Tag: Business

Monday Business Edition is an Open Thread

1 China overtakes Japan as world’s No. 2 economy

by David Watkins, AFP

2 hrs 40 mins ago

Go Pack!  I think I’ll get to the economics of the upcoming NFL lockout later.

1 AOL to buy The Huffington Post for $315 million

By Anthony Boadle, Reuters

Mon Feb 7, 3:08 am ET

Just News so far.

1 Chinese property ‘bubble’ fuels hard landing fears

by Hui Min Neo, AFP

Sun Jan 30, 6:49 pm ET

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich explains whether President Barack Obama’s new approach will create more jobs or send those jobs overseas.

Monday Business Edition

It’s slowly starting to dawn on Institutional Democrats that they’re going to lose big in November.  The consequences are very real.  Racist Radical Reagan Republicanism is a proven failure.  And Institutional Democrats?  They’re a failure too because they knew what to do and didn’t do it.

I’ll put my policy prescription right up front, the only thing that will save Democrats at this point is massive downsizing- Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Gibbs, Geithner and Summers, Salazar and Duncan.  Do I want heads on pikes?  Figuratively, yes.  These highly paid strikeout kings and clubhouse malcontents have to go for the good of the team.

And if not I hope you’re happy with the crappy offices that come with minority status and one term Presidencies you corporatist whores.  Anyone who claims to care about “electoral victory” is a liar.

It’s Witch-Hunt Season

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: August 29, 2010

So what will happen if, as expected, Republicans win control of the House? We already know part of the answer: Politico reports that they’re gearing up for a repeat performance of the 1990s, with a “wave of committee investigations” – several of them over supposed scandals that we already know are completely phony. We can expect the G.O.P. to play chicken over the federal budget, too; I’d put even odds on a 1995-type government shutdown sometime over the next couple of years.

It will be an ugly scene, and it will be dangerous, too. The 1990s were a time of peace and prosperity; this is a time of neither. In particular, we’re still suffering the after-effects of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, and we can’t afford to have a federal government paralyzed by an opposition with no interest in helping the president govern. But that’s what we’re likely to get.

If I were President Obama, I’d be doing all I could to head off this prospect, offering some major new initiatives on the economic front in particular, if only to shake up the political dynamic. But my guess is that the president will continue to play it safe, all the way into catastrophe.

Opposition Pay-offs

by Dave Anderson, 2010 August 29

The stimulus as passed in ARRA was necessary but insufficient.  It was too small at the topline number for the size of the output gap we actually faced (as the recession was deeper than the earlier data showed) and poorly designed with too much money going to AMT fixes and ineffective lump-sum tax-cuts.  The effective parts were pared back to please Sens. Collins, Snowe and Nelson.  And this was because the Republican Party realized they were the opposition and the job of the opposition is to oppose.  It also was because the Obama Administration likes to punch dirty fucking hippies, especially when they are right on the math and the political outcomes.

What Can Obama Really Do?

by Ian Welsh, 2010 August 29

The idea that Obama, or any President, is a powerless shrinking violet, helpless in the face of Congress is just an excuse.  Presidents have immense amounts of power: the question is whether or not they use that power, and if they do, what they use it for.

…

If Obama is not using that money and authority, the bottom line is it’s because he doesn’t want to.

Putting aside the question of what Obama could have accomplished already, if he wants to help everyday Americans, turn around Democratic approval ratings in time for the midterm elections, and leave behind him a legacy of achievement, he can still do it. If he wants to.

The Two Stories of This Terrible Economy, Yet Obama and the Dems Won’t Tell Theirs

Robert Reich, Friday, August 27, 2010

If Obama and the Democrats would connect these dots they’d have a story that would make Americans’ hair stand on end. We’re in this mess because of big business and Wall Street. Government is needed to get us out of it.

…

So why haven’t Obama and the Dems succeeded yet? Big business and Wall Street have used their money and political clout to stop government from doing as much as needs to be done.

