The Case for a Really Bad Recession No Matter Who is President in 2021

You can see the effects of the Coronavirus in the nearly empty restaurants, coffee shops, health clubs, etc…. throughout the United States. The U.S. should have gone into recession sometime in 2016 to 2018 after corporate profits peaked during the third quarter of 2014 and annually during that year. The U.S. always follows a decline in total corporate profits with a recession unless corporate earnings pick up. However, something kept this business expansion going far beyond what it historically should have since corporate earnings have been down for almost six years.

The Fed’s $26 trillion bailout of billionaires and multi-millionaires during the last economic crisis, as well as record corporate debt, helped to prolong the record economic expansion and the stock market bubble far beyond what economic fundamentals would normally have allowed. Record corporate share buybacks have helped the bubble and expansion along, although share buybacks had long been considered market manipulation.

Apple, for example, purchased $320 billion of its own shares over the last seven years pushing its stock price after a seven-way split in 2014 from $92 a share to over $320 until January 2020. The shares have lost $50 so far and are likely to lose a lot more. $320 billion are heading down the drain.

President Donald Trump’s tax cuts which largely went to the rich and their corporations should be given plenty of credit for extending this expansion and stock market bubble. Most corporations used the tax savings for share buybacks. All that did was inflate perhaps the largest US stock market bubble in history. As the number of people filing for unemployment insurance rises, the bubble will have further to fall, and it is likely the business contraction will be worse because of it, and the president should be given plenty of credit for that too.

Income and wealth inequality has continued to grow over the last forty years to historic proportions. Consumer debt is at record levels, as is corporate debt. Gross domestic product growth has been much lower over the last decade than under President’s Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton. The same is true with job growth. Wages have been stagnant for forty years. Home prices have fallen 8 percent since and including the fourth quarter of 2017. Rich investors are pouring out of the mortgage bond markets.

All of this suggests a recession of historic magnitude, among the worst ever. I am not the only one who thinks this way. The Fed over the last ten days has lowered interest rates, and will likely lower them even further this week. Normally that does not happen until after a recession has officially begun. In addition, the president has declared a national emergency and the Democrats and Republicans have a relief package all set for the Senate to vote on this coming week.

None of the share buybacks, federal stimulus packages, and interest rate decreases will likely defeat the impact of the Coronavirus unless they come with a vaccine. Many months from now expect the folks at the National Bureau of Economic Research to get together and determine the recession began in March 2020, maybe April.

President Trump will not be at fault, though his tax cuts for the rich and their corporations will have played a negative role in the coming debacle.

There is a reason why income and wealth inequality has gotten so bad in the United States that three men own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the population.

You can blame the Democrats and the Republicans and the billionaires who pull their strings. For tax cuts for the rich blame Republicans; for exporting millions of jobs and redistributing trillions of dollars of income from the 99 to the 1 percent blame the Democrats, especially the Clinton’s and Joe Biden. For deregulation of Wall Street blame Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. The list goes on but the leaders of the two parties work together behind closed doors to ensure all this stuff occurs.  This is precisely why the two parties have acted so quickly together to fight the Coronavirus and the ensuing economic debacle they have created.

**An hour after I wrote and posted this story the United States Federal Reserve Bank dropped interest rates a full percent down to virtually zero and announced it would purchase $700 billion of U.S. Treasury Notes and Mortgage-Backed Bonds. The recession has not even begun and everybody in power is acting as if the next Great Depression began a year ago. The folks in power know a disaster coming when they see it. Hell, they created it by redistributing trillions of dollars from the 99 to the 1 percent during the last forty+ years. Now the chickens may be coming home to roost.

 

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Politically, the Middle Class Strikes Back Against the Plutocracy: Bernie Sanders Officially Announces His Candidacy for the Presidency: Giving Hope for Change to Americans Squeezed by the Democrats, the Republicans, and the 1 Percent

Good news for the middle class has finally arrived. The 99 percent has a real candidate for US president now. On Tuesday, May 26, US middle class Senator Bernie Sanders officially announced his candidacy to be the Democratic nominee for the US presidency.

Former Wall Street Senator Hilliary Rodham Clinton is Bernie’s only competition for the nomination. Clinton has a boat load of money, but she carries a ton of baggage. Most notably, she and her husband, former Wall Street President Bill Clinton, are notorious redistributers of income from the 99 to the 1 percent.

If you listen to Bernie’s announcement speech above, the defining issue of this election is going to be income distribution, and more specifically, how the 1 percent went from stealing 8 percent of all US income in 1980 to 37 percent today. Who loses on this issue? Clinton does.

Sure the Dems will hold debates, and sure the moderator will make sure the debate issues will be about abortion, gun control, and a ton of social issues, and not income and wealth inequality, and yes the moderator will make certain the television camera’s never light upon Bernie’s face by not calling on him to answer any questions or to respond to Clinton’s answers, but Bernie will win this election, and by a fair margin.

