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POPSHijacking Our Water Supply A group of water oligarchs engineered a disastrous privatization scheme to make a fortune out of California's most precious natural resource.
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POPSThird Stimulus? Thanks, But You’ve Already Done Enough Damage Already
Sure just keep throwing money at the problem since we have ‘proof’ that it works so well. Abraham Maslow said, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." The government has spent almost one trillion dollars trying to stimulate the economy. That's one expensive hammer. How exactly are they planning to stimulate the economy this time? First, is to extend unemployment benefits. Secondly, they will extend a tax credit for first time home buyers. Finally, the Associated Press reports a possible extension of subsidies for COBRA. I think it is high time that Congress roll up their sleeves and actually work out a successful method instead of repeating their lazy-man’s-mistakes of the past. The most logical stimulation plan is one that would allow business to produce and trade without government interference. This would free the government to do what it was intended to do, namely, protect its citizens rights as laid out in the constitution.
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POPSAmerican Casino: A Documentary About the Home-Mortgage Crisis more @ clip source the Cockburns meet one guy in "American Casino" who understands the whole mess better than most, a California real estate investor named Jeff Greene who smelled the end of the housing bubble around 2006 and bet $1 billion against the mid-decade exuberance of Wall Street. Sitting in his walled and gated beach compound in Malibu, Greene calmly tells the camera that the opportunity for his successful hedge bet (which has yielded $500 million so far) involved massive pain for millions of homeowners.
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POPS"Architects of Ruin" throw out common sense and decades of experience in order to make loans that were almost certain to go unpaid. The effort was launched during the Carter administration but really gained momentum and a head of steam during the Clinton years. (GOPers shouldn't feel too smug as the Bush administration continued and even expanded the practice). "Architects of Ruin" can be advance-ordered now on Amazon.com. No doubt, it will generate a flood of negative reviews from liberals in the mainstream media and their allies in the political and academic worlds in part because of sensational tidbits like the fact White House Chief of Staff was paid "more than $46,000 an hour as a board member for Freddie Mac ." What caught my eye today, though, concerns a little known fact about a long-forgotten class-action lawsuit filed in 1994 by three young trial lawyers, one of whom just happens to be sitting in the Oval Office today as president.
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POPSFinancial foolishness... The US economy is far to beholden to financial markets and Wall street. The problems started with deregulation under Reagan, and culminated with deregulation under Clinton (the Gramm-Leach-Biley act of 1999) -- allowing inv banks, ins. co's and comm banks to create 'whatever' new investment vehicles they wanted... all outside ANY government regulation. We saw what happened: they gave mortgages to people who couldn't afford them, know that they could slice-n-dice 'em and sell them off before they went sour. Now we, the taxpayer, are paying to keep these same institutions afloat. I only hope for some sensible regulation.
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POPSCapitalism in Crisis
An interesting column by Richard Posner on the background of and some lessons from the financial crisis. In short: 1) Capitalism is risky and is prone to bubbles and depressions (take home message is not that capitalism is 'bad' but that one must diversify and hedge); 2) The crisis is a consequence of deregulation (not that deregulation is 'bad' but that deregulated capitalism carries with it more of the bubble/depression risks). But in the end, as with so many, Posner concludes that the whole mess should be laid at the feet of government. This is not the right conclusion, not that government is not the responsible party, they are. But the key issue that underlies the government's failure is not that government is inherently 'bad' as many are often led to conclude but that it was made that way. A systematic attack and undermining of governance has occurred in the U.S. since the early 1980s. Not all was bad, likely much of it early on was needed, but like so many other human expe
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POPSSomeone tell Obama: Americans did not cause the financial crisis, the world's central banks did
"Every economic bust demands scapegoats. And you can always bet your bottom dollar that politicians and journalists will be the ones leading the mob. (One need only recall the Democrats' recent efforts at whipping up hatred against bankers for confirmation of this dismal fact). But all said and done, you can never beat a good conspiracy story. And that is basically what Simon Johnson* has given us. According to this brilliant student of economic history America is facing elite business interests — financiers, in the case of the U.S. — played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them. (The Quiet Coup, The Atlantic, May 2009). "
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POPSIs the GOP out to lunch?