The story is clear, and it has the virtue of being the truth. Why won’t Obama and the Democrats tell it? Is it because big business and Wall Street have the money and political clout even to prevent the story from being told?

Policy Options Dwindle as Economic Fears Grow

By PETER S. GOODMAN, The New York Times

Published: August 28, 2010

“There are many ways in which you can see us almost surely being in a Japan-style malaise,” said the Nobel-laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, who has accused the Obama administration of underestimating the dangers weighing on the economy. “It’s just really hard to see what will bring us out.”

Japan’s years of pain were made worse by deflation – falling prices – an affliction that assailed the United States during the Great Depression and may be gathering force again. While falling prices can be good news for people in need of cars, housing and other wares, a sustained, broad drop discourages businesses from investing and hiring. Less work and lower wages translates into less spending power, which reinforces a predilection against hiring and investing – a downward spiral.

Deflation is both symptom and cause of an economy whose basic functioning has stalled. It reflects too many goods and services in the marketplace with not enough people able to buy them.

Banks’ Self-Dealing Super-Charged Financial Crisis

by Jake Bernstein  and Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica

Aug. 26, 10:09 p.m.

Over the last two years of the housing bubble, Wall Street bankers perpetrated one of the greatest episodes of self-dealing in financial history.

Faced with increasing difficulty in selling the mortgage-backed securities that had been among their most lucrative products, the banks hit on a solution that preserved their quarterly earnings and huge bonuses:

They created fake demand.

More Business News below.

Now That’s Rich

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: August 22, 2010

We need to pinch pennies these days. Don’t you know we have a budget deficit? For months that has been the word from Republicans and conservative Democrats, who have rejected every suggestion that we do more to avoid deep cuts in public services and help the ailing economy.

But these same politicians are eager to cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country.

What – you haven’t heard about this proposal? Actually, you have: I’m talking about demands that we make all of the Bush tax cuts, not just those for the middle class, permanent.

…

And where would this $680 billion go? Nearly all of it would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people with incomes of more than $500,000 a year. But that’s the least of it: the policy center’s estimates say that the majority of the tax cuts would go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent. … And the average tax break for those lucky few – the poorest members of the group have annual incomes of more than $2 million, and the average member makes more than $7 million a year – would be $3 million over the course of the next decade.

In Striking Shift, Small Investors Flee Stock Market

By GRAHAM BOWLEY, The New York Times

Published: August 21, 2010

One of the phenomena of the last several decades has been the rise of the individual investor. As Americans have become more responsible for their own retirement, they have poured money into stocks with such faith that half of the country’s households now own shares directly or through mutual funds, which are by far the most popular way Americans invest in stocks. So the turnabout is striking.

…

The notion that stocks tend to be safe and profitable investments over time seems to have been dented in much the same way that a decline in home values and in job stability the last few years has altered Americans’ sense of financial security.

…

But then came a grim reassessment of America’s economic prospects as unemployment remained stubbornly high and private sector job growth refused to take off.

Investors’ nerves were also frayed by the “flash crash” on May 6, when the Dow Jones industrial index fell 600 points in a matter of minutes. The authorities still do not know why.

Special BP Blowout Disaster Coverage

1 Gulf claims chief says no-sue rule was his idea

By HARRY R. WEBER, Associated Press Writer

Sun Aug 22, 4:09 pm ET

2 For Gulf tourism, problem is perception – not oil

By NOAKI SCHWARTZ, Associated Press Writer

Sun Aug 22, 1:51 pm ET

Outrageous?  We report…

We are governed by motherfucking idiots.

Or amoral greedheads, take your pick; but even the Nazi supporting Henry Ford understood you have to have someone to sell cars to.

Except we don’t sell cars anymore.  What we sell is Ponzi scams, pyramid schemes, and multi-level marketing and all the shouters on CNBC think they got in at the top, but they’re really just bottom feeders like the rest of us.

Perhaps the coming Hindenberg Crash will convince them.

Or maybe they really are stupid.

Forget a Double Dip. We’re Still in One Long Big Dipper.

