Tag Archives: economy

Unemployed Workers Come Together – Common Security Clubs

Posted on 2010/09/24 05:41 pm by thepete

Unemployed Workers Come Together – Common Security Clubs

underpaidgenius:

For people among the ranks of the unemployed, underemployed and those who love them, we need new strategies to face the changes.

One approach has been to form unemployment groups and common security clubs for the purpose of overcoming isolation, providing mutual aid, and taking action together to work for policies that increase economic security and create the jobs of the future.

Breaking out of the isolation that often accompanies unemployment is the first step. “The jobless in the United States lose far more than their paychecks; they also lose precious social support,” wrote sociologist Arlie Hochschild in the Los Angeles Times in article about common security clubs that serve as a lifeline for the unemployed. “Research has found that the health of those who lose jobs is likely to decline and the risk of dying rises. Many not only lose daily contact with factory and office friends, they also retreat from other social interaction.”

I think we should be taking to the streets, but meeting together is probably a first step.

Huh. I’ve not had stable/continuous employment for years and I don’t have any of those problems. Why, just ask my friends—??

ohhhhhhhhhh….

;(

All right, where do I sign up?

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Obama claims the world has dodged a depression

Posted on 2010/09/23 05:40 pm by thepete

Obama claims the world has dodged a depression

coalspeaker:

And anyway, the pesky recession ended a whole summer ago! …right?

Good point—and Obama should tell that to the >10% of America who are out of work, like… —>me<—

sniff-sniff… smells like the Absurd Disconnect again.

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Today in Why America is Over: Newt Gingrich, John Boehner and everyone else.

Posted on 2010/09/13 01:29 pm by thepete

From officialssay:

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anticolonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior… This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president.”

—

Newt Gingrich, a Republican and former House speaker, giving National Review Online his take on President Obama.

From CSMonitor.com reported on why Boehner may let tax cuts for the wealthy expire:

“I don’t think that’s going to help our economy,” said Boehner on “Face the Nation” on CBS on Sunday.

Republicans have long insisted that keeping taxes low on those at the top of America’s income scale is the best way to help the private sector generate new jobs.

That said, why would Boehner vote for a tax approach he still believes to be flawed? Several political theories come to mind.

He’s getting ready to be speaker of the House. With many polls showing it likely that the GOP will make big gains this fall, it’s possible that Boehner will become speaker in the next Congress. That’s a very different job than the one he now holds. The speaker has more responsibility for governing the nation – and that means more responsibility for actually getting bills passed.

SIGH. Example #1 shows us how the Republicans are still accusing others of what they, themselves are guilty of.  Not to mention, they’re also racist, xenophobia-mongers, happy to point out “the other” even if that “other” got elected into office by an overwhelming majority. Gingrich looks like a fool doing both this and when he accuses others of being out of touch (oh and the mostly white, male, suit-wearing, Republicans are in touch?) and also by clearly being out of touch himself.  However, the moderate Republicans (if there are any) and the Democrats (I’m pretty sure there are some around) both let these loudmouth A-holes get away with it.  Then there’s the media, I’ll get to them in a second.

Example #2 of why America is over is Boehner’s bonehead machinations. He’s caving not because he wants to, not because he thinks it’s the best thing to do for America, he’s doing it to protect his chances for being SoH when the Republicans take over.

“Fuck America, it’s about my job,” he seems to be saying and it’s obvious to anyone paying attention.

Meanwhile, the media is only encouraging him by doing a truly horrible job of holding the USG’s feet to the fire.  It’s the media’s responsibility to challenge everything the government does. How often do you see this?  These polls that point to a Republican win in November exist only because we are an almost completely misinformed public.

If most of us knew the truth, third party candidates would sweep the country since both parties are killing America with their petty, stupid, back-biting and infighting.  America is dying for several different reasons and so far no one is willing to face this reality.

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What do they say about doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result?

Posted on 2010/09/09 12:14 am by thepete

Back on August 30, 2010, I came across an article at NYTimes.com that reported “Japan Plans New Steps to Curb Yen.” Here’s an excerpt:

Japan promised a host of measures on Monday in a bid to ignite its faltering economy and temper a punishingly strong yen.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan proposed new stimulus steps, while the Bank of Japan, under pressure from the government, further eased its already easy monetary policy.

