Saturday, August 13, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
The Stimulus Bill Was Messed Up
Image via Wikipedia
- It was too small. It should have been at least a trillion. (Stimulus: Make It A Trillion, Stimulus: Size Matters)
- One third of the stimulus going to tax cuts was a huge mistake. That was like appeasing the Republicans, not one of who voted for the bill anyways. When the world appeased Hitler, World War II happened. When Obama appeased the Republicans, the Tea Party happened, and he lost the House.
- That one third should have been spent on jobs programs where you train people for a week and you send them out to work for $10 per hour, $20 per hour. (Three Million Jobs)
- The number one goal of the stimulus bill should have been to take every American to one gigabit per second kind of internet access. But most of the focus stayed on physical construction. That was the equivalent of FDR putting all his stimulus money into farm jobs. No, he focused on industries, and the jobs of tomorrow.
- There was not enough global focus. There were too many Great Depression lessons that were applied to the Great Recession. The number one aspect of this Great Recession is its global component. A new global financial architecture has to be built. That is policy level work.
Related articles
- Steve Benen: How About a Bachmann-Inspired Stimulus? (crooksandliars.com)
- Inside the 2009 Stimulus Package (turbotax.intuit.com)
- A Second Stimulus Bill Needed (democracyforum.blogspot.com)
- Noah Smith: Greg Mankiw Thinks Obama's Stimulus Worked (delong.typepad.com)
- Bob Cesca: The Case for Republican Economic Sabotage (huffingtonpost.com)
- Book Summary: Broke by Glenn Beck - Chapter #6 - Hoover, Keynes & FDR (ajbulava.wordpress.com)
- David Woolner: Forgetting Lessons of Keynes and FDR Brings On the 'Obama Recession' (huffingtonpost.com)
- Let's Hear It For Classical Economics (businessinsider.com)
- Why I'm Depressed about our Recession (americablog.com)
- No immediate effects for credit-rating downgrade (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- "Frustrated" Obama rips Congress: It's time for certain people to put country over party (hotair.com)
- Calling Foul on Risk Aversion and the Stimulus [Mike the Mad Biologist] (scienceblogs.com)
- Obama Criticized Over Credit Rating Downgrade, Debt Ceiling Deal, Jobs, Afghanistan (laurieanichols.wordpress.com)
- The Uselessness Of Demanding Stimulus (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
- The Uselessness Of Demanding Stimulus (pinkbananaworld.com)
- Anti-stimulus Politics (krugman.blogs.nytimes.com)
- Richard P. Rumelt: World War II Stimulus and the Postwar Boom (online.wsj.com)
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Three Million Jobs
Image via WikipediaSend one million mentors into all the low performing schools across the country. Pay them.
Send one million people to white wash roofs across America. Pay them.
Get a million people to do the netroots thing on behalf of democracy movements across the globe. Pay them. Send 50,000 netroots activists to go out into the world to help those democracy movements from nearby countries.
My point being what America needs is a massive jobs program. And I say start with people who you can pay $10 per hour, $20 per hour.
These are people you should be able to put to work with a week or two of training.
Global New Deal Needed
London Has Become Cairo
A Second Stimulus Bill Needed
Send one million people to white wash roofs across America. Pay them.
Get a million people to do the netroots thing on behalf of democracy movements across the globe. Pay them. Send 50,000 netroots activists to go out into the world to help those democracy movements from nearby countries.
My point being what America needs is a massive jobs program. And I say start with people who you can pay $10 per hour, $20 per hour.
These are people you should be able to put to work with a week or two of training.
Global New Deal Needed
London Has Become Cairo
A Second Stimulus Bill Needed
Related articles
- Thoughts On The Post Debt-Ceiling Dynamics Between the Democratic Establishment and the Netroots (crooksandliars.com)
- Read up on the budget deal. Demand transparency. Weigh in. Democracy demands it. (allthingsreform.org)
- At Netroots, all eyes on Wis. (politico.com)
- Day After Wis.: Will Dems Still Target Walker? (blogs.abcnews.com)
- Lots More Union Events at Netroots Nation (talkingunion.wordpress.com)
- Debt-Deal Disaster Shows Genius of U.S. Democracy: Noah Feldman (businessweek.com)
Global New Deal Needed
Image via WikipediaI am in agreement with Gordon Brown.
Gordon Brown: Global New Deal: America’s path to growth through higher consumption is blocked by high personal borrowing and negative equity. Another well-trodden road out of recession—a private investment spurt—has failed to materialize as businesses hoard cash in the absence of a growing home market. ........ And now that the debt deal will forestall the other traditional path—a stimulus from public investment—just one route to sustained growth remains that can prevent a decade of high American unemployment. ....... Obama should now refocus his attention on securing a global growth pact that will free the world as a whole, and particularly the West, from years of anemic growth. ....... far bolder: “America’s plan for the world economy”—to achieve for global trade and growth now what Gen. George Marshall’s plan did for the faltering world of the 1940s. ........ a “global New Deal” ....... Today, 60 percent of China’s income comes from exports, while America’s export share is just 25 percent. ..... The need is urgent because as Asia’s middle classes double in the next decade, its consumer market will dwarf all others, accounting for 40 percent of all global consumer spending. Without a bigger footprint in Asia, America will be left behind. ....... if—as predicted—India, China, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Turkey, South Korea, Indonesia, and Russia, which today buy just 15 percent of U.S. exports, account for 70 percent of future global growth, then no American company can afford to stay at home. ........ Europe’s only hope of salvation from a decade of high unemployment is to export its way to growth. ....... an up-skilling of America’s middle class and calls for U.S. public and private sectors to frontload investment in education technology and infrastructure. And a global growth pact will require America to agree to common global financial standards that can prevent future financial crises. ......... with each iPad sale, only $4 of profit go to its Asian manufacturers, while $80 go to its American (and British) designers ........ From now until Election Day, the president’s opponents will frame his position as “burdening our children with debt.” Indeed, so adept have those on the right been at playing the politics of fear, on all continents, that even in Australia—a country with virtually no debt—the incumbent Labour government lost its majority when it was faced with a conservative onslaught about deficits. ....... Two thirds of a century ago, after the greatest of depressions and the worst of wars, General Marshall rejected the politics of fear for the economics of hope, and the Marshall Plan pioneered a global program that framed the new world order. It repaid itself many times over, doubling global trade and putting America’s flagging postwar economy on course for its most successful era ever. Now, with the same vision and by accepting that a global new deal is the only way forward, an America reborn can lead again.
Related articles
- Global New Deal (thedailybeast.com)
- China's trade growth rebounds in July (seattlepi.com)
- China's trade growth rebounds in July (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- China's trade growth rebounds in July (sfgate.com)
- US trade deficit widens in June to $53.1 billion (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- ADB: Asia to pause inflation fighting policy (sfgate.com)
- Economist sees pause in Asias inflation fight (theglobeandmail.com)
- Chinese trade surplus at a record high as US downgrade threatens their holdings (ktwop.wordpress.com)
- Singapore cuts forecasts for economy, exports (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- Luis Alberto Moreno: The View Is Different Down Here (huffingtonpost.com)
London Has Become Cairo
Image via WikipediaPeople in America who seek to cut government spending in ways that will send the world economy hurtling down into a grand recession should look to London now. And you thought only Third World dictators needed to face street power.
This is not the time for austerity measures. This is the time for a Global Marshall Plan.
No black person before Barack Obama ever became President Of The United States. That was racism. Blaming Obama for what Bush did is racism. Blaming Obama for not having brought forth some kind of a leftist utopia is also racism.
When you disagree with Tea Party fiscal insanity and blatant racism, you support the other guy. That other guy is Barack Obama. There are too many liberals in America who neither oppose the Tea Party nor support Barack Obama and simply sit back and complain. These are people who only get energized whey they are completely thrown out of power. These are people addicted to powerlessness.
You have to learn to be in power. The liberal crowd has much to learn.
This is not the time for austerity measures. This is the time for a Global Marshall Plan.
No black person before Barack Obama ever became President Of The United States. That was racism. Blaming Obama for what Bush did is racism. Blaming Obama for not having brought forth some kind of a leftist utopia is also racism.
When you disagree with Tea Party fiscal insanity and blatant racism, you support the other guy. That other guy is Barack Obama. There are too many liberals in America who neither oppose the Tea Party nor support Barack Obama and simply sit back and complain. These are people who only get energized whey they are completely thrown out of power. These are people addicted to powerlessness.
You have to learn to be in power. The liberal crowd has much to learn.
Related articles
- The Right Word: Fox News fears riots | Sadhbh Walshe (guardian.co.uk)
- Flickering Signs of Intelligent Life From NYC Media Elites (alternativenewsreport.net)
- Democrats doubt Barack Obama's reelection chances [ Dems Ak if Hillary would have been better ] (gunnyg.wordpress.com)
- Who's had a worse summer: Barack Obama or David Cameron? (powerwall.msnbc.msn.com)
- Cairo: War Dog of the US Navy SEALs (DevGru Unit) -cnbnews.net (gloucestercitynews.net)
- Democrats doubt Barack Obama's reelection chances (peregrine5700.wordpress.com)
- Blame Obama - Michael Reagan - Townhall Conservative (gds44.wordpress.com)
- Whither the Anti-War Movement? (themoderatevoice.com)
- Tea Party Blame and Fairy Tales - Brent Bozell - Townhall Conservative (gds44.wordpress.com)
- Video: A Failure of Leadership (nicedeb.wordpress.com)
Monday, August 08, 2011
A Second Stimulus Bill Needed
Image via Wikipedia
The stimulus bill was not big enough. The stimulus money was not spent fast like it needed to be to have any effect. One third of the stimulus bill was tax cuts. That was a mistake. Obama did that to get Republican votes, and no Republican voted for the bill anyway. That instead was seen as a sign of weakness and might have hastened the Republican takeover of the House.
The biggest chunk of the stimulus bill needed to go to taking all of America to one gigabit per second kind of broadband. Instead the biggest chunk of the money went to old economy stuff and to humdrum payments. Paying the unemployed is important, but paying the unemployed is not what creates the next generation of jobs.
The threat of a double dip is very real. And the one thing that can save the country is a stimulus bill.
The biggest mistake perhaps has been to apply Great Depression lessons to the Great Recession. The Great Recession is America reeling from a lack of global institutions that globalization asks for. Capital wants to go global at breakneck speeds, but the global infrastructure to make that happen is not there. The Great Depression gave us macroeconomics. The Great Recession needs to give us globoeconomics.
What is needed is massive jobs programs, massive public works programs. Send a million mentors into the inner city schools, and pay them. Send another million to whitewash the roofs across America, and pay them.
Extending the Bush tax cuts was nothing less than criminal.
New York Times: Second Recession in U.S. Could Be Worse Than First: the economy is much weaker than it was at the outset of the last recession in December 2007, with most major measures of economic health — including jobs, incomes, output and industrial production — worse today than they were back then. And growth has been so weak that almost no ground has been recouped, even though a recovery technically started in June 2009. ..... When the last downturn hit, the credit bubble left Americans with lots of fat to cut, but a new one would force families to cut from the bone. Making things worse, policy makers used most of the economic tools at their disposal to combat the last recession, and have few options available. ....... the four years since the recession began ...... Today the economy has 5 percent fewer jobs — or 6.8 million — than it had before the last recession began. The unemployment rate was 5 percent then, compared with 9.1 percent today..... the typical private sector worker has a shorter workweek today than four years ago...... Income levels are low, and moving in the wrong direction ...... with construction nearly nonexistent and home prices down 24 percent since December 2007, the country does not have a buffer in housing to fall back on. ..... the economy is smaller today than it was when the recession began ....... Unlike during the first downturn, there would be few policy remedies available if the economy were to revert back into recession. ....... Interest rates cannot be pushed down further — they are already at zero. The Fed has already flooded the financial markets with money by buying billions in mortgage securities and Treasury bonds, and economists do not even agree on whether those purchases substantially helped the economy. So the Fed may not see much upside to going through another politically controversial round of buying. ...... at the end of 2007, the federal debt was 64.4 percent of the economy. Today, it is estimated at around 100 percent of gross domestic product, a share not seen since the aftermath of World War II, and there is little chance of lawmakers reaching consensus on additional stimulus that would increase the debt. ...... “There is no approachable precedent, at least in the postwar era, for what happens when an economy with 9 percent unemployment falls back into recession” ...... 1937, when there was also a premature withdrawal of fiscal stimulus, and the economy fell into another recession more painful than the first ..... Corporate profits are at record highsEven before this recession hit in 2007 China was on schedule to become the number one economy in the world by 2016. Continued policy mistakes in America might only hasten that process. There has been much self destructive behavior.
The stimulus bill was not big enough. The stimulus money was not spent fast like it needed to be to have any effect. One third of the stimulus bill was tax cuts. That was a mistake. Obama did that to get Republican votes, and no Republican voted for the bill anyway. That instead was seen as a sign of weakness and might have hastened the Republican takeover of the House.