One day after he announced that he intended to run for the presidency, back in April, 75,000 people volunteered to work on his campaign. A month later, he has 200,000 volunteers. By election time, Bernie will have half a million plus, perhaps a million plus, volunteers working on his campaign. Hilliary can spend half a billion dollars, but she can’t beat what Bernie has, volunteers and real hope for the 99 percent, rather than the phoney Obama hope and change!

A message from Bernie:

Friend –

For many months I have been traveling from coast to coast across our country, and have had the opportunity to meet with thousands of good, hard-working, and remarkable people. Like you and me, they are deeply concerned about the future of our country.

They wonder why they are working longer hours for lower wages. They worry about whether their kids will be able to afford college or get decent jobs. They fear that they may not have the savings to retire with dignity and security.

The challenges facing our country are enormous.

After a year of travel, discussion and dialogue, I have decided to be a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. But let’s be clear. This campaign is not about Bernie Sanders. It’s about a grassroots movement of Americans standing up and saying: “Enough is enough. This country and our government belong to all of us, not just a handful of billionaires.”

Our movement needs people like you involved to help it succeed. Add your name now to say you support my campaign for president.

Http://go.berniesanders.com/launch-photos

Bernie Sanders

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Presidential Candidate and US Middle Class Senator Bernie Sanders “Political Revolution” Can Only Come About if He Abandons the Democrats

“Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), on Friday May 15  declared his presidential campaign that began in late April is running to win, and he says the United States will need a “political revolution” to do it. After the Democrats caved on fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Bernie’s political revolution may actually happen, but only if he abandons the Democratic Party and continues his campaign as an Independent.

Last week, Senate Democrats caved in an unprecedented 24-hour period on fast-tracking the maligned Trans-Pacific Partnership – the largest global Income and Political Power Redistribution of all time, falsely marketed as a free trade deal. Tuesday, Democrats in the Senate appeared to have thwarted President Obama’s pressure to ram through the top secret classified treaty that corporate attorneys have spent the last several years writing behind closed doors.

Bernie Sanders opposes this scam.

Check out the rest of the story at:

Bernie Sanders’s “Political Revolution” Can Only Come About if He Abandons the Democrats.

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Immigration Reform: The Republicans Really Aren’t Serious about it, neither are the Democrats, but it is useful to divide their semi-respective bases and keep our eye off income and wealth inequality

The Republican’s in congress have been blustering and proposing measures about border security and immigration reform since they have come into power. It’s all hogwash. Okay, it’s pure unadulterated bull shit.

The Republicans want to lower wages in the United States for the 99 percent, and redistribute the difference between the old wages and the new lower wages into the pockets of their billionaire buddies. So do plenty of Democrats, like Wall Street Senator Ron Wyden. Republicans also want to undermine health and safety laws, and an undocumented working population can hardly find a voice against undermining these laws. That’s why the Republicans really are against immigration reform, or fixing border security. They want to continue the current system of keeping millions of people undocumented, and welcoming new arrivals, so as to continue pushing wages down.

Otherwise, the Republicans would:

* Make it a felony to enter the United States undocumented, which many nations already do. In Mexico, it’s a one to two year prison sentence for entering the nation undocumented the first time. This law would likely reduce undocumented immigration by 90 percent, if enforced.

* Would broadcast loudly that any sort of amnesty would reduce the wages of American citizen’s for eleven years, and reduce the gross domestic product of the United States for eleven consecutive years, according to a study by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). See The Economic Impact of S. 744, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act–Congressional Budget Office, giving a strong rationale for the Republicans to rally the troops against undocumented immigrants, but that’s not going to happen.

* would broadcast loudly that the last amnesty for undocumented workers reduced average American wages for eleven years.

* would pass a law requiring all businesses to use the highly accurate and successful E-Verify system, but that would push a lot of undocumented immigrants out of the job markets, thereby reducing the supply of labor, and raising wage rates.

The Republicans, however, don’t want to mention of these things because:

* They want to lower the wages of US workers, as well as undermine US health and safety laws, because those laws undermine profits.

* Building fences and holding tanks for an increasing undocumented population is big business because most of those things are privatized.

* In other words, keeping people undocumented is big business.

The same can be said for the Democratic Party. They also want to lower American wages, which is what President Obama has done according to the CBO report by allowing up to five million undocumented immigrants to stay and work in the United States. The president’s actions have also likely encouraged more people to arrive undocumented in the United States. According to Pew Hispanic Research poll a few years ago, 80 percent of Mexican adults said they would rather live in the United States than Mexico.

So the president’s actions will also keep the profitable business of catching and holding undocumented immigrants going strong far into the future, even after the US supreme court invalidates his orders.

This issue keeps Americans divided between the law and order Republican grass roots and the bleeding heart liberals. The issue is really about profits, divide and conquer the grassroots, and to keep us from seeing the real picture of income and wealth inequality.

The two parties used to divide us over abortion, but in recent polls, only 1 percent of Americans considered abortion to be a major issue. Undocumented immigration, and immigration in general, were higher up in the polls than abortion. That’s why illegal immigration is the new abortion in the sense that it is a divisive issue that keeps our eyes off the economic prize, and other issues, such as income and wealth inequality, which have been brought about by legislation in the federal government.

