Wealth Care For All
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on March 22, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Monday, March 22nd, 2010If America were one hundred people, one would have forty-two bucks while eighty others shared seven dollars.
Now that they seem to have that “health care for all” thing fixed, maybe America should get to work on WEALTH care for all. I mean, somebody besides the Billionaires For Wealth Care that is, whose motto is “if we’re not broke, don’t fix it”. Yeah, it’s nice that Ben Bernanke is all outraged now that the money has changed hands and he still has a job. But I bet he’s still against the idea of wealth redistribution otherwise, even though he was behind one of the most epic examples of it. But seriously, what is wrong with redistribution of wealth? And when did so many working stiffs start thinking it’s a horrible idea? Let’s ponder for a moment the concepts of “fairness” as it pertains to wealth distribution. If, because of our God-given right to explore our Darwinian right to survival of the fittest in our laissez-faire capitalist society, I guess it’s fair that if you can horde a few billion dollars for yourself, well, more power to ya. At the point where you have 6 or 7 houses and as many cars, as well as virtually no worries in terms of food, clothing, shelter, and FU luxury items, still we might say well, go ahead. You’re a selfish ass, but go ahead. But when you reach this level of surplus and the citizens of the country that got you there are literally starving, I think any reasonable person would say maybe it’s time for you to cut a few bucks loose simply out of human decency. I mean really, you can’t drive seven cars at once, can you? In my opinion, if by this point you haven’t decided on a little serious philanthropy, that’s still your choice. But in the interest of maintaining the “survival of the fittest, every man for himself” theories that you justify your behavior with, I think that’s when it becomes fair for the rest of us to kill you and eat you. Because science shows that money only makes you happy when you know that you have more than others, and you can’t see us anymore through your smoked-glass limo windows. And we just want you to be happy. So once we’ve wrecked your life and you’re unemployed (we weren’t really gonna eat you, you probably taste like crap) you can rediscover that giving even feels good when you’re jobless. On a serious note: you always hear statements like “one percent of Americans have ninety-nine percent of the wealth”, but no-one ever gets the infographic right. They always use plot lines and pie charts. We have a better example below, feel free to share it. Read the rest of this entry »
False Profits Of The Econopocalypse
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on March 4, 2010 by admin in Politics
Thursday, March 4th, 2010We’re in the midst of a great opportunity to create real change, and we’re blowing it, because bankers are smarter than we are.
 Maybe these banker guys just have better connections than the rest of us do |
I’ve often said that two of the best jobs in the world to have are Economist or Weatherman. Who else gets paid so much to be wrong so often? I was reminded of this recently while reading Busted: Dean Baker On The Price We’re Still Paying For The Housing Bubble in The Sun Magazine. Granted, The Sun is about is hippy-dippy liberal as publications get, but Baker says some insightful things in the piece, key amongst them being that “Economists think they’re doing their job if they are saying the same thing everyone else is saying“. He points out that economists tend to say what their bosses want to hear, for risk of damaging their careers; a couple of classic examples of this being of course demi-god Alan Greenspan, who finally fessed up about how wrong he was, and Ben Bernanke, who’s been saying there’s no bubble since 2005. Guess who still has the sweet job? Bernanke just began his second term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve on February 1. What boggles my mind at this point is that now that we KNOW top-level government and banking experts were so wrong, why do they still have jobs? If you were to make a series of decisions that bankrupted the company you work for, what would you expect to happen? The answer is obvious, so why do we – as a people – tolerate the ongoing abuse of the very banks we bailed out? Why didn’t the taxpayers get profit sharing and bonuses for bailing out the banks, instead of the CEO’s that caused the mess? I’ve been whining about the bailouts since day one, and have remained astounded at how little coverage the Quiet Coup has gotten. That Atlantic article just linked to explores what’s really happening in America right now, pointing out that “…the finance industry has effectively captured our government…” and that “…recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform…”. Which is why I’m glad some doomsayers are still saying that we’re Running On Empty or asking if maybe the government is Hiding How it Bailed Out AIG and Goldman. And finally congress at least seems to be looking at it this all as a problem. If you haven’t quite come to understand or accept the fact that your government has been “hijacked by the oligarchs” read this lengthy but level-headed Bill Moyers interview with Simon Johnson. You might start thinking that healthcare is the least of your worries.
Thanks A Trillion, Frank
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on February 2, 2010 by admin in Politics
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010How the GOP will stick you with the biggest economic debacle in history and make you think Obama did it.
