“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
David Cay Johnston: The victims of low-interest locusts
Another financial crisis looms for U.S. taxpayers, a disaster likely to create even worse human misery than the mortgage fiasco that some of us warned about years before the Wall Street meltdown in 2008.
The crisis next time: collapsing investment incomes for older Americans as artificially reduced interest rates force them to use up their savings and drive more pension plans into failure.
Eviscerating the interest income of savers is the undeniable result of a long-running Federal Reserve policy to reduce interest rates, especially since December 2008. The Fed reiterated on Aug. 1 that it plans to keep interest rates low through late 2014. It says this helps to promote stronger economic growth and bring down the jobless rate.
As in the mortgage crisis, you can see this disaster building by examining the official data.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: Attorney General to U.S.: Nothing to See On Wall Street, Folks, Just Move Along
Yesterday the Justice Department announced that once again it’s not going to pursue evidence of Wall Street crimes which has been sent its way. It has already failed to act on information sent to it by sources whose investigators are apparently more dogged than its own, including several other government agencies and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Now the bipartisan committee which was led by Senators Carl Levin and Tom Coburn can be added to the list of sources whose leads weren’t pursued by Attorney General Eric Holder and his staff.
Holder was on the defensive yesterday, a sign that the mounting criticism of his inaction is getting his attention. He was also scornful of that criticism, saying that it’s belied by “a troublesome little thing called facts.”
There’s something troublesome here, all right, but it isn’t the facts.
Mitt Romney will announce his running-mate Saturday morning on the USS Wisconsin.
Wisconsin, it will be noted, is the home state of Congressman Paul Ryan.
And the campaign bling factories are gearing up to print “Romney-Ryan” pins.
That’s a significant shift.
Until just a few days ago, Ryan was considered an unlikely prospect for the No. 2 spot on the Republican ticket: too rigid in his budgetary obsessions, too whacky in his enthusiasm for Ayn Rand’s novels and Austrian economics, too enthusiastic about taking apart Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
But Romney has always liked Ryan.
And so has the Republican right.
Eugene Robinson; Heating up debate on climate change
Excuse me, folks, but the weather is trying to tell us something. Listen carefully, and you can almost hear a parched, raspy voice whispering: “What part of ‘hottest month ever’ do you people not understand?”
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July was indeed the hottest month in the contiguous United States since record-keeping began more than a century ago. That distinction was previously held by July 1936, which came at the height of the Dust Bowl calamity that devastated the American heartland. [..]
We can’t do anything about the greenhouse gases we’ve already spewed into the atmosphere, but we can minimize the damage we do in the future. We can launch a serious initiative to develop and deploy alternative sources of energy. We can decide what kind of environment we leave to our grandchildren.
I’d like to hear President Obama and Mitt Romney talk about the future of the planet. What about you?
Dan Moran: NRA prevents funding for studies on gun violence
There was nothing unusual about the University of Colorado’s grant to its once-promising student, James E. Holmes.
If Holmes weren’t accused of killing a dozen people and wounding 58, we’d never know that he received $21,600 for living costs while he pursued his doctorate in neuroscience. Nor was there anything odd about how the university paid for the stipend. The money came from an annual grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health.
But if the National Institutes of Health had granted money to a researcher delving into the reasons for mass shootings, there might have been trouble. In an Orwellian use of power politics, the gun lobby led by the National Rifle Association has in many instances muzzled federal agencies’ ability to fund basic research into gun violence.
Robert Reich: Back From Three Weeks Vacation With a Bold Proposal
When I left the U.S. economy was in a stall, Greece was on the brink of defaulting, the euro-zone couldn’t get its act together, the Fed couldn’t decide on another round of quantitative easing, congressional Democrats and Republicans were in gridlock, much of the nation was broiling, and neither Obama nor Romney had put forward a bold proposal for boosting the economy, slowing climate change, or much of anything else.
What a difference three weeks makes.
Here’s a bold proposal I offer free of charge to Obama or Romney: Every American should get a mandatory minimum of three weeks paid vacation a year.
Most Americans only get two weeks off right now. But many don’t even take the full two weeks out of fear of losing their jobs. One in four gets no paid vacation at all, not even holidays. Overall, Americans have less vacation time than workers in any other advanced economy.
This is absurd. A mandatory three weeks off would be good for everyone — including employers.
,/div>
Recent Comments