Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

So while Congress is busy working on reform legislation, Wall Street’s lawyer-lobbyists in Washington are working hard to neutralize such efforts.

Who’s winning? Over lunch across town from Capitol Hill, I recently asked that question of a very smart attorney endowed with deep experience in keeping Washington safe for Wall Street. In answer, he pointed to this seven-line paragraph buried in a 26-page amendment to “HR 3795, Over-The-Counter Derivatives Markets Act of 2009,” passed in a voice vote by the House Agriculture Committee the night before. Following the vote, the committee had issued a press release hailing their vote for “strengthening” regulation.

On the contrary, said my friend, “I guarantee you that not a single member, and almost certainly no one else, apart from the traders on Wall Street and the lobbyist who inserted it on their behalf, understood the significance of this paragraph. It means that nothing will change.”

http://counterpunch.org/andrew11112009.html

Bob Herbert:

Mr. Obama announced this week that he would convene a jobs summit at the White House next month to explore ways of putting Americans back to work. It remains to be seen whether the summit will yield anything substantial. But it’s fair to wonder why the president and his party have not been focused like fanatics on job creation from the first day he took office.

It was the financial elites who took the economy down, and it was ordinary working people, the longtime natural constituents of the Democratic Party, who were buried in the rubble. Mr. Obama and the Democrats have been unconscionably slow in riding to the rescue of those millions of Americans struggling with the curse of joblessness.

We’ve been hearing that there are six unemployed workers for every job opening in the U.S., but even that terrible figure is deceptive. There are 25 unemployed construction workers for every job opening in their field, and more than a dozen for every opening in the durable goods industries, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.

This was not a normal recession, and we are not on the cusp of anything like a normal recovery. The unemployment rate for black Americans is 15.7 percent. The underemployment rate for blacks in September (the latest month for which figures are available) was a gut-wrenching 23.8 percent and for Hispanics an even worse 25.1 percent. The poverty rate for black children is almost 35 percent.

Elizabeth Warren on credit card interests rates, bailout money, and why plutocracy reigns supreme.

great great blog: http://fourteenpercent.typepad.com/

don't know if this blog is great or not, yet: http://firelarrysummersnow.blogspot.com/

Fabulous Frontline episode last night about the credit card companies.

http://www.andrewrosssorkin.com/?p=386

Realtytrac says defaults and repossessions have been running at over 300,000 a month since February. One million American families lost their homes in the fourth quarter. Moody's Economy.com expects another 2.4m homes to go this year. Taken together, this looks awfully like Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/6962632/America-slides-deeper-into-depression-as-Wall-Street-revels.html

not having the DJIA widget and screaming dollar bill on top makes me sad

It was tough for me to watch the market inexplicably surge over the last couple months so I dont miss it much.

Re: market surging. Rescuing the economy from collapse entailed installing a huge money-chute with its terminus in Wall Street and the Fed and the Treasury pouring huge amounts of cash into the top end. The result is a certain kind of success, albeit a success that still tastes like a lollipop dropped in hair clippings, but at the final cost of no change to the system.

One million American families lost their homes in the fourth quarter.

Jesus fucking Christ. lot of human misery in that statistic.

not having the DJIA widget and screaming dollar bill on top makes me sad

cosign

First our economy is like "Hey, here's a home that's four times the size of what you need!" And then it's like "Give that back. Now you don't have a home at all!"

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1953136,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

Goldman received $12.9 billion when the government bailed out the insurer.

In all, the firm is expected to have earned $12 billion in 2009.

I'm assuming these 'earnings' are including taxpayer money.

The $2 trillion conjured up by the Federal Reserve to buy toxic assets at face value is not taxpayer money. And Goldman Sachs was one of the biggest beneficiaries when the feds bailed out AIG and decided to honor its contracts on CDOs.

Didnt every bank basically profit off of federal guarantees and assurances along with 0% interest rates? This is why these fuckers getting huge bonuses pisses everyone off.

But... but... they were smart enough to be on the receiving end, weren't they?

I'm assuming these 'earnings' are including taxpayer money.

― Adam Bruneau, Wednesday, 13 January 2010 16:52 (2 hours ago)

Actually I don't think so - Goldman Sachs paid back its TARP money in the middle of the year IIRC.

TARP was only the most prominent and direct taxpayer subsidy. GS has profited enormously from the more indirect and less obvious taxpayer subsidies cited in my post above. The AIG takeover resulted in an enormous windfall for GS.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/34842647

Just look at the slaughter across the board: BofA, Citi, Morgan Stanley, Goldman, JPMorgan — all of them down 2.5 to 3.5 percent. This had nothing to do with China. What it’s all about is a ridiculous bank-tax proposal that is anti-growth, anti-capital, anti-profits, anti-shareholders, and anti-bank-lending.

the best thing about this is as of now the live bank quotes are all in the green.

Link above proves Larry Kudlow is either as ignorant as mud, or he hides his knowlege very well.

jobless rate to stay above 8 percent until 2012

it's alarming and all, but i think it's disingenuous to blame it on "the downturn." the downturn was the popping of an unsustainable bubble. it's possible that the united states is going to have persistent unemployment at a rate that would have been unthinkable not long ago, but that has more to do with structural problems in our society and economy, and the acceleration of global trade, than with "the downturn."

Agreed.

I feel the same way about the term "wealth destruction" - the wealth wasn't really there to begin with.

Anyone have any thoughts about Obama's bank plan / Glass Steagall 2?

i'll believe glass steagall 2 when i see it
jobless rate to stay above 8 percent until 2012
at this point i can imagine out of work rednecks refusing to look for jobs just to keep the unemployment rate high

Um, whut?

Also the ridiculousness of that suggestion aside, refusing to look for a job would ultimately put them in a "discouraged worker" category and thus not in the unemployment rate.

jokes jokes but if you want to take it seriously, the putative rednecks on strike against fascism/marxism might not be honest about how they file their unemployment

i like seeing paul volcker next to obama but no way is this going to do anything to the banks

taibbi is awesome as per usual -

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2010/01/27/populism-just-like-racism/

The Dow closed just above 10,000, dropping 2.6 percent, when two of Wall Street’s biggest fears — a deteriorating jobs market and the debt woes facing foreign governments — re-emerged on Thursday.

What? You thought we were on our way to a recovery? If so, I have a Timothy Geithner I can sell you for cheap.

just saw there's a new baseline.

yeah, i did feel like we were on the way to a recovery. still hoping, maybe foolishly.

that baseline scenario is loooonnnnnngggg. key point that jumped out at me is the need for a second, robust stimulus:

9) On a Q4-on-Q4 basis, the US will struggle to grow faster than 2 percent (the IMF forecast is for 2.6 percent). This within year pattern will likely involve a significant slowdown in the second half – although probably not an outright decline in output. The effects of fiscal stimulus will begin to wear off by the middle of the year and without a viable medium-term fiscal framework there is not much room for further stimulus – other than cosmetic “job creation” measures.

. . . but i haven't read the whole post yet in detail, so maybe i'm off-base.

juicy quotes just how utterly vapid congressional republicans are from hank paulsons memoir

Just in case you miss the drift, he describes his meetings with Senate Republicans, in sum, as completely useless.

First on the chopping block, McCain: The former Goldman Sachs CEO blasts the ’08 GOP presidential hopeful for suspending his campaign for a disastrous Sept. 25 meeting at the White House with Bush, Obama, Cheney, et al. Paulson says the meeting was pointless and describes McCain’s suspension “impulsive and risky,” adding, “When it came right down to it, he had little to say in the forum he himself had called.”

Palin, he says, “rubbed me the wrong way,” meetings with the Senate GOP were “a complete waste of time for us, when time was more precious than anything,” and Cantor’s suggestion that TARP be replaced with an insurance program met with outright derision from Paulson.

The usually unsnarky Paulson hits the minority whip particularly hard, ridiculing Cantor’s insurance plan by sarcastically suggesting the administration abandon efforts to prop up the collapsing financial system — just to try out Cantor’s unproven, “unformed” insurance scheme.

“I got a better idea. I’m going to go with Eric Cantor’s insurance program,” he writes. “That’s the idea to save the day.”

lol want to read paulson's book

ha me too.

geithner & nationalization one year (or so) on. or the story of differing definitions of success:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/03/15/100315fa_fact_cassidy?currentPage=4

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n05/john-lanchester/the-great-british-economy-disaster

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/32255149/wall_streets_bailout_hustle/print

points of interest: still clinging to the idea that nationalization wouldve been a mistake and mb more convinced that w/e were calling health care reform now couldve been shelved (sorry max) for more/better/comprehensive finance reform & reregulation. have no idea now what is even possible politically. lanchester's point about debt is p interesting in the american context w/r/t to social spending.

shld probably find some time to read up on the impact/feasibility of higher taxes

Impact of raised taxes is a republican rhetorical holocaust

this makes sense to me. the US is hemmoraging jobs, and other countries apparently do a lot of our former-jobs more efficiently. so what to do? change the focus to a newer industry and/or paradigm, where the playing field is more level and where we can lead. also, we spent decades profiting by ruining the environment, and much of that opportunity (for the US, at least) seems to have run its course. it seems sensible to me to begin profiting by helping the environment, if possible.

relax, we'll be fine.

Over the next 40 years, Kotkin argues, urban downtowns will continue their modest (and perpetually overhyped) revival, but the real action will be out in the compact, self-sufficient suburban villages. Many of these places will be in the sunbelt — the drive to move there remains strong — but Kotkin also points to surging low-cost hubs on the Plains, like Fargo, Dubuque, Iowa City, Sioux Falls, and Boise.

said "real action" may play out any number of ways on the US Politics thread imo

Why The Obama Plan is Working.

Arrgh. As I suspected, Business Week says Obama's plan is working because "the markets are right".

And the markets are happy because Obama, with the full urging and connivance of Bernanke and Geithner, has poured vast amounts of free money into the system, while not yet having made any move that would effectively curb the powers or excesses that drove the collapse in the first place. So, basically, it is the same old path we've been on since Reagan: all profits are privatized while most losses are socialized.

BTW, last night I dreamed I pulled a dollar bill out of my billfold and found Reagan's face where George Washington should be. My dream-self reaction was, "Oh, I see they finally got their way."

This column is a great luscious orgy of optimism. This column is a great luscious orgy of optimism. This column is a great luscious orgy of optimism. This column is a great luscious orgy of optimism. This column is a great luscious orgy of optimism. This column is a great luscious orgy of optimism. This column is a great luscious orgy of optimism.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/04/02/opinion/ts-brooks-190.jpg

Hi, I'm David Brooks. Welcome to my luscious orgy.

pffft, even if Brooks and the BW articles are correct when most people think about the economy they think about j-o-b-s. and that hasn't really gotten any better. until that happens, all of this "happy talk" will mean nothing to folks who answer polls about the economy.

newsweek, 04.09.10 -- How America pulled itself back from the brink—and why it's destined to stay on top.

you're right, the market isn't everything. but (a) it is something (significant, in the proper context) and (b) there are many other indicators of vibrancy, as the newsweek article indicates. there's a growing raft of evidence that obama's economic policies are working, even though the key element for many -- understandably, jobs -- is, as is often the case, lagging behind at the beginning of the recovery.

Interest Rates Have Nowhere to Go but Up

I wonder if rising interest rates on credit cards and other debts will have any effect on the assumption that you have to carry a cc balance from month to month and be somewhat in debt in order to have "good" credit (as judged by the same companies who benefit from your indebtedness).

Right under the surface of all this "recovery" wonderfulness are a multitude of grim facts that aren't going to change any time soon. Raise interest rates at all and they'll come popping up to the surface. Keep interest rates where they are and a new bubble (or bubbles) will replace the old one.

The basic elements of a productive economy have been ebbing in the USA for a long time and they will not reappear any time soon under current conditions; the USA has a long way to claw back.

lol Goldman Sachs, BTW ... carried over from the more general politics thread!!