Economy
Related: About this forumWeekend Economists Go Through the Looking Glass May 17-19, 2013
Because the Tea Party brings instant connections to the Mad Hatter and the world of Lewis Carroll, we are going through the Looking Glass in hopes of finding our way back to the world we were born into:
One thing was certain, that the WHITE kitten had had nothing to do with
it:--it was the black kitten's fault entirely. For the white kitten had
been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of
an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it
COULDN'T have had any hand in the mischief.
The way Dinah washed her children's faces was this: first she held the
poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw she
rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose: and
just now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was
lying quite still and trying to purr--no doubt feeling that it was all
meant for its good.
Don't you instantly feel like that poor little kitten, being scrubbed backwards and against nature by your own mother? If not, you are in the 1%, and don't belong on this site....
all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there's the room you can
see through the glass--that's just the same as our drawing room, only
the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a
chair--all but the bit behind the fireplace. Oh! I do so wish I could
see THAT bit! I want so much to know whether they've a fire in the
winter: you never CAN tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then
smoke comes up in that room too--but that may be only pretence, just to
make it look as if they had a fire. Well then, the books are something
like our books, only the words go the wrong way; I know that, because
I've held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in
the other room.
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=3273223&pageno=3
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Demeter
(85,373 posts)The sole former branch of Central Arizona Bank will reopen tomorrow as a branch of Western State Bank during its normal business hours...As of March 31, 2013, Central Arizona Bank had approximately $31.6 million in total assets and $30.8 million in total deposits. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, Western State Bank agreed to purchase essentially all of the failed bank’s assets. ..The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $8.6 million. Compared to other alternatives, Western State Bank's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Central Arizona Bank is the 13th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the second in Arizona. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Gold Canyon Bank, Gold Canyon, on April 5, 2013.
WHAT IS GOING ON IN AZ, TANSY?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ( 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer.
His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all examples of the genre of literary nonsense.
He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy, and there are societies in many parts of the world (including the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand) dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life.
Dodgson's family was predominantly northern English, with Irish connections. Conservative and High Church Anglican, most of Dodgson's ancestors were army officers or Church of England clergy. His great-grandfather, also named Charles Dodgson, had risen through the ranks of the church to become the Bishop of Elphin. His grandfather, another Charles, had been an army captain, killed in action in Ireland in 1803 when his two sons were hardly more than babies. His mother's name was Frances Jane Lutwidge.
The elder of these sons – yet another Charles Dodgson – was Carroll's father. He reverted to the other family tradition and took holy orders. He went to Westminster School, and then to Christ Church, Oxford. He was mathematically gifted and won a double first degree, which could have been the prelude to a brilliant academic career. Instead he married his first cousin in 1827 and became a country parson.
Dodgson was born in the little parsonage of Daresbury in Cheshire near the towns of Warrington and Runcorn, the eldest boy but already the third child of the four-and-a-half-year-old marriage. Eight more children were to follow. When Charles was 11, his father was given the living of Croft-on-Tees in North Yorkshire, and the whole family moved to the spacious rectory. This remained their home for the next twenty-five years.
Young Charles' father was an active and highly conservative cleric of the Church of England who later became the Archdeacon of Richmond and involved himself, sometimes influentially, in the intense religious disputes that were dividing the church. He was High Church, inclining to Anglo-Catholicism, an admirer of John Henry Newman and the Tractarian movement, and did his best to instill such views in his children. Young Charles was to develop an ambiguous relationship with his father's values and with the Church of England as a whole.
During his early youth, Dodgson was educated at home. His "reading lists" preserved in the family archives testify to a precocious intellect: at the age of seven the child was reading The Pilgrim's Progress. He also suffered from a stammer – a condition shared by most of his siblings – that often influenced his social life throughout his years. At age twelve he was sent to Richmond Grammar School (now part of Richmond School) at nearby Richmond.
In 1846, young Dodgson moved on to Rugby School, where he was evidently less happy, for as he wrote some years after leaving the place:
I cannot say ... that any earthly considerations would induce me to go through my three years again ... I can honestly say that if I could have been ... secure from annoyance at night, the hardships of the daily life would have been comparative trifles to bear.
Scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. "I have not had a more promising boy at his age since I came to Rugby", observed R.B. Mayor, then Mathematics master.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)If corporations are people, as the Supreme Court pretends, they certainly are loudmouths, constantly telling us how great they are and spreading their names everywhere...Amazingly, though, these corporate creatures have suddenly turned demure, insisting that they don't want to draw any attention to themselves. That's because, in this case, corporations are not selling, they're buying — specifically, trying to buy public office for their pet political candidates by funneling millions of corporate dollars through such front groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In turn, the fronts use the money to air nasty attack ads that smear the opponents of the pro-corporate candidates.
Why do corporations need a middleman? Because the ads are so partisan and vicious that they would appall and anger millions of customers, employees and shareholders of the corporation. So, rather than besmirch their own names, the corporate powers have meekly retreated behind the skirt of Republican political outfits like the Chamber. But don't front groups have to report (at least to election authorities) who's really behind their ads, so voters can make informed decisions? No. Thanks to the Supreme Court's infamous Citizen United edict in 2010, such groups can now pour unlimited sums of corporate cash into elections without ever disclosing the names of their funders. This "dark money" channel has essentially established secret political campaigning in America. That's why shareholders and other democracy advocates are asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to rule that the corporate giants it regulates must reveal to shareholders all political donations their executives make with corporate funds. After all, the millions of dollars the executives are using to play politics don't belong to them — it is shareholder money. And by no means do shareholders march in lockstep on which political candidates to support or oppose.
Hide and seek can be a fun game for kids, but it's infuriating when CEOs play it in our elections. Last year, corporate interests sought to elect their candidates by hiding much of their politicking not only from company owners but also from voters. In all, $352 million in "dark money" poured into our 2012 elections, the bulk of it from corporations that covertly pumped it into secretive trade associations and such scams as "social welfare charities," run by the likes of Karl Rove and the Koch brothers. Since underhanded, anonymous electioneering puts a fatal curse on democracy, the SEC should at least compel corporate managers to tell their owners — i.e., the shareholders — how and on whom their money is being gambled in political races. It's a simple reform, but — oh, lordy — what a fury it has caused among the political players.
A rare joint letter from the U.S. Chamber, Business Roundtable and National Association of Manufacturers has been sent to the CEOs of the 200 largest corporations in our country, rallying them to the barricades in a frenetic lobbying effort to stop this outbreak of honest, democratic disclosure. House Republicans are even going to the extreme of trying to make it illegal for the SEC to let shareholders (and the voting public) know which campaigns are being backed by cash from which corporations. Hyperventilating, these powerful scaredy cats claim to be intimidated by the very suggestion that they tell the people what they're doing in public elections. Their panic over having a little sunlight shine into their deepest bunker reveals just how destructive they intend dark money to be for our democracy. Ironically, the Supreme Court's chief assumption in allowing unlimited corporate cash into the democratic process was that shareholders would be informed and involved, and provide public accountability for their companies' political spending. Even Justice Antonin Scalia, long a cheerleader for corporate politicking, is no fan of hiding it from the electorate: "Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage," he has written, adding that a campaign "hidden from public scrutiny" is anathema to self-governance. He also deems it cowardly: "This does not resemble the Home of the Brave," he pointedly noted.
WINK, WINK, NUDGE NUDGE
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Summary: Powerful interest groups provide a mirror in which we can see our true selves. Their well-funded expert opinion manipulators know our real hopes and fears, and manipulate them to mold public opinion. This is one of a long series of posts showing how both Left and Right have drawn the same conclusion, both sides basing their propaganda on our dominant emotion: fear. So long as we passively accept being lied to and manipulated, they will continue to do so...
A NUANCED DISSECTION OF GLOBAL WARMING IN THE NEWS
Demeter
(85,373 posts)'How would you like to live in Looking-glass House, Kitty? I wonder if
they'd give you milk in there? Perhaps Looking-glass milk isn't good
to drink--But oh, Kitty! now we come to the passage. You can just see a
little PEEP of the passage in Looking-glass House, if you leave the door
of our drawing-room wide open: and it's very like our passage as far
as you can see, only you know it may be quite different on beyond.
Oh, Kitty! how nice it would be if we could only get through into
Looking-glass House! I'm sure it's got, oh! such beautiful things in it!
Let's pretend there's a way of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty.
Let's pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get
through. Why, it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It'll be
easy enough to get through--' She was up on the chimney-piece while she
said this, though she hardly knew how she had got there. And certainly
the glass WAS beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist.
In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly
down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was
to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite
pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as
the one she had left behind. 'So I shall be as warm here as I was in the
old room,' thought Alice: 'warmer, in fact, because there'll be no one
here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun it'll be, when they
see me through the glass in here, and can't get at me!'
Then she began looking about, and noticed that what could be seen from
the old room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest
was as different as possible. For instance, the pictures on the
wall next the fire seemed to be all alive, and the very clock on
the chimney-piece (you know you can only see the back of it in the
Looking-glass) had got the face of a little old man, and grinned at her.
'They don't keep this room so tidy as the other,' Alice thought to
herself, as she noticed several of the chessmen down in the hearth among
the cinders: but in another moment, with a little 'Oh!' of surprise, she
was down on her hands and knees watching them. The chessmen were walking
about, two and two!
'Here are the Red King and the Red Queen,' Alice said (in a whisper, for
fear of frightening them), 'and there are the White King and the White
Queen sitting on the edge of the shovel--and here are two castles
walking arm in arm--I don't think they can hear me,' she went on, as she
put her head closer down, 'and I'm nearly sure they can't see me. I feel
somehow as if I were invisible--'
WE KNOW THAT FEELING, DON'T WE?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)He left Rugby at the end of 1849 and matriculated at Oxford in May 1850 as a member of his father's old college, Christ Church. After waiting for rooms in college to become available, he went into residence in January 1851. He had been at Oxford only two days when he received a summons home. His mother had died of "inflammation of the brain" – perhaps meningitis or a stroke – at the age of forty-seven.
His early academic career veered between high promise and irresistible distraction. He did not always work hard, but was exceptionally gifted and achievement came easily to him. In 1852 he obtained first-class honours in Mathematics Moderations, and was shortly thereafter nominated to a Studentship by his father's old friend, Canon Edward Pusey. In 1854 he obtained first-class honours in the Final Honours School of Mathematics, graduating Bachelor of Arts. He remained at Christ Church studying and teaching, but the next year he failed an important scholarship through his self-confessed inability to apply himself to study. Even so, his talent as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship in 1855, which he continued to hold for the next twenty-six years. Despite early unhappiness, Dodgson was to remain at Christ Church, in various capacities, until his death.
The young adult Charles Dodgson was about six feet tall, slender, and had curling brown hair and blue or grey eyes (depending on the account). He was described in later life as somewhat asymmetrical, and as carrying himself rather stiffly and awkwardly, though this may be on account of a knee injury sustained in middle age. As a very young child, he suffered a fever that left him deaf in one ear. At the age of seventeen, he suffered a severe attack of whooping cough, which was probably responsible for his chronically weak chest in later life. Another defect he carried into adulthood was what he referred to as his "hesitation", a stammer he acquired in early childhood and which plagued him throughout his life.
The stammer has always been a potent part of the conceptions of Dodgson; it is part of the belief that he stammered only in adult company and was free and fluent with children, but there is no evidence to support this idea. Many children of his acquaintance remembered the stammer while many adults failed to notice it. Dodgson himself seems to have been far more acutely aware of it than most people he met; it is said he caricatured himself as the Dodo in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, referring to his difficulty in pronouncing his last name, but this is one of the many "facts" often-repeated, for which no first-hand evidence remains. He did indeed refer to himself as the dodo, but that this reference was to his stammer is simply speculation.
Although Dodgson's stammer troubled him, it was never so debilitating that it prevented him from applying his other personal qualities to do well in society. At a time when people commonly devised their own amusements and when singing and recitation were required social skills, the young Dodgson was well equipped to be an engaging entertainer. He reportedly could sing tolerably well and was not afraid to do so before an audience. He was adept at mimicry and storytelling, and was reputedly quite good at charades.
In the interim between his early published writing and the success of the Alice books, Dodgson began to move in the pre-Raphaelite social circle. He first met John Ruskin in 1857 and became friendly with him. He developed a close relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his family, and also knew William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Arthur Hughes, among other artists. He also knew the fairy-tale author George MacDonald well – it was the enthusiastic reception of Alice by the young MacDonald children that convinced him to submit the work for publication.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Our family-unfriendly society exacts psychic and financial tolls that many women won't accept...Samantha could not be more sure that she does not want to have kids. “Because it just looks awful,” is how she put it. I asked her to elaborate: “Because it looks exhausting. It looks like so much work. It just makes me tired. It makes me tired just looking at it.”
Samantha, a 34-year-old professional I interviewed for a research project about choices around childrearing, was a No Way. She was absolutely sure she didn’t want kids. Her certainty came from a combination of two things: a distaste for the daily life of parenting – “the little baby voices, and the screaming, and the tantrums, and the constant questioning. Not for me” – and a different kind of life that she was excited to pursue. She wanted to continue to excel in her career, travel, have delicious meals, and bask in quiet afternoons. I‘ve interviewed plenty of No Ways and many are quick to articulate the time, energy and money it takes to raise children. They see parenting as a choice between further investment in their own “human capital” (their knowledge, skills and talents) and investing in someone else’s. The answer for them is obvious. No Ways are contributing to the growing trend of childlessness. Many women today have not or will not become mothers by choice. One out of five American women over 40 is currently childless. Generation X is even more likely to decide against parenting; as many as one-in-three may skip parenting. While some of these women will face infertility, at least half will have very purposely chosen a child-free life, often alongside supportive partners. And, while traditionally it has been women with higher levels of education who have chosen childlessness, women with less education are looking more and more like their more educated sisters on this variable.
Happy (or Unhappy) Either Way
Interestingly, however, among those choosing childlessness, No Ways are the minority. Instead, I suspect that the majority of women who grow to old age without having children will do so not out of resolve, but out of a deep sense of ambivalence. Most women who are considering childlessness are Either Ways. Callie, like Samantha, is a 34-year-old professional, but she’s an Either Way. This is how she describes her life:
Knowing that she would be happy either way, however, didn’t alleviate what Callie experienced as a rather crushing pressure to decide. But she just couldn’t; so she decided not to decide. She is leaving it up to fate. She and her husband are going to let nature take its course (that is, use no birth control) for exactly three years. If she gets pregnant and has a baby, they’ll be parents; if she doesn’t, they’ll settle in to enjoy the pleasures of a child-free life. Sometimes Either Ways, like Callie, feel ambivalent because their lives carry so much potential… with or without kids. Others are unsure not because they see a wide array of options for themselves, but because they don’t. They add up the costs of a child and subtract the lost wages that balancing work and a family might entail and came up with a “this may not be possible.” In a society with a weak safety net, zero paid parental leave, and a minimum wage that fails to bring a family of two above the poverty line, more and more people are considering skipping parenthood because it’s just not financially feasible. A shrinking middle-class may mean shrinking families. If there is a large group of women who could go either way, then their childbearing choices will likely be strongly affected by the opportunities and constraints of modern life. First, there’s the pull of childlessness, its draw. For middle- and upper-class women especially, childlessness may be attractive because it offers them the freedom to do other interesting things. This is a still rather new opportunity for women. Only since the women’s movement of the ‘70s have women had the opportunity to excel in challenging, respected and high-paying careers. For women who have access to these occupations, childlessness is a tempting choice precisely because having children is no longer the only way for women to feel like they’re doing something valuable with their lives. And then there’s the push, the realization that having children may incur financial and psychic costs that a person can’t or doesn’t want to pay. The conditions for parenting today are, in many ways, incredibly averse....A third of single moms are in poverty; motherhood is the single strongest predictor of bankruptcy in middle-age and poverty in old-age. By the time these women are adults, some think that skipping the kids and focusing on the self, the job or career, and their partner, if they have one, sounds like a pretty great life.... In the meantime, the government is doing little to entice women into parenthood; we treat childrearing like a hobby, not the reproduction of the nation (which is what it actually is).
MORE
Lisa Wade is an associate professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles. She holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an M.A. in human sexuality from New York University.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)As we move toward the fifth anniversary of the great financial crisis of 2008, people should be outraged that cutting Social Security is now on the national agenda, while taxing Wall Street is not. After all, if we take at face value the claims made back in 2008 by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, Wall Street excesses brought the economy to the brink of collapse. But now the Wall Street behemoths are bigger than ever and President Obama is looking to cut the Social Security benefits of retirees. That will teach the Wall Street boys to be more responsible in the future.
Most people are now familiar with President’s Obama’s proposal to cut Social Security by reducing the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). While the final formula is somewhat convoluted, the net effect is to reduce benefits by an average of roughly 3.0 percent. Since Social Security benefits account for more than 70 percent of the income of a typical retiree, this cut is more than a 2.0 percent reduction in income. By comparison, a wealthy couple earning $500,000 a year would see a hit to their after-tax income of just 0.6 percent from the tax increase that President Obama put in place last year.
While President Obama is willing to make seniors pay a price for the economic crisis, his administration is unwilling to impose any burdens on Wall Street. Specifically, it has consistently opposed a Wall Street speculation tax: effectively a sales tax on trades of stock and derivatives. The Obama administration has even used its power to try to block efforts by European countries to impose their own taxes on financial speculation. If the idea of taxing stock trades sounds strange, it shouldn’t. The United States used to impose a tax of 0.04 percent until Wall Street lobbied to eliminate it in the mid-1960s. Many countries, including the United Kingdom, Switzerland, China, and India already impose taxes on stock trades. The tax in the UK is 0.5 percent on stock trades (0.25 percent for both the buyer and the seller). It dates back more than three centuries. The country raises more than 0.2 percent of GDP ($32 billion in the United States) from the tax each year. The tax has not prevented the London stock exchange from being one of the largest in the world.
There are currently two bills in Congress for a similar tax in the United States. A bill by Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison would impose the same tax as the UK on stock trades and would apply a scaled rate to options, futures, credit default swaps and other derivative instruments. It could raise more than $150 billion annually or more than $2 trillion over the ten year budget window. A second bill has been put forward by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and Oregon Representative Peter DeFazio. This bill would apply a 0.03 percent tax to trades of stock and a wide range of other financial assets. According to the Joint Tax Committee, the bill would raise close to $40 billion a year or over $400 billion over a ten-year budget window once it is implemented. Unfortunately the administration has consistently opposed both bills. It claims that it is concerned about the incidence of these taxes – that ordinary investors would see large burdens from the tax. It also claims to be worried that the taxes will disrupt financial markets by making trading more costly. Neither of these stories passes the laugh test. Ordinary investors don’t trade much, and therefore are not going to feel much impact from the tax. If someone with $100,000 in a 401(k) (this is much larger than the typical 401(k)) turns it over at the rate of 50 percent annually, they would pay $15.00 each year as a result of the Harkin-DeFazio tax. Furthermore research shows that investors reduce their trading as costs increase. This means that if the tax increases trading costs by 20 percent, then investors will reduce their trading by roughly the same amount (in this example, turnover would fall to 40 percent annually). That means that the net cost of turnover in a 401(k) will barely change for a typical investor as a result of the tax. Wall Street would just see much less business....So the Obama administration wants us to believe that it is willing to cut the Social Security benefits of retiree living on $15,000 a year in Social Security by $450 but it opposes a Wall Street speculation tax because it is concerned that investors with $100,000 in a 401(k) may pay a few dollars a year in additional trading costs. Only a reporter with the Washington Post would believe a story like that...The basic story is very simple. Wall Street bankers have a lot more political power than old and disabled people who depend on Social Security. That is why President Obama is working to protect the former and cut benefits for the latter.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)From a young age, Dodgson wrote poetry and short stories, both contributing heavily to the family magazine Mischmasch and later sending them to various magazines, enjoying moderate success. Between 1854 and 1856, his work appeared in the national publications, The Comic Times and The Train, as well as smaller magazines like the Whitby Gazette and the Oxford Critic. Most of this output was humorous, sometimes satirical, but his standards and ambitions were exacting. "I do not think I have yet written anything worthy of real publication (in which I do not include the Whitby Gazette or the Oxonian Advertiser), but I do not despair of doing so some day," he wrote in July 1855. Sometime after 1850, he did write puppet plays for his siblings' entertainment, of which one has survived, La Guida di Bragia.
In 1856 he published his first piece of work under the name that would make him famous. A romantic poem called "Solitude" appeared in The Train under the authorship of "Lewis Carroll." This pseudonym was a play on his real name; Lewis was the anglicised form of Ludovicus, which was the Latin for Lutwidge, and Carroll an Irish surname similar to the Latin name Carolus, from which the name Charles comes.
Warpy
(111,141 posts)and we raced through Quine's text on it so that we could devote the last month to Lewis Carroll/Dodgson, whose writings on it and logic puzzles are extensive.
I loved being stumped occasionally by his problems.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The Occupy Wall Street protests have captured America's political imagination. Polls show that two-thirds of the nation now believe that America's enormous wealth ought to be "distributed more evenly." However, almost as many Americans--well over half--feel the protests will ultimately have "little impact" on inequality in America. What explains this disconnect? Most Americans have resigned themselves to believing that the rich simply always get their way.
Except they don't.
A century ago, the United States hosted a super-rich even more domineering than ours today. Yet fifty years later, that super-rich had almost entirely disappeared. Their majestic mansions and estates had become museums and college campuses, and America had become a vibrant, mass middle class nation, the first and finest the world had ever seen.
Americans today ought to be taking no small inspiration from this stunning change. After all, if our forbears successfully beat back grand fortune, why can't we? But this transformation is inspiring virtually no one. Why? Because the story behind it has remained almost totally unknown, until now.
