Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

putting millions of unemployed people to work building a new low-carbon infrastructure - weatherproofing homes, laying down Bus Rapid Transit and high-speed rail lines, implementing a price on carbon, renewable energy standards,

i believed obama when he talked this shit

:/

That shit sounds way too much like by-gawd commie socialism for any red-blooded American to ever believe in.

i believed obama when he talked this shit

i did too. And shit, I think Obama believed it too. He had Van Jones as his Green Jobs czar, Chu, Holdren, and so on. And occasionally he hints that he still "gets it". But energy/environmental policy, out of all policy realms, is the least conducive to compromise, because nature/physics does not give a damn that "politics is the art of what's possible". aaaaaaaaaarrrrgh

don't hate the player hate the game?

anyway, i was going to apologize for going off on a tangent on an economy thread but the inaction on climate/energy over the past 3 decades is going to have massive economic repercussions. people always talk about the costs of implementing a price on carbon without ever talking about the costs of NOT doing so, which are mindboggling. If a flood is clearly approaching your home and you could pay $50 to stop it or mitigate it, you do it. you don't quibble about whether the cost is $50 or $75 or $20, you just DO IT ASAP because if you don't your fucking house is ruined.

bllluuurgh

xpost

I sympathize with Obama and the tough position he's in, but if this is a game he's the closest thing to a DM we've got

last post before i pass out in a pile of puke in the gutter (again), but i'll go ahead and make an ass out of myself by making the prediction that anything approximating a global economic recovery will come paired with another sustained rise in the price of oil to the $150-160 range, followed by another recession that will be blamed primarily on other more obvious factors.

also, depressing sidebar: rising oil prices + climate change related extreme weather have already pushed food prices to similar levels that provoked food riots in a dozen countries in 2008 and 2009; the idiotic ethanol policy in the U.S. plus the almost certain future rise in oil prices are going to exacerbate the situation. Lester Brown has been on fire regarding this subject recently, and for the last decade.

http://i52.tinypic.com/5nmyw8.gif

positive signs, finally

It took less than three weeks for the new Republican Congressional leadership to claim credit for an apparent economic upturn.

An aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Brian Patrick, emailed reporters this morning:

THERE ARE THE JOBS: Republicans Prevent Massive Tax Increase, Economy Begins to Improve....

Ha

Republicans Prevent Massive Tax Increase

Pretty easy to prevent something when the only opposing party immediately caves to your position.

"massive" would have equaled returning rate a few percentage points to Clinton era

considering that the GOP credited the late 90s boom to Ronald Reagan, it's not at all surprising that they'd credit any improved economic news to their (1-month) majority. logic isn't the point here, it's all about message.

also, and w/t reading any of those Esquire articles, i actually think that Latin America may be the best bet for economic growth this decade -- China and India are going to hit some big walls soon (though I think India may end up faring better than China).

Gross Eliminates Government Debt From Pimco's Flagship Total Return Fund

Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., eliminated government-related debt from his flagship fund last month as the U.S. projected record budget deficits.

Pimco’s $237 billion Total Return Fund last held zero government-related debt in January 2009. Gross had cut the holdings to 12 percent of assets in January, according to the Newport Beach, California-based company’s website. The fund’s net cash-and-equivalent position surged from 5 percent to 23 percent in February, the highest since May 2008.

Yields on Treasuries may be too low to sustain demand for U.S. government debt as the Federal Reserve approaches the end of its second round of quantitative easing, Gross wrote in a monthly investment outlook posted on Pimco’s website on March 2. Gross mentioned that Pimco may be a buyer of Treasuries if yields rise to attractive levels.

Treasury yields are about 150 basis points too low when viewed on a historical context and when compared with expected nominal gross domestic product growth of 5 percent, he wrote in the commentary. The Fed is scheduled to complete purchases of $600 billion of Treasuries in June.

Gross in his February commentary urged investors to reduce holdings of Treasuries and U.K. gilts and buy higher-returning securities such as debt from emerging-market nations. “Old- fashioned gilts and Treasury bonds may need to be ‘exorcised’ from model portfolios and replaced with more attractive alternatives both from a risk and a reward standpoint,” Gross wrote.

the austerity mistake:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/austerity-games-here-and-there/

"The only way the economy can avoid taking a hit from government cuts is if private spending rises to fill the gap — and although you rarely hear the austerians admitting this, the only way that can happen is if people take on more debt. So we have the spectacle of a government that inveighs against the evils of debt pinning all its hopes on an assumption that over-indebted households will dig their hole even deeper."

let's cut taxes on the rich too

The only way the economy can avoid taking a hit from government cuts is if it get's it's spending fix from somewhere else.

No shit, Paul Krugman.

He's not writing a public diary revealing his newest economic revelations, he's trying to influence policymakers who don't (or refuse to) get it.

But sadly noone in the White House will advocate for his position

much love to william greider

http://www.thenation.com/article/159433/how-wall-street-crooks-get-out-jail-free?page=full

Except for occasional civil complaints by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the nation is left to face a disturbing spectacle: crime without punishment. Massive injuries were done to millions of people by reckless bankers, and vast wealth was destroyed by elaborate financial deceptions. Yet there are no culprits to be held responsible.

mistakes were made

didn't matt taibibi write the same article a few months ago?

matt taibbi vs. megan mccardle - fight!

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/video-taibbi-vs-mcardle-on-goldmans-responsibility-to-its-clients-20110516

whoah

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/business/17bank.html?_r=1

The New York attorney general has requested information and documents in recent weeks from three major Wall Street banks about their mortgage securities operations during the credit boom, indicating the existence of a new investigation into practices that contributed to billions in mortgage losses.

