One can conceive of pushing back general government, in fact the whole public sector, into their component households. They would form a vast subset of the set of households. These would be the households fed by government payrolls. As opposed to, say, a household which drew its income from employ in the private sector. So in reality one can in fact reduce the entire task of social accounting to that for a single sector-the household sector.
So that is the top break for the entire spreadsheet. One column per household. Row wise Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth. This would complete the simulacrum of homo economicus.
AT&T CEO’s pay jumps 35 percent to $20.3 million in 2009
from Macworld by Ann Bednarz
*** begin quote ***
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson’s stock awards fell 8 percent in 2009, but he earned a cash bonus of $5.85 million that helped increase his total compensation by 35 percent.
*** end quote ***
Corporations are are a gooferment creation. So, needless to say, they are screwed up.
It’s unseemly for ANY corporation employee to have a salary greater than that of the President.
The gooferment’s creation fails to align the interest of the owners and the employees.
The gooferment could correct that error with five year stock options as the manner of executive compensation. Or maybe, a mix of options that vest from 10 to 50 years? With a sliding scale, weighted towards the middle?
That could be done with the stroke of a pen.
If I was “king”, I’d have the “Sheriff of Nottingham” (aka the IRS) audit any company that pays salaries greater than that of the Prez.
How fast could things change?
How many lobbyists and politicians would have their pockets stuffed with cash to kill this?
HR 3590 has passed, 219 to 212. Now comes the Motion to Recommit. That’s not expected to derail the process, but might slow it down. And then the vote on the ‘reconciliation’ amendments in HR 4872.
Everyone is getting their shot at a Philip Blond point right now: the Brooks column, Deneen and Rod the Bod after the Tocqueville Forum event last night, The Immanent Frame. So, as I frequently ask myself, why not me?
In a moment of many voices, I will say but a few sentences. Blond identifies himself with the Distributists, which is a sometimes obscure reference for Americans, even among some traditional conservatives. And that’s because Distributism is not dealing quite so explicitly with a tradition being lost, so much as an alternative form of development – accepting historical change, but insisting that it must be steered in a certain way. Much as I like Chesterton and Belloc, my thoughts here drift toward E.F. Schumacher, whose Small is Beautiful was a minor milestone in “Third way” thinking.
Schumacher’s focus, and Blond’s, is that the physical community is a spiritual one, and that our spiritual future must be a relational future. This further reminds me of the ideals of Renaissance civic humanism, which took a medieval/classical ideal of a state that is good for its people, and began to think again about what this meant for the causes of virtue within it, eventually drawing deep conclusions about participation in the political process for the everyday man.
The problematic issue with civic humanism, and I think Red Toryism, is defining the point at which the community should no longer be politicized. Most of us think communities can and should be stronger, and if they are going to be politicized – ie organized into self-identifying polity, capable of decision-making - then it seems quite humane to do so in a very local way. Indeed, participatory citizenship, even to a small polity, bestows a sense of ownership as well as an enhanced awareness of the community. Great all around. But the spiritual identity of men is more complex than a mere zoon politikon. To what extent must we be satisfied with apolitical relationships, and when can even local politics overrun natural relations with institutionalized ones? These are questions the Red Tory in all of us should deal with … when it does become more of a reality.
Externalities (spillover effects) are common in virtually every area of economic activity. Externalities occur when firm or people impose costs or benefits outside the market place. External cost and benefits together are called externalities.
External cost are said to be the negative externalities and external benefits are said to be positive externalities. External cost is the uncompensated cost n individual or the firm imposes on the other; the best example for external cost or negative externalities is the environment cost of the pollution. The external benefits are the benefits the individual or firm gives to others without receiving any compensation in returns, the best example for positive externality or external benefit is the national defense provided to protect the freedom of everyone, even if one wants or not irrespective of whether one is paying for it or not and commodity available from public distribution system. The government should be more concerned about the negative externalities.
The government should be more concerned about the negative externalities. They are defined as third party effects arising from production and or consumption of goods and services for which no appropriate compensation is paid. The study of externalities by economists has been more in the recent years after the link between the economy and environment became strong.