The biggest chunk of the stimulus bill needed to go to taking all of America to one gigabit per second kind of broadband. Instead the biggest chunk of the money went to old economy stuff and to humdrum payments. Paying the unemployed is important, but paying the unemployed is not what creates the next generation of jobs.
The threat of a double dip is very real. And the one thing that can save the country is a stimulus bill.
The biggest mistake perhaps has been to apply Great Depression lessons to the Great Recession. The Great Recession is America reeling from a lack of global institutions that globalization asks for. Capital wants to go global at breakneck speeds, but the global infrastructure to make that happen is not there. The Great Depression gave us macroeconomics. The Great Recession needs to give us globoeconomics.
What is needed is massive jobs programs, massive public works programs. Send a million mentors into the inner city schools, and pay them. Send another million to whitewash the roofs across America, and pay them.
Extending the Bush tax cuts was nothing less than criminal.
New York Times: London Sees Twin Perils Converging to Fuel Riot: Frustration in this impoverished neighborhood, as in many others in Britain, has mounted as the government’s austerity budget has forced deep cuts in social services. At the same time, a widely held disdain for law enforcement here, where a large Afro-Caribbean population has felt singled out by the police for abuse, has only intensified through the drumbeat of scandal that has racked Scotland Yard in recent weeks and led to the resignation of the force’s two top commanders...... there was not long to wait until a new one erupted: across London, skirmishes broke out on Sunday between groups of young people and large numbers of riot police officers, which one officer said were drawn from forces around London. ...... In Enfield, a usually calm suburb, shop windows were smashed and debris lay in the street. In nearby Edmonton, groups of young people gathered near damaged storefronts. In Tottenham itself, roads were closed, a helicopter hovered overhead and squads of police vans swooped in to make arrests in side streets. ....... The march turned into a pitched battle between hundreds of officers, some on horses, and equal numbers of rioters, wearing bandannas and armed with makeshift weapons that included table legs and an aluminum crutch. Looting throughout northern London continued past dawn, leaving streets littered with glass. In daylight, residents emerged to survey buildings, many considered landmarks, that had been left gutted and smoldering. ........ unless endemic youth unemployment in Tottenham was curbed, “this will happen again. These kids don’t care. They don’t have to pay for this damage, we do. Working people do. What do they have to lose?” ...... many voiced concern that looters in other areas of London had been allowed to smash and steal for several hours before officers arrived. ....... Economic malaise and cuts in spending and services instituted by the Conservative-led government have been recurring flashpoints for months. ....... Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, were attacked in their Rolls-Royce as protesters — some of whom were subsequently jailed — shouted “Tory scum,” a reference to the Conservative Party’s traditional links with the aristocracy, and “off with their heads!” In March, a reported 500,000 people marched against the cuts, with some protesters occupying the exclusive food store Fortnum & Mason — Prince Charles’s grocer. ...... one man shouted, “This is our battle!” When asked what he meant, the man, Paul Rook, 47, explained that he felt the rioters were taking on “the ruling class.” ....... As the budget cuts take hold, risk of unemployment increases and social measures like youth projects are sacrificed, Mr. Beech said, and “all logic says there will be an increase in antisocial behavior.” “Boredom, alienation and isolation are going to be factors”
Related articles
- NYT analysis: We're probably in double dip recession (msnbc.msn.com)
- Robert Reich: The Republicans' Double-Dip, and What Must Be Done (huffingtonpost.com)
- The Republican's Double-Dip, and What Must Be Done (robertreich.org) John Boehner said Tuesday the Republicans got “90 percent of what we wanted” from the budget deal. So presumably he and his colleagues are willing to take responsibility for some 450 points of today’s mammoth 513-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. ...... marks Wall Street’s largest losing streak since 2008. ..... a giant sell-off like this is motivated by hard, cold realities. ..... the economy looks like it’s dead in the water. ..... job growth is just about at a standstill. ..... investors now know the federal government’s hands are tied. The original stimulus is over; the Fed’s “quantitative easing” is over. ..... This week’s deal over the debt ceiling cinches it. The market is now on its own — without enough rocket power get out of the continuing gravitational pull of the Great Recession. ....... The economy plunged 8.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 – the steepest quarterly decline in more than half a century. And in 2009 household buying declined almost 2 percent (compared with a previous estimate of 1.2 percent). That’s the biggest contraction in almost sixty years. ....... the original stimulus should have been much larger in order to offset the drop. With cash-starved state and local governments simultaneously scaling back their own spending, the federal stimulus needed to be even bigger. ...... So much for Republican claims that the original stimulus “didn’t work.” Of course it didn’t, given the size of the slide. ....... It was never a debt crisis. The debt crisis was manufactured. It’s been a jobs, wages, and growth crisis all along. ...... stop obsessing about future budget deficits and get to work on the real crisis of unemployment, falling wages, and no growth. ...... We need a bold jobs bill to restart the economy. ..... The jobs bill should be number one on the nation’s agenda. It should have been all along.