This lively popular history will speak directly to the political hopelessness so many Americans feel. By tracing how average Americans took down plutocracy over the first half of the 20th Century--and how plutocracy came back-- The Rich Don't Always Win will outfit Occupy Wall Street America with a deeper understanding of what we need to do to get the United States back on track to the American dream.
https://secure.nationofchange.org/rich-dont-always-win
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The weekly news is like a recurring bad dream that is becoming an even worse nightmare. While the investor class cheers a rising stock market, the rest of us sink....The headline that jumped out at us this week came from Bloomberg News, CEO Pay 1,795-to-1 Multiple of Wages Skirts U.S. Law. Is that possible? Can they have gotten that outrageous? Bloomberg reports that it’s true. One example of where that big income is coming from is the health care profiteers, those that treat our health like it is a commodity from which they can profit rather than a human right. This week, Big Pharma executives get the headline, Big Pharma CEOs Rake in $1.57 Billion in Pay. Since the passage of Medicare Part D, with the provision forbidding Medicare administrators from negotiating bulk prices, Pharma has ripped off the elderly and the government producing $711 billion in profits over the last decade. Another rip-off of Medicare is the private insurance portion known as Medicare Advantage. It added an excess $34.1 Billion to the cost of Medicare in 2012 alone. Between insurance companies and pharmaceuticals, it is no wonder Medicare is struggling in this system. Medicare keeps its overhead at a low 2% to 3%, but the profiteers rip the system off....
They say that a fish rots from the head. When it comes to low-wage workers, while President Obama is saying people should have a living wage, it turns out the federal government employs more poverty-level workers than McDonald’s and WalMart combined. Obama could end it with a stroke of a pen, but will he? As has been true for a long time, women workers make up half of the minimum wage earners in the United States, meaning single parent mothers, really struggle – as do their children. All of the challenges of unemployment, underemployment and stagnant wages are leading to a big increase in suicides, now more death from suicides than auto accidents. Government policies are making the employment situation and race to the bottom for wages worse. Mistaken austerity programs have cost the U.S. economy 2.2 million jobs according to the Brookings Institution. This loss of jobs due to austerity is occurring despite rapidly falling deficits in the federal budget. In other words, Congress and the administration could be investing in the economy, rather than shrinking it. And, the courts are siding with employers, overruling the NLRB and saying the bosses don’t have to notify workers of their rights.
While workers struggle, the big banks keep racking in government subsidies, $102 billion in subsidies since 2009, but that’s not enough. In addition to shaking down taxpayers, they are also shaking down customers. Banks are using robo-signing to create false credit card debt, suing customers – without giving them notice – and then getting judgments against customers for debts they really don’t owe. California is suing JPMorgan Chase over this practice, but the other big banks do it too. And, as the investor class watches cities fail, they look for opportunities to profit, like vultures circling cities for meat to pick off the bones of urban decay...
All of this shows that in order to create an economy that works for us, people must work together. In the battle against austerity, we are seeing too much division, people fighting for their own project to be funded. We can’t let the actions of the government divide us. We must hang together or we will surely hang separately. The root causes of the problems we face are all shared – the power of concentrated wealth exercised through corporate interests. That is our political enemy. We must stand in solidarity against it...
This article is based on a weekly newsletter for ItsOurEconomy.us. To sign up for the free newsletter: http://webskillet.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=17a49926b1625f313cb5f63dd&id=88b4c98917
Kevin Zeese JD and Margaret Flowers MD co-direct It’s Our Economy and are organizers of the Occupation of Washington, DC. They co-host Clearing the FOG on We Act Radio 1480 AM Washington, DC and on Economic Democracy Media. Their twitters are @KBZeese and @MFlowers8.
Warpy
(111,141 posts)and who was blessed with a Congress that was terrified of the angry, hungry mobs at their gates and the threat they represented to all those cushy Congressional seats.
In the process, he not only managed to create an economy that gave labor its best deal ever and along with it a large and stable middle class, he also allowed his class to hold onto much of its wealth and, if they paid any attention at all, to increase it slowly as time went on.
And they never forgave him for that.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)There’s a rally going on. Why are so many people worried? It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that this is the most hated stock market rally of all time. The simple facts that the S&P is up about 17% year-to-date or that the major indexes are setting new highs should prompt immense celebration across Wall Street. But there’s no party. Negativity and doubt persist. I personally believe the front-loaded returns of 2013 are ripe for a brief pullback, but I am very bullish longer term and I’m staying fully invested. My reasons aren’t particularly unique, but here are the biggies:
There are many data points here that people can parse as they see fit. Mine is that the S&P’s trailing P/E ratios haven’t been below 13 since 1989 — and since January 1990, the S&P’s median P/E is about 20 and the average is 25. We are currently at around 18. You can say I’m cherry-picking, but I would assert I am favoring the era of computers over the era of the horse and buggy.
I mean, what out of Europe could rattle us after Cyprus? And if the debt ceiling debacle in 2011 and the fiscal cliff in 2012 didn’t sink American consumers or derail the economy, what do we have to be afraid of?
RealtyTrac reported yet another big drop in distressed property recently, with foreclosures hitting a six-year low. Meanwhile prices are up at the fastest pace since 2006, according to Case-Shiller. This housing recovery isn’t just good for jobs or homebuilder stocks and for lenders in the financial sector, but for the wealth affect it brings to consumers, too.
Rates remain low, fostering investment and spending. Like it or lump it, it doesn’t appear that will change anytime this year — even if recent reports from Fed watcher Jon Hilsenrath make it clear quantitative easing won’t last forever. And if you’re a macro bear that expects GDP or unemployment to worsen, there’s even less of a chance Ben Bernanke will take his foot off the gas.
One of the best lines I read last week was from Cullen Roche over at Pragmatic Capitalism, who wrote, “The Neanderthal who shorted Cro-magnon Man stock 30,000 years ago is sitting on hefty losses.” This reminds me of Warren Buffett’s crisis-era wisdom that “It’s never paid to bet against America.” Entrepreneurs and businesses always surprise us and the economy always has a second act — it always has. Besides, if you believe that humans are a doomed race and that America will become a Third World country… well, you have bigger problems then rebalancing your IRA based on that outlook, don’t you?
I’d also insist that the healthy skepticism will keep the rally honest, not invalidate the gains that have been made...I, too, have serious concerns about a slowdown in China or the damaging impact of a push for austerity in government when we need it least or the fact that many blue chips continue to struggle with their top line even if cost-cutting or mergers can goose corporate profits in the near-term. But the fact that investors continue to acknowledge these problems and debate them shows this is part of the current market dynamics.
A bigger question than why stocks have rallied, however, is why so many people distrust the run even though it is taking place right before their eyes. Here are a few culprits that I think are making Americans see what they want to see — namely, a market and perhaps even an economy on the brink.
For many folks, they can’t correlate a stock market rally with personal success. Consider that Edward Wolff, an NYU economist, found that the average wealth of those younger than 35 tallied just $48,400 in 2010 — roughly half the $95,500 it was in 2007. Also, consider a 2010 Fed survey of consumer finances that showed 51.77% of families in the 40 to 59.9 percentile of household income — the very middle of the spectrum — owned stock in 2010, with a median portfolio value of $12,000. Meanwhile families in the 90 to 100th percentile of income owned stock in 90.6% of cases with a median value of $267,500. Clearly the young and the middle class have reasons to be skeptical that things are better, based on this data.
From flash crashes to high-frequency trading to investment banking scandals, it’s easy to see why folks don’t trust the rally — because they don’t trust many things about Wall Street right now.
Anyone investor who has been in the game for 15 years or more is painfully aware of the havoc caused by asset bubbles, whether it be the dot-com crash or the housing bust. That colors most investors’ attitudes. Scientists who have studied loss aversion have proven repeatedly that our losses hurt significantly more than our gains, so it’s no wonder traders are more preoccupied with the risk of a crash than the boon of continued gains.
Yes, yours truly is to blame, too. The reality is that the two most powerful ways to get clicks are extreme fear and extreme greed. So expect the “fear” button to get pushed some more, even as the markets move higher. Keep these items in mind before you discount the data or let your doubts get the upper hand. It’s not easy to cut through the perception problems. I am self-aware enough to admit bulls can see what they want to see just as bears can. Market timing errors work both ways, and just like bears refused to buy low, the bulls may refuse to sell high before things roll back. But in the cold light of day, the economic data isn’t all that bad, and there remains a powerful push from the Fed to keep things moving in the right direction. You can’t fight the tape. I’ll remain fully invested (in funds — I don’t own stocks anymore to avoid the appearance of impropriety in my commentary) unless some big-time event changes the narrative. Because the current narrative of an iffy but ever-higher market is one that is just fine by me.
WOW! DELUSION?
Demeter
(85,373 posts)'I think I'll go and meet her,' said Alice, for, though the flowers were
interesting enough, she felt that it would be far grander to have a talk
with a real Queen.
'You can't possibly do that,' said the Rose: '_I_ should advise you to
walk the other way.'
This sounded nonsense to Alice, so she said nothing, but set off at
once towards the Red Queen. To her surprise, she lost sight of her in a
moment, and found herself walking in at the front-door again.
A little provoked, she drew back, and after looking everywhere for the
queen (whom she spied out at last, a long way off), she thought she
would try the plan, this time, of walking in the opposite direction.
It succeeded beautifully. She had not been walking a minute before she
found herself face to face with the Red Queen, and full in sight of the
hill she had been so long aiming at.
'Where do you come from?' said the Red Queen. 'And where are you going?
Look up, speak nicely, and don't twiddle your fingers all the time.'
Alice attended to all these directions, and explained, as well as she
could, that she had lost her way.
'I don't know what you mean by YOUR way,' said the Queen: 'all the ways
about here belong to ME--but why did you come out here at all?' she
added in a kinder tone. 'Curtsey while you're thinking what to say, it
saves time.'
Warpy
(111,141 posts)ended up in the pockets of the few, the 1% and institutuional investors. Damned few of them trickled down to Main St. and that's why the larger economy is in the toilet while the Dow soars.
The truth is that the stock market is not only inflated, it's hyper inflated, and everybody seems to realize it except a handful of people who are so disengaged from reality that all they see is their portfolio numbers increasing.
It's unsustainable, no matter how many dollars the Fed prints or how much funny money is generated by the derivatives market plus accounting tricks.
I just wonder if they'll all be hurt badly enough in the next crash that they'll be willing to go back to what worked the last time it got this bad, the 20s that roared for everybody but the 98% of America who worked for a living.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)If the backs of the 1% are broken, and all their paper assets evaporate...and they can only defend the property they occupy, one at a time, for lack of ability to hire goons....and the workers take the means of production into their own co-operative hands....
It's a crazy dream. But that's what made this country to begin with.
The Occupation sowed the seeds. The seeds are watered by the tears of the 99%.
Warpy
(111,141 posts)were the WASPs who got here first and grabbed all the best land but who got sick of paying all the niggling taxes the Crown had levied on everything they did.
Fortunately for us, they were products of the Enlightenment who thought in the long term instead of the short and gave us a remarkable governmental structure that they were wise enough to crib largely from the Iroquis.
However, the structure has proven to be resilient enough that we've been here before and have managed to come out of it when our government has become sufficiently frightened by the people to act in their behalf.
Unless we scare them enough, they'll continue to ignore us.
It doesn't have to be violent. It just has to be consistently anti incumbent.
bread_and_roses
(6,335 posts)almost unbelievable - perfect stuff.
