Matt Taibbi appeared on the Parker/Spitzer Show. As always, he is eloquent and funny in describing the sad state of our nation's failed political and economic system. His new book "Griftopia" explains how the economic crisis happened. He, like John Edwards, identifies Two Americas. There are the grifters and then the rest of us. Taibbi Says Tea Party Doing Heavy Lifting for BanksRead below the fold...
Here's an easy question: would you rather go to jail for a few hours with a bunch of friends or die?
Here's a poorly kept secret: the wars that a majority of Americans want ended are not ending, and the war machine that a majority of Americans want cut back is growing.
Here's a situation that is not secret at all but too horrifying for us to acknowledge: if the war machine continues on its current course, we will not survive it economically, environmentally, or with any civil liberties or representative government intact. If we do not reach those catastrophes it will be because blowback or nuclear proliferation takes us out first. Read below the fold...
Doug Henwood's latest issue of "Left Business Observer" is out. (Subscription is $22 a year for 11 issues.) Henwood wrote the visionary book "Wall Street" in 1997 predicting this mess we are in now. Henwood reminds us that in "All the King's Men", Willie Stark is urged not to speak so wonkish and instead just say that "he's gonna soak the fat boys." Read below the fold...
The recent weeks brought a flood of quarterly reports as companies on calendar years rushed to file their 10-Qs with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In that welter of documents, one thing stood out: Even executives are worried who’s going to pay for health care.
In a recent post I wrote about “The Real Solution to the Fiscal Sustainability Problem.” But I was just kidding, folks. That was a solution only for people who think that Fiscal Sustainability means controlling the growth of the national debt, and stabilizing and reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio. That view of Fiscal Sustainability, however, doesn't trace the connection from a coherent idea of fiscal sustainability to the national debt and the debt-to-GDP ratio. So, let's start from such a view and see where it leads us. Fiscal Sustainability is: Read below the fold...
To understand just how bad the 112th Congress, elected on November 2nd and taking office on January 3rd, is likely to be for peace on Earth, one has to understand how incredibly awful the 110th and 111th Congresses have been during the past four years and then measure the ways in which things are likely to become even worse. Read below the fold...
As I've blogged many times before, I don't think there is a “fiscal sustainability problem” as the people who are presently deluging us with exhortations to bring the national debt and the debt-to-GDP ratio define it. That's because I define “fiscal sustainability” in a different way than they do, as I've explained in another post. In this one, however, for the sake of argument, I'll accept the deficit hawk/dove notion of “fiscal sustainability” and offer a different and, I think, much better solution to that problem than any of the deficit-reduction Commissions, groups, and individual members of these bodies are proposing to us now. Read below the fold...
We expected to see an all-out assault on Social Security and progressive taxation in November, and we expected it to come under the banner of "deficit reduction." That was always the plan: Wait until after the election, when a lame-duck Congress could pass the preferred policies with the least political blowback. Then release a flurry of like-minded proposals and supportive editorials to create the illusion of consensus, capped by a coordinated media blitz to pressure the President and Congress into accepting them.
This week and last we've seen the appearance of four plans for “deficit and debt reduction.” Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson started things off by releasing their Co-Chair's plan. Read below the fold...
In a beautifully simple post that should crystallize everything for you, Professor Stephanie Kelton of the University of Missouri at Kansas City crystallizes the logic of the Sectoral Financial Balance Model for President, Obama, the Catfood Commission, the deficit hawks and doves and you and me. She says:
In a 'closed economy' (one without foreign trade), the government's budget position is, by accounting logic -- the negative of the private sector's (firms and households combined) position. Thus, a public sector DEFICIT is equal to the private sector's SURPLUS. To the penny.
So, in a closed economy, a Federal Government budget deficit adds to private sector financial assets, while a Government surplus represents a leakage and subtracts financial assets from the private sector. Or more briefly, Government deficits make private individuals richer; Government surpluses make private individuals poorer. Read below the fold...
Pretty soon I plan to start blogging about the presentations and discussions emerging from the Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In Counter-Conference. But, first, I want to discuss the program design and its logic. Read below the fold...
...the only thing that kept the liberal class honest was the radical left, and that once you destroyed and gutted the radical left the liberal class evolved into a class of courtiers, hedonists of power, people who speak one way and act in another. The Democratic Party is the poster child for this.
Hedges being Hedges, YMMV. Like Chris Floyd and Arthur Silber, he's often an uncomfortable read (or listen). His words ring true to me.
A few days ago I began a critique of the Catfood Commission Co-Chair Proposals draft, by focusing on a single slide of their presentation stating “our guiding principles and values.” There was enough objectionable material on that slide to justify a post. But there's much more worth commenting on in the succeeding slides on the same subject. Slide 2 says:
2. The Problem Is Real –the Solution Is Painful –There’s No Easy Way Out –Everything Must Be On the Table –and Washington Must Lead
