Submitted by libbyliberal on Sat, 10/20/2012 - 9:15pm
“Wasn’t that awful what happened to Jill Stein?”
It was the first thing I said to my coworker through the wall of our adjoining cubes when I got back to work on Friday night. R___’s a trusted friend and an avid daily reader and watcher and listener of current events, including what I used to consider the “hard stuff”, like the NYT, Atlantic, New Yorker, NewsHour, NPR, etc. I’ll bring up a news tidbit, R__ can not only be counted on to have heard about it, but to fill in the details for me.
R____ is also extremely respectful to me as a Green Party advocate. He is one of my very few coworkers who wouldn’t respond to my question with, “Who the hell is Jill Stein?” Instead, he responded:
“Why? What happened to Jill Stein?”
Read below the fold...
Submitted by letsgetitdone on Thu, 08/16/2012 - 9:39pm
More on liberty from Ryan's reply to the President's 2011 SOTU. These are about that old Republican hypocritical favorite, “small government.”
”The President and the Democratic Leadership have shown, by their actions, that they believe government needs to increase its size and its reach, its price tag and its power.”
What planet does Congressman Ryan live on? The Democrats have done very little to increase the size of Government. The measure of that is that the average annual growth in Federal Government spending is the lowest it's been in the period since Dwight Eisenhower became President. In addition, Federal spending as a percent of GDP is still extremely low compared to National Government expenditures by the nations mentioned in my last post, and has only risen about 5 percentage points from Bush Administration levels, in response to the economic crisis, which, remember, was caused by policies avidly supported by Paul Ryan and conservative Republicans.
In addition, the President, much to his discredit, has done all he could to keep Government expenditures revenue neutral or revenue positive, beyond expenditures for defense, the stimulus, and increases in social safety net expenditures resulting from the recession. His health care reform bill is a disgraceful attempt to bailout the insurance companies without taking them over, because he would not entertain Medicare for All, since it wasn't “revenue neutral.” Never mind that enhanced Medicare for All would have saved the private sector $900 Billion per year in Medical Costs, and that the stimulus involved in an additional $800 Billion of Federal deficit spending would probably have created an addition 2 million jobs, at least. Read below the fold...
Submitted by letsgetitdone on Tue, 07/24/2012 - 9:48pm
By
L. Randall Wray
[Blogger's Note: This post was authored By Professor L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Research Director with the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability and Senior Research Scholar at The Levy Economics Institute. It originally appeared at Economonitor's Great Leap Forward Blog and is cross-posted here with permission of the author.]
As the Global Financial Crisis rumbles along in its fifth year, we read the latest revelations of bankster fraud, the LIBOR scandal. This follows the muni bond fixing scam detailed a couple of weeks ago, as well as the J.P. Morgan trading fiasco and the Corzine-MF Global collapse and any number of other scandals in recent months. In every case it was traders run amuck, fixing “markets” to make an easy buck at someone’s expense. In times like these, I always recall Robert Sherrill’s 1990 statement about the S&L crisis that “thievery is what unregulated capitalism is all about.”
After 1990 we removed what was left of financial regulations following the flurry of deregulation of the early 1980s that had freed the thrifts so that they could self-destruct. And we are shocked, SHOCKED!, that thieves took over the financial system.
Nay, they took over the whole economy and the political system lock, stock, and barrel. They didn’t just blow up finance, they oversaw the swiftest transfer of wealth to the very top the world has ever seen. They screwed workers out of their jobs, they screwed homeowners out of their houses, they screwed retirees out of their pensions, and they screwed municipalities out of their revenues and assets. Read below the fold...
Submitted by a little night ... on Wed, 07/11/2012 - 1:40pm
Submitted by DCblogger on Sat, 01/21/2012 - 3:13pm
Talks set out terms of US mortgage deal
The banks would receive less credit if they reduce balances for loans packaged in bonds or by reducing monthly payments through cuts in borrowers’ interest rates. In one scenario, the banks would get about 50 cents of credit for every $1 of reduced mortgage principal in home loans used to back bonds. In another scenario, balances on loans held on the banks’ books that are cut in the first year of the deal would receive $1.25 credit. This means, under certain circumstances, the aid to homeowners would be less than the aggregate size of the settlement, people familiar with the matter said.
Read below the fold...
Submitted by cg.eye on Wed, 10/26/2011 - 4:29am
If not impossible-- I wonder if a big NYT loan came due....
NEW YORK — Bankers have an odd- sounding problem these days: They are awash in cash.
Droves of consumers and businesses unnerved by lurching markets have been taking their money out of risky investments and socking it away in bank accounts, where it does little to stimulate the economy.
Although financial institutions are not yet turning away customers, they are trying to discourage some depositors from parking that cash with them. With fewer attractive lending and investment options for that money, it is harder for the banks to turn it around for a healthy profit.
Read below the fold...
Submitted by lambert on Sat, 10/08/2011 - 8:22pm
Utterly clueless:
"The one thing I can tell you for sure," [Bloomberg] said earlier in the interview, "is if anybody in the city breaks the law we will arrest them and turn them over the district attorneys."
BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA??!?!
ZOMG. I haven't laughed so hard in ages! Anybody?! Read below the fold...
Submitted by a little night ... on Tue, 08/23/2011 - 12:19am
Submitted by Tony Wikrent on Wed, 07/20/2011 - 10:33am
Submitted by JuliaWilliams on Tue, 06/28/2011 - 12:11pm
Submitted by JuliaWilliams on Sun, 06/05/2011 - 6:11am
Submitted by libbyliberal on Thu, 04/21/2011 - 8:39pm
(567 Obama-dumping days until 2012 election-Hugh's Obama's Scandals List)
Sometimes I come across an electrifying article that inspires simultaneous dread, enlightenment and validation. An article providing that AHA moment, confirming my worst suspicions and connecting some troubling, global-big-picture dots. Dots-connecting that the pen-flashlight narrow, manipulatively selective, milli-second illuminations by Western corporate media don’t begin to help ordinary Americans or other Westerners achieve. Read below the fold...
Submitted by twig on Thu, 02/24/2011 - 4:05pm
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the administration has a new scam scheme plan to make the foreclosure mess go away.
The Obama administration is trying to push through a settlement over mortgage-servicing breakdowns that could force America's largest banks to pay for reductions in loan principal worth billions of dollars.
Read below the fold...
Submitted by twig on Thu, 02/10/2011 - 11:06pm
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