I have an abstract love and a visceral loathing for "Alice." I can recognize the brilliance, but as a child it horrified me. And to this day, even as an adult who reads almost everything (or used to - alas, the internet takes up a lot of time, these days, and I work an awful lot, and still have a multitude of other obligations, and I get tired a lot faster than I used to - eyes and brain both - and don't read as much as I once did.....) anyway, even as a voracious adult reader I do not like the grotesque, the fantastical. It disturbs me emotionally, and not in a productive way.
But the aptness of "Looking Glass" to our current straits is just to perfect.
Kudos to Tansy for the suggestion and to Demeter for finding such perfect examples.
edit for a comma
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I didn't see the Wink, Wink, Nudge Nudge....I was reading it literally, and totally grossed out, confused, and a bit frightened. I think that the dramatizations by Disney and others helped...sometimes there was too much detail in the book obscuring the plot, such as it is.
But as for the Aptness:
These are truly Frightening Times....partly for what is happening on a daily basis, and partly for the dense fog that seems to envelope most living people. There are frightened people of all stripes who are watching, waiting for some idea of how to survive. Because: what cannot continue, will not continue.
Warpy
(111,141 posts)because I related it wholly to the kind of crazy dreams I had at the time: sometimes funny, sometimes scary, but always interesting.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)In 1856, a new Dean, Henry Liddell, arrived at Christ Church, bringing with him his young family, all of whom would figure largely in Dodgson's life and, over the following years, greatly influence his writing career. Dodgson became close friends with Liddell's wife, Lorina, and their children, particularly the three sisters: Lorina, Edith, and Alice Liddell. He was for many years widely assumed to have derived his own "Alice" from Alice Liddell. This was given some apparent substance by the fact the acrostic poem at the end of Through the Looking Glass spells out her name, and that there are many superficial references to her hidden in the text of both books. It has been pointed out that Dodgson himself repeatedly denied in later life that his "little heroine" was based on any real child, and frequently dedicated his works to girls of his acquaintance, adding their names in acrostic poems at the beginning of the text. Gertrude Chataway's name appears in this form at the beginning of The Hunting of the Snark, and no one has ever suggested this means any of the characters in the narrative are based on her.
Though information is scarce (Dodgson's diaries for the years 1858–1862 are missing), it does seem clear that his friendship with the Liddell family was an important part of his life in the late 1850s, and he grew into the habit of taking the children (first the boy, Harry, and later the three girls) on rowing trips accompanied by an adult friend to nearby Nuneham Courtenay or Godstow.
It was on one such expedition, on 4 July 1862, that Dodgson invented the outline of the story that eventually became his first and largest commercial success. Having told the story and been begged by Alice Liddell to write it down, Dodgson eventually (after much delay) presented her with a handwritten, illustrated manuscript entitled Alice's Adventures Under Ground in November 1864.
Before this, the family of friend and mentor George MacDonald read Dodgson's incomplete manuscript, and the enthusiasm of the MacDonald children encouraged Dodgson to seek publication. In 1863, he had taken the unfinished manuscript to Macmillan the publisher, who liked it immediately. After the possible alternative titles Alice Among the Fairies and Alice's Golden Hour were rejected, the work was finally published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 under the Lewis Carroll pen-name, which Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier. The illustrations this time were by Sir John Tenniel; Dodgson evidently thought that a published book would need the skills of a professional artist.
The overwhelming commercial success of the first Alice book changed Dodgson's life in many ways. The fame of his alter ego "Lewis Carroll" soon spread around the world. He was inundated with fan mail and with sometimes unwanted attention. Indeed, according to one popular story, Queen Victoria herself enjoyed Alice In Wonderland so much that she suggested he dedicate his next book to her, and was accordingly presented with his next work, a scholarly mathematical volume entitled An Elementary Treatise on Determinants.
Dodgson himself vehemently denied this story, commenting "...It is utterly false in every particular: nothing even resembling it has occurred"; and it is unlikely for other reasons: as T.B. Strong comments in a Times article, "It would have been clean contrary to all his practice to identify the author of Alice with the author of his mathematical works". He also began earning quite substantial sums of money but continued with his seemingly disliked post at Christ Church.
Late in 1871, a sequel – Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There – was published. (The title page of the first edition erroneously gives "1872" as the date of publication.) Its somewhat darker mood possibly reflects the changes in Dodgson's life. His father had recently died (1868), plunging him into a depression that lasted some years.
In 1876, Dodgson produced his last great work, The Hunting of the Snark, a fantastical "nonsense" poem, exploring the adventures of a bizarre crew of tradesmen, and one beaver, who set off to find the eponymous creature. The painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti reputedly became convinced the poem was about him.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I'll be back after a few zzzz's.
Feel free to continue the dialog, though. Nothing is too weird for this Weekend!
hamerfan
(1,404 posts)The thread subject reminds me of this song.
It's A Big Old Goofy World by John Prine:
Demeter
(85,373 posts)ABOARD THE USS GEORGE H.W. BUSH — A drone the size of a fighter jet took off from the deck of an American aircraft carrier for the first time yesterday in a test flight that could eventually open the way for the U.S. to launch unmanned aircraft from just about any place in the world.
The X-47B is the first drone designed to take off and land on a carrier, meaning the U.S. military would not need permission from other countries to use their bases...
WELL, THAT'S JUST ... LOVELY. THE JOY CONTINUES:
The X-47B is far bigger than the Predator drone, has three times the range and can be programmed to carry out missions with no human intervention, the Navy said. While the X-47B isn’t a stealth aircraft, it was designed with the low profile of one. That will help in the development of future stealth drones, which would be valuable as the military changes its focus from the Middle East to the Pacific, where a number of countries’ air defenses are a lot stronger than Afghanistan’s.
“Unmanned systems would be the likely choice in a theater or an environment that was highly defended or dangerous where we wouldn’t want to send manned aircraft,” Branch said.
The bat-winged X-47B launched from the deck at 11:18 a.m. yesterday, using a steam catapult, just as traditional Navy warplanes do. It executed several maneuvers designed to simulate tasks that the aircraft would have to perform when it landed on a ship. Then, the Navy said, it safely transited across the Chesapeake Bay to land at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland after an approximately 65-minute flight. The next critical test for the tailless plane will come this summer, when it attempts to land on a moving aircraft carrier, one of the most difficult tasks for Navy fighter pilots. The X-47B successfully landed at the air station this month using a tailhook to catch a cable and bring it to a quick stop, just as planes setting down on carriers have to do.
The X-47B has a wingspan of about 62 feet and weighs 14,000 pounds, versus nearly 49 feet and about 1,100 pounds for the Predator. While Predators are typically piloted via remote control by someone in the U.S., the X-47B relies only on computer programs to tell it where to fly unless a human operator needs to step in.
Eventually, one person may be able to control multiple unmanned aircraft at once, Branch said.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The recipient of the largest government services contract in U.S. history has told military officials it will take another 13 years and half a billion dollars to finish off its work stemming from the Iraq war. This assessment from KBR Inc., which won the $38 billion deal from the U.S. Army way back in 2001, is at the heart of a legal battle between the two sides.
KBR was responsible for aiding virtually all American military support operations as part of the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (pdf) (LOGCAP) III in Iraq. With the conflict over and the pullout of combat units, the Pentagon sought to alter the terms of payment for the remainder of the contract. U.S. Defense Department officials want to pay KBR a fixed amount for what’s left to do (which could save it hundreds of millions of dollars), while the company wants to be reimbursed for its efforts, which has been the case since the deal was arranged last decade. The Army’s move to implement the change prompted KBR to sue in court, where its lawyers argued that the remaining duties will cost $500 million and take 13 years to complete.
Emails exchanged between the two sides were presented as part of the litigation, allowing Charles Tiefer, professor of government contracting at the University of Baltimore and a member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, to review them. His take on the communications?
“The emails show things have gotten very nasty between KBR and the Defense Department,” Tiefer told the Federal Times. “The emails show that the Defense Department, in its dealings with KBR, feels like it’s wrestling with a giant python,” he added. “The kind of willingness to work with KBR that you saw for a number of years during the Iraq War has completely gone.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
WELL, THIS IS A SITUATION WHERE A PREDATOR DRONE MIGHT BE APPROPRIATE...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)As I have been writing a lot lately, the clean little secret of the global economic crisis is that standard economic theory actually performed pretty well. It's true that few anticipated the severity of the 2008 crisis — but that wasn't a deep failure of theory, it was a failure of observation. We actually had a pretty good understanding of bank runs; we just failed to notice that traditional banks were a much smaller share of the system than before, and that unregulated, unguaranteed shadow banks had become so important. Once that realization hit, as the economist Gary Gorton has documented, standard bank-run theory made perfectly good sense of the story.
And the aftermath of the crisis — persistent low interest rates despite high deficits, impotence of monetary policy, major negative impacts of fiscal austerity — may not have been what most economists or government agencies predicted, but it's what they should have predicted. As I often point out, Macroeconomics 101 has worked pretty well. The point is that radical new theories haven't been needed at all, since off-the-shelf economics tools we already had, provided plenty of guidance.
In that case, however, why are we doing so badly? And I mean really badly. In Europe, recovery is now behind where it was at the same point during the Great Depression. See the chart on European industrial production from the League of Nations starting in 1929, and Eurostat starting in 2007.
The immediate answer is bad policy — above all, fiscal austerity in the face of mass unemployment, which is exactly what everything we know about macroeconomics says we should not be doing. Some of these choices reflected the problems of the monetary union in Europe — but there has been a lot of austerity, even in Europe's core nations. And underlying it all was the absolute determination of officials to throw out everything we had learned about macroeconomic policy in depressions and go with their prejudices instead. Of course, they found prominent economists — like Alberto Alesina, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff — who told them what they wanted to hear. But there were plenty of prominent economists desperately warning that they were wrong; it was the policy makers and the Very Serious People in general who decided who they would regard as serious and worth listening to — leading to what now look like comical mistakes.
But it's no joke; it's a terrible tale of folly and disaster.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The president’s new choices for Commerce secretary and FCC chair underscore how far down the rabbit hole his populist conceits have tumbled. Yet the Obama rhetoric about standing up for working people against “special interests” is as profuse as ever. Would you care for a spot of Kool-Aid at the Mad Hatter’s tea party?
Of course the Republican economic program is worse, and President Romney’s policies would have been even more corporate-driven. That doesn't in the slightest make acceptable what Obama is doing. His latest high-level appointments -- boosting corporate power and shafting the public -- are despicable.
To nominate Penny Pritzker for secretary of Commerce is to throw in the towel for any pretense of integrity that could pass a laugh test. Pritzker is “a longtime political supporter and heavyweight fundraiser,” the Chicago Tribune reported with notable understatement last week, adding: “She is on the board of Hyatt Hotels Corp., which was founded by her family and has had rocky relations with labor unions, and she could face questions about the failure of a bank partly owned by her family. With a personal fortune estimated at $1.85 billion, Pritzker is listed by Forbes magazine among the 300 wealthiest Americans.”
A more blunt assessment came from journalist Dennis Bernstein: “Her pioneering sub-prime operations, out of Superior Bank in Chicago, specifically targeted poor and working class people of color across the country. She ended up crashing Superior for a billion-dollar cost to taxpayers, and creating a personal tragedy for the 1,400 people who lost their savings when the bank failed.” Pritzker, whose family controls Hyatt Regency Hotels, has a vile anti-union record.
Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker? What’s next? Labor Secretary Donald Trump? SEC Chairman Bernie Madoff?
BUT WAIT! IT GETS EVEN BETTER! SEE LINK FOR DETAILS.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)...In her first standalone piece of legislation, Warren wants to require that student loans are offered at the same rate that banks pay (currently 0.75 percent from the Federal Reserve).
In her Senate remarks introducing The Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act, Warren bluntly states her rationale: "If the Federal Reserve can float trillions of dollars to large financial institution, surely they can float the Department of Education the money to fund our students, keep us competitive, and grow our middle class."...
...What's astonishing is that the US government makes a profit on student loans, according to Warren: "Some may say that we can’t afford this proposal. I would remind them that the federal government currently makes 36 cents in profit on every dollar it lends to students. Add up all of those profits and you’ll find that student loans will bring in $34 billion next year."
The toll on students and their future down paying of college debt is crushing many Americans financially: "Today’s graduates collectively carry more than $1 trillion in debt – more than all the outstanding credit card debt in the whole country," Warren warned in her Senate speech. "Doubling the interest rate on new student loans will just increase the pressure on our young people."
...As Warren notes in her catchy slogan: bank on students. They are a much sounder investment in the future of the US than banks too big to fail.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)5/16/13 BBC: Bankers: Risking It All - Part II
Bankers Fixing The System story about banking industry in 2012 BBC documentary
With gripping first-hand accounts from banking insiders, regulators and politicians this film tells the story of two recent multi-billion pound trading disasters that rocked the City. It shows that some bankers are still taking reckless risks, five years after the crash that brought the world's economy to its knees. Risk is the engine of growth but reckless risk can have catastrophic consequences, especially in volatile times like the turbulent financial world of today. The film charts the thirty-year effort to manage financial risk through mathematical modelling and shows how this can encourage some traders to behave as if they have mastered risk altogether. With Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, former JP Morgan executive Bill Winters and regulator Martin Wheatley.
appx 1 hour
part 2
part 1
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)5/17/13 Wal-Mart Warns of a Slowdown by Graham Summers
If you want to get a sense of what’s happening in the world, your best bet is to ignore Government data and focus on corporate revenues. Why revenues? Because earnings can be massaged any number of ways (depreciation methods, laying off staff to cut costs, depletion of loan loss reserves for banks, etc.). But you cannot fake actual money coming in the door.
With that in mind, I want to draw your attention to the recent drop in corporate revenues at a number of corporations including Proctor and Gamble, Starbucks, AT&T, CB Richard Ellis, Safeway, American Express, IBM.
If this doesn’t serve as evidence that real economy falling to pieces, I don’t know what does. To top it off, we can now add Wal-Mart, the single largest retailer, to the list. Wal-Mart just reported that same-store sales fell 1.4%. This is the first time this has happened in six quarters.
So much for the “recovery” theory. If you look at the real economy, things are getting worse and worse. When even Wal-Mart reports that people are spending less (remember that corporate email that February sales were a “disaster”?) you KNOW things are bad.
Folks, something awful is brewing in the economy. And yet, against this backdrop, stocks continue to rally hard. This bubble is worse than anything I’ve seen in my career, including the 2007 top.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-05-17/wal-mart-warns-slowdown
xchrom
(108,903 posts)BALTIMORE (AP) -- Orb is ready for his whirl at history.
The Kentucky Derby winner was in a playful mood the day before the Preakness, making faces for photographers between nibbles of grass outside his stall at Pimlico Race Course.
"I couldn't be more pleased with the way he's doing," trainer Shug McGaughey said at his final pre-Preakness media briefing Friday morning. "I can't see any adversity. I would have to think it would take a pretty darn good horse to beat him if he goes over and runs his race."
If he can defeat eight rivals in the 1 3-16-mile Preakness on Saturday, it would set up a Triple Crown try in the Belmont Stakes in three weeks. Orb is the even-money favorite, and there's a growing feeling that this 3-year-old bay colt may be special enough to give thoroughbred racing its first Triple Crown champion since Affirmed in 1978.
"We'd sure love to have that opportunity," a relaxed and confident-sounding McGaughey said. "Probably the racing world would love to see it, too."
xchrom
(108,903 posts)(Reuters) - A European probe into possible oil price manipulation expanded with the investigation of a small niche trading house in the Netherlands, while a key U.S. senator on Friday called for the Justice Department to join the investigation.
Dutch trading house Argos Energies, a mid-sized trading company that deals in physical oil products and owns storage facilities, was visited by inspectors from the European Commission on Tuesday, a source familiar with the investigation said on Friday.
The visit occurred on the same day that authorities raided the London bureau of pricing agency Platts, and the offices of Statoil, Royal Dutch Shell and BP in the biggest cross-border action since the probe into rigging of Libor benchmark interest rates.
In Washington, the chairman of the Senate's energy committee asked the Justice Department to investigate whether alleged price manipulation has boosted fuel prices for U.S. consumers.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The Congressional Budget Office put conservative economic thinkers on their ass this week. In this Report (SEE LINK), the CBO concluded that the US budget deficit is about to collapse to insignificance. The improvement in the deficit outlook is so large that it has lead liberal thinkers to start calling for more stimulus spending. If it were not for the three scandals brewing for Obama (Benghazigate, IRSgate and APgate) I think there would be calls to spend some more government money. The CBO assessment of the deficit profile relies on every trick in the book. The assumption is that all of the variables that weigh on the deficit will be improving over the next few years. Tax collections will remain at historically high levels. Government spending will decline as the economy improves. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be kicking $95Bn into the coffers. Social Security will cost less than previously thought, the same favorable result is assumed for both Medicare and Medicaid. And of course, there will be no wars or military incursions that have to be paid for. But, by far, the biggest driver of the reduced deficits will come from a robust economic recovery that is set to occur. This is the CBO forecast for top line GDP growth:
Wow! 6.5% growth is coming our way! Don't worry at all about the endless recession in Europe. Don't consider the rapid slowdown in China either. And please don't worry about the fact that the Fed is going to be taking its foot off the gas over the next 24 months - all that won't make any difference. The USA is set for a spurt of growth not seen for years...What could the CBO be hanging its hat on when making this bold predictions of rapid economic expansion? I wonder if the CBO is relying on Obamacare to provide the big boost. This is the only significant economic development on the horizon. It will change everything when it's finally implemented. It will result in 32 odd million more people having access to healthcare. And when those people do have health insurance, they will be going to Doctors, getting treatments and medicines. And with those visits and related spending, the economy will get a lift - at least that is the thinking.
There is some evidence that Obamacare is going to ratchet up health spending. The New England Journal of Medicine has done a study on the results of an experiment in Oregon. Some 6,000 people were given access to Medicaid for two years. There was a control group of another 5,000 people who did not get access to health insurance. What did those who won the lottery for the free health benefits do? They went to Doctors of course. The study showed that those with insurance were 2Xs more likely to visit a doctor, and would take twice as many prescription drugs. Obamacare will result in an increase in medical diagnostics; the number of MRI's, X-rays, blood test etc. will increase markedly when free health insurance is available. The cost of all these new medical services will add to GDP, and increase employment in healthcare. The Oregon study showed that healthcare spending rose by $2,750 for those who had access to Medicaid versus the control group. If these results are applied to all of the 32m people who have no insurance today, it would result in an increase in spending of $90Bn - that comes to 5.5% of GDP. While not all of that spending is going to happen, its pretty clear that Obamacare is going to ramp up the economy by a meaningful amount - a 2% net increase in economic activity is possible. To the extent that Obamacare is measured as a jobs program it may be considered a "success". More medical spending will be the result. The larger question of what it will do for the health profile of Americans is not at all a sure thing. I was surprised by the conclusions drawn by the Oregon study: This randomized, controlled study showed that Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes in the first two years. The reason why overall health results were not improved for those with insurance was interesting. People who have healthcare available to them often adopt risky behavior. For example, those who had health insurance in the Oregon study were much much more likely to smoke. (10% increase over those that did not have health insurance) This conclusion confirms what has been observed in other situations. When people have seat belts, they think they are safe, so they drive faster. It appears that the same holds true on health related matters.
The pessimist in me says that the roll-out of Obamacare is going to be anything but a success. The state insurance exchanges will not be up and running on time. Getting those 32m people to sign up for Medicaid will not happen at the pace that is currently anticipated. Obamacare will not be the economic stimulus that is hoped for, it won't improve the nations health levels by much, and it's going to cost an absolute bundle in the form of increased taxes. My guess is that in 2-3 years most folks in the country are going to hate Obamacare, but it it will be impossible to get rid of by then.
I DON'T THINK IT WILL EVEN GET THAT FAR, MYSELF.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)For some minutes Alice stood without speaking, looking out in all
directions over the country--and a most curious country it was. There
were a number of tiny little brooks running straight across it from side
to side, and the ground between was divided up into squares by a number
of little green hedges, that reached from brook to brook.
'I declare it's marked out just like a large chessboard!' Alice said at
last. 'There ought to be some men moving about somewhere--and so there
are!' She added in a tone of delight, and her heart began to beat quick
with excitement as she went on. 'It's a great huge game of chess that's
being played--all over the world--if this IS the world at all, you know.
Oh, what fun it is! How I WISH I was one of them! I wouldn't mind being
a Pawn, if only I might join--though of course I should LIKE to be a
Queen, best.'
She glanced rather shyly at the real Queen as she said this, but her
companion only smiled pleasantly, and said, 'That's easily managed. You
can be the White Queen's Pawn, if you like, as Lily's too young to
play; and you're in the Second Square to begin with: when you get to
the Eighth Square you'll be a Queen--' Just at this moment, somehow or
other, they began to run.
Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it
was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand
in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep
up with her: and still the Queen kept crying 'Faster! Faster!' but Alice
felt she COULD NOT go faster, though she had not breath left to say so.
The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other
things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they
went, they never seemed to pass anything. 'I wonder if all the things
move along with us?' thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to
guess her thoughts, for she cried, 'Faster! Don't try to talk!'
Not that Alice had any idea of doing THAT. She felt as if she would
never be able to talk again, she was getting so much out of breath: and
still the Queen cried 'Faster! Faster!' and dragged her along. 'Are we
nearly there?' Alice managed to pant out at last.
'Nearly there!' the Queen repeated. 'Why, we passed it ten minutes ago!
Faster!' And they ran on for a time in silence, with the wind whistling
in Alice's ears, and almost blowing her hair off her head, she fancied.
'Now! Now!' cried the Queen. 'Faster! Faster!' And they went so fast
that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the
ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite
exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground,
breathless and giddy.
The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest
a little now.'
Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been
under this tree the whole time! Everything's just as it was!'
'Of course it is,' said the Queen, 'what would you have it?'
'Well, in OUR country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd
generally get to somewhere else--if you ran very fast for a long time,
as we've been doing.'
'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now, HERE, you see, it takes
all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to
get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'
Demeter
(85,373 posts)In 1856, Dodgson took up the new art form of photography, first under the influence of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, and later his Oxford friend Reginald Southey. He soon excelled at the art and became a well-known gentleman-photographer, and he seems even to have toyed with the idea of making a living out of it in his very early years.
