The deficit hysteria drumbeat will build to a deafening crescendo.

[Better Believe It]

Nothing’s Really Been Fixed — 5 Ways the Financial Insanity Will Continue
by Les Leopold
May 15, 2010

The deficit hysteria drumbeat will build to a deafening crescendo.

Forget about taxing the super-rich–we’ve got to cut benefits for working people instead. Respected journalists like New York Times columnist David Leonhardt warn us that we’re all living beyond our means. It’s time to tighten our belts or we’ll end up like Greece. No more tax breaks for health and housing. We’ve got to retire later, with less money, and cut our medical expenses. And our wages have to become more “competitive.” But who is “we”? Where are all these high-living people? The average non-supervisory production worker in America (about 75 percent of the workforce) has already seen an 18 percent drop in real wages since the mid 1970s. Meanwhile productivity increased by more than 90 percent. Yet now we’ve got to tighten our belts? Where did all that money from the higher productivity go, if not to us? No surprise here: into the hands of the few.

It all goes back to that most glaring symptom and cause of our psychosis: our insane maldistribution of income, which gets worse and worse every year. The richest 1 percent of Americans now earn more than the bottom 50 percent. Back in 1973, the richest 1 percent of earners collected 8 percent of the national income. By 2006, the top 1 percent got nearly 23 percent of the national income — the highest proportion since 1929. Or look at the pay gap on the job: In 1970, the top 100 CEOs earned 45 times more than their workers, on average. In 2009 the ratio was 1,071 to 1.

The ultimate insanity of our current moment is that the richest investors and the largest bankers in the world just crashed our system, got bailed out by taxpayers, grew even larger, and now are back to earning record profits and bonuses. They caused the biggest jobs crisis since the Great Depression and drove the entire global economy into a ditch–and they could do it again any minute. And now they’re telling us to tighten our belts and act more responsibly?

Here’s the good news. The American people sense something is really wrong. They’re angry at Wall Street and anyone in its pocket. It’s taken a while, but the truth is seeping in. The angry public forced Congress to bring those squirming bankers into their hearing rooms. Unfortunately, Congress caved when it came to actually passing a strong reform bill that would bust up the biggest banks, end windfall profits and curb the gambling. Too bad the average citizen has no way to register his or her anger except to vote the “ins” out. Since. both parties are largely in the pocket of the financial industry (and other industries), it’s hard, if not impossible, to be optimistic about the new “ins.”

Imagine if we could vote for something like a jobs and environment party, free from Wall Street’s money, that was dedicated to putting ALL of our people to work building a truly sustainable economy? Now that would be really insane.

Read the full article at:

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/05/15/help-whats-the-cure-for-financial-insanity/

[Go2Peace]

1. We have had higher levels of debt when measured against GDP (chart included)

It looks alarming until you look at the second chart, which is the more accurate one to watch. As long as our economy comes back and we then take measure to slow it nothing is at risk.

[704wipes]

2. a jobs and environment party

Just fashion it after the old 'Peace and Freedom Party' of Dr. Spock.
He got on the ballot in a fair number of places, even Indiana.

I like the idea -- The Jobs and Environment Party.

[snot]

3. K&R'd