debt-driven economy

Debt and the Finance Sector

Thu, 07/23/2009 - 1:46pm — a little night ...

I've been wanting to write about the way the Finance sector came to dominate our economy, and what that means: a debt-driven economy. Barry Ritholz at The Big Picture has provided a graph that is certainly worth a thousand words:

Total Debt-to-GDP ratio versus Financial Profits

The chart compares the rise in Total Credit Market Debt (as a percentage of the GDP) to Finanacial Profits (as a percentage of the GDP). And - surprise! - they rise in tandem!

That's about all you need to know. The rest is commentary.

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I support Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Per capita health care spending (2007):

United States: $7290
Switzerland: $4417
France: $3601
United Kingdom: $2992
Average of OECD developed nations: $2964
Italy: $2686
Japan: $2581

-- Bob Somerby

The text of HR676 (Medicare For All) as PDF (30 pages). The FAQ. Compare HR3200 with HR676.

Medicare for All would save $350 billion a year (study in New England Journal of Medicine).

In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program*." -- Bill Moyers.

* Medicare For All.

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23:30:36 hipparchia and to you too!
11:47:14 lambert Happy Thanksgiving in chat, too!
18:12:59 lambert Simple answers to simple questions: Yes.
18:00:47 BDBlue That's true on healthcare, but I was talking about the Fed bill. When the WH surrogates try to water it down, will the blogs fall in line?
16:32:33 lambert They'll pass something, anything. They need to declare victory.
15:40:03 BDBlue Re VL's post on the A-list, it will be interesting to watch the discussion of the bill on the blogs as the WH inevitably tries to kill it via various surrogates. Will we see the veal pen in action? And I agree this bill is potentially huge.
13:36:52 lambert Agree on Ron Paul and the Fed.
13:23:52 brucedixon interesting.... Glen tells me that neither the fake "jobs summit" nor the familiar wailing of conyers about his being disappointed with the prez are the big story. the most important thing happening in DC right now is the Ron Paul bill which wd require the Fed to be audited.
13:57:03 brucedixon I think my colleague Glen Ford is writing on it this week in BAR so I will just co-sign whatever he says.
22:03:36 Valley Girl I'd sure like Bruce Dixon's take on the Conyers comments. Just emailed him.
21:03:43 lambert Thanks, Jeff.
18:16:03 Jeff W lambert, I wrote to NOW about that Elizabeth Warren video not playing and got a response of sorts back, which I sent to you as a private PM. Just FYI.
02:28:28 hipparchia the first thing they told us my volunteer training: humans are natural born rescuers.
00:18:34 lambert One more study... [url]
23:57:37 lambert Joe Bageant is god. [url]
01:00:54 lambert The actuary was a whistleblower under Bush, too. [url]
00:47:48 hipparchia that's ok, jason stands ready to help smear the actuary quoted in that wapo article [url]
23:16:16 lambert Elders under the bus on Medicare, naturally. [url]
20:11:01 lambert 19:49:09 +100

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