Externalities create divergence between private and social cost, e.g. costs of pollution is not included in the cost of production of the factory, which is creating the pollution; but it is included in the social cost as the community has to bear the cost in some way or the other. Thus the social cost in this case is greater than the private cost.
Social cost = private cost + private cost
A chemical factory throwing out a lot of chemical waste in the nearby river killing the fish and making the water unhealthy for use, refineries pollute the air and paint industry creating bad odour, creating respiratory track infections and other diseases to all the people living in the area around the factories. These negative externalities will increase the social cost as the cost on the clean up and health will increase. External cost due to traffic jams, an individual deciding to go for a drive in the peak hours and increasing the travel time of the other drivers are all negative externalities.
We already have discussed about investment function and capital expenditure in our previous post. Now, the blog will discuss about all aspect of business and economics.
Fully 2.5 billion of the world’s adults don’t use banks or microfinance institutions to save or borrow money, but unserved doesn’t mean unservable.
Pointers:
• Fully 2.5 billion of the world’s adults don’t use formal banks or semiformal microfinance institutions to save or borrow money.
• Nearly 2.2 billion of these unserved adults live in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
• Unserved, however, does not mean unservable.
• The microfinance movement, for example, has long helped expand credit use among the world’s poor—reaching more than 150 million clients in 2008 alone.
• Approximately 1.2 billion adults in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East who use formal or semiformal credit or savings products, about 800 million live on less than $5 a day.
• Large unserved populations represent opportunities for institutions that are able to offer an innovative range of high-quality, affordable financial products and services.
• With the right financial education and support to make good choices, lower-income consumers will benefit from credit, savings, insurance, and payments products that help them invest in economic opportunities, better manage their money, reduce risks, and plan for the future.
Two areas of endeavor have caught my interest as obvious examples of systems that are broken and in need of fixing. Regarding the first – healthcare — I’ve basically stuck my head in the sand and ignored it, leaving that issue and related debates to others better qualified to coax coherence out of complexity. The second – the recording industry – I’ve blogged about directly and indirectly over time.
As currently practiced in the U.S., the healthcare industry is on a collision course with insolvency. Already, tens of millions of people lack coverage, and those with coverage are either being squeezed by increased premiums accompanied by automatic claim refusals and/or are forced into bankruptcy when a major medical problem arises. The details of healthcare reform change daily, but reform of this particular industry is something that only government can do. Left to their own devices, the inextricably entwined healthcare and insurance industries simply cannot fix themselves while perverse incentives continue to corrupt the services rendered and cause costs to spiral without improvement in outcomes. Yet members of the Tea Party movement advocate against self-interest, seeing in the spectre of government interference an evil worse than, for instance, a total lack of preretirement healthcare benefits. Many of these people are retirees already enjoying the benefits of Medicaid and Medicare. Their intransigence about reform, even if it’s only step 1 in a multistep process, boggles the mind.
In contrast, this article by Miles Raymer in the Chicago Reader is notable for the author’s admission that he has changed his mind about free file sharing, which he now disparagingly calls freeloading. The business model that had served the recording industry for decades, based on intellectual property rights (specificaly, copyright) recognized for centuries, has been wrecked by file sharing made easy by modern technology. “Fine,” thought Raymer (and many others), “we’ll just figure out a different was of making money to support the creative impulse.” Several years into that experiment, he now recognizes new sources of revenue don’t simply spring magically into existence in the wake of the destruction of old ones. Any number of people could have told him that, but I surmise he was only able to learn that lesson the hard way. Until then, he happily advocated against self-interest, willingly giving away the fruits of his labor. Put another way, he embraced the demise of the music industry as the result of file sharing with the rose-hued optimism often called creative destruction.
I guess it must be that liberal education: Progressives can’t do math. You want to trust them with a $500 Billion dollar tax increase called Obamacare? It will only cost $2.5 Trillion.
When liberals do math, we can increase the number of people covered by healthcare insurance, increase benefits and reduce cost. Let’s watch:
Obama does math. Our president visited 57 states, 1 left to go.
Nancy Pelosi does math. 500 million Americans lose their job every month.
Joe Biden does math. “Jobs” is a three letter word.
And now, the gift that keeps on giving. Obamacare will reduce your insurance premium by 3000%.