A recent study by Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling exhaustively lists every surviving print, and Taylor calculates that just over fifty percent of his surviving work depicts young girls, though this may be a highly distorted figure as approximately 60% of his original photographic portfolio is now missing, so any firm conclusions are difficult. Dodgson also made many studies of men, women, male children and landscapes; his subjects also include skeletons, dolls, dogs, statues and paintings, and trees. His pictures of children were taken with a parent in attendance and many of the pictures were taken in the Liddell garden, because natural sunlight was required for good exposures.
He also found photography to be a useful entrée into higher social circles. During the most productive part of his career, he made portraits of notable sitters such as John Everett Millais, Ellen Terry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, Michael Faraday and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Dodgson abruptly ceased photography in 1880. Over 24 years, he had completely mastered the medium, set up his own studio on the roof of Tom Quad, and created around 3,000 images. Fewer than 1,000 have survived time and deliberate destruction. He reported that he stopped taking photographs because keeping his studio working was difficult (he used the wet collodion process) and commercial photographers (who started using the dry-plate process in the 1870s) took pictures more quickly.
With the advent of Modernism, tastes changed, and his photography was forgotten from around 1920 until the 1960s.
https://www.google.com/search?q=charles+dodgson+photos+of+children&client=firefox-a&hs=Ba8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US
fficial&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=StGXUYXFEZTlyAHtu4H4Aw&ved=0CDQQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=675
Demeter
(85,373 posts)President Obama used his weekly radio address on Saturday to reassure the American people that he has “played no role whatsoever” in the U.S. government over the past four years.
“Right now, many of you are angry at the government, and no one is angrier than I am,” he said. “Quite frankly, I am glad that I have had no involvement in such an organization.”
The President’s outrage only increased, he said, when he “recently became aware of a part of that government called the Department of Justice.”
“The more I learn about the activities of these individuals, the more certain I am that I would not want to be associated with them,” he said. “They sound like bad news.”
Mr. Obama closed his address by indicating that beginning next week he would enforce what he called a “zero tolerance policy on governing.”
“If I find that any members of my Administration have had any intimate knowledge of, or involvement in, the workings of the United States government, they will be dealt with accordingly,” he said.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Giving consumers the info that they need to make conscious buying decisions...
Given the byzantine corporate ownership structures of practically every item Americans purchase, it takes near encyclopedic knowledge to know which companies you are supporting when you buy, say, toilet paper. A new free app will help conscious consumers know whose pockets they are lining, and help them avoid supporting right-wing causes and truth-obscuring corporate conglomerates like Koch Industries and Monsanto. The free downloadable app scans everything in your shopping cart and traces the ownership all the way up to the parent company. Sometimes that trail will resemble a complicated family tree, since parent companies don't always want you to know who their offspring is. Just by way of example, Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft toilet paper and Dixie Cups are all products of Georgia-Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. The Brothers Koch also have gotten their corporate hands into the seemingly progressive yoga pants industry. But when you buy stretchy Lycra-containing pants for your downward dog, they are made by Invista, a textile company Koch bought.
The idea for an app for more consicous-shopping first germinated at a Netroots Nation gathering, when Darcy Burner, the former Microsoft programmer, suggested some app developer work on it. A group calling itself Buycott was already at work on the challenge, ultimately making the app even more spophisticated than Burner envisioned. It took 16 months for freelance programmer Ivan Pardo, 26, of Los Angeles to develop the app that allows you to scan the barcode of any item in your shopping cart and find out who your purchase is enriching. But it goes beyond that, as Forbes.com's Clare O'Connor reports. Users of the app can "can join user-created campaigns to boycott business practices that violate your principles rather than single companies. One of these campaigns, Demand GMO Labeling, will scan your box of cereal and tell you if it was made by one of the 36 corporations that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory labeling of genetically modified food." Monsanto, of course, comes to mind, but it has plenty of company including: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Kraft and Unilever.
On a more positive note, Buycott has campaigns to support companies that support progressive causes, like Absolut and Starbucks, both of which have supported marriage equality.
The app is free and downloadable to the Android or iPhone.
......................................................................................................
Buycott campaigns encouraging shoppers to support brands that have, say, openly backed LGBT rights. You can scan a bottle of Absolut vodka or a bag of Starbucks coffee beans and learn that both companies have come out for equal marriage.
“I don’t want to push any single point of view with the app,” said Pardo. “For me, it was critical to allow users to create campaigns because I don’t think its Buycott’s role to tell people what to buy. We simply want to provide a platform that empowers consumers to make well-informed purchasing decisions.”
Forbes reached out to Koch Industries and Monsanto for comment and will update this story with any responses.
.......................................................................................................................
Update: Tuesday’s traffic surge is causing some problems for Buycott. Pardo says he’s working to fix issues with the Android app in particular. “The workload is a bit overwhelming now,” he said. “For example, our Android app was just recently released and the surge of new users today has highlighted a serious bug on certain devices that needs to be fixed immediately. So all other development tasks I was working on get put on hold until I can get this bug fixed.”
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Just how much of our lives do billionaires influence? While activists may rightly rail against the 1%, everything from branded bottled water to energy drinks to gummi bears and beyond are owned by rich people. It’s one thing to criticize their disproportionate influence in politics, but it’s a whole separate ballgame when it comes to not lining their pockets. A new Forbes slideshow reveals in detail how “billionaire brands control your life"--and how easy it is to further enrich these billionaires unwillingly.
Take Brawny paper towels, for example. It seems like a benign purchase that will help you clean your house. But when you buy Brawny products, you’re giving money to the Koch brothers, who own the company. Charles and David Koch are worth $34 billion. Even worse, they’re major funders of conservative causes.
Or look at Expedia, the very convenient website that helps you search for the best deal on hotels. That company is owned by Barry Diller, whose net worth comes in at $1.9 billion.
Want an energy drink to boost your day? You’ll also have to hand over cash that lines the pockets of other rich people. 5 Hour Energy drink is owned by Manoj Bhargava, who is worth $1.5 billion. Red Bull, another energy drink, is owned by Dietrich Mateschitz, worth $7.1 billion.
Here’s yet another example: if you use a computer with an Intel processor, the fabulously wealthy owner will profit. His name is Gordon Moore, and he’s worth $4.1 billion.
This is not to say you should go live in a cave and not consume anything, particularly when many of the products Forbes lists are important for some people to use. But it’s important to frankly acknowledge the power of billionaires in our society--and how consumers keep their pockets fat. The big question, then, is how to change an unequal society with the scale tipped towards the rich while consumers continue to buy their products. As a first step, we could start with raising their taxes.
Alex Kane is AlterNet's New York-based World editor, and an assistant editor for Mondoweiss. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane.
ALL THE MORE REASON TO 1) BUY USED IF POSSIBLE, 2) BUY AS A GROUP AND SHARE, 3) BUY LOCAL 4) DO IT YOURSELF, 5) KICK BAD HABITS LIKE CAFFEINE, OR IMPULSE SPENDING, 6) SQUEEZE THE EAGLE TILL IT SCREAMS!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The fight against plutocracy, concentrated wealth and corporatism is decentralized, creative and growing. Every week we are inspired by the many people throughout the country who are doing excellent work to challenge the power structure and put forward a new path for the country. The popular resistance to plutocracy, concentrated wealth and corporatism is decentralized, creative and growing.
The heart of the conflict faced in the United States is the inequity of an unfair economy supported by a corrupt two party system. This week there was a very creative protest in New York City against the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim of Mexico. He’s made his billions with the help of government allowing a monopoly on phone service resulting in Slim gouging the public. Now he gives a small percentage of that wealth back in philanthropy and people applaud him. But, the protesters were very effective, laughing out loud whenever he spoke. They responded when someone asked “Why is everyone laughing?” with “Because Slim’s philanthropy is a joke!” and followed with mocking kazoos.
In contrast to the world’s wealthiest was the Poor People’s Campaign which marched from Baltimore to Washington, DC ending at Freedom Plaza. The march occurred on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s campaign and raised issues of poverty, police violence, unfair economy and non-responsive government. Another march was announced in Pennsylvania from Philadelphia to Harrisburg from May 25 to June 3 to stop spending on prison construction and instead invest in building communities. Also, from Philadelphia the ‘Operation Green Jobs’ March from Philadelphia to Washington, DC will begin on May 18 and is organized by the Poor People’s Economic and Human Rights Campaign.
But more and more Americans are realizing that while we protest the extraction of oil, gas, uranium and coal, the reality is that the root of the problem is in the American Way of Life (AWOL). One activist from Portland made the point that the Tar Sands starts in our driveways and we need to change the AWOL in order to truly combat it. We agree that our strategy has two prongs: protest and build i.e. Stop the Machine and Create a New World. In addition to how much energy we each use, we need to look at where our food comes from. An Occupy group in Berkeley, Occupy the Farm, made that point this week when they took over University of California land to grow farm for the community locally. Another area where we are seeing continued growth in the movement is in thinking through how we do our work and in developing strategy to achieve our goals. We published a live streamer “Code of Ethics” developed by people who work in the citizen’s media. Note the high ethics and cooperative approach they take to getting the media out. Many are thinking about strategy to make the movement more effective. Gar Alperovitz, a political economist who has been writing about alternatives to big finance capitalism in the United States has a new book out focused on strategy, “What then Must We Do,” and we published a review of the book by Sam Pizzigati of Inequality.org entitled: A Promising Path for Pummeling Plutocracy.
Upcoming actions:
- May 17th, Support the Guantanamo hunger strikers on the 100th Day of their hunger strike with phone calls and tweets to the White House and protests in DC, NY, Chicago and other cities.
- May 18th, ‘Operation Green Jobs’ March from Philadelphia to Washington, DC organized by the Poor People’s Economic and Human Rights Campaign.
- May 18th to 23rd the Home Defenders League Week of Action against the banks and foreclosures in Washington, DC.
- May 18th to 20th there is a weekend of protests against the closure of schools in Chicago.
- May 22nd Stop the Frack Attack People’s Forum in Washington, DC.
- May 25th Protests against Monsanto everywhere
- May 25th to June 3rd March from Philadelphia to Harrisburg against prison spending.
- June 1st, Get on the Bus For Bradley Court Martial Trial with buses leaving from Baltimore, MD, Washington DC, New York City and Willimantic, CT.
- June 14th to 16th Trade Justice Action Camp in Bellingham, WA by the Backbone Campaign
- June 24th to 29th is the beginning of “Fearless Summer” that starts “an epic summer of actions.”
You can order or print OccuCards to bring with you to these actions. There are cards for all of the issues being protested above and new cards are being created.
And watch for the transformation of October2011/Occupy Washington DC into Popular Resistance, daily news and resources for effective activism, coming in June. Sign up here if you want to be notified of the launch:
http://october2011.org/pledge
Demeter
(85,373 posts)...By making a few subtle changes to a regulation in the U.S. Code titled “Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies” the military has quietly granted itself the ability to police the streets without obtaining prior local or state consent, upending a precedent that has been in place for more than two centuries.
The most objectionable aspect of the regulatory change is the inclusion of vague language that permits military intervention in the event of “civil disturbances.” According to the rule: “Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances.”