The phrase “already easy monetary policy” reminded me of an article from Reuters.com that I had been meaning to write about since August 28, 2010, when I first found it. That article was called “Analysis: The uncomfortable mathematics of monetary policy.” Here’s an excerpt:

The prospect of a renewed effort by the U.S. central bank to drive down already super-low borrowing costs raises the issue of whether such measures can help stimulate a recovery that is faltering due to a lack of consumer demand.

Sound familiar?

The article goes on:

The sorry state of the U.S. economy, despite all the monetary and fiscal firepower the Fed and the Treasury have deployed, already befuddles the experts.

Yeah, so between our government’s economic choices and Japan’s, I’m starting to wonder if anyone with a brain is at the helm of either country’s economic ships.  I mean, they both seem to be trying the same solutions over and over again and nothing’s worked yet.  Or is this like the Japanese movie Bubble Fiction (spoiler alert: they did it to get rich)?

In fact, I’d go so far as to say we’re both screwed if new ideas don’t get introduced (or new people don’t get put in charge) soon. 

The whole irony is magnified when you consider Japan’s “Lost Decade.” They went through the popping of an almost identical economic bubble (part of this is discussed in Bubble Fiction) as we did just recently and it seems like no one knows how to learn from mistakes and, you know, evolve.  We need some seriously fresh DNA in the form of new ideas and new blood.

Who wants to bet we get neither and that both governments keep on truckin’ right into a ditch?

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Education is a Ponzi Scheme, the Bailout is a Ponzi Scheme does anyone believe in Democracy Still?

Posted on 2010/09/08 11:42 pm by thepete

fredericguarino:

Why higher education is like a Ponzi scheme

Ph.D. students competing for fewer and fewer jobs, and one professor believes the academic marketplace is turning into a Ponzi scheme.

in other positive developments….

In the Planet Money podcast’s Deep Read from a couple of weeks back was an interview with Nassim Taleb (the Black Swan guy) and in it Taleb described the bailouts as a giant Ponzi scheme, too.  I can’t find a transcript, but the gist of what he said was that the corporations that were “too big to fail” were Bernie Madoff. The taxpayers were Madoff’s victims.  Seems to make sense to me.  Well, in a really sad way.

The interview with Taleb is definitely worth listening to, though I did disagree with a couple of things he said.  Mainly, I found his idea that no one predicted the 2008 economic crisis completely inaccurate since people did.  Danny Schechter made a movie in 2006 predicting that our reliance on debt (and specifically sub-prime mortgages) would be our doom.  But that’s beside the point.  Taleb says some pretty smart things, otherwise.  Like (I’m paraphrasing) “don’t have any debt” and “don’t fly in a plane with pilots and crew who have crashed one before, in fact, bet on their plane to crash again.”  What he means is: don’t expect our economy to get better with the guys who caused it to crash in charge of the recovery.

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Smaller cities’ shrinking populations–but where do they go?

Posted on 2010/09/08 09:45 pm by thepete

fredericguarino:

“Over the last 50 years, the city of Detroit has lost more than half its population. So has Cleveland. They’re not alone: Eight of the 10 largest cities in the United States in 1950, including Boston, have since lost at least 20 percent of their population.”

—

How to shrink a city

Are they fleeing to the suburbs?  Or to homelessness?  I feel like in these uncertain times the cheapest, safest place to be is a major city.

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It’s scary when I Disagree with a Nobel Laureate that I Usually Agree with

Posted on 2010/09/03 12:27 pm by thepete

underpaidgenius:

The Real Story – Paul Krugman

The actual lessons of 2009-2010, then, are that scare stories about stimulus are wrong, and that stimulus works when it is applied. But it wasn’t applied on a sufficient scale. And we need another round.

But it won’t happen. President Obama is incapable of a sustained fight against the GOP and his own conservatives, and it’s unclear where his heart is on this matter anyway.

Obama is facing exactly what any moderate faces today: the enmity of the hysterically Tea Partyish GOP and the anger of the disaffected liberals at the far left of the Democratic party.

Oh, I wish we could have a multiparty system, where at least there would be a hope of coalition politics instead of a two-party Mexican standoff.

Stowe Boyd (aka UnderpaidGenius) is right—and Krugman is oversimplifying, I think. And in a very scary, very subtle way, this is another example of the Absurd Disconnect.  Krugman, and so many others, is/are ignoring the reality of our changing world.  Not that I blame them.  Over the past 100 years we’ve see not just a dramatic change in the way our economy works, but we’ve seen a dramatic rise in the rate of that change. 