Officials in Eric T. Schneiderman’s office have also requested meetings with representatives from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. The inquiry appears to be quite broad, with the attorney general’s requests for information covering many aspects of the banks’ loan pooling operations. They bundled thousands of home loans into securities that were then sold to investors such as pension funds, mutual funds and insurance companies.

Thank you New York state for doing what the feds have clearly declined to do, and it's about fucking time some one did it.

the new spitzer

"The government already has reached the limit of its borrowing authority, $14.3 trillion, and the Treasury is using a series of extraordinary maneuvers to meet financial obligations."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/06/01/us_congress_debt_limit

but we can't raise taxes

we're not gonna budge here

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201106010013

maybe a stretch, but her dress is awesome

crooked timber:

Eric Cantor:

“Everything is on the table,” he said. “As Republicans, we’re not going to go for tax increases. I think the administration gets that. But we’ve also put everything on the table as far as cuts.”

Imagine what the response would be if this were flipped around. Imagine a Democrat emitting the following, as a bold deficit reduction plan: “Everything is on the table … we’re not going to go for spending cuts. I think the Republicans get that. But we’ve also put everything on the table as far as tax hikes.” No one would say such a Bizarro Norquist thing, of course, because no one on the Democratic side is as bizarre as Norquist. But if someone did, it would be perfectly obvious the person saying this thing wasn’t concerned with deficit reduction. The idea that someone unwilling to contemplate spending cuts – anywhere – was a deficit hawk would not pass the laugh test. As Cantor’s statement does not.

disagree with the awful strategy proposed in the rest of the post, but that's pretty otm. saying "everything is on the table" while absolutely refusing to consider tax hikes is absurd, especially given that over the past century, the standard response to recessions has been tax hikes.

biggest Dow dip since last summer yesterday. Looks like I picked the right season to reduce my 401k contrib (so I can afford my upcoming rent hike and vacation)

and vast wealth was destroyedcreated by elaborate financial deceptions

rick ungar otm

http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/06/01/how-our-largest-corporations-made-170-billion-during-great-recession-and-paid-no-taxes/

twelve of the nations largest Fortune 500 companies, while making $170 billion in profits during the period of The Great Recession, paid an effective tax rate of negative 1.5%

goldman subpoenaed

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-02/goldman-said-to-get-subpoena-from-manhattan-prosecutor-over-senate-report.html

that took fucking long enough

the last decade in terms of real wages was actually worse than the Great Depression

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/06/03/235709/depression-wages/

The increase in total private-sector wages, adjusted for inflation, from the start of 2001 has fallen far short of any 10-year period since World War II, according to Commerce Department data. In fact, if the data are to be believed, economy wide wage gains have even lagged those in the decade of the Great Depression (adjusted for deflation). Over the past decade, real private-sector wage growth has scraped bottom at 4%, just below the 5% increase from 1929 to 1939, government data show.

i think we should cut taxes and deregulate stuff

so frustrating

If we all just sit and wish hard enough, maybe the rich will start letting us have a bit more of the profits of our labors.

but nobody in america wants to redistribute $$$$$$, except for like half of americans

Americans break into two roughly evenly matched camps on the question of whether the government should enact heavy taxes on the rich to redistribute wealth in the U.S. Forty-seven percent believe the government should redistribute wealth in this way, while 49% disagree, similar to views Gallup found four years ago.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/147881/Americans-Divided-Taxing-Rich-Redistribute-Wealth.aspx

florida couple forecloses on bank of america

http://www.news-press.com/article/20110603/BUSINESS/110603016/Bank-America-pays-debt-instead-losing-furniture

That story made me happy, until I thought about all the shit that couple had to put up with and how little the bank really compensated them for it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2000558/Record-61-6TRILLION-financial-promises-paid-US-borrow-125bn-month.html

We knew the U.S. economy's financial health and future was looking bad - but amazing figures show how rapidly it deteriorated even further last year.
The federal government has a record $61.6trillion of financial promises not paid for after $5.3trillion of new financial obligations were added in 2010.

This gap between spending commitments and revenue in the year gone by equals more than one-third of the nation's output, reported USA Today.

Medicare added $1.8trillion in new liabilities and Social Security took on $1.4trillion in obligations, which is partly down to longer life expectancies.

really could do without the daily mail on this thread

Of course, but it was a toss up between that and USA Today.

how about the boise register? chinidaho ho!

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/12/31/1472023/chinese-company-eyes-boise.html

FYI, approximately half of the jobs created in May came from McDonalds

Up to 30,000 of the 54,000 jobs created in May were the result of a hiring spree by the hamburger chain, analysts at Morgan Stanley told Market Watch on Friday.

Richard Fisher, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, dropped by our offices this week and relayed a remarkable fact: Some 37% of all net new American jobs since the recovery began were created in Texas.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304259304576375480710070472.html

since this is the wsj, curious how many of those new lone star positions are mcjobs (not that there's anything wrong with those). i'd want to see info on average wages and benefits before i take them seriously

nobody in america wants to redistribute $$$$$$, except for like half of americans

We've BEEN redistributing it... upward!

it's called "rightfully earned" Morbs

um...

Multi-billion-dollar government subsidies to, for example, oil companies are "rightfully earned"?

but they create jobs so we should be grateful for them and give them whatever they need out to give us jobs because they create them for us and we're goddamn lucky for the privilege