Obama Wins, the System is Broken
This interview with Rob Johnson of the the Roosevelt Institute, Marc Steiner of WEAA, and Lester Spence of We are Many gives a sobering view of election results.
Read more...Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class
Bill Black: Wall Street Urges Obama to Commit the Great Betrayal
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Cross posted from Benzaga
Wall Street’s leading “false flag” group, the Third Way, has responded to the warnings that Robert Kuttner, AFL-CIO President Trumka, and I have made that if President Obama is re-elected our immediate task will be to prevent the Great Betrayal – the adoption of self-destructive austerity programs and the opening wedge of the effort to unravel the safety net (including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid).
Read more...Pete Peterson and the Deficit Hawks Teach Lawmakers Deep Fiscal Irresponsibility
Michael Hoexter is a policy analyst and marketing consultant on green issues, climate change, clean and renewable energy, and energy efficiency. Originally published at New Economic Perspectives
We have come to accept in the Orwellian world of mass communication and media spin that pressure groups and political organizations name themselves in ways that contradict their actual mission. We have become cynical about truth and about good intentions, trusting only after long observation certain political actors and then only reservedly. There is now such an alphabet soup of organizations in Washington, a veritable smorgasbord of lobbyists that only political junkies and Washington insiders will know every acronym and player.
However there is a constellation of particularly influential groupings in Washington that should be known by every American for what they are and what they are not. These groups form a powerful hub at the center of the fiscal austerity campaign.
Read more...Fed Budgetary Experts Demolish CBO Health Cost Model, the Linchpin of Budget Hysteria
A remarkably important and persuasive paper that calls into question the need for “reforming” Medicare has not gotten the attention it warrants. “An Examination of Health-Spending Growth In The United States: Past Trends And Future Prospects” (hat tip nathan) by Glenn Follette and Louise Sheiner looks at the model used by the Congressional Budgetary Office to estimate long term health care cost increases. Bear in mind that this model is THE driver of virtually all forecasts of future budget deficits.
This paper, although written in typically anodyne economese, is devastating in the range and nature of its criticisms.
Read more...Desperate Effort by Tyler Cowen and Megan McArdle to Silence Discussion about Income Inequality
A tangible sign that the issue of income inequality is taking hold in the American psyche: Tyler Cowen has made a patently ridiculous effort to try to change the topic, and Megan McArdle is dutifully amplifying it.
Read more...Bill Black: The Great Betrayal – and the Cynicism of Calling it a Grand Bargain
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City
Obama intends to begin to unravel the safety net (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) to convince the Republicans to enter into this Faustian bargain. Just as only a conservative Republican could visit “Red” China, only a Democrat can begin the destruction of the safety net. The difference, of course, is that normalizing relations with China was a good thing while unraveling the safety net is a terrible thing.
Read more...Some Hidden Casualties of Hurricane Sandy
It’s peculiar to have been in the midst of the superstorm and have suffered pretty much nada in the way of immediate effects.
Read more...Econ4 Discusses Jobs and Job Creation
Econ4 has released the first video in its series, The Bottom Line. This offering debunks the propaganda that tax cuts for the wealthy create jobs.
Read more...Mr. Market Says the Military Industrial Complex Will Be Largely Spared in Upcoming Grand Bargain
It’s been remarkable to witness the public complacency in the face of the certain-in-trajectory, less-clear-in-details “Grand Bargain” that Obama and Romney are determined to foist on the hapless middle class and poor in this country. One part of the deficit equation that has gotten comparatively little attention: the fact that the military appears likely to be spared the budget axe.
Read more...Michael M. Thomas: Naked Capitalism – An Insider’s Guide
By Michael M. Thomas, who figured out Wall Street was not all it was cracked up to be before most of you were born
More than any other forum, Naked Capitalism consistently suggests and proposes new ways to bridge what I consider the abyss that will one day sink us all if Koch brothers-style politics and capitalism have their way: the chasm that lies between what we need to know and what we have been (and will be) allowed to know.
Read more...Elderly Americans Burdened by Student Debt Too
The Wall Street Journal has an important story on a phenomenon that’s likely to get more attention by virtue of growth: that of middle aged and elderly Americans saddled by significant amounts of student debt.
Read more...Rentier CEOs Advocate Austerity for America
Felix Salmon did an admirable takedown of a “CEOs [sic] Deficit Manifesto” in the Wall Street Journal. It’s yet another entry in the long-running, dishonest campaign funded by billionaire Pete Peterson to pretend that all right thinking people (and of course CEOs believe they have the right to think for everybody else) should be all in favor of trashing the middle class and the economy through misguided deficit cutting.
Read more...Money & Public Purpose: Government is Not a Household
This second entry in the Money & Public Purpose series features Stephanie Kelton and Randy Wray debunking widely held misperceptions on the relationship of governments to the economy (for instance, that running surpluses is a good idea).
Read more...Bill Moyers: Plutocracy Rising
Bill Moyer’s latest show, with Matt Taibbi and and Chrystia Freeland, focuses on how the super rich have established a yawning chasm between themselves and ordinary Americans, both in financial and physical terms. One major focus is view the rich are where they are by virtue of their talents and efforts, not (say) by regulatory and tax arbitrage, and how they’ve convinced themselves and a large swathe of society of this myth.
Read more...Why is a Price-Fixing/Collusion Lawsuit Against the Biggest Names in Private Equity Getting Only Cursory Notice?
It’s troubling that some stinging charges against the very biggest names in private equity are getting only passing attention in the financial media.
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