If someone is paying the insurance company $10,000 they will send you $300,000 back to get a policy.
How many people are getting insurance through their jobs right now? Raise your hands. All right, well, a lot of those folks, your employer, it’s estimated, would see premiums fall by as much as 3000%, which means they could give you a raise!
HAHAHAHAHAhahahaha!!!!! And people called president Bush names…
Democrat Dicky Durbin admits… premiums won’t go down.
This seems to be what the Democrats are saying:
I’ll tell you anything to get you to like Obamacare. Free health care! Yeah, let’s slam this Obamacare bill through, whatever it is, without a bill out of conference, heck, without the House voting on the Senate bill. Who needs to read the bill anyway, it’s all full of numbers and stuff. We don’t understand that sort of thing. We want to campaign saying we “passed health care for the American People.”
Psssst. Don’t tell anyone we are taking over the student loan business and putting all those making student loans out on the street, unemployed. It’s a little baby step to Nationalizing Banking completely.
http://wp.me/pFeEj-nk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUd-slJc-GY
I was asked to wrtie something up about my book, Manufacturing Discontent. I thought that I would share it with you. Any comments would be be appreciated.
Of all my books, Manufacturing Discontent may seem to have the least links with Marxism. After I published The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation, some people argued that the subject was purely historical and had no contemporary relevance. Of course, the seizure of property continues throughout the world, even in the United States, where government can take property through the law of eminent domain and then turn it over to private interests.
What’s the difference between Mister Micawber and the US Treasury?
“…to illustrate the government’s commitment to repaying Social Security, the Treasury Department has been issuing special bonds that earn interest for the retirement program. The bonds are unique because they are actually printed on paper, while other government bonds exist only in electronic form. They are stored in a three-ring binder, locked in the bottom drawer of a white metal filing cabinet in the Parkersburg offices of Bureau of Public Debt.” — Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam’s IOUs
Particularly fun: Factory-farmed chickens, bred such that their breast grows too fast for their bones and organs, so they can’t walk more than a few steps at a time and mostly just lie on the ground. Cows and pigs in CAFUs, Confined Animal Feeding Units, standing around caked with their own excrement – happily you can mitigate the salmonella risk by soaking your hamburger meat in chemicals or by irradiating it.
Yum yum, the American fast-food and supermarket diet!
Discovered the Nutrient Density Index. A scale rating food on minerals and vitamins but also “phytochemical” content. The greener the better, in short.
Can I validate the alleged science behind this scale? I cannot. But eating a lot of bok choy – don’t need any further science tests to push me there. Had it in stirfry tonight. Kale and spinach? Sign me up. Lunch these days is often hummus, pita from flax flour, tabouli (made my own tonight!), brown rice, fresh cukes, carrots sauteed with tagine spices. Apples from New England, not New Zealand.
Beats irradiated cow poop and freakshow chicken any day.
Study finds median wealth for single black women at $5.
[S]ingle white women in the prime of their working years (ages 36 to 49) have a median wealth of $42,600 (still only 61 percent of their single white male counterparts), the median wealth for single black women is only $5.
For all working-age black women 18 to 64, the financial picture is bleak. Their median household wealth is only $100. Hispanic women in that age group have a median wealth of $120.
As if income disparity weren’t bad enough, these same people don’t even have the safety cushion provided by the accumulation of wealth. Not many people want to be unemployed, but if one end up in this position, it is much easier to take with a bit of a safety net. The United States’ prison-industrial system doesn’t help either.
The question is what can we do do help these people?
After Wolfie Munchau went off on one about the wickedness of naked CDS’s, the letter pages of the FT have enjoyed a slow-motion explosion of discussion (I love the pre-Internet, it is so civilised. I wish the ‘publish’ button had a one-day delay, the writing would be so much better).
This is not chronological. But the intention is to refute the knee-jerk TUCist view:
“At the ETUC, we’re increasingly concerned that Greece seems to be alone to face a renewed wave of financial market speculation, as heavily leveraged speculators take advantage of Greece’s debt crisis, exacerbating the country’s situation for a heavy profit.”
The TUC’s views are hardcoded into their thinking. But responsible governments ought to think more deeply, and this is why Buttonwood is right to criticize the “axis of feeble reasoning” behind this letter:
“we must prevent speculative actions from causing so much uncertainty on the market that prices no longer provide accurate information and state financing reaches a fundamentally unjustifiable high level”
So speculators cause the problems they are trying to profit from. This may be called ‘reflexivity’ (see this comment on Rajiv Sethi’s page – hattip Alex commenting here). Under certain conditions, speculation can become destabilising, is the view. The other view, as Buttonwood explains, is that the reason Greeks borrow more expensively is, um, their inability to run their affairs properly:
“Greece has a huge budget deficit, a debt-to-GDP ratio of more than 100%, a poor credit rating and a record of restating its accounts for the worse. A yield of 6% doesn’t seem too unjustifiable in the circumstances*”
And there are real problems with banning CDS. On to the letters. In this one:
“To ban CDS altogether would virtually remove a bank’s ability to manage credit risk; to ban naked shorts would completely remove the ability to find proxy hedges for the huge array of credit risk that cannot be sold or directly hedged . . . The CDS debate will continue as long as there is a failure to distinguish between market manipulation, speculation and risk management. Blunt limits or bans will affect all three”
Now this one:
“A liquid market needs lots of buyers and sellers, and an observable price. If a buyer knows that there is a market in credit default swap protection, they can buy with the knowledge that even if they can’t sell their bonds, they can protect themselves from losses. Hedging would be more expensive and less liquid if naked shorts were banned, which would make investors demand a bigger premium for liquidity, making funds more expensive . . . Naked CDS do not reduce liquidity; it is not a zero sum game. Underlying the arguments is often an ethical disdain for speculation. But the very distinction between “good” investing and “bad” speculating is spurious.”
And this one argues that Speculators Force countries to Mend their Ways:
“Speculation performs a vital task in the economy – that is, punishing those borrowers who have difficulty putting their house in order, Greece being a prime example. It was hardly unexpected that the Maastricht criteria would be conveniently ignored by politicians when all or most of the eurozone countries fail to abide by their own holy rules . . . Speculators then perform the role that politicians find difficult or impossible – namely to force countries to mend their ways. Indeed, had speculation been even more prevalent, the current situation might not have arisen, since interest rate spreads would have increased sooner, forcing countries to react.”
Finally, the FT itself has offered its own stout opinion:
“Proposals by European leaders to crack down on sovereign credit default swaps serve an important purpose: to deflect attention from the fact that their inability to deal with the Greek debt crisis is a trap of their own making . . . “Naked” CDS, where the buyer does not own the underlying bond, are often likened to insuring one’s neighbour’s house against fire. But while arson is easy, no speculator has deep enough pockets to bring down Greece at will . . . A ban, if it could be enforced, would also confine hedging to a world of barter, requiring one to find those with the opposite hedging needs of one’s own without intermediates”
That is my view, too. An ethical distaste for speculation is hoping to find a Divinely Convenient Coincidence: “What I find abhorrent is also bad for the world”. In this case, it doesn’t work out that way. People betting on the failure of some activity or entity may not seem like an honourable way of making money. But prices being too high or implying too great a chance of success are also a massive con; they force investors to pay more than they should for something. In the credit crunch, HBOS railed against ’shorters’ causing their bank share price to fall. But wanting their share price to be high when their balance sheet and future profits were f***ed was a grossly dishonest aspiration; it was hoping that countless pensioners would be suckered into paying too much for near-worthless equity.
So too with Greek bonds. They don’t deserve a high price. And insisting that ricketty, balsa-wood shacks be granted the right to fire insurance with miniscule premia is daft.
SAN FRANCISCO – Defense contractor Kratos Defense & Security Solutions Inc. reported a fourth-quarter profit Thursday.
Kratos shares fell 86 cents, or 6 percent, to $13.35. In the past year, they have traded between $6.01 and $14.56.
For the quarter that ended Dec. 27, Kratos earned $400,000, or 2 cents per share. In the same period a year earlier, it recorded a loss of $109.8 million, or $10.36 per share, including a $105.8 million charge reflecting a drop in value of its intangible assets paperless payday loans.
Kratos’ revenue rose 3 percent to $75.2 million, with government solutions revenue rising 5 percent to $67.7 million.
For the full year, Kratos reported a loss of $41.5 million, or $2.99 per share, compared with a loss of $111.1 million, or $11.95 per share, in 2008.
Full-year revenue rose 17 percent in 2009 to $334.5 million.
Today’s lead editorial, Posturing over taxes doesn’t help Arizona, is a sight to behold. Bonded as the editorialists are to supporting the sales tax hike, it is comical to read they find McCain’s “posturing” as a new convert to holding the line on taxes, reprehensible. So culpable is he, in fact, that wet hen editorialist Kathleen Ingley shook her sopping tail feathers not only at popular McCain challenger, J.D. Hayworth, but splattered the sainted Jon Kyl as well as the newly opinionated McCain. The senior senator recently admitted he “hadn‘t given much attention” to the issue and was “unsure how he would vote” on the tax increase.
In fact, the editorial takes the same position Seeing Red AZ took yesterday — but for different reasons. Referring to McCain’s joint anti-tax statement with Jon Kyl, Ingley impugns McCain’s coordination with Kyl as “posturing,” implying that Kyl was the puppeteer moving McCain’s strings after being cornered by Hayworth. She mockingly uses the word “circus,” concluding “there is much to hate about Arizona’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate, where cynicism fills the center ring.”
It’s clear for this ‘unbiased’ journalist, Democrat politics hold greater appeal.
Since the taste of intra-party politics is so bitter (even being viewed by an outsider), we expect the newspaper will finally forgo its increasingly ignored pre-election endorsements and stick to honing the skill of factual reporting.
20+ African countries are selling or leasing land for intensive agriculture on a shocking scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era.
Billionaires and Mega-Corporations Behind Immense Land Grab in Africa
John Vidal, Mail & Guardian
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:00:01 GMT
Judging from the way that the wealthy throughout the entire world are behaving like a bunch of filthy lying stupid bastards. Why is this surprising?
The economic communities around the world and in the United States are going to get exactly what they deserve. They have predicated and based their entire economic system here in the United States and around the world on nothing but filthy lies. And graft and corruption. And so as a result, they will get exactly what they deserve. I know that I’m right regarding economic analysis and financial analysis. Because I have been right all along. Just like those people who have been reading my Journal will see that I accurately predicted the $800 trillion of market loss that took place during the third business quarter of 2009. Just like I have been correct about every single thing I did to economically and financially in the ever since I’ve been doing financial. So I don’t have anything to prove to anyone.
The fact of the matter is, the world does have something to prove to himself. And that is that it can in fact be more interested in surviving and helping the market to survive. Rather than to behave like a bunch of filthy lying stupid bastard cockroaches climbing around on a pile of garbage. Because that’s exactly what the world is becoming. We are no longer being concerned with acting like human beings. We are no longer being concerned with trying to help the market to survive. We are becoming much more concerned with how much we can grab and steal then trying to help the market to survive. And this of course is exactly why the markets of ailing. And furthermore, it is exactly why there is a second market crashed coming that will actually take place within the next 10 to 15 business quarter’s.
Of course, I don’t expect anyone to believe that. And that’s basically because most of the world has become nothing but a bunch of stupid self-serving egotistical bastards who don’t give a damn whatsoever about learning anything new. The world is much more concerned with taking everything maintain the status quo. And if anyone dares to come forward with any kind of new information. The world would rather kill that person than to actually investigate the new information.
It’s not a problem as I’ve been saying all this morning. I’m not doing this Journal for any human being here in this world and doing this Journal as an American citizen, to fulfill my obligation and my duty to serve and protect the Constitution and to protect the United States. And I’m doing this Journal as my responsibility to the creator my creator. So that I can to fill my responsibility to the creator before I die. The fact that people are involved in what I’m writing about is merely a result of happenstance of my being a human being. I would much rather write about things that don’t concern humans at all. Because humans in my way of thinking of it nothing but a huge this one to me all I life. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like what the creator has in fact created here on Earth. It just means I have a tremendous hatred for the way that humans have chosen to demonstrate their own behavior. Collectively and individually, whereby as a result. Humanity now resembles nothing but a bunