October 2009, the highest rate since 1983 and roughly twice the pre-crisis rate.

"The average hours per work week declined to 33, the lowest level since the government began collecting the data in 1964.[181][182]

"The very rich lost relatively less in the crisis than the remainder of the population, widening the divide between the economic classes. Thus the top 1% who had a share of 34.6% of the nation's wealth in 2007 increased their share to 37.1% by 2009."

The richest 1% of Americans then demanded taxpayer bailouts to ensure their "fair share" of the nation's wealth weren't compromised, and Republicans and Democrats in congress were happy to comply.

What consequences did the crisis and bailout have on our level of national debt?

"In early 2008, the CBO projected that debt as a percent of gross domestic product would fall from 36.8 percent to 22.6 percent at the end of 2018.

"In contrast, the latest CBO forecast has debt soaring to 75.3 percent of GDP in 2018.

"What caused this stunning reversal, which in dollar terms works out to a $10 trillion swing for end-year 2018 debt, from $5.1 trillion to $15.8 trillion?

"Almost all of this increase is due to the severe recession that followed the financial crisis of late 2008.

"This lowered output and employment, and therefore reduced tax revenue."

The financial crisis of 2008 should have changed some conservative minds about how big business, big government and the richest 1% of Americans collaborate to socialize cost and privatize profits.

Fiscal Conservatives Dodge $10 Trillion Debt: Simon Johnson - Bloomberg

And this is exactly why we should have cut taxes even more for the wealthy, so they could create more jobs for us poor folk.

And win the Lottery?

No Lottery?
No deal!

btw, the rich are creating plenty of jobs but they all require learning Mandarin and swimming a long, damn way.

Personally, I vote for raising their taxes and confiscating their citizenship if they take their money and desert their country.

 

[georgephillip]

I guess people are finally figuring out that Obama is a fascist.

Obama's actions place him with Mussolini as far as preferring a corporate-state alliance.

It's too early to be sure how Obama would react if 90% of Americans begin pushing him to his left in the same way FDR was in the 1930s.

Do you see any Huey Long-like politicians out there?

 

[georgephillip]

It all comes down to the fact, the cold hard fact.


America = Management and Corporations VERSUS their workers. It always has. It's nothing more than this. Right now Corporations are winning. Will this lead to more jobs? Not a chance. As a small business owner its very easy to see.

The 21st Century class war is a little different from the classic struggle of owners/management v. workers.

Today the unearned incomes generated by the FIRE sector (finance, insurance and real estate) are being exempted from taxation with small businesses and workers expected to make up the missing revenues or take cuts in government services.

Michael Hudson from July 2008:

"The great economic fight of our epoch is being waged by the FIRE sector – Finance, Insurance and Real Estate – against the industrial economy and consumers.

"Its objective is to maximize property prices and the volume of debt relative to what labor and industry are able to earn."

Since the richest 1% of Americans derive most of their wealth from the stock market and fund the campaigns of most Republicans AND Democrats, it's not hard to guess which side of this fight DC favors.

Michael Hudson: The Next Big Bail Out

 

[AquaAthena]

Which political party was in the majority when the collapse happened? The first thing on the democrat agenda (aside from seroid use in baseball) when they gained the majority in both houses was the ruination of the financial system starting with the collapse of Fannie Mae which was supervised by congress. What do you think Barney Frank meant when he said he had "ideological blinders" on when Fannie went down? He wanted it to happen because of his ideological differences with republicans and capitalism. Democrats let it happen to pave the way for the "hope and change" of socialism.

Yes, and Bush was relying on some people who were not in the country's economical best interests.

I believe there has been more alarm raised about potential unsafty and unsoundness [of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] than, in fact, exists."- Barney Frank... 9/25/2003

The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do NOT see. Barney Frank---9/11/ 2003

I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing."--Barney Frank---9/25/2005

"These two entities--Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac---are not facing any kind of financial crisis." Barney Frank -- 9/11/2003

"Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, they are not in danger of going under----I do think their prospects of going forward are very solid." -- Barney Frank-- 7/14/2008

 

[georgephillip]

all of our problems stem from 2008 and wall street.
Yet people still defend them as if they are not the bad guys in all of this. They want to lower their taxes as if they will help them out. they won't in reality.

there is a reason we call it greed. These people like greed and power and dont want to share it with the common folk. Sadly gop/teaparty members dont even see that and defend them till the end, not knowing those same people would walk over their fallen bodies if given the chance.

Pawns

"The priests in these corporate temples, in the name of profit, kill with even more ruthlessness, finesse and cunning than Raskolnikov.

"Corporations let 50,000 people die last year because they could not pay them for proper medical care.

"They have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis, Palestinians and Pakistanis, and gleefully watched as the stock price of weapons contractors quadrupled.

