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Posts Tagged ‘economic’

The Guardian of the UK, normally a straight forward and honest broker of news and commentary, has bought into the lying bull shit of the US corporate press. Some Guardian idiot named Larry Elliot wrote,

“America’s growth figures have come as a nasty shock to Wall Street. For nine months the stock market had been rising on hopes that the world’s biggest economy was on the mend. But the latest data suggests the US recovery is still very much work in progress.”

No, no, no, the stock market was rising because corporate profits are at record levels! Apparently, Elliot doesn’t seem to understand the connection (simple cause and effect) between stock prices and corporate earnings. He’s too dense to understand that the only way those earnings can grow in the face of worldwide declining demand is by redistributing income from the 99 to the 1 percent. Shipping jobs overseas is the easy way to push stock prices up because the difference between the old wages here and the new lower wages overseas increases corporate profits year after year. Studies by the Federal Reserve show that between 1.2 to 2.4 million jobs are shipped from the US to elsewhere every year.

It’s easy to predict slower growth in the US because the demand for goods and services has been redistributed into the fat wallets of the super wealthy. They’ve used their control of the US government to pass legislation that does this. They now take home over 31 percent of total income produced in the US, compared to about 8 percent thirty-three years ago. That leaves the rest of us with little or no money to buy goods and services to the point where economic growth can be vibrant, like it used to be. Meanwhile, the rich invest in things like politicians and derivatives, which does nothing to create demand, but does everything to destroy it. The redistribution process is growing. That means the economy will continuously weaken, although it is possible there might be occasional and abnormal historically weak growth spurts.

At least Elliot did get something right, although not completely:

“The even worse news is that the US economy may slow down in the second quarter. Not only will activity be impeded – perhaps severely – by cuts in federal programs, but consumers are unlikely to continue running down their savings to finance their spending in the way they did in the first three months of the year.”

What he doesn’t say is that consumers are unlikely to continue running down their savings” or use their credit cards when their income is continuously being redistributed to the 1 percent by their government. (more…)

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The US Banana Republic: On our way to becoming what we used to be.

“Incomes for the bottom 90 percent of Americans only averaged a mere $59 more in 2011 than in 1966. For the top 10 percent, by the same measures, average income rose by $116,071 to $254,864, an increase of 84 percent over 1966.

During the same period, members of the top 1 percent saw their incomes grow by 275 percent.
And the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent – their 2011 average income of $23.7 million was $18.4 million more per taxpayer than in 1966.

Another way to illustrate the huge disparity: the six heirs to the Walmart fortune had a net worth equivalent to the bottom 41.5 percent of Americans combined in 2010.”
Let that sink in.

How can anyone support vulture capitalism? America has been a plutocracy for decades now, controlled by these greedy socio/psychopaths.”

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US Corruption: The Stink has been Rising to the Clouds

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The economy sucks under President Barack Obama, especially for those under the age of thirty, but if you’re a member of the top 1/2 of 1 percent, you’re doing pretty good since the president intends to use legislation to redistribute income from the bottom to the top. That’s what he’s been doing. That’s why corporate profits are at an all time high when demand is so slack. That’s why the Dow Jones average is at an all time high, because income is continuously being redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent. Free trade is a perfect example of an income redistribution scam. The president has signed three of them into law, despite government studies showing how they result in job losses. Check out the following link. http://johnhively.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/the-biggest-income-redistribution-scam-free-trade-treaties/

Still, for the 99 percent it’s a better economy than when George W. Bush left the nation in ruins. However, it’s not as good as under any president since Herbert Hoover (and Bush) left the nation in shambles in March 1933. That’s a lot of presidents.

Think about it this way. Under President Jimmy Carter, the US added 230,000 jobs a month on average, with an economy with 60 percent of the population and 60 percent of the gross domestic product as today. In comparison, it’s an awesome month for Obama if the economy creates 180,000 jobs thirty-three years after Carter left office. Why the difference? It’s simple. When Carter was president, the 1 percent took home about 8 percent of the total national income, compared to slightly over 30 percent today. That’s why there’s such a significant difference in the performance of the economy under Carter and Obama.

The 1 percent invest their money in derivatives, like credit default swaps and bonds backed by home mortgages, and things that produce nothing, and they typically are a drain on the economy. The 99 percent use their money to buy goods and services, which stimulates job growth and wage increases. That’s why income distribution is so important. Obama knows this, but unlike President Franklin Roosevelt, Obama refuses to do anything about it. The president also allows Wall Street criminals to go free, something not even the corrupt and incompetent George W. Bush did when Worldcom and other companies committed criminal acts.

In other words, Obama has no intention of doing anything that makes the nation so ill. His real base is a slice of the 1 percent. Still, give him some credit where credit is due. Okay, not that much credit is due to him except for the gains on Wall Street and the record setting corporate profits. That hasn’t done anything for the 99 percent except suck them financially dry. Check out the graph below.

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Is this poster correct?

The poster is correct, but only to a certain degree. Obama bears some responsibility for the slow creation of jobs. First of all, Charlie Brown was dumb enough to get fooled by Lucy time and time again. Likewise, President Obama was stupid enough to get fooled by his own economic advisers over and over again, notably by the Wall Street toadie, Lawrence Summers.

For example, Obama’s original stimulus package was about three times too small to engineer an economic recovery, and there were plenty of worthwhile economists who said so, such as Nobel prize winners Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz.

Second of all, Obama continues federal policies that redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent, his masters, such as the Crown Brothers of General Dynamics. Those policies began under Ronald Reagan, and include such legislation as free income redistribution trade treaties. Obama has already signed three of these treaties into law knowing they would cost the 99 percent jobs, and the difference between the old higher wages here and the new lower wages there are going into the pockets of the 1 percent via higher corporate profits, rising dividends and surging share prices. Obama knows this. He isn’t stupid, like Charlie Brown. Now the Obama man is negotiating the biggest free income redistribution treaty in USA history, the Trans Pacific Partnership. This scam will redistribute even more income from the 99 to the 1 percent than Nafta. The Guardian calls it “Nafta on Steroids.”

Sure Republicans obstructed Obama’s agenda for the last four years, but Obama’s agenda included sucking the middle class dry and shifting their former income into the already fat wallets of the 1 percent. So he bears quite a bit of the responsibility for our slow economic recovery.

Obama also failed to recognize that the redistribution of income from the 99 to the 1 percent over the previous 26 years has stifled the demand for goods and services from the 99 percent because they earn less money than they used to. That stifles job growth and has lead to the anemic recovery. Not only that, Obama’s agenda has invigorated America’s economic slow motion collapse.

As for the 1 percent, they usually invest their money in things that destroy rather than create jobs, such as derivatives, buying politicians and legislation, and free income redistribution treaties.

Worse yet, the 1 percent now steal about 31 percent of all US income, compared to 8 percent 31 years ago. That means the 99 percent earn 69 percent compared to 92 percent in 1980.

That’s why President Jimmy Carter looks like such a genius compared to the president’s that have followed him. The deficit was historically small under his watch compared to when Obama, Bush and Reagan have been president, but 208,000 jobs a month were created under Carter, and with rising wage rates. That was with an economy with 60 percent of the GNP and population as we have today. It was because the 99 percent had way more money to spend then, making job growth far more robust compared with now. Obama knows this as surely as I do. But he dare not do much to alleviate the burdens of the middle class for fear of angering his corporate backers. Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden is very much the same as Obama, in this regard.

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Are you listening President Obama? Of course not. The banksters have you in their hip pocket. That’s why not a single attempt to prosecute the destroyers of the economy has occurred. Iceland engineered an economic recovery by doing the opposite of what the Obama administration has done. The government bailed out the people and jailed the banksters.

How much is the US government rotted by big money? You know. That’s all the money the 1 percent have received via tax cuts and legislation that redistributes income from the 99 to the 1 percent, such as free trade income redistribution treaties that continue to destroy the middle class and US economy? People were prosecuted for the Savings and Loan scandal that cost the taxpayers $124 billion, but nobody on Wall Street was prosecuted at all for the most recent and much larger financial crisis. They’ve been bailed out. Hows that for justice?

These people are not prosecutable because of the tax cuts for the rich that have been used to rot the guts out of the US government and the corporate wing of the US Supreme Court, which includes Chief Justice John Roberts, and the Koch Brothers drones Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia. All of these members are on the payroll of the Koch Brothers in one way or the other. It’s a rigged game.

Eliminating the Bush tax cuts would be a step in the right direction, but hardly enough steps to solve the corruption in the courts and the government.

Click the link below to see what Iceland has done.

Iceland Fixed its Economy By Jailing the Banksters

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http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/395066_497688703598949_1851174490_n.jpg

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The Republicans are threatening to tank the economy for the third time since Obama became president if they don’t get what they want. The American people are being held hostage by economic terrorists of the right.

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman has challenged President Barack Obama to do the right thing about the so-called fiscal cliff and the Republican threat. “So President Obama has to make a decision, almost immediately, about how to deal with continuing Republican obstruction. How far should he go in accommodating the G.O.P.’s demands?

