Watch the deteriorating transformation of the U.S. economy from January 2007 — approximately one year before the start of the recession — to the most recent unemployment data available today.
Tag: economy
Whose bailout? Not ours.
Posted by on October 17, 2009
From the PSL website:
Bailout helps big banks post huge profits, stimulus creates a few hundred jobs
October 15 was a day of some revealing statistics and facts.
Led by soaring bank stock prices, the Dow Jones average hit the magic 10,000 number. High fives all around Wall Street.
The bankers at Goldman Sachs also announced that their bonus and compensation package for 2009 would be as high, or possibly higher, than the $20 billion they doled out to themselves in 2008. Thank you, taxpayers!
It was also announced that the lobbyists for the biggest bankers had spent $200 million to convince members of Congress not to tighten regulations on the banks and their compensation packages. How did those troubled, insolvent and bailed out banks come up with a whopping $200 million to “lobby” elected officials? Again, a big shout-out to the taxpayers!
October 15 brought forth some other statistics about how society’s other half—or the other 99 percent, really—are faring.
The government that gave the bankers $9.5 trillion in bailout funds and loan guarantees, with no strings attached or any oversight over how those funds would be spent, released its report on how the “stimulus package” was doing for job creation.
Thanks to the federal stimulus money, the number of jobs that were created or “saved” in Michigan, where the official unemployment rate is 15.2 percent, was a grand total of 400. Four hundred—wow!
Nevada, the state with the next highest unemployment rate, reported 159 jobs created or “saved” from the stimulus package. Another big wow!
Rhode Island, the state with the third highest unemployment rate, 12.8 percent officially, reported six jobs—yes, six—were created or saved thanks to the bailout money from the federal government.
Whose bailout? Certainly not ours.
The VERY BEST Investment….
Posted by on March 30, 2009
The VERY BEST Investment….
Buy politicians! A small investment to Democrat and Republican campaign funds (or even an outright bribe) can return 100’s of times that amount in lucrative contracts or laws aimed at making corporations more money…
Wall Street’s Best Investment
Buying Washington: Money talks and regulators look the other way.
Robert Weissman, Progressive Populist
April15th Edition
Financial deregulatory mania over the last three decades led directly to the current financial meltdown.
(A special thanks to Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart for sending this)
After the House Rejection of the Bailout Plan & the Dow Jones Plunge:
Posted by on September 30, 2008
After the House Rejection of the Bailout Plan & the Dow Jones Plunge:
* Labor Must Not Bow to the Wall Street Blackmail
* Labor Must Mobilize to Put a Full Stop to the $700 Billion Corporate Bailout and Fight for an Emergency Plan to Bail Out Working People
By ALAN BENJAMIN
(Editor of The Organizer Newspaper)
Sept. 29, 2008 — The House of Representatives voted today to defeat the $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan that had been worked out over the weekend at the insistence of President George W. Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The proposed plan aimed at nationalizing the debt of the bankers who profited from the home-mortgage speculative orgy of the past few years.
By a vote of 227 to 206, the House killed the bill — with 94 Democrats and 133 Republicans voting against the bailout plan.
The vote stunned much of the media and establishment. Bush, Pelosi, and House Minority leader Boehner had aggressively pushed the revised bailout plan. A narrow YES vote was widely expected. So great was this expectation that Senate majority and minority leaders anticipated they would be voting today in the Senate to approve the agreement passed in the House.
Almost immediately, in reaction to the vote in the House, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 777 points Monday, its biggest single-day fall ever.
Soon after, in response to this stock market dive, Democrats and Republicans — prompted by Bush, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, Pelosi and Boehner — pledged that they would try again to get a bailout plan passed in the House on Thursday, Oct. 2. It was agreed that the House would reconvene on Thursday, instead of adjourning for the year as planned.
Simply announcing that a new vote would take place on yet another bailout plan was necessary, Paulson announced, to “restore confidence” in the credit markets. Paulson then warned that the members of Congress had to go back to the drawing board. “We need to work as quickly as possible,” he said. “We need to get something done. … We need to put something back together that works.”
Nancy Pelosi chimed in. “What happened today cannot stand,” she said. “We must move forward, and I hope that the markets will take that message.”
Pelosi was joined in her plea by Barack Obama, who stated, “Democrats, Republicans, step up to the plate, get it done.” Likewise, John McCain urged Congress “to put partisanship behind them and vote a plan to rescue the credit markets and the economy.”
