George Carlin on class structure in the USofA: The upperclass has all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes and does all of the work. The lower class is there to scare the sh*t out of the middle class to keep them doing all of the work.
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After the Battle Against SOPA—What’s Next? | The Nation
31 Jan…For the first time ever, the Internet had taken on Hollywood extremists and won. And not just in a close fight: the power demonstrated by Internet activists was wildly greater than the power Hollywood lobbyists could muster. They had awoken a giant. They had no clue about just how angry that giant could be.
The real question now, however, is whether this community recognizes the potential it has. Ours is not a Congress that has made just one mistake—almost passing SOPA/PIPA. Ours is a Congress that makes a string of mistakes. Those mistakes all come from a common source: the ability of lobbyists to leverage their power over campaign funds to achieve legislative results that make no public-good sense.
The (Internet) giant has stopped this craziness—here and now. But the challenge is for the giant to recognize the need to stop this craziness generally. We need a system that is not so easily captured by crony capitalists.
via After the Battle Against SOPA—What’s Next? | The Nation.
United Kingdom Shows That Austerity Does Not Grow the Economy – Economic Intelligence (usnews.com)
31 JanThe reason the economy is not creating jobs is simply that there is no source of demand to replace the demand created by the housing bubble. With nothing to replace this lost demand, companies see little reason to expand production and hiring.
Government spending is an obvious source of demand. However this spigot has been closed due to concerns over deficits. We have thousands of people in Washington who seem convinced that if the government would just stop spending money and lay off more employees then the private sector would respond with increased output and hiring.
While this might seem implausible on its face (what business hires people because the government has laid off school teachers or firefighters?), we no longer have to speculate about the impact of budget cuts and government layoffs, the United Kingdom is showing us.
via United Kingdom Shows That Austerity Does Not Grow the Economy – Economic Intelligence (usnews.com).
The Austerity Debacle. – NYTimes.com
31 JanAh, the Confidence Fairy!
How could the economy thrive when unemployment was already high, and government policies were directly reducing employment even further? Confidence! “I firmly believe,” declared Jean-Claude Trichet — at the time the president of the European Central Bank, and a strong advocate of the doctrine of expansionary austerity — “that in the current circumstances confidence-inspiring policies will foster and not hamper economic recovery, because confidence is the key factor today.”
Such invocations of the confidence fairy were never plausible; researchers at the International Monetary Fund and elsewhere quickly debunked the supposed evidence that spending cuts create jobs. Yet influential people on both sides of the Atlantic heaped praise on the prophets of austerity, Mr. Cameron in particular, because the doctrine of expansionary austerity dovetailed with their ideological agendas.
Apple Facts That Will Blow Your Mind (AAPL)
30 JanApple is sitting on an incredible pile of cash. Read these comparisons and think:
Apple now has $97.6 billion in cash. Last year the company increased its cash hoard by nearly $38 billion. That means Apple was adding $1,200 to its cash pile every second.
In GDP terms, Apple’s cash pile alone would make it the 58th largest country. That’s ahead of global hot spots Iraq and Libya while just trailing Qatar, a country with enough economic clout that it was selected to host a World Cup. Maybe we could look forward to a 2026 World Cup in Cupertino?
At its current Forbes valuations, Apple could buy every single NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL team — and still have $31 billion left in the bank.
Of course, the numbers really get crazy if Apple hits expectations and keeps adding to its cash pile in the quarters ahead.
* After next quarter, Apple’s cash hoard will be able to pay the entire total the federal government’s costs for education in a year.
* In two quarters, Apple’s cash hoard will be able to pay for the inflation-adjusted cost of the Marshall Plan ($115 billion).
* By the end of next year, Apple’s cash hoard will be larger than all of the corporate taxes America collected in 2009 ($138 billion)!
Nathan Newman: How the Googlization of Television Will Destroy High Wage, Union Hollywood
30 JanPolicymakers can help by adding antitrust scrutiny of Google’s actions in the television market with an eye on protecting labor rights in the sector as well.
The discussion on inequality coming out of the Occupy Wall Street protests is how we got to the point where so many workers are not sharing in the economic bounty of our nation’s economy. Part of the answer is that as industry after industry faced strains from emerging technologies and globalization, counsels of “do nothing” prevailed as unions were destroyed and jobs shipped overseas.
With Hollywood, we actually have a sector that is currently economically vibrant where the bottom 99% of workers in the industry share in the wealth enjoyed by the top 1% in the industry. It faces strains on its model — and the threat of Googlization is a top one — but we have time for citizens and policymakers to step up and figure out what new models can sustain both new innovation AND a robust standard of living for all workers in the industry.
via Nathan Newman: How the Googlization of Television Will Destroy High Wage, Union Hollywood.
Michael Hudson: Banks Weren’t Meant to Be Like This « naked capitalism
28 JanYet the banks now browbeat governments – not by having ready cash but by threatening to go bust and drag the economy down with them if they are not given control of public tax policy, spending and planning. The process has gone furthest in the United States. Joseph Stiglitz characterizes the Obama administration’s vast transfer of money and pubic debt to the banks as a “privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a ‘partnership’ in which one partner robs the other.” Prof. Bill Black describes banks as becoming criminogenic and innovating “control fraud.” High finance has corrupted regulatory agencies, falsified account-keeping by “mark to model” trickery, and financed the campaigns of its supporters to disable public oversight. The effect is to leave banks in control of how the economy’s allocates its credit and resources. …
Banking has moved so far away from funding industrial growth and economic development that it now benefits primarily at the economy’s expense in a predator and extractive way, not by making productive loans. This is now the great problem confronting our time. Banks now lend mainly to other financial institutions, hedge funds, corporate raiders, insurance companies and real estate, and engage in their own speculation in foreign currency, interest-rate arbitrage, and computer-driven trading programs. Industrial firms bypass the banking system by financing new capital investment out of their own retained earnings, and meet their liquidity needs by issuing their own commercial paper directly. Yet to keep the bank casino winning, global bankers now want governments not only to bail them out but to enable them to renew their failed business plan – and to keep the present debts in place so that creditors will not have to take a loss.
via Michael Hudson: Banks Weren’t Meant to Be Like This « naked capitalism.
George Soros on the Coming U.S. Class War – The Daily Beast
24 JanSoros is not a happy camper:
Sitting in his 33rd-floor corner office high above Seventh Avenue in New York, preparing for his trip to Davos, he is more concerned with surviving than staying rich. “At times like these, survival is the most important thing,” he says, peering through his owlish glasses and brushing wisps of gray hair off his forehead. He doesn’t just mean it’s time to protect your assets. He means it’s time to stave off disaster. As he sees it, the world faces one of the most dangerous periods of modern history—a period of “evil.” Europe is confronting a descent into chaos and conflict. In America he predicts riots on the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown that will dramatically curtail civil liberties. The global economic system could even collapse altogether.
via George Soros on the Coming U.S. Class War – The Daily Beast.
AP Interview: Davos Forum founder says capitalism is out of balance, warns conflicts await – The Washington Post
24 JanDAVOS, Switzerland — Capitalism is out of whack, the founder of the World Economic Forum says, welcoming critics’ ideas of how to fix it — even those camped out in protest igloos near his invitation-only gathering of global VIPs.
This anti-big money mood is surprising territory for a man who embraces free markets and whose livelihood consists of bringing world CEOs and political leaders together for elite brainstorming sessions.
Klaus Schwab is also unusually downbeat, his trademark optimism tempered by global economic turmoil and public unrest ahead of this year’s forum.
“We have unfinished business and we have to act fast,” he told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday ahead of the forum’s Wednesday opening.
Is Our Economy Healing? – NYTimes.com
23 JanBut there are reasons to think that we’re finally on the (slow) road to better times. And we wouldn’t be on that road if Mr. Obama had given in to Republican demands that he slash spending, or the Federal Reserve had given in to Republican demands that it tighten money.
Why am I letting a bit of optimism break through the clouds? Recent economic data have been a bit better, but we’ve already had several false dawns on that front. More important, there’s evidence that the two great problems at the root of our slump — the housing bust and excessive private debt — are finally easing.
Truth and Traditions 