My answer is, not far at all. Mr. Obama should hang tough, declaring himself willing, if necessary, to hold his ground even at the cost of letting his opponents inflict damage on a still-shaky economy. And this is definitely no time to negotiate a “grand bargain” on the budget that snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.”

Click the link below for his complete article.

Paul Krugman–Let's Not Make a Deal–New York Times

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Wall Street Mitt the Twit of the Twit Twins economic scam will only make things worse for the 99 percent. He plans to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent. Here are seven facts about the Mitt Scam that you should know about from Thinkprogress.org.

The scam…”gives the rich and corporations a massive tax cut. Romney’s proposal to give every American a tax cut is a giveaway to the rich that is four-times larger than the Bush tax cuts. Half the benefit would go to the richest five percent of Americans, and each member of the top 0.1 percent would get at least a $264,000 cut. Romney says he will balance the cuts with the closure of tax loopholes, but he can’t name which ones he’d close and even if he did, the plan wouldn’t generate enough revenue to offset revenue lost to tax reductions. His corporate tax plan, meanwhile, results in more than $1 trillion in tax cuts.”

Mitt’s scam also “raises taxes on the middle class. A Tax Policy Center analysis found that Romney’s plan would raise taxes on middle class families by up to $2,000 if he were to keep his promise to maintain the current level of revenue. A later analysis that added in the cost of Romney’s corporate tax cuts nearly doubled the size of the tax hike on the middle class to as much as $4,000 for a family of four.”

Click the link below for the complete story.

Seven Facts About Wall Street Mitt's Economic Scam He Doesn't Want You to Know — Think Progress.org

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The Wall Street Journal continued its role of propaganda machine for the 1 percent by issuing a story about how our current economic recovery is the weakest since the Great Depression.

The Journal picked up the story from the Associated Press, another piece of the propaganda machine of the 1 percent. Other parts of the machine picked up the story, including the Oregonian newspaper, one of the most viciously anti-middle class mouthpieces of the 1 percent.

The purpose of these corporate propaganda machines is to keep any discussion having to do with income redistribution from the 99 percent to the 1 percent under raps. And so, the story of our economic recovery went like this:

“Economic growth has never been weaker in a postwar recovery. Consumer spending has never been so slack. Only once has job growth been slower.

More than in any other post-World War II recovery, people who have jobs are hurting: Their paychecks have fallen behind inflation.

Many economists say the agonizing recovery from the Great Recession, which began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009, is the predictable consequence of a housing bust and a grave financial crisis.

Credit, the fuel that powers economies, evaporated after Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008. And a 30 percent drop in housing prices erased trillions in home equity and brought construction to a near-standstill.”

Note that the authors blame the “housing crisis and a grave financial crisis” for our lame economy. There is no mention of the redistribution of income that began during the reign of the “Great Liar,” President Ronald Reagan.

For example, politicians of both political parties know that free trade treaties are vehicles for redistributing income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent. These treaties make it easy for US corporations to ship, or create, jobs overseas. The difference between the old, higher wages in the US and the new, lower wages overseas are directed into the bulging wallets of the super rich via higher corporate profits, rising dividends and soaring share prices.

That’s precisely why the 1 percent have been able to rob the 99 percent of much of their income, curtailing the demand for goods and services, making the current recovery the weakest on record.

The 1 percent received about 7 percent of the total income produced in the US thirty-two years ago, but now their ability to purchase legislation (free income redistribution trade treaties, for example) from their plutocrats in public office, such as Wall Street Senator Ron “Hedge Fund Lover” Wyden, have allowed the 1 percent to steal between 27 and 30 percent of the total national income.

Nowadays, the 99 percent receive between 70 and 73 percent of the total national income compared to about 93 percent 32 years ago. By any statistical measurement, the economy was much stronger way back then and the most significant difference between then and now is that a ton of income has been legislatively redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent. Demand for goods and services is weak now compared to then. It’s obvious. That’s how we have such a weak economy.

And that’s why consumer spending is so weak. That’s also why there was a housing bubble, and that’s why there was a “financial crisis.” In other words, the propaganda machine is working overtime to distance their readers and listeners from the reality of income redistribution to pure bull shit. We’re frogs in the water that is slowly heating up, but now the water is near to boiling. Wake up!

One behalf of the 1 percent, the corporate propaganda organs, such as the Wall Street Journal and the Oregonian newspaper, lied to us about Trickle Down Economics, deregulation, free trade and numerous other income redistribution scams. They’re still up to it. Don’t let them lie to you any more.

Related stories

US economic recovery is weakest since World War II–Wall Street Journal

Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?– Johnhively.wordpress.com

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