Now that Goldman Sach's back in the black, Geithner says the economy's on the mend? True for you?

[Octafish]

The guy's in Saudi Arabia, shilling for the dollar: Geithner: Recession easing, U.S. on the mend

The economy certainly has been pure gold for some folks: Goldman Sachs Posts Record Profit, Beating Estimates



The “things are turning around” story is not true for me and many, many of those where I'm at, the Motor City. If anything, things are worse, here and across the country -- True Unemployment Rate Already At 20%.

And the shrinking middle class? It keeps getting squeezed tighter and tighter, if not smaller and smaller: The Mystery of the Missing Unemployed Man: On Jobs and Banks

What's more, this "recession" seems to be helping the usual suspects -- meaning the rich are in a position to seize the opportunity to get richer and the poor, cast to their own devices, can only get poorer. Gellerstedt sees opportunity in recession.

Should this the natural order of things? I think not.

If we are still a functioning democracy, we need to rethink things. That means rebuilding the economy -- from the ground up and from the top down. Otherwise, we're heading straight for a disaster where there probably won't be much left to argue about.

If we don't -- meaning address economic inequality, poverty, homelessness, vanished jobs, underfunded and undervalued public education, environmental degradation, climate change, crumbling infrastructure, urban decay and all the rest of the good causes that the conservative nutjobs decry as the bleetings of "bleeding heart liberalism" -- it will be remembered as the real shame of our times. You see, We the People were in a position do something about it.

[meegbear]

1. As Krugman (I think) pointed out ...

it's probably going to be a "jobless recovery".

[Octafish]

3. If so, who'll have money to make the economy go? Besides Geithner's chums, I mean...

People need jobs. That's why Henry Ford, who paid his workers $5 a day in 1914, was a genius -- it was a living wage at the time and the workers could buy what they made.

Geithner's dirty little secret

By F William Engdahl
Asia Times
Apr 3, 2009

US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, in unveiling his long-awaited plan to put the US banking system back in order, has refused to tell the dirty little secret of the present financial crisis. By refusing to do so, he is trying to save de facto bankrupt US banks that threaten to bring the entire global system down in a new more devastating phase of wealth destruction.

The Geithner proposal, his so-called Public-Private Partnership Investment Program, or PPPIP, is not designed to restore a healthy lending system that would funnel credit to business and consumers. Rather it is yet another intricate scheme to pour even more hundreds of billions of dollars directly to the leading banks and Wall Street firms responsible for the current mess in world credit markets, without demanding they change their business model.

Yet, one might say, won't this eventually help the problem by getting the banks back to health?

Not the way the Barack Obama administration is proceeding. In defending his plan on US TV recently, Geithner, a protege of Henry Kissinger and before his present posting president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, argued that his intent was "not to sustain weak banks at the expense of strong". Yet this is precisely what the PPPIP does. The weak banks are the five largest banks in the system.

The "dirty little secret" that Geithner is going to great degrees to obscure from the public is very simple. There are only at most perhaps five US banks that are the source of the toxic poison causing such dislocation in the world financial system. What Geithner is desperately trying to protect is that reality. The heart of the present problem, and the reason ordinary loan losses are not the problem as in prior bank crises, is a variety of exotic financial derivatives, most especially credit default swaps.

CONTINUED...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KD03Dj02.html

Where's our "living wage" meegbear? I've been working for 34 years. Now it looks like I'll have to work twice as hard for the next 34 just to keep the lights on, let alone set some aside to retire (such a sweet, sweet word).

[inna]

6. thanks for the link. i like Engdahl and Atimes, but i missed that article. nt

[meegbear]

7. You're asking me sunshine?

I took a forced 40% paycut earlier this year. I'm almost back up to my original rate, but that's because someone was laid off and I got the money (and the work). I am rebuilding myself now and probably won't be able to retire.

[chill_wind]

2. Kicking for those still in serious denial. n/t

[Octafish]

8. The "Goldman Sachs Effect" Transfers the Strategic Advantage to China

History isn't dead, but freedom is another matter...

The "Goldman Sachs Effect" Transfers the Strategic Advantage to China

William R. Hawkins
Thursday, September 28, 2006

William R. Hawkins is Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the U.S. Business and Industry Council.

A front page article in the September 25 issue of Defense News reported that China has tried to blind U.S. satellites with high-powered lasers, which can disable electro-optical satellites like the giant Keyhole spacecraft or even interfere with radar satellites like the Lacrosse. Satellites have become critical to American military communications, surveillance, and targeting. Thus they are at the heart of the strategy to transform the U.S. military through net-centric warfare systems.

That China, a strategic rival of the United States in East Asia and increasingly in this hemisphere, would seek to disrupt American capabilities should not be surprising. There have been reports for many years that Beijing was working on a variety of anti-satellite weapons. What is truly alarming is the response from the Bush White House, or, rather, the lack thereof.

According to the Defense News report, “Pentagon officials, however, have kept quiet about China’s efforts as part of a Bush administration policy to not anger Beijing, which is a leading U.S. trading partner and seen as key to dealing with North Korea and Iran. Even the Pentagon’s recent China report failed to mention Beijing’s tests. Rather, after a contentious debate, the White House directed the Pentagon to limit its concern to one line.”

The desire of the White House not to “anger” Beijing is an attitude apparently not reciprocated in China, where there seems to be no fear of angering America by testing weapons against U.S. targets – or even, on occasion, threatening nuclear attack against the U.S. homeland. Who instills fear, and who shows fear, is a measure of the real balance of power in a relationship.

SNIP (with lots o' names)...

The trade-off between economics and security works against the United States on both ends. It is well known that Beijing manipulates the value of its currency to gain a competitive advantage against American and other trade rivals. Chinese officials claim that reforming their currency policy would cause economic turmoil, harming China's “fragile” banks and financial sector. Paulson has accepted this explanation, and on his recent trip to Beijing said the U.S. would be “patient.” Yet, last May, while Paulson was still Goldman Sachs CEO, the firm invested $2.6 billion in the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, the country’s largest bank. It is the largest single investment Goldman Sachs has ever made. According to a Sept. 28 report in the Wall Street Journal, “when ICBC, as the bank is known, lists its shares on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock markets next month, the value of Goldman's stake could double based on current demand for the offering.” So much for “fragile” Chinese banks!

CONTINUED...

http://www.americaneconomicalert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=2567

So that's why manufacturing is key to a nation's prosperity.

[autorank]

4. Geithner is smoking some good stuff, I'll say that for him k*r#5 proudly

The Goldman Sachs mend is a point of real contention.

However, the biggest donors never lose when The Money Party has it's way.

[Octafish]

11. Scoop is tops!

... including Catherine Austin Fitts:

"One of the things that is interesting about reading conspiracy theory is that much of what folks think is conspiracy is really many people acting in concert to make or protect their money."

Unless we name names and give the crooks the what's for, we'll be worse, economically speaking, than Haiti.

[autorank]

12. Catherine was one of the earliest to blow the whistle

And she survived!

Yet, "Scoop" is great and so is this OP.

People really need to push for justice here.

:hi:

[Hydra]

5. Unless we have a new deal, a lot of people are going to die

Not that anyone in Washington cares.

[autorank]

13. That's the true message - those in power don't care

Not that they enjoy suffering or would oppose it's alleviation, they just don't want to share any of their
gains to help with the process. They'll just walk over or around the bodies.


Graph: The banks received $3.2 trillion through the Federal Reserve,
a $700 billion bailout in October, 2008 and 2009 budget item for another
$750 billion bailout. An unspecified number of citizens will benefit
from the recently passed $787 billion stimulus bill.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0903/S00010.htm

Of that small piece for us, very little is direct aid. That's the "stimulus" bill.

So, you're right, they don't care.

[truedelphi]

16. What a most excellent graph. In fact, it is far better, due to

Its accuracy, than the Graph that Geithner used to tout the need for the stimulus package.

[smiley_glad_hands]

9. Maybe Goldman Sachs is the govenrments plunge protection team?

Maybe as part of those duties GS buys and sells stocks in a way to prop the stock market?

Maybe their just crooks?

Who knows, but either way, our system is fucked.

edited for spelling

[Karenina]

10. BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!

:rofl::rofl::rofl: :toast:

[truedelphi]

14. I'd be laughing with Karenina, except that

Way back during the crash of Oct 1987, someone or some single entitiy made a huge BUY that saved the system on that Black Friday.

It has never been revealed who did the buy, even though it was a historic buy and even though it kept the economy afloat.

Well Goldman Sachs is saving Goldman Sachs, and so all the international Commentators were saying late last night on the Money Channel how tremendously well the balance sheet of Sachs is doing.

But the same commentators were not at all enthusiastic about the USA or even other banks. None of them broached the common, internet spread notion that Goldman Sachs, at this point in history, IS THE USA government. I think "Christian" got the memo. He commented a great deal on reasons for GS' recovery without ever mentioning how marvelous it is for one (now successful) firm to have had Paulson engineer the collapse of rival Bear Stearns, and then to have Kashkari see to it that AIG became a pass through for GS. And with Geithner's Chief of Staff a GS baby, hey - it is fair to say that GS is the major holder of this Administration's puppet strings. And since I AM NOT BEING paid by MSNBC, what can happen to me?

Glub, glub, get your hands off me, I love the President, no don't ......... (I thought the safe room would protect me better than this!)

[Mari333]

15. Geithner lives in WooWooLand.

On a planet far faraway.

[ieoeja]

17. To answer the question in the title ... yes.

We weren't going to get bonuses this year. Then they changed their mind at the last minute as revenues improved the last month (our fiscal year runs through June).

So, yes, it is on the mend for me personally.


On the other hand, the guy living in a room in my basement is still unemployed.

[G_j]

18. right on, Octafish

here's one for you!


The Smithsonian Institute Blues (Or The Big Dig)

Come on down t' the big dig
Come on down t' the big dig
Come on t' the big dig

Singin' the Smithsonian Institute blues
Singin' the Smithsonian Institute blues

The way it's goin' La Brea tar pits
I know you just can't lose
The new dinosaur is walkin' in the old one's shoes

Come on down t' the big dig
Can't get around the big dig

This may be premature but if I'm wrong
You can just say it's the first time I was happy t' be confused
Singin' the Smithsonian Institute blues

Alll you new dinosaurs
Now it's up t' you t' choose
It sure looks funny for a new dinosaur
T' be in an old dinosaur's shoes
Dina Shore's shoes
Dinosaur shoes

C'mon down to the big dig
You can't get around the big dig
C'mon to the big dig
Ya can't get around the big dig

Singin' the Smithsonian Institute blues


``` Don Van Vliet