 This example uses $100 bills |
It’s time once again for people like you and me to have their heads spun by the incomprehensible numbers that are the US Budget. Personally, ever since I learned about fictitious capital, I’ve had a hard time understanding why the government expects us to pay OUR bills, when THEY operate at a deficit almost all the time. Short of a revolution though, not much can be done about that, so let’s just try to understand the numbers. There are two ways to look at numbers like this. One is to just look at them, and say “Wow. Those are some really big numbers.” The New York Times has a great interactive for doing just that. You can also try to visualize the numbers, as in the graphic at left, which was assembled from the larger images here. We explored this in more detail last year. You can also do what politicians do, and talk about the numbers in ways that sound good but make no sense in reality. That’s what the GOP has been doing for a while, largely with the help of Frank Luntz. Frank Luntz is the guy that was largely instrumental in the success of the GOP over the past decade, through their implementation of his GOP Playbook. If you’ve never given it a look, you should, because it was his language – refined through dial groups and other marketing-style research – that allowed the previous administration to rack up the hugest deficits in history, while making you think they were frugal conservatives. Now that the previous administration has trashed the economy, saying goodbye on the way out with Bush nationalizing the banks and essentially destroying American capitalism as we knew it, it’s time to make it look like it’s all Obama’s fault. And Frank is back, with the words to do it. He’s penned the new talking points in a memo called Language of Financial Reform. That’s a link to the full document, which is also embedded and excerpted below. Read the rest of this entry »
It Takes A Pillage
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on October 26, 2009 by admin in Politics
Monday, October 26th, 2009The public has been slow to react to investment banks’ plundering of the economy, but some protests are finally taking shape in Chicago.
If you’re amongst the nation’s 14 million unemployed, maybe you should see if you can get a job delivering the plasma screen TV’s and cases of champagne that bailed out bankers will be buying to celebrate another year of million-dollar bonuses. Finally, even people like billionaire investor George Soros say you should be angry about the obscene bonuses received by Wall Street. In spite of the fact that the White House “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg is imposing restrictions on certain companies’ compensation, it’s largely agreed that this is pointless, because what bank executives don’t get in salary and cash bonuses, they get through stock options and other benefits. So while New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo releases a study (see No Rhyme or Reason: The ‘Heads I Win, Tails You Lose’ Bank Bonus Culture) that looks in detail at how bailout recipients Merrill and Citigroup both lost more than $27 billion in 2008 but still somehow justified paying nearly $9 billion in bonuses, and while Treasury Department watchdog Neil Barofsky continually points out the appalling misuse of bailout funds, 2009 bonuses at companies like Goldman Sachs will be double what they were in 2008. Call me naiive, but I remain astounded at the idea that one can run global economy into the ground and get a bonus for it. I was originally going to use the analogy of a man with gambling problem for today’s little rant, and thought it a little corny. But Nomi Prins – author of It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street
Jolly Diwaliween & Other Politically Incorrect October Holiday Ideas
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on October 17, 2009 by admin in Holidays
Saturday, October 17th, 2009Did Diwali sneak up on you unexpectedly again this year? No worries, we have a solution. And like last year, the scariest thing about Halloween is probably the economy.
  The author of this article is an alien and is not offended by this costume. |
If you missed the fact that Diwali was a little earlier in October this year, we have a helpful tip. With Halloween only two weeks away, just carve your pumpkins early, stick candles in all of them, and celebrate “Diwaliween”. Just so you don’t make the same mistake in the future, here are the dates for Diwali through 2022. Also on the 17th this year, we have that dose of artificial sweetener called “Sweetest Day”, which – although charming on the surface – was actually created by businessmen in Cleveland in 1921 to sell candy. With equally shallow sentiments, we have United Nations Day on the 24th, when – much like the rest of the year – United Nations members aren’t. By the way, Diwali wasn’t the only celebration we almost overlooked; in case you weren’t aware that there’s energy, October is Energy Awareness Month. For those of you who need all your information in the form of an interactive Flash game, EnergyStar has graciously complied. Because you know, simply listing things would be boring. Who knew that turning off the lights saves energy? Personally, I think they could’ve saved a lot of energy by firing the person that created that interactive graphic. Still to come this month, we of course have Halloween. Last year, the scariest thing about Halloween was the fact that Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson were in charge of averting global economic collapse. This year, the scariest thing is that they don’t seem to have fixed much; retail sales appear to be down about 18% for the season. Perhaps if retailers like Target stopped offending middle-income liberal elitists by selling tasteless “illegal alien” themed costumes, sales would improve. We’re not offended, so in the interest of a healthy economy, we’d like to point out that although Target pulled the product, Amazon and others haven’t. Buy one today