So, why this defeat, when all the media pundits had predicted the victory of the bailout plan?
David Sirota wrote in his blog on Campaign for America’s Future (Sept. 29) that, “the fear of being thrown out of office is forcing our politicians to at least consider what the public wants.”
Sirota continued,
“Polls overwhelmingly show a public that sees voting for this bill as an act of economic treason whereby the bipartisan Washington elite robs taxpayer cash to give their campaign contributors a trillion-dollar gift.
“As just two of many examples, Bloomberg News’ poll shows ‘decisive’ opposition to the bailout proposal, and Rasmussen reports that their surveys show ‘the more voters learn about the proposed $700 billion federal bailout plan for the U.S. economy, the more they don’t like it.’ … Any sitting officeholder that votes for this — whether a Democrat or a Republican — should expect to get crushed under a wave of [Left and Right] populist-themed attacks from their opponents.”
Pressures Will Mount to Approve the Corporate Bailout on Thursday
Republicans who voted against the consensus plan — the largest voting bloc against the plan — blamed the Democrats for amending the bailout package with language calling for too much government intervention. Some called this “socialism.” One Republican Congressman invoked the Bolshevik Party and its takeover of the “free-market” economy.
The crisis in the political summits, and corporate boardrooms, is reaching the boiling point.
The bankers and financial institutions have now warned that they will not sit back and permit a deal to fall through their fingers. The Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable immediately activated their lobbying of House Republicans and Democrats. They are hoping that the stock market “scare” today will prompt all members of Congress who voted against the bailout to re-think their vote.
At this writing, many analysts predict that some modifications will be made to the plan defeated today — to appease the House Republicans. But given the “fragile nature of the compromise,” one economist quoted on ABC TV stated, it is not likely that the changes will be that significant. Less Congressional oversight and fewer restrictions on the “golden parachutes” of the CEOs of the financial institutions are expected. Also possible is an apology by Pelosi for statements made prior to the vote that were considered “too partisan” and “too inflammatory” by 12 Republicans, who claimed that these statements prompted them to vote against the bill.
But all this only underscores one fundamental question facing working people across the country who have opposed any corporate welfare plan: They and their representatives in the House will be pressured — blackmailed is more like it — by the Wall Street speculators and told they must accept what is unacceptable to them.
We can expect a major push for “national unity” with the Wall Street thiefs in the coming days. We will be told to put all partisan concerns aside in the interest of the economy and the nation. Every argument imaginable will be brought out to drive the American people to accept this corporate welfare plan. What is good for Wall Street is what’s good for Main Street, we will hear again and again.
This, of course, is one BIG LIE.
More than ever, working people, with the trade unions in the lead, need to mobilize massively to put a definitive stop to this corporate bailout … and to demand a Workers Recovery Plan that bails out America’s working people and the oppressed.
Putting forward an alternative plan is, in fact, becoming a burning necessity. We will be told by all the corporate-owned media that There Is No Alternative to their corporate heist. But there is an alternative — one that bails out working people and the economy, not the speculators who got us into the mess we’re in today.
An Emergency Plan to Bail Out Working People and the Economy
What would such a plan look like? Here are five essential components (and there could be many more) which we in The Organizer newspaper submit for the widest discussion among unionists and activists:
1) Nationalize the Federal Reserve and Establish a Federally Owned, Public Banking System
This is necessary to make credit available for small businesses, homeowners, manufacturing operations, renewable energy and infrastructure investments.
This (re)nationalization should begin with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so that the government, through these two institutions, can stop all foreclosures.
Only through a State-run Emergency Board will the real economy be able to get back on its feet, removed from its addiction to war and speculation.
The “free market” is what has created the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. The people who created this mess should not be allowed to continue to run the financial system.
2) End all Funding for the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Slash the Military Budget
All the funds that have been allocated to the U.S. wars and occupations around the world, and all the military bases needed to sustain these wars, must be re-oriented post-haste toward meeting human needs — by funding public education, libraries, hospitals, roads, public housing, Reconstruction for the Gulf Coast, social services and more.