And our culture hasn’t been able to keep up.

Most of us are focused on fixing the system we already have—as though it’s not completely and utterly outmoded.  People like Krugman aren’t facing the obvious-if-you-look reality that capitalism is broken.  You can no longer define things through the basic “supply and demand” concept since the Internet changes so very much about how commerce is done.

Meanwhile, people like myself, Boyd and others, call for brand new ideas.  This is what I think is missing from what we’re hearing from everyone in the establishment—even the more outspoken people like Krugman who think the old ways are worth saving.

I’m not sure what the new system should look like, but one thing is clear—our current system is a mess and it’s not getting any better.  This isn’t about applying the stimulus—this is about building a new economy from scratch.

After all, how do we “stimulate” an economy that has had its foundation turned to sand?

Outsourcing has transformed our country into a land of consumers, not producers. The only thing we make here are ideas and, thanks to the Internet, those are cheap or free.  Thanks to this inability to create value, the value of our dollar is dropping through the floor.  The Fed is practically giving money away because we’re all subconsciously reacting to this new world and not wanting to take on any debt.

We’re at this point where the scam that was the old system is falling apart.  Finally, the disconnect between what we are told (“Don’t spend beyond your means.”) and what our economy systemically requires (lots and lots of people debt-chained into the system) is getting so wide as to not be reconcilable by the participants (us).

So, now I find myself looking at all of these talking heads telling me that we’re going to recover.  Recover what?  The system that we’ve just driven into the ground?

Time for a new car.

Maybe a hybrid—or how about one that runs on solar? :)

(And by invoking environmental concepts, I’m suggesting the new economy be based around benefiting all, not just people who want to be rich and those who already are.)

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The Onion Calls Out our Imaginary Economy (I wonder how often this’ll get RT’d)

Posted on 2010/08/30 06:42 pm by thepete

Screengrab source.

I guess it’s fine that our economy is entirely a symbolic, mutually shared illusion, so long as we can laugh at it. ;P

…but seriously, I doubt we’ll see this Onion story reblogged and retweeted all over the tuberwebs.

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Underpaid Genius – Every Man For Himself

Posted on 2010/07/16 03:33 pm by thepete

Underpaid Genius – Every Man For Himself

Another great little piece of commentary from Stowe Boyd about how the powers that be have it upside-down and backwards when it comes to getting the economy going again.

My favorite part is the Krugman quote:

But we’re talking about voodoo economics here, so perhaps it’s not surprising that belief in the magical powers of tax cuts is a zombie doctrine: no matter how many times you kill it with facts, it just keeps coming back. And despite repeated failure in practice, it is, more than ever, the official view of the G.O.P.

Yeah, that sounds like the USG to me!

Click the title above to check out the rest of Boyd’s post.

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The problem with our states is that they’re not countries… economically speaking, that is…

Posted on 2010/07/09 01:52 pm by thepete

underpaidgenius:

“The lack of coordination within the United States — and, equally important, the failure to recognize the states as macroeconomic players — helps explain our sluggish recovery. To make matters worse, several states have country-sized G.D.P.’s, but none has the macroeconomic tools of an independent country. Every state except Vermont has some sort of balanced budget requirement that prevents it from weathering a recession by running up big deficits to keep teachers employed, students in college, welfare payments flowing and construction humming. Nor can New York and California stimulate their economies by, say, printing more currency. Instead, states are managing huge budget crises with the only tools they have, cutting spending and raising taxes — both of which undermine the federal stimulus. That’s why the best booster shot for this recovery and the next would be to allow states to borrow from the Treasury during recessions. We did this for Wall Street and Detroit, fending off disaster. It’s even more important for states.”

—

Christopher Edley, Let Treasury Rescue the States

| The Supply Siders are going to love this idea.

Meh—I think I’d rather see New York and California secede.  Honestly, that’s where we’re headed—unless we actually want to let the USG drag us down with it. 

Hell, the world runs on money, right? So let’s act that way, dissolve the United States of America and reform all fifty of us into an EU-style economic entity. “The United Economies of America” aka the UEA.

Don’t get me wrong—I don’t want this to happen—but seriously—this is the way the world works and it’s high time we stop the lies and admit that our economy would be hella-more stable if we let government be more local and economy be more distributed.

Why keep pretending money isn’t king when it clearly is?

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