Bruce Afran, a civil liberties attorney and constitutional law professor at Rutgers University, calls the rule, “a wanton power grab by the military.” He says, “It’s quite shocking actually because it violates the long-standing presumption that the military is under civilian control.” A defense official who declined to be named takes a different view of the rule, claiming, “The authorization has been around over 100 years; it’s not a new authority. It’s been there but it hasn’t been exercised. This is a carryover of domestic policy.” Moreover, he insists the Pentagon doesn’t “want to get involved in civilian law enforcement. It’s one of those red lines that the military hasn’t signed up for.” Nevertheless, he says, “every person in the military swears an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States to defend that Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.”
One of the more disturbing aspects of the new procedures that govern military command on the ground in the event of a civil disturbance relates to authority. Not only does it fail to define what circumstances would be so severe that the president’s authorization is “impossible,” it grants full presidential authority to “Federal military commanders.” According to the defense official, a commander is defined as follows: “Somebody who’s in the position of command, has the title commander. And most of the time they are centrally selected by a board, they’ve gone through additional schooling to exercise command authority.” As it is written, this “commander” has the same power to authorize military force as the president in the event the president is somehow unable to access a telephone. (The rule doesn’t address the statutory chain of authority that already exists in the event a sitting president is unavailable.) In doing so, this commander must exercise judgment in determining what constitutes, “wanton destruction of property,” “adequate protection for Federal property,” “domestic violence,” or “conspiracy that hinders the execution of State or Federal law,” as these are the circumstances that might be considered an “emergency.”
“These phrases don’t have any legal meaning,” says Afran. “It’s no different than the emergency powers clause in the Weimar constitution (of the German Reich). It’s a grant of emergency power to the military to rule over parts of the country at their own discretion.”...
AND WE ALL KNOW HOW THAT TURNED OUT
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The following is an excerpt from from Debtors' Prison by Robert Kuttner (Knopf 2013):
In this, the fifth year of a prolonged downturn triggered by a financial crash, the prevailing view is that we all must pay for yesterday’s excess. This case is made in both economic and moral terms. Nations and households ran up unsustainable debts; these obligations must be honored—to satisfy creditors, restore market confidence, deter future recklessness, and compel people and nations to live within their means.
A phrase often heard is “moral hazard,” a concept borrowed by economists from the insurance industry. In its original usage, the term referred to the risk that insuring against an adverse event would invite the event. For example, someone who insured a house for more than its worth would have an incentive to burn it down. Nowadays, economists use the term to mean any unintended reward for bad behavior. Presumably, if we give debt relief to struggling homeowners or beleaguered nations, we invite more profligacy in the future. Hence, belts need to be tightened not just to improve fiscal balance but as punishment for past misdeeds and inducement for better self-discipline in the future.
There are several problems with the application of the moral hazard doctrine to the present crisis. It’s certainly true that under normal circumstances debts need to be honored, with bankruptcy reserved for special cases. Public policy should neither encourage governments, households, enterprises, or banks to borrow beyond prudent limits nor make it too easy for them to walk away from debts. But after a collapse, a debt overhang becomes a macroeconomic problem, not a personal or moral one. In a deflated economy, debt burdens undermine both debtors’ capacity to pay and their ability to pursue productive economic activity. Intensified belt-tightening deepens depression by further undercutting purchasing power generally. Despite facile analogies between governments and households, government is different from other actors. In a depression, even with high levels of public debt, additional government borrowing and spending may be the only way to jump-start the economy’s productive capacity at a time when the private sector is too traumatized to invest and spend.
The idea that anxiety about future deficits harms investor or consumer confidence is contradicted by both economic theory and evidence. At this writing, the U.S. government is able to borrow from private money markets for ten years at interest rates well under 2 percent and for thirty years at less than 3 percent. If markets were concerned that higher deficits five or even twenty-five years from now would cause rising inflation or a weaker dollar, they would not dream of lending the government money for thirty years at 3 percent interest. Consumers are reluctant to spend and businesses hesitant to invest because of reduced purchasing power in a weak economy. Abstract worries about the federal deficit are simply not part of this calculus...
MORE AT LINK--SEE ESPECIALLY THE DISCUSSION OF FDR AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION
Demeter
(85,373 posts)But you all go on....see you in the morning!
siligut
(12,272 posts)In ideal circumstances, the needs of the mother and the child are the same. In less than ideal circumstances, some mothers seek to fill their own needs above those of their children. This has to do with something other than supply and demand.
kickysnana
(3,908 posts)
Demeter
(85,373 posts)
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Summary: What a wonderful week, bringing to even the most obtuse of Americans unmistakable evidence of our government’s growing power. These incidents are insignificant in themselves, more of the endless scandals that titillated members of America’s outer party (the proles don’t care about such things; the inner party knows their irrelevance). But they might give small pushes to help a few see the true state of America.
(1) The Tea Party discovered that the government will investigate even white conservatives! Watch their anti-reality screens glow as they deflect all evidence that it was routine low-level actions, not planned attack by the Black Pretender in the White House.
(2) Journalists discovered that the government has no friends, only subjects and targets. Even their supine support of the government — concealing secrets, spinning stories to their benefit, denying a voice to its opponents — gives them no immunity from government surveillance. Legal surveillance, due to the post-9/11 shredding of the 4th Amendment.
(3) During the five years posting warnings on the FM website, I have received many forms of replies saying Don’t worry; all is well. None say it in as few words as this tweet, which should be carved on the eventual memorial to the late great Constitution:
You placed the burden on active citizenship; but individuals may have little effect. Republic endures unbroken.
We cannot know what the author meant, but the words probably speak for the majority of Americans today. The words echo their feeling of powerlessness (their disinterest in collective action) plus a delusional unwillingness to see the results of our passivity.
Twitter is a direct line into the thought-stream of America, the neurons freely chatting with one another. Always interesting, often depressing, sometimes terrifyingly depressing.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)A few weeks ago, we did a story about hedge fund king Dan Loeb's plans to address a conference of institutional investors and perhaps solicit new clients among the public retirement funds in attendance, despite his involvement with a political lobbying group that campaigns against those very types of defined benefit plans. When stories by Rolling Stone, Washington Monthly and the New York Post came out about Loeb's affiliations, Loeb canceled his scheduled speech at the Conference of Institutional Investors and fled the event, reinforcing the simple idea that powerful interests can be forced to choose between taking the public's money and involving themselves in regressive politics. We have another one of those situations brewing now, only it's a much bigger deal this time – the much-talked-about, much-dreaded potential sale of the Tribune newspaper group to the odious Koch brothers. As first reported in the Times a few weeks ago, the Kochs, after years of working through the media with relentless lobbying and messaging, are exploring the idea of skipping the middleman and becoming media themselves, with the acquisition of one of the biggest media groups in the country.
The Tribune papers encompass eight major publications across the country, including the Los Angeles Times, the Allentown Daily Call, the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, the Baltimore Sun, the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Hartford Courant, the Daily Press of Hampton Roads, Virginia, and Hoy, America's second-largest Spanish-language paper. It should go without saying that the sale of this still-potent media empire to the cash-addled Koch brothers duo – lifetime denizens of a sub-moronic rightist echo chamber where everything from Social Security to Medicare to unemployment benefits to the EPA are urgent threats to national security, and even child labor laws are evidence of an overly intrusive government – would be a disaster of epic proportions. One could argue that it would be on par with the Citizens United decision in its potential for causing popular opinion to be perverted and bent by concentrated financial interests.
Of course, conservatives will argue that people like myself are only talking that way because the potential buyers of these people are conservatives. If George Soros or some other wealthy, Democrat-leaning meddler in national affairs was leading the pack to become the next Hearst, I wouldn't bat an eyelash – right? Well, that's true. But the issue here isn't so much what I think about the Koch brothers. It's what the private equity firms and banks that are the major shareholders in the Tribune Company think of the Koch brothers. Because it turns out that some of these firms are heavily dependent upon investment from public unions, which would make their participation in the sale of a media empire to the public-union-bashing Kochs severely problematic. The Koch brothers have always taken powerful and unequivocal stances against public sector unions and their retirement plans. They were primary financial backers of Scott Walker's anti-union movement in Wisconsin, where the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity group engaged in massive ad buys and signature-collecting campaigns to back Walker's play to crush collective bargaining rights for public workers. Through direct donations and support of groups like the conservative state policy group ALEC, the Kochs have taken aim at public unions, public union lobbying and public pensions in multiple states across the country, among other things spending $4 million in California to support Prop 32, a state ballot measure restricting union political activity.
The potential conflict comes from the fact that two of the major stakeholders at Tribune Co. are investment management firms that manage billions of dollars of public pension funds. One is called Oaktree Capital, a Los Angeles-based group that owns 23.5 percent of Tribune Co. Another is called Angelo Gordon & Co., which is based here in New York and owns 9.4 percent of Tribune. J.P. Morgan Chase, another major Tribune stakeholder, also manages public-sector funds. This sale really can't happen, obviously, without the assent of these companies. Yet these companies are financially dependent upon public pension funds. Oaktree's client list includes the two monster California funds, CalPERS (the California Public Employees' Retirement System) and CalSTRS (California State Teachers' Retirement System), as well as the City of Philadelphia Board of Pensions, the Houston Municipal Employees Pension System, the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, the Illinois State Retirement Systems, the Los Angeles City Employees' Retirement System, the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association and the Los Angeles Fire & Police Pensions, plus public funds in Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Angelo Gordon's clients, meanwhile, include those same CalSTRS and Los Angeles Fire & Police funds, the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board, the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the New York State Teachers' Retirement System, Ohio State University, the Pennsylvania State Employees' Retirement System, the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio and the Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois, among others. What this means, essentially, is that public-sector workers in the very cities and states where the Kochs plan to take over these iconic newspapers will in a sense be subsidizing or enabling the sale by keeping their monies under management with companies like Oaktree and Angelo Gordon. Many of these groups have already contacted Oaktree and Angelo Gordon to express their concern. As was the case with Dan Loeb and his courtship of public-sector union money, the unions want to make sure firms like Oaktree understand that their decision on the Tribune sale may influence their own investment decisions. "None of this is in a vacuum," explains Liz Greenwood, a trustee for the LA County Pension Fund (LACERS)....
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...The potential Tribune sale would be a high-profile litmus test of the unions' financial self-awareness. Public-sector workers from Massachusetts to California can force their investment managers to make a choice: sell to the Kochs, or keep managing their retirement billions. If the Kochs want to buy newspapers, this is a free country, and nobody can stop them. But the people whose benefits they want to slash don't have to help them get there.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)We were just talking about how the wrongest prediction of the past 5 years was the call for "inflation" or "hyperinflation" due to aggressive monetary easing.
In his latest US Macro Dashboard note, Morgan Stanley economist Vincent Reinhart points out that the real story now is the return of deflation risk.
With evidence building that the Q2 soft patch is upon us, worrisome chatter about deflation is taking center stage. Our outlook for some time has been that mounting fiscal drag would show through in Q2 most strongly as sequester effects take hold and a slowdown in global trade hits US shores. Indeed, another run of poor data this week has shown Spring growth may be dampened by weakness in manufacturing, increasing jobless claims, and a stalling housing recovery. The slowdown in activity is not helping the Fed with their consistently significant misses on the employment side of their mandate, but it now appears they may have to turn their attention to supporting inflation from the bottom.