3) Moratorium on All Home Foreclosures, Utility Shut-Offs and Evictions
A genuine plan to protect homeowners could include the following points:
- enact a foreclosure moratorium now, before the next phase of ARM interest-rate increases take effect;
- refinance mortgages into 30- and 40-year loans at reasonable rates of interest — but at the current market value of their homes, not the inflated prices of the boom;
4) Massive National Reconstruction Public Works Program
A WPA-type program is needed urgently to rebuild the nation’s schools, hospitals and crumbling infrastructure and to put millions of people back to work, with a living (prevailing) wage and with the unfettered right to join a union and to wield their collective strength, including through strike action (for which the repeal of Taft-Hartley is essential), to press for better wages and working conditions
5) Sliding Scales of Wages to Keep Up with Inflation
This will be needed to enable working people to offset the rising cost of living produced by the “staglation” that has already reared its ugly head and is bound to increase in the coming weeks and months.
Not One Taxpayers’ Dollar For the Wall Street Speculators!
Any plan that calls for using taxpayers’ dollars to pay back the speculators must be stopped. Every dollar that goes to a speculator is one dollar less that could go to rebuilding the economy and putting millions of people back to work through a mass public works program. These speculators gambled and they lost. They are parasites. They are not needed. Their profits should be confiscated. There should be no pandering to them in the name of “helping Wall Street.” Bailing them out is not necessary to stave off the financial crisis. On the contrary, it will only deepen the problem.
For our part, we in The Organizer newspaper pledge to do everything in our power to help build the most powerful labor-led fightback movement to stop this corporate assault. What’s at stake is the fate of millions of working people at home and abroad.
Public Outcry Forces House to Reject $700 Billion Bailout of Financial Industry
Posted by on September 30, 2008
From Democracy Now!:
On Monday, the House voted 228-to-205 against authorizing the largest government intervention in the financial market in US history. The measure would have granted the Treasury unprecedented authority and up to $700 billion to relieve faltering banks and other firms of bad assets backed by home mortgages, which are falling into foreclosure at record rates. As the economic crisis worsens and spreads across the globe, we speak with Robert Johnson, former chief economist of the Senate Banking Committee, and Bruce Marks, the founder and CEO of NACA, the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America.
Alexander: Fed Rescue Plan a Temporary Fix
Posted by on September 24, 2008
Alexander: Fed Rescue Plan a Temporary Fix
Stewart A. Alexander
September 22, 2008
At first the Bush administration said the price tag to rescue the U.S. economy would cost $500 billion and within days the price tag was revised to a whopping $700 billion; if the rescue plan is approved by Congress, working people will be in a financial black hole for $11.3 trillion (the national debt). Vice Presidential Candidate Stewart A. Alexander, says “This rescue plan is only a temporary fix for an economy with many fractures. The root cause of the U.S. economic crisis is the system, capitalism; and every 75 years a new bailout plan becomes necessary.”
This past week, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. presented the bleak news regarding the U.S. economy to ranking members in Congress and the two men made clear that the U.S. economy is facing an economic crisis that could quickly spread to all areas of the globe.
Within the past two weeks, the U.S. government took the extraordinary measure to bailout the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and to indicate the depth of the U.S. financial crisis, the following week the U.S. government bailed out AIG (American International Group, Inc.). Unlike Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG is not directly regulated by the federal government.
With the additional $700 billion that the Bush administration is seeking from Congress, the American working class will be strapped with $1 trillion of debt to bailout the billionaires of the world with no guarantees of repayment; and no such plans for repayment have been offered to the American taxpayer.
Even if Congress approves the $700 billion that the Bush administration is now seeking from hard working Americans, Stewart Alexander believes “it would require much more; perhaps $10 trillion.” Alexander notes that the current economic crisis is now a global crisis and has spread to most of the major economies of the world.
Recently, Secretary Henry Paulson stated on Fox News Sunday, “There are no guarantees;” however, Alexander says, “With these federal bailouts there are many risk that will jeopardize the future well-being of all working people. It is likely working class people will be subject to sharp declines in their living standards, the U.S. currency will weaken further against other major currencies and inflation will further destabilize the U.S. economy. It is also likely Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will be restructured to provide minimal benefits and services.”
Alexander says, “The $700 billion that the Bush administration is asking Congress to approve is an 11th hour plea by the Bush White House that reveals an urgent cry; not to let the U.S. economy crash on our watch.”
For more information search the web for: Stewart A. Alexander
http://labs.daylife.com/journalist/stewart_a._alexander
http://StewartAlexanderCares.com