- The Republican's Double-Dip, and What Must Be Done (businessinsider.com)
- The Republicans' Double-Dip, and What Must Be Done (tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com)
- You: News Analysis: Double-Dip Recession May Be Returning (nytimes.com)
- After 16 Types Of Stimulus Failed, What Can The US Government Try Next? (businessinsider.com)
- You: Medicine for the 'second great contraction' (search.japantimes.co.jp)
- Inside the 2009 Stimulus Package (turbotax.intuit.com)
- Bill Gross: Economy Is At The 'Tipping Point' Of Recession (huffingtonpost.com)
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Default Racism
Image via WikipediaAmerica defaulting will throw the global economy into a Grand Recession.
There are people who never made peace with the fact that, oh well, there is a now a black guy in the White House.
The racist white Republicans' hatred for the folks out there in the Third World is so strong, they would be willing to jack up the unemployment rate in America all the way to 29% if that is what it will take to inflict pain on the Third World folks.
This divided government thing is obviously not working. I say give the House back to Barack Obama. Like they kicked Mubarak out in Egypt it is time to kick the Republicans out. March.
There are people who never made peace with the fact that, oh well, there is a now a black guy in the White House.
The racist white Republicans' hatred for the folks out there in the Third World is so strong, they would be willing to jack up the unemployment rate in America all the way to 29% if that is what it will take to inflict pain on the Third World folks.
This divided government thing is obviously not working. I say give the House back to Barack Obama. Like they kicked Mubarak out in Egypt it is time to kick the Republicans out. March.
The New Yorker: Smash The Ceiling: y the subprime meltdown, skyrocketing oil prices, the Eurozone debt crisis, and even the Tohoku earthquake ...... —a failure to raise the debt ceiling, which would almost certainly throw the economy back into recession ...... the United States doesn’t need, and shouldn’t have, a debt ceiling. Every other democratic country, with the exception of Denmark, does fine without one. There’s no debt limit in the Constitution. ...... Congress can simply vote to lift it, as it has done more than seventy times in the past fifty years. But it’s too strong because its negative consequences (default, higher interest rates, financial turmoil) are disastrously out of proportion to the behavior it’s trying to regulate. For the U.S. to default now, when investors are happily lending it money at exceedingly reasonable rates, would be akin to shooting yourself in the head for failing to follow your diet...... time pressure tends to close minds, not open them. ...... Under time pressure, negotiators tend to rely more on stereotypes and cognitive shortcuts. They don’t consider as wide a range of alternatives, and are more likely to jump to conclusions based on scanty evidence. Time pressure also reduces the chances that an agreement will be what psychologists call “integrative”—taking everyone’s interests and values into account...... by turning dealmaking into a game of chicken, the debt ceiling favors fanaticism ..... “It does not always help to be, or to be believed to be, fully rational, coolheaded, and in control of oneself” when it comes to brinksmanship. It doesn’t, in short, help to be President Obama. That may be why all the deals that have been taken seriously this season rely much more heavily on spending cuts than on tax increases: the deals represent Republican priorities, because the Republicans seem to be more willing than the Democrats to let the country default........ Instead of figuring out ways to raise the debt ceiling, we should simply go ahead and abolish it.
Related articles
- Smash the Ceiling (room4truth.com)
- Trump: GOP Should Let U.S. Default (huffingtonpost.com)
- Republican Rep. warns of Obama impeachment if GOP forces debt default (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
- White House threatens veto of Boehner debt bill (marketwatch.com)
- White House Threatens Veto Of Boehner Debt Bill (thenewspundit.com)
- VIDEO: Republicans postpone debt vote (bbc.co.uk)
- Obama to Banks: We're Not Defaulting - FoxBusiness.com (maximuslibertas.wordpress.com)
- James Surowiecki: Why we don't need a debt ceiling. (newyorker.com)
- Boehner Fights Internal Strife on Threatened Debt Plan (businessweek.com)
- Trump on Fox: Let US default so Obama loses in 2012 (americablog.com)
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