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Video: US Senator Elizabeth Warren Speech at National Summit on Raising Wages: What a Contrast to Wall Street Senators Ron Wyden, Mitch McConnell and Orrin Hatch

While US Senator Elizabeth Warren battles for the working families of the United States, Wall Street Senator’s Ron Wyden, Mitch McConnell and Orrin Hatch are launching the latest assault against the middle class by pushing the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) income redistribution agreement through the senate.

Wyden, Hatch, and McConnell support the treaty because it will redistribute more income from the 99 to the 1 percent, which is precisely why Warren opposes this boondoggle.

In her speech, Warren says that 90 percent of the people of the US received about 70 percent of income growth from the 1930s until 1980. Since then, Warren points out, the top 10 percent has gotten 100 percent of all income growth, which is something Wyden, Hatch, and McConnell are working so hard to do. But that’s not quite accurate.

Wyden, Hatch, and McConnell have been trying to push all income growth into the pockets of the 0.01 percent via legislation and trade agreements, such as the Trans Pacific Partnership. They’re close to succeeding since 95 percent of all income growth since 2009 has gone into the pockets of the 1 percent. President Obama is also pushing hard to pass the TPP through congress.

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Video: How Free Trade is Wiping Out the Middle Class by Massively Redistributing Income From the 99 to the 1 Percent

All of your liberal Democratic and conservative Republican congresspeople know free trade treaties have been the primary catalyst that has created the inequality in the United States today, and they also know those treaties have redistributed income from the 99 to the 1 percent. Everyone one of them knows this, and President Obama knows this as well.

And they still want to pass the most destructive, secretly negotiated treaty in US history that will redistribute massive amounts of income from the the 99 to the 1 percent.

They don’t give a hog fart about you and your loved ones and fellow Americans in the least. It’s all about money. Follow the money.

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This is how the corrupt US government works

This is how the corrupt US government works.

Is there a relationship between a company giving campaign contributions and receiving government handouts for their rich shareholders? You bet there is, and it’s called corruption to the core!

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It this the reality of Obamacare and its malcontents?

Obamacare and its malcontents

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Will Hilliary Clinton’s Nightmare Appear In 2016?

Hilliary Clinton is likely to make a run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2016. Polls show she is an overwhelming favorite to defeat such Democratic salwarts as current Vice President Joe Biden.

The Democratic Party currently represents corporate interests almost as much as the Republican Party. The only difference between the two parties is which sections of the top 0.05 income earners and corporations do they represent? Quite naturally, both parties happen to represent Wall Investment firms about equally. But for the most part, the battle between the parties is a battle between the parasites of the 1 percent, which is nearly always against and at the expense of the 99 percent. For example, Democrats represent Costco, while Republicans represent Walmart.

However, things are changing. By 2016, income and wealth will have continued to be redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent via federal, state and local legislation. The corporate propaganda media, from Fox News to the New York Times, will attempt to limit debate on this crucial issue, as it always does. By 2016, the oncoming train wreck called the US economy may be completely off track, or at least, closer to it than it is now, and its already riding only on one rail. This suggests the issues of income and wealth redistribution will become an important topic, despite desperate attempts by the media to turn our attention away from it.

Hilliary Clinton was corrupted by and sold out to the 0.05 percent decades ago. She has a track record to prove it. So who could challenge her and win?

“Any candidate who challenged Clinton would need several key assets. The candidate would almost certainly have to be a woman, given Democrats’ desire to make history again. She would have to amass huge piles of money with relatively little effort. Above all, she would have to awaken in Democratic voters an almost evangelical passion. As it happens, there is precisely such a person. Her name is Elizabeth Warren.”

Check out the videos below in which Senator Warren questions US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geither. The second video is how she wondered at her very first Senate hearing why so few Wall Street banks are ever taken to court.

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According to President Dwight Eisenhower: Stupid has arrived and taken over the Republican Party; but What About the Democratic Party?

According to President Dwight Eisenhower, in the quote below, the stupid crackpots of the Republican Party have taken over the party. They’ve helped to drive the US precariously close to an economic cliff on behalf of a small minority of rich people, and to the detriment of the 99 percent. No doubt, the photos and quotes below are accurate and many Democrats happily smile and laugh when they compare that Socialist Republican Party of the 1950s with what’s going on with the Party nowadays. But where do the Democrats stand on the issues?

Wall Street Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, for example, has proposed to effectively demolish Medicare by privatizing it. And President Obama is happy to reduce social security payments in order to give tax breaks to the 1 percent. Social Security, by the way, has a $2.7 trillion surplus that collects $120 billion in interest every year, so there really is no reason to reduce payments. There are plenty of Democrats who have voiced the same sentiment when it comes to both of these programs.

Senator Wyden is set to become chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and, well, Obama is president. These are just two of many like-minded Democrats in the Federal government. In other words, the stupid people Eisenhower spoke of are not only the vast majority of the elected people of the Republican Party in congress, but they’re also in charge of most of the Democratic Party.

And these people from both parties are driving the rest of us into poverty by redistributing our income to the 1 percent via Federal legislation.

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