While it's well known that the Fed is far away on its employment target, it's also now seeing its inflation target look increasingly perilous.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-and-now-its-time-to-worry-about-deflation-again-2013-5#ixzz2Tk06nfWv
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Deflation problem solved, fascism problem solved, corruption problem solved, budget problem solved, deficit problem solved, unemployment problem solved, social problems (hunger, homelessness, illness, premature death, mental illness, suicide and murder) solved, infrastructure deterioration solved, appalling ignorance solved.
You get the picture.
Deflation is the least of the problems.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)There are tiny little peaches on my tree!
I didn't have time to count them while doing the papers, but they are there in quantity...and once I get some sleep, I can go out and gloat.
I understand that the Japanese enclose each little fruit in a bag to keep insects away...anybody know anything about this?
After Google: they say peaches need to use something that lets air through, so the y recommend nylon "footies" as used to try on shoes in stores. I'm not sure how you keep them on the tree (twist-ties, I expect) but I will find out!
i don't know anything about wrapping the fruit -- but it makes sense -- just be careful climbing around.
i know the birds and squirrels will get them if you don't do anything.
i'm very jealous.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)and I'm hoping it will stay that way.
If this works, next year, PEARS! Then CHERRIES!
I'm going to bag the fruit on the existing trees around here! I'm going to go gardener!
MANIA ENSUES
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Farmer outfit to go with this new endeavor!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)I love fresh peaches, there is nothing better than eating a lush ripe peach, and having the juices run down your arm. Heaven!
When we bought this house eons ago, there was a huge apple tree. I had it professionally thinned out, sprayed it for bugs, and it produced delicious apples for a few years. Then spouse thought the branches got in the way of mowing, and he sawed off the offending branches. Aargh. The tree never produced apples again, and finally had to cut it down when it died.
Then I bought a couple mini apple trees for the back yard. Since they were five foot dwarf size, I could easily manage to keep them trimmed up. Every year, they produced gazillions of tiny apples, which then dropped due to an early frost. EVERY year. Spouse finally asked why I spent so much time taking care of these 2 trees when we got no apples to eat. Eventually, those trees were cut down too.
We also had a medium-size pear tree that produced lots of tiny juicy sweet Seckel pears. The bees, wasps and hornets loved them too. It was always tricky to pick the pears and keep them from rotting on the ground, without getting stung. That tree started dying after spouse sawed off a few low branches.
Having fruit trees can be rewarding, kinda time-consuming, but well worth the fresh fruit to eat. Let us know how your peach tree does this year. Hoping you get lots of juicy sweet peaches to eat!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)or at least, take all instruments of destruction away from him!
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)He was an Ironworker by trade, and truly good at building heavy-duty things. Things made of metal, iron and steel.
When it comes to plants and trees and other things that grow. Um, not so much. So I try to grow things in designated areas where the lawnmower and other instruments don't destroy the veggies and flowers.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)other than the exceptionally rare and ultimately meaningless rise in income taxes which are insufficient to accomplish any of the goals listed as reasons for it. As we all know, the really rich don't pay taxes and they don't depend on earned income.
Extracting fair compensation from those that have taken such a disproportional share or our national product will require actions that will never be allowed until the number of people that have at least a vague understanding of how things really work reaches a critical mass and thereby forces the changes required.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)To educate ourselves, and spread the knowledge around.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)
Tens of thousands of people joined a union-organised march in Rome Saturday, protesting against the new coalition government’s austerity measures.
The metal workers union FIOM said the rally was to demand “the right to jobs, training and health care”.
“We cannot wait any longer,” said FIOM secretary Maurizio Landini as Italy is mired in recession.
He said the country’s dire economic conditions began with the decisions of the previous governments of Silvio Berlusconi and Mario Monti.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)To promote letter writing, Dodgson invented The Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case in 1889. This was a cloth-backed folder with twelve slots, two marked for inserting the then most commonly used penny stamp, and one each for the other current denominations to one shilling. The folder was then put into a slip case decorated with a picture of Alice on the front and the Cheshire Cat on the back. All could be conveniently carried in a pocket or purse. When issued it also included a copy of Carroll's pamphletted lecture, Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing.
Another invention is a writing tablet called the nyctograph for use at night that allowed for note-taking in the dark; thus eliminating the trouble of getting out of bed and striking a light when one wakes with an idea. The device consisted of a gridded card with sixteen squares and system of symbols representing an alphabet of Dodgson's design, using letter shapes similar to the Graffiti writing system on a Palm device.
Among the games he devised outside of logic there are a number of word games, including an early version of what today is known as Scrabble. He also appears to have invented, or at least certainly popularised, the Word Ladder (or "doublet" as it was known at first); a form of brain-teaser that is still popular today: the game of changing one word into another by altering one letter at a time, each successive change always resulting in a genuine word. For instance, CAT is transformed into DOG by the following steps: CAT, COT, DOT, DOG.
Other items include a rule for finding the day of the week for any date; a means for justifying right margins on a typewriter; a steering device for a velociam (a type of tricycle); new systems of parliamentary representation; more nearly fair elimination rules for tennis tournaments; a new sort of postal money order; rules for reckoning postage; rules for a win in betting; rules for dividing a number by various divisors; a cardboard scale for the college common room he worked in later in life, which, held next to a glass, ensured the right amount of liqueur for the price paid; a double-sided adhesive strip for things like the fastening of envelopes or mounting things in books; a device for helping a bedridden invalid to read from a book placed sideways; and at least two ciphers for cryptography.
.........................................
Within the academic discipline of mathematics, Dodgson worked primarily in the fields of geometry, matrix algebra, mathematical logic and recreational mathematics, producing nearly a dozen books under his real name. Dodgson also developed new ideas in the study of elections (e.g., Dodgson's method) and committees; some of this work was not published until well after his death. He worked as a mathematics tutor at Oxford, an occupation that gave him some financial security.
His mathematical work attracted renewed interest in the late 20th century. Robbins' and Rumsey's investigation of Dodgson Condensation, a method of evaluating determinants, led them to the Alternating Sign Matrix conjecture, now a theorem.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)She (the red queen) had got all the pegs put in by this time, and Alice looked on
with great interest as she returned to the tree, and then began slowly
walking down the row.
At the two-yard peg she faced round, and said, 'A pawn goes two squares
in its first move, you know. So you'll go VERY quickly through the Third
Square--by railway, I should think--and you'll find yourself in the
Fourth Square in no time. Well, THAT square belongs to Tweedledum and
Tweedledee--the Fifth is mostly water--the Sixth belongs to Humpty
Dumpty--But you make no remark?'
'I--I didn't know I had to make one--just then,' Alice faltered out.
'You SHOULD have said, "It's extremely kind of you to tell me all
this"--however, we'll suppose it said--the Seventh Square is all
forest--however, one of the Knights will show you the way--and in the
Eighth Square we shall be Queens together, and it's all feasting and
fun!' Alice got up and curtseyed, and sat down again.
At the next peg the Queen turned again, and this time she said, 'Speak
in French when you can't think of the English for a thing--turn out your
toes as you walk--and remember who you are!' She did not wait for Alice
to curtsey this time, but walked on quickly to the next peg, where she
turned for a moment to say 'good-bye,' and then hurried on to the last.
How it happened, Alice never knew, but exactly as she came to the last
peg, she was gone. Whether she vanished into the air, or whether she
ran quickly into the wood ('and she CAN run very fast!' thought Alice),
there was no way of guessing, but she was gone, and Alice began to
remember that she was a Pawn, and that it would soon be time for her to
move.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Beyond the feel-good story of the New Jersey bodega operator who struck it rich with a lucky ticket, the recent Powerball jackpot of $338 million was actually rather unremarkable. Indeed, both the Powerball and the Mega Millions lotteries have previously seen their jackpots push past the half billion mark. The trend of sky-high jackpots can be traced back 25 years, when America’s state lottery directors banded together to fend off a new federal proposal from Rep. Cardiss Collins. The Illinois Congresswoman, who died on February 3, is fondly remembered for her time as the lone African-American woman in the House of Representatives and for her unwavering advocacy on behalf of the poor. Yet the Chicago-based icon is less known for her proposal to start a national lottery, which ultimately—and unintentionally—helped lead to our current frenzied practices of jackpot gambling.
In 1985, Collins proposed a national lottery to supplement Social Security and Medicare via federal savings bonds. Instead of a ticket, the bettor would purchase a bond whose serial number would serve as the ticket number. Thus, the millions of lottery losers would have been left holding a savings bond rather than a worthless ticket or a crumpled scratch game card. Collins’ proposal was blocked in the House, but not before it set off a wave of fear and panic among state lottery directors and their corporate contractors, who were quick to take action. The worry in lottery circles was that a national lottery, with its massive pool of potential bettors, would be able to build far larger jackpots than those offered by the existing state gambling operations. According to the magazine Gaming and Wagering Business, in an effort to “beat the federal government to the punch,” a consortium of several state lotteries “hatched a plan to run a giant multi-state lotto game that would rival Congress’ fledgling plans.” The result was the game Lotto America, which went on sale in February 1988, initially offered in six states and the District of Columbia.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the history of lottery gambling in the United States is the apprehension evinced by ’80s lottery executives as they experimented with new ways to drive up jackpot amounts. “I don’t know if we’d feel comfortable with $40 million jackpots,” Pennsylvania’s lottery director said in 1986. Delaware’s lottery director echoed that sentiment, explaining that “the public might think jackpots of $50 to $100 million were obscene for one person to win.” California’s lottery director summed up the problem: “I hate to use the term morality—but there is an issue involved in excessively large jackpots.” With such concerns in mind, Lotto America initially planned to cap its jackpots at $80 million in order to prevent “grotesque” sums from accumulating. Yet the evidence was already clear that jackpot size (rather than offering good odds) was the most effective way to attract new bettors, and thus jackpots were left uncapped. Over the next several years, Lotto America added several more states and reduced the odds of winning to ensure that jackpots rolled over week after week, climbing higher and higher. In 1992, the game was renamed Powerball. Four years later Powerball was joined by another multi-state lottery called the Big Game, later renamed Mega Millions. The games eventually agreed to overlap, and now 44 of the 46 lottery jurisdictions in the nation feature multi-state jackpot games. Thus we now have not one, but two de facto national lotteries. The only thing we are lacking is any meaningful national regulatory framework for lottery practices, which are becoming more predatory as they explore new marketing practices and increasingly addictive games such as Quick Draw and video lottery terminals.
A significant cultural shift has taken place in the years since Collins offered a socially responsible framework for government lotteries, and cultural reservations about the concentration of wealth have long since been put aside. In 2012 the Mega Millions jackpot broke $500 million, leaving behind quaint notions that people might take offense at such accumulation. The rise of such gambling forms has co-evolved with the development of an intensely skewed distribution of wealth in this country over the past 30 years. As countless Americans lay down their bets week after week, they are registering their consent for a pattern of wealth distribution that, not long ago, was considered “obscene” or “grotesque.” These acts of betting are small, and most people experience them as inconsequential. But like the jackpots themselves, these small acts accumulate into something significant. The massive civic participation in government lotteries helps provide the cultural foundation for our jackpot way of life.