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No Armistice In War on Poor
Armistice Day reminds us that when wars end, the winners and losers are supposed to make peace. For the first time, in 2009, leaders of World War II enemies, Germany and France, commemorated the date together as a sign of new mutual respect. But this week also marked the ten-year anniversary of a different kind of war -- a war on Americans' assets and the poor. Ten years later, while the winners and losers are obvious, there's no armistice in sight.
On November 12, 1999, after decades of banking deregulation, congress repealed the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which up until that point had kept Main Street banks and commercial financial speculation apart. Glass-Steagall's repeal unleashed a wave of derivative marketing that rewarded shameless loan sharks for selling the most vulnerable Americans into a bubble of debt.
The bubble having burst, now the stock market is up. Companies are reporting strong earnings and Wall Street's clearly at peace. The top three banks announced this week that they'll be giving out their biggest bonuses yet. But this week's news also brought US double-digit unemployment and regardless of those good earnings, the layoffs just don't stop; Sprint says it's cutting another 2,500 jobs; Pfizer, 2,000 jobs; even supposedly new and growing parts of the economy aren't growing -- software developer Adobe's cutting 6 percent of its workforce, game-maker Electronic Arts is cutting 1,500 jobs. And that's just this week.
Winners and losers? You betcha. And the winners have won some serious loot.
Having suppressed wages for decades, now employers are suppressing jobs. Workers are not only making do with less -- they're working harder than ever, and there are no new hires, because fewer people seem to get the job done just fine. In fact their productivity's up. And the personal costs are off the books.
Call me crazy, but the spoils are pretty nifty: fewer workers, lower wages, a more terrified workforce. From a winners' point of view, what's not to like?
The proof of no peace is in the fact that the president and congress keep talking about recovery and jobs bouncing back...but there's no real structural change on the table, no new economic tools, no regulation -- certainly no reparations -- in sight. The losers are weak and the winners are stronger than ever.
The US economy has lost some 10 million jobs since the recession began. Do you really think those 10 million jobs are coming back? It seems to me, the war is far from over and the spoils are just beginning to mount.
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39 Comments so far
Show AllThe return of the bad 'Good Old Days' when elite robber barons ruled everything, and the common man lived in near penury.
Get this fact through your thick heads: 10% of the population controls 90% of the wealth. And the top 1% controls the vast majority of that 90%.
The economy is not going to improve, not for you, anytime soon. The Elite will continue to loot and burn their way through *your* savings, forcing you to line their pockets even more.
And you have no legal recourse to stop them. Their creations, the Corporations, have more rights than you do. They can commit robbery, rape, murder and worse, and you can't touch them. They can sell you poison packaged as food, disease marketed as a cure. And you can't stop them.
Because they control the government that makes the laws that are supposed to be there to protect YOU.
In not speaking out, in not standing up en mass and saying 'NO! I will not tolerate this!', you are giving them license to commit these illegal and immoral acts.
There are plenty of folks objecting, they are simply being dismissed by the left as "mobs" and "Nazi's", with the right dismissing the others as communists, socialists and liberals.
God help them if these two groups ever stop playing buying their swill.
The engineered divisiveness is all part and parcel of a grand plan. As long as people are too afraid about losing their jobs, no healthcare, swine flu, illegal immigrants, or missing the latest episode of 'reality' TV, they will assume someone else will stand up for them.
But we have already seen what government policy will be when you do stand up. Want a hint?
G20 Pittsburgh meeting ring a bell?
LRAD sound cannons, tear gas, rubber bullets, and truncheons used against unarmed and unresisting protestors.
You live in a very pretty dictatorship. To say otherwise is denial.
Did you notice that in most of the Pittsburgh videos it was the plain clothed, spontaneous citizen protesters who were getting arrested, while the masked and uniformed groups of "anarchists" (there's a clue) were allowed to continue their provocations? It almost seemed like they were there to do just enough property damage to give protesting a bad name and to give the authorities an excuse to bring down the hammer.
Are you suggesting that the police and administration would use lies and deceit to further their agenda?
Oh the shock!
Heavens forbid! I wouldn't dream of making such a seditious suggestion. If the authorities were going to do something like that I'm sure they would have done it during the civil rights/anti-war era of the 60s, oh wait...:( One would almost think they were acting in the belief that Americans had no knowledge of history, errf... Well, whatever is going on, I'm sure that the free-market and our vigorous democratic institutions will see to it. Perhaps Mr. Obama et al. are thinking that by acting like corporatists now they can rouse the populace into supporting his true progressive agenda down the road; once the Democrats have more seats in congress of course.
Sarcasm, it's whats for dinner.
As someone sympathetic to the Pittsburgh Anarchist community, the Anarchists are quite real and they are not agent-provoceturs. They are people actually living the change they want to see, unlike overweight rich bougeois CD commenters, which sad to admit, includes me.
Has the passivist (sp. stet) model of protest gotten us anywhere?
Smashing the windows of major banks and the Mcdonalds-owned "Boston Market" seems to me to be quite a moderate and measured expression of our rage. All the broken-windows-of-family-business stories were either unsubstantiated or were done by clueless drunk bubba college kids who confused the protest action for a Penguins Stanley Cup celebration.
As far as why the cops never seem to catch the anarchists, and instead arrest bystanders, you have to ask the cops. I do know most anarchists are in good shape and can run much faster than a cop. They are also cynical of the Berriginan-phoughshares type of CD actions of the older generation - where one commits a symbolic act of vandalism then waits for the police while celebrating Holy Eucharest - because thet have been shown again, and again, to produce the same useless result in a US courtroom. Better to run away and fight again.
Not dictatorship, it's fascism; corporate control of government.
Obama doesn't call the shots anymore than the wanker did.
They are smiling puppets.
Magna Carta the Corp.s; OFF with their TAILS!
This SUCKS.
Every day I see old clunkers beside the road. The driver could afford nothing better, can't afford to call a tow truck even if he had a cell phone, and is worried about losing his job for being late.
I see little kids hiding in the back floor because their parents can't afford a car seat, cars full of eight people at the food bank----they can't afford the gas for individual trips.
Then I hear drug companies on TV saying "If you can't afford your medicine we may be able to help". These bastards are some big humanitarians. If they and their fellow corporate 'persons' had not stolen everything these people have they wouldn't need help.
The imaginary left-right divide is continually encouraged and the flames of discontent fanned to keep the masses fighting amongst each other. It's one of the oldest tactics there are - divide and conquer. How do we come together as a people, the ones supposedly in charge in this poor excuse for a democracy regardless of some pretty petty disagreements, and finally say NO to the common scourge of corporate rule and political malfeasance? Without that happening, we are certainly doomed to serf existence for the majority and champagne and caviar for the elite.
Divide and conquer is age old.
Two options:
1. quit paying taxes
2. pitchforks and shovels
3. turn off the tv
4. return all credit cards
buff-right on
5. avoid banks
6. stop buying junk
now put your clothes back on
There's one little thing you're overlooking in your plan: religion. This is about more than left/right. It's about two forces fighting for power: the robber barons and the church, they both want the same thing and operate in similar ways but they're not willing to share it among themselves.
This is what they had in mind all along. They started this when Nixon left office. They didn't want the people of the country keeping the gov't honest, and set about to destroy the middle class. They declared war without telling those they were aiming at. And that is what all those goddamned bonuses are about. The more they keep the money, the less any of us will see any of it.
They took our money and gave it to themselves, promising to reward us with better jobs that would pay us more and more. They delivered a loss of jobs and an increase in debt. The differences between those day's Reaganomics and today's version is that then they promised to give us jobs, now they promise to loan us our own money when we give them trillions. They didn't give us jobs then, and they aren't loaning us anything now. Just more lying, nothing has changed, it's just gotten worse.
Their divide and conquer political games have paid off really well for them. But you know, those of us who played Monopoly as kids knew how this game was going to turn out when it started. And the crap we took for saying so while everyone else was out there either getting rich or going broke...
Thanks for pointing out the obvious Laura. I like you alot, but you're REALLY late to the table with this one.
I have heard that rich people taste just like chicken. Maybe it's time for the poor and homeless to kill and eat the rich people, and take all their stuff. Then they would be rich, and the next batch of poor could kill them and take all their stuff ... etc., ad infinitum. Violence and greed only beget violence and greed! But the corporate masters have set up the game and rigged the rules. They have bribed our "elected" officials, and they own the police and the military. When the last straw breaks the camel's back, and they are being hauled in carts to the guillotine, they will all say "We didn't mean to ... etc. We didn't know ... etc." But those are lies. They know. They hope that we don't know. And most of us are so stupid, that we don't.
The rich can only rule the willing masses. Many Americans are protesting silently: we have walked away from property when the banks have been unwilling to renegotiate. We're finding ways to live with less consumption. We are turning our backs on the "debtor economy" by either walking away from what's owed to GE/BofA/Chase etal or we're deciding to go straight cash. Frankly, I've moved all my accounts out of the big banks. They repulse me. It feels wonderful to have no consumer debt and to patronize the local economy.
So far so good...
I see them on the side of the road every day, crying over what they've lost due to what we've done to them.
At least the robber barons of old built universities, public libraries and museums. Robber barons today pocket every last penny.
The mantra the right wing think tanks such as The Fraser Institute push here in Canada is that of "Lagging productivity" as compared to the USA.
They want legislative changes so that we can be "As Productive" as US workers or we will see a drop in living Standards. Generally these are less in the way of Labor protections and ways of making it easier to have employees work "off hours without pay"
The peoples pushing this Mantra tend to be "The Investor Class", the Corporations and the think tanks funded by the same.
Those gains in productivity have done little to improve the lot of the working class. All they are is shifting more and more work to a smaller few. The "Costs" of these gains are borne by lower wages, higher long term unemployemnt greater stress and health care costs.
Its easy really. Accept a lower wage increase. Work an extra 2 hours a day on your OWN time. Do the work that the person we just laid off used to do.
BOOM productivity goes up.
Now lets squeeze even more.
Way back in the 1970's various Committees were struck here in Canada wherein they recommended a Guaranteed National Income. Rather then have things like Unemployment Insurance, Welfare pensions and the like , all Canadians would be GUARANTEED a base level of income that would be enough to pay for Food , Shelter, Clothing and the Staples of life.
I grew up in Alberta and thought the idea insane at the time given my "Conservative" upbringing but as I look back I recognize that was a very GOOD idea.
It would have given people the FREEDOM and the SECURITY of knowing they were never enslaved to a Job and that they would not be out in the streets if they did not do as the masters demanded.
It time we revisited that idea and GIVEN the billions in profits extracted from this Country by foreign firms and given a GINI of some 32.0 (I would suggest 20 is plenty) it is certainly affordable.
So, things aren't any better in Canada than the USan Empire, huh? I've wondered about that often.
Here's another scenario for you (real one as it happened at my own company). The boss gets a new client (big one too) that brings in billions of dollars worth of business a year. He has to hire more employees to do the extra work. Good news, right? Not so fast, says the boss. He'll cut back the 4 to 5% raises he never gave anybody to 2% in order to pay the new employees' salaries. I just got my 2% race, it amounted to $14 every 2 weeks. My (small, economic Toyota) takes $25 to fill, it takes me one tank of gas to go to an from work a week. My famous race doesn't even cover the tank of gas that it takes to get there! How do you like that little twist?
Now, here's the thing you gotta admire (if I can use that word), when it comes to creative ways of screwing their wage serfs, nobody can top them.
I believe the GINI in the USA is pushing 50 so we are not THERE yet.
That said with Harper in Power and things like NAFTA giving away our resources and abrogating sovereignity a good many would like to see us Corporatized like the USA with Social Program spending gutted.
That said our own boss rolled back our wages last year and then used the rationale that the price of things like TVS and washing machines was dropping. With a tight labor market people that quit had better ensure they have a job lined up before they do.
This while rent, food , energy and gas all went up and this while the Government shifted more taxes from the Corporations to the workers to ensure the Corporations do not flee the country thus causing job losses.
Therein is the underlying problem. These Corporations get so large they blackmail the Government into getting anything they want simply by claiming they will curtail "investment" and put those investements elsewhere.
The Prime example of this is Alberta where the royalty payments for the oil and natural gas are the lowest in the world. When the price of oil was sky high Alberta finally decided to boost those payments higher. When the oil price started to drop the Oil Companies threatened to stop investment in Alberta unless they were slashed again.
Alberta has hitched all of the horses to the energy bandwagon so were all but begging the big boys to stay with more in the way of "tax breaks". As they give these "tax breaks" to Big Oil they run a deficit thus decide they have to cut social program spending.
So, I assume you are commuting about 30 miles each way? Find a job closer to work - or preferably where you can use public transportation. even when I lived in god-awful suburban Fairfax county, I never commuted that far.
As the anarchists around her say, live the change you want to see.
The Fraser Institute is the bane of thinking and analytical Canadians. Their influence has only increased under the Harper government. The detrimental gutting of our social/public policies can be directly attributed to this institution (bastion) of neo-conservatism. It is they who constantly demand cutting the taxes that corporations pay which could easily fund our programs (including post-secondary education and child-care). Instead, the working class (the term "middle class" is meant as a placebo effect for those working class who think they are part of the "better life") is loaded with the taxes the wealthy and corpos should be paying.
The best solution and response to those who would rob us of what little we earn to enrich the already rich is to recreate local, social economies and to practice participatory democracy. When we take back logical solutions (yes, it means working against the system) we can also win back out communal values - we are in this together and no more "you are on your own" (YoYo) that neo-liberal "think-tanks" would have.
People are used to being the butt. The only thing changing is the butt's getting bigger.
I have a suggestion. Everytime you hear an economist say that jobs are "lagging" indicator so our economy is really, really doing okay, translate the word "lagging" to "lying".
Jobs are a lying indicator because the lack of jobs exposes the government liars. Nowadays government and Wall Street are interchangeble terms.
The mindset of Wall Street is DARWIN MEETS MONSANTO.
The elite believe they have genetically re-engineered themselves to a god-like status. Gods never say they are sorry and do whatever they feel, in their infinite wisdom, is necessary for their noble, benevolent reign. Middle class in general and the poor in particular are eating up resources and should be "weeded out" because they are weeds. It's laughable to try to get a rich, highly educated, god pig to be concerned with humans in general. They consider themselves super-human so anyone who is merely human is a nuisance and should just die to make the world a better place.
Madame Defarge understood all this centuries ago.
The War on Terror...
The War on Drugs...
The War on Illiteracy...
The War on Poverty...
The War on Common Sense...
The War on Decency...
The War on The Working Class...
War, war, war...
And big fish eats little fish, every time, old the time.
The Republican answer to every problem is either start a war on it, build prisons for it, or, if it is indecent, show it on FOX News and be shocked over it, BUT always make money for the "MASTER CLASS from it." Who cares about the young, the old, the poor, the sick, or any one who cares for other people?--certainly not the right-wing fascists of the world.
"The Republican answer to every problem is either start a war on it, build prisons for it, or, if it is indecent, show it on FOX News and be shocked over it, BUT always make money for the "MASTER CLASS from it."
Well, I don't see the Democrats complaining about that much less doing anything about it. This is not a problem created by the Republicans alone. Both parties stand equally guilty. As they should since they're only different legs on the same dog.
You bloggers are full of beans. Anyone with a brain knows that businessmen distrust the Obamo socialist plans for Amerika. I won´t even go in to Al Gore and world government. You would-be revolutionaries should put your guillotines away and join the Tea Party Patriot movement. You do not have to be a Fox News junkie to belong. When the majority of responsible, voting Americans know the issues, we will have a wisely elected government of the people with liberals and conservative views represented. Until then, it is whoever has the most cash in his or her election coffers that wins. That is not the democracy our founding fathers intended nor you or I want. P
People of lesser ambition than Blankfein would wonder why $16 trillion in money held by banks and big non-financial corporations is not making its way to the American workforce, in new jobs, better pay, a future. Why sit on so much cash while American communities go down the tubes? With so many kids in poverty?
Like Blankfein, President Obama understands the dynamics of ambition all too well, whereby recovery hinges on achieving return on investment without emotionalism or compromise, a concrete goal that inspires Lloyd Blankfein and keeps alive the wellspring of human ambition. And sells lots of yachts.
Said President Obama this fall to a group of high school students, “Don’t ever give up on yourself, because when you give up on yourself you give up on your country.” Most of all, don’t expect much from your country, unless you’re an ambitious banker looking for relief.
Carl Ginsburg is a tv producer and journalist based in New York. He can be reached at carlginsburg@gmail.com
_______________________________________________________________________________
Maukapete,
When "winning" is properly defined, people like you and Blankfein will be labelled "losers".
You are, however, quite right about or founding fuckers. We are catching on now. I hope you had fun because it's over, pal.
"Anyone with a brain knows that businessmen distrust the Obamo socialist plans for Amerika."
Sorry, the bailouts, the refusal to prosecute Bush, et al, the surge in Afghanistan, the incursions into Pakistan, his inertia on healthcare, etc. have all confused and thinking that he's actually doing all that for us poor folk. However businessmen know better and can see what we ordinary people without a brain can't see.
"You would-be revolutionaries should put your guillotines away and join the Tea Party Patriot movement."
The Tea Party Patriot movement? ROFL! Is this the same "Tea Party Patriot Movement" with the senior citizens demanding that the government keep its paws off healthcare and, in particular, their Medicare? The same "Movement" that is protesting no tax raises on those who make over $250,000 year? Or are you talking about a different "Tea Party Patriot Movement"?
atime
« Link to my interview last night on Kudlow and Co.
The 10-Year Yield is the Giveaway »
It’s About the Death of Small Business
November 6th, 2009
By David Goldman
As I said on Larry Kudlow’s CNBC show Wednesday night (see link in previous post), the big issue in the US economy is the massacre of small business. That’s why the household survey shows that 558,000 Americans “became unemployed” during October, while the establishment survey of payrolls shows a decline of only 190,000 jobs. The establishment data, which are collected from larger businesses, are more reliable; the household survey is based on telephone interviews with randomly-selected households. But the numbers are so large as to make clear that small businesses are shutting down.
With commercial and industrial lending by American banks down 13% since September 2008, and most banks continuing to “tighten lending standards” in the Fed’s official poll, this is not surprising. Wal-Mart will make it through a recession; not the tea-cozy shop down the mall corridor, much less the real-estate agency in the half-abandoned exurb. The global speculative grade default rate, as Moody’s reported this week, has risen to a post-Great Depression high of 12%. Credit lines for small businesses (including home equity, credit cards, and all the other devices entrepreneurs use to fund themselves) will continue to shrink.
Numerous analysts have made the point that in all previous post-war recoveries, it was small business that led job creation. During the 1980s and 1990s large businesses lost employment and small businesses grew. The fact that job losses at small business are evidently far higher than those at large businesses does not make this look like any recovery at all.
This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 8:58 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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atime
« It’s About the Death of Small Business
The 10-Year Yield is the Giveaway
November 11th, 2009
By David Goldman
We have had the longest winning streak on the S&P in three years, and gold hits new records every day — and the 10-year yield has fallen in the course of the week. That’s not a dog that didn’t bark, but a dog that did an Elvis impression. The simple explanation is: dollar devaluation. All US assets are cheapening to foreign investors, including Treasury securities. With unemployment at umptysteenth percent (17.5% of the workforce by the comprehensive measure) American prices simply won’t move at the rate at which the dollar is devalued. Labor will remain cheap. That’s why Treasury securities look cheap to foreigners. The Fed has effectively placed a giant wealth tax on America by devaluating the dollar.
All that has happened is that dollar devaluation has revalued the price of international tradeables — gold commodities, Intel, luxury condos in Manhattan — while the grass roots of the US economy continue to dry up. The stock market looks bubbly. How long will the bubble last? As one of my mentors in the business, Credit Suisse chief US economist Neal Soss, like to put it: Bubbles last until they feel like fundamentals.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 9:13 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One Response to “The 10-Year Yield is the Giveaway”
Inner Workings Copyright 2008-2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings), Ltd.
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA = THE GREATEST PURVEYOR of CLASS WAR in the HISTORY OF THE PLANET. VIOLENCE OF ECONOMIC , CULTURAL AND MILITARY CHARACTER IS THE NAME OF AMERICA.
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"I MUST WITH SADNESS AND GREAT SHAME THAT THE GREATEST PURVEYOR OF VIOLENCE IN THE WORLD TODAY -- IS MY OWN COUNTRY AND GOVERNMENT....WE ARE A NATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL GIANTS AND MORAL MIDGETS"....
REVEREND MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
If Laura Flander's facts are facts, and I don't know enough to suspect otherwise, this is about the best article on the subject--her cleverly and carefully constructed argument about a difficult subject to understand, are comprehensible.
I hope those joining the job conference Obama announced today, will at least look into her argument; "Glass-Steagall's repeal unleashed a wave of derivative marketing that rewarded shameless loan sharks for selling the most vulnerable Americans into a bubble of debt."
Quite the contrary. Obama has already approved 'the surge' for that war.
AND THEY EVEN MAKE US BUY OUR OWN AUDIO-VISUAL PROPAGANDA DELIVERY MACHINES.