"They have turned cancer into an epidemic in the coal fields of West Virginia where families breathe polluted air, drink poisoned water and watch the Appalachian Mountains blasted into a desolate wasteland while coal companies can make billions.

"And after looting the U.S. treasury these corporations demand, in the name of austerity, that we abolish food programs for children, heating assistance and medical care for our elderly, and good public education.

"They demand that we tolerate a permanent underclass that will leave one in six workers without jobs, that condemns tens of millions of Americans to poverty and tosses our mentally ill onto heating grates. Those without power, those whom these corporations deem to be ordinary, are cast aside like human refuse.

"It is what the god of the market demands."

Chris Hedges: Throw Out the Money Changers - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig

 

[auditor0007]

The financial crisis of 2008 should have changed your mind about something. From Wiki:

"The output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States—decreased at an annual rate of approximately 6% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009, versus activity in the year-ago periods.[180]

"The U.S. unemployment rate increased to 10.1% by October 2009, the highest rate since 1983 and roughly twice the pre-crisis rate.

"The average hours per work week declined to 33, the lowest level since the government began collecting the data in 1964.[181][182]

"The very rich lost relatively less in the crisis than the remainder of the population, widening the divide between the economic classes. Thus the top 1% who had a share of 34.6% of the nation's wealth in 2007 increased their share to 37.1% by 2009."

The richest 1% of Americans then demanded taxpayer bailouts to ensure their "fair share" of the nation's wealth weren't compromised, and Republicans and Democrats in congress were happy to comply.

What consequences did the crisis and bailout have on our level of national debt?

"In early 2008, the CBO projected that debt as a percent of gross domestic product would fall from 36.8 percent to 22.6 percent at the end of 2018.

"In contrast, the latest CBO forecast has debt soaring to 75.3 percent of GDP in 2018.

"What caused this stunning reversal, which in dollar terms works out to a $10 trillion swing for end-year 2018 debt, from $5.1 trillion to $15.8 trillion?

"Almost all of this increase is due to the severe recession that followed the financial crisis of late 2008.

"This lowered output and employment, and therefore reduced tax revenue."

The financial crisis of 2008 should have changed some conservative minds about how big business, big government and the richest 1% of Americans collaborate to socialize cost and privatize profits.

Fiscal Conservatives Dodge $10 Trillion Debt: Simon Johnson - Bloomberg

And this is exactly why we should have cut taxes even more for the wealthy, so they could create more jobs for us poor folk.

And win the Lottery?

No Lottery?
No deal!

btw, the rich are creating plenty of jobs but they all require learning Mandarin and swimming a long, damn way.

Personally, I vote for raising their taxes and confiscating their citizenship if they take their money and desert their country.

While I agree with you on what you have stated and shown, I can't quite agree on you with this point. However, it should be listened to, because the truth is as the disparity between rich and poor continues to grow and the middle class is wiped out, this could well be the end result. When the masses become poor, they rebel. We have seen this over and over throughout history. Having a super elite class within society eventually leads to revolution.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

The financial crisis of 2008 should have changed your mind about something. From Wiki:

"The output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States—decreased at an annual rate of approximately 6% in the fourth quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009, versus activity in the year-ago periods.[180]

"The U.S. unemployment rate increased to 10.1% by October 2009, the highest rate since 1983 and roughly twice the pre-crisis rate.

"The average hours per work week declined to 33, the lowest level since the government began collecting the data in 1964.[181][182]

"The very rich lost relatively less in the crisis than the remainder of the population, widening the divide between the economic classes. Thus the top 1% who had a share of 34.6% of the nation's wealth in 2007 increased their share to 37.1% by 2009."

The richest 1% of Americans then demanded taxpayer bailouts to ensure their "fair share" of the nation's wealth weren't compromised, and Republicans and Democrats in congress were happy to comply.

What consequences did the crisis and bailout have on our level of national debt?

"In early 2008, the CBO projected that debt as a percent of gross domestic product would fall from 36.8 percent to 22.6 percent at the end of 2018.

"In contrast, the latest CBO forecast has debt soaring to 75.3 percent of GDP in 2018.

"What caused this stunning reversal, which in dollar terms works out to a $10 trillion swing for end-year 2018 debt, from $5.1 trillion to $15.8 trillion?

"Almost all of this increase is due to the severe recession that followed the financial crisis of late 2008.

"This lowered output and employment, and therefore reduced tax revenue."

The financial crisis of 2008 should have changed some conservative minds about how big business, big government and the richest 1% of Americans collaborate to socialize cost and privatize profits.

Fiscal Conservatives Dodge $10 Trillion Debt: Simon Johnson - Bloomberg

And this is exactly why we should have cut taxes even more for the wealthy, so they could create more jobs for us poor folk.

Yeah.....they've done such a great job (at that), over the last ten years.