Robert Reich

Saturday, August 14, 2010

The central problem is lack of demand – and that’s what has to be tackled.

Three of the four sources of demand have stopped working. (1) Consumers can’t and won’t buy because they’re still under a huge debt load, can’t get more credit, are afraid of losing their jobs (or already have), depend on two wage earners at least one of whom is working part-time and pulling in less, or have to save. (2) Businesses won’t invest and spend on creating more jobs if they don’t see consumers willing to buy more. (3) Exports are stalled because the dollar is so high they cost too much, much of the rest of the world is still struggling with recession, and American firms can make things for sale abroad more cheaply abroad.

That leaves only one remaining source of demand – government. We need a giant jobs program to hire people and put money in their pockets that they’ll spend and thereby create more jobs. Put ideology aside and recognize this fact. If it makes you more comfortable call it the National Defense Jobs Act. Call it the WPA. Call it Chopped Liver. Whatever, we have to get the great army of the unemployed and underemployed working again.

…

If we let the deficit hawks and government haters dominate this debate, as they have, the Big Dipper will continue for years. The Great Depression lasted twelve.

Attacking Social Security

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: August 15, 2010

So where do claims of crisis come from? To a large extent they rely on bad-faith accounting. In particular, they rely on an exercise in three-card monte in which the surpluses Social Security has been running for a quarter-century don’t count – because hey, the program doesn’t have any independent existence; it’s just part of the general federal budget – while future Social Security deficits are unacceptable – because hey, the program has to stand on its own.

It would be easy to dismiss this bait-and-switch as obvious nonsense, except for one thing: many influential people – including Alan Simpson, co-chairman of the president’s deficit commission – are peddling this nonsense.

…

What’s really going on here? Conservatives hate Social Security for ideological reasons: its success undermines their claim that government is always the problem, never the solution. But they receive crucial support from Washington insiders, for whom a declared willingness to cut Social Security has long served as a badge of fiscal seriousness, never mind the arithmetic.

1 China overshadows Japan economy as growth slows

by David Watkins, AFP

52 mins ago

America Goes Dark

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: August 8, 2010

(A) large part of our political class is showing its priorities: given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble – literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education – they’re choosing the latter.

…

But isn’t keeping taxes for the affluent low also a form of stimulus? Not so you’d notice. When we save a schoolteacher’s job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there’s a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.

…

The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud – to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.

Monday Business Edition is an Open Thread

1 BP spends $6.1 bln on Gulf spill response

AFP

57 mins ago

Defining Prosperity Down

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: August 1, 2010

I worry that those in power, rather than taking responsibility for job creation, will soon declare that high unemployment is “structural,” a permanent part of the economic landscape – and that by condemning large numbers of Americans to long-term joblessness, they’ll turn that excuse into dismal reality.

…

We’re told that we can’t afford to help the unemployed – that we must get budget deficits down immediately or the “bond vigilantes” will send U.S. borrowing costs sky-high. Some of us have tried to point out that those bond vigilantes are, as far as anyone can tell, figments of the deficit hawks’ imagination – far from fleeing U.S. debt, investors have been buying it eagerly, driving interest rates to historic lows. But the fearmongers are unmoved: fighting deficits, they insist, must take priority over everything else – everything else, that is, except tax cuts for the rich, which must be extended, no matter how much red ink they create.

The point is that a large part of Congress – large enough to block any action on jobs – cares a lot about taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population, but very little about the plight of Americans who can’t find work.

Monday Business Edition is an Open Thread

1 Greek truckers end week-long strike

by John Hadoulis, AFP

Sun Aug 1, 3:48 pm ET

Remember, the reason they deserve this kind of money is that they are better and brighter than you or I.

They know things.  They work hard.

For the Calivinists among them their material prosperity is the manifestation on earth of their elect status in heaven.

Because luck and connections had nothing to do with it.

(also worth reading is Why Conservatives Hate Keynes By: masaccio Sunday July 25, 2010 10:30 am)

1 Hayward payoff ignites new BP controversy

AFP

6 mins ago