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Archive for the ‘financial crisis’ Category

Strategic Ideas Dept: The Case for a Popular Front vs. Finance Capital

September 8th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in financial crisis, pushing obama, rightwing

The Great American Stickup:

How the Political Class Mugged America

and Handed the Money Over to Wall St.

With so much opportunity, why has Obama presided over such an economic disaster?

By Amy Goodman and Robert Scheer

Progressive America Rising via Democracy Now

September 7, 2010  

Goodman: As we continue our discussion on the state of the economy, we’re by veteran journalist and Truthdig.com editor Robert Scheer. His book is just out; it’s called The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street. What is wrong with the economy today? And how did we get here?  

Scheer: Well, you know, you say a longtime journalist. I worked for the Los Angeles Times as a national reporter, and I covered these hearings in Washington when the Clinton Administration in the '90s basically fulfilled the promise of the Reagan Revolution. Reagan was not able to reverse the sensible regulations of the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt designed to prevent us from getting into another depression. And those regulations of Glass-Steagall, which Feingold was against -- was for keeping and against reversing, said that investment banks playing with supposedly rich people's money should not be allowed to merge with commercial banks that were using the deposits of people that were insured by the taxpayers and that these were different activities. And Reagan could never pull off that kind of deregulation. In fact, because of the savings and loan scandal at the end of his term, he actually had to sign off on increased financial regulation. But when Clinton came in, he brought in one of the big players on Wall Street, Robert Rubin, who has been head of Goldman Sachs, and basically turned to him and said, "You know, what do I need to do to get Wall Street on my side?" And they said, reverse what they considered to be onerous financial regulation. And Clinton delivered on that. He brought in Rubin then to be his Treasury secretary, who was followed by Lawrence Summers, who’s now the top economics adviser in the Obama White House.

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Reagan’s Stockman: It’s Worse Than You Think, Class War Is Coming Soon

August 11th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Unemployment, financial crisis, rightwing

 

Reagan insider: 'GOP destroyed U.S. economy'

Commentary: How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts.

Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline

By Paul B. Farrell

MarketWatch

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- "How my G.O.P. destroyed the U.S. economy." Yes, that is exactly what David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, "Four Deformations of the Apocalypse."

Get it? Not "destroying." The GOP has already "destroyed" the U.S. economy, setting up an "American Apocalypse."

Jobs recovery could take years


In the wake of Friday's disappointing jobs report, Neal Lipschutz and Phil Izzo discuss new predictions that it could be many years before the nation's unemployment rate reaches pre-recession levels.

Yes, Stockman is equally damning of the Democrats' Keynesian policies. But what this indictment by a party insider -- someone so close to the development of the Reaganomics ideology -- says about America, helps all of us better understand how America's toxic partisan-politics "holy war" is destroying not just the economy and capitalism, but the America dream. And unless this war stops soon, both parties will succeed in their collective death wish.

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G20 Toronto: Sticking the Public with the Bill for the Bankers’ Crisis

June 28th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in financial crisis, youth and students

By Naomi Klein

Toronto — From Monday's Globe and Mail Published on Sunday, Jun. 27, 2010

My city feels like a crime scene and the criminals are all melting into the night, fleeing the scene. No, I’m not talking about the kids in black who smashed windows and burned cop cars on Saturday.

I’m talking about the heads of state who, on Sunday night, smashed social safety nets and burned good jobs in the middle of a recession. Faced with the effects of a crisis created by the world’s wealthiest and most privileged strata, they decided to stick the poorest and most vulnerable people in their countries with the bill.

How else can we interpret the G20’s final communiqué, which includes not even a measly tax on banks or financial transactions, yet instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013. This is a huge and shocking cut, and we should be very clear who will pay the price: students who will see their public educations further deteriorate as their fees go up; pensioners who will lose hard-earned benefits; public-sector workers whose jobs will be eliminated. And the list goes on. These types of cuts have already begun in many G20 countries including Canada, and they are about to get a lot worse.

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The New Globalized Poor: Within Our Borders, Among Ourselves

February 23rd, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in financial crisis, poverty

California 'Shantytown,' 21st Century Style

America's Dirty Little Secret:

Who's Really Poor in America?

 

By Leo Hindery, Jr.

Huffington Post

Every Tuesday the Huffington Post lets me post a featured piece. Mostly I write about jobs, especially the issue of 'real unemployment', and trade, where I worry over the extremely adverse effects which unfair globalization is having on American workers.