The GOP is "out to lunch" as in porch light on-nobody's home. The GOP has not been mentally there, for some time now. Strange how it could hold so many minds captive with its utterly insane propaganda. What is wrong with people? The GOP should have been laughed off the world stage at the beginning of the Bush reign of nincompoopery. But no, people embraced the blunders, starting with the preemptive Invasion of Iraq and the GOP’s cooked intelligence to launch this phony war. Then, the Terri Schiavo debacle when the GOP joined the religious right to interfere in a local matter. Also, The Marriage amendment, the GOP stuck its nose where it doesn't belong. The GOP JUSTICE SUNDAY frenzy, The GOP hurricane KATRINA incompetence The GOP Bush strut on the deck of the USS Abe Lincoln declaring "Mission Accomplished."Insanity all the way. The GOP lives in fantasy but maybe, since people are growing up, the unhinged, hateful world of the GOP might be fading away. But don't hold your breath.
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POPSOFF WITH HIS HEAD--PHIL GRAMM IS A GREEDY CRIMINAL Is it conceivable that this “knowing crime,” so widespread within the UBS enterprise, was unknown to Vice Chairman Gramm—even though it primarily involved U.S. tax evasion, and he had been hired by the company because of his expertise in American law, some of which he helped to write? As Gramm said when he was hired in 2002 by UBS, the position “will provide me with the opportunity to practice what I have always preached. I have been involved in every major financial debate since I’ve been in the Congress.” Phil Gramm lost his position as the co-chairman of John McCain’s presidential campaign when he blamed the recession not on the banking deregulation he championed but rather the people of the United States, which he described as a “nation of whiners.” But that was a sideshow compared with the serious charges now swirling around UBS, charges that may finally prove to be Gramm’s undoing.
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POPSGlobalization And Its Fall Out It has helped some corporations increase their profits and markets, but many corporations like AOL/Time Warner and Enron whose non-sustainable growth was based on deregulation accompanying globalization have themselves either gone bankrupt or lost their value. Following the globalization path is proving to be a recipe for non-sustainability for the rich and impoverishment and destitution for the poor.
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POPSLegalizing Marijuana the political obstacle, and the resulting funding of terrorist, narco-terrorits, drug cartels, gangs, police corruption, etc.
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POPSThe Dirty Dozen Meet the bankers and brokers responsible for the financial crisis - and the official
The Maestro HENRY PAULSON WAS CEO of Goldman Sachs (1999-2006); Treasury secretary (2006-2009) WHAT HE DID Pushed for end to debt restrictions for banks like Goldman, then arranged big bailout for Goldman. WORST MOVE TARP proposal just three pages long; made his decisions "non-reviewable." NOW SAYS "I don't think we've made mistakes on the major decisions." The Big Loser DICK FULD WAS CEO of Lehman Brothers (1993-2008) WHAT HE DID Piloted Lehman to largest bankruptcy in U.S. history; earned $22 million the year firm went bust. WORST MOVE Tried to avoid lawsuits by selling his $13 million Florida home to his wife for $100. NOW SAYS Feels "horrible" about Lehman, but insists his management was "prudent and appropriate." Mr. Too Big KEN LEWIS IS CEO of Bank of America (2001-present) WHAT HE DID Created ultimate too-big-to-fail company, buying up Fleet, MBNA, Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. WORST MOVE Failed to catch a $15 billion loss at Merrill before buying the
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POPSThe Right-wing's criticism of Obama, summed up It took them 20 years of destructive deregulation to break the economy, and they expect Obama to fix it immediately? They should consider themselves luck if there's any improvement whatsoever in his first term; especially considering the brick walls the Republicans keep trying to throw up in the path of America's recovery.
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POPSRepublicans had big role in economic meltdown Now that Obama has been elected and has the task of cleaning up the mess the Republicans made, these same Republicans are now the self-approved experts on how to get out of this financial mess. As Obama stated several weeks ago, he and the Democrats won the election because the American people were fed up with the Republican ineptitude. In six weeks, President Obama has acted more responsibly than Bush did in eight long years.
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POPSObama's Remarks on Education Get Mixed Reviews Diane Ravitch, an education historian at New York University, took Obama to task for promising to expand charter schools. She told Politico's "The Arena": "Doesn't he realize that they are a deregulation strategy much beloved by Republicans? Deregulation works brilliantly for some schools as it does for some firms. But it produces many losers, too. blogged Sherman Dorn, a professor of education at the University of South Florida in Tampa: "The most obvious way to read the statements about reform, charter schools, and higher education is that President Obama is now the sixth president since 1960 to devote significant lip service to education."
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POPSPresident Obama Glossed Over Some Complex Realities And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day." THE FACTS: This may be so, but it isn't only Republicans who pushed for deregulation of the financial industries. The Clinton administration championed an easing of banking regulations, including legislation that ended the barrier between regular banks and Wall Street banks. That led to a deregulation that kept regular banks under tight federal regulation but extended lax regulation of Wall Street banks. Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, later an economic adviser to candidate Obama, was in the forefront in pushing for this deregulation.
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