Two old friends, civil rights activist David Mixner and former U.S. Senator (and my oft co-author) Don Riegle (D-MI), believe that in the economic recovery, not enough attention is being given to 'who's really poor' now. David and Don have for years advised me -- and others -- on the issue of poverty in America, and they are worried that too many people, and especially too many people in the administration and Congress, are missing this imperative.

To help make their point, they referred me to poverty activist Marsha Timpson, who describes today's poor as "America's dirty little secret, hidden in the backyards of America's shining homes, the hollows, the reservations, the border towns and the dark ghettos of the city where they are the lie of the American dream."

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Time to Take the Wall St Speculators to the Cleaners

January 12th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in financial crisis, pushing obama

Tax Bank Bonuses and Capital Gains

of Wealthy to Pay for Jobs Program



By Robert Creamer Huffington Post

Jan. 11, 2010 - This column is about pornography. Yesterday's New York Times ran a front page story headlined: "For Top Bonuses on Wall Street, 7 Figures or 8." The story was chocked full of obscenity:

"Bank executives are grappling with the question that exasperates, even infuriates, many recession-weary Americans: Just how big should their paydays be?" asked the Times.

"Despite calls for restraint from Washington and a chafed public, resurgent banks are preparing to pay out bonuses that rival those of the boom years," it continued. "The haul, in cash and stock, will run into many billions of dollars."

"Industry executives acknowledge that the numbers being tossed around -- six-, seven- and even eight-figure sums for some chief executives and top producers -- will stun the many Americans still hurting from the financial collapse and ensuing Great Recession."

"During the first nine months of 2009," the Times reported, "five of the largest banks that received federal aid -- Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley -- together set aside about $90 billion for compensation." (more...)

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Getting Ready for 2010: More ‘Centrism’ Is A Loser

December 28th, 2009 by admin | No Comments | Filed in elections, financial crisis, pushing obama

Democrats Do Not Need to Become More 'Moderate' to Win in 2010

Four Rules for

Victory in November

By Bob Creamer

Huffington Post

There is little doubt that over the last several months President Obama's poll numbers -- and those of Democrats generally -- have taken a swing for the worse. The president's job approval numbers have drifted below 50 percent. The popularity of some of his signature initiatives has dropped. Last week, Democratic Congressman Parker Griffith of Alabama announced he was switching parties -- presumably in order to enhance his odds of political survival next fall.

These events have given rise to calls that the Democratic agenda needs to become more "moderate" or "centrist" and that this would somehow be more attractive to Independent voters.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

"Moderating" our goals is not a recipe for victory. It is a recipe for failure. Last fall, voters overwhelming voted for change, and they knew then -- and still know now -- the kind of change they wanted.

They wanted to end the stranglehold of the private insurance companies that continues to put every American a single illness -- or one layoff -- away from financial catastrophe. They want to take bold, clear action to assure that America is in the forefront of creating the clean energy jobs of the future -- and leave a thriving healthy planet to our children. They wanted to fundamentally change the bull-in-the-china shop foreign policy of the Bush years and re-establish American leadership in the world. Most importantly, they rejected the failed economic policies that allowed the recklessness of huge Wall Street banks to plunge the economy into free fall -- and cost millions their livelihoods. They desperately want leadership that will lay the foundation for long term, bottom-up, widely shared prosperity. In other words they wanted... and still want... fundamental change.

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Finance Capital as the Main Enemy of Jobs

December 22nd, 2009 by admin | No Comments | Filed in financial crisis, rightwing

Regulatory Reform -

Then Break Up the

Big Wall Street Banks


By Robert Creamer

Huffington Post

Dec. 15, 2009 - Last Friday, the House passed critical regulatory reform legislation aimed at preventing the recurrence of the kind of financial meltdown that devastated our economy at the end of the Bush administration.

The lobbyists from Wall Street worked hand-in-glove with the Republicans, and a few Democrats, to try to kill the bill. Astoundingly, the Republicans argued that Wall Street should continue to be free to engage in the same reckless speculation that led directly to 10 percent unemployment and required the taxpayers to inject hundreds of billions into the markets so that the geniuses of private finance would not plunge us all into the abyss of another Great Depression.

With no regard for history -- and here I mean the events of only 12 months ago -- the Republicans and Big Banks have the audacity to contend that the creation of jobs and a growing economy requires the lowest levels of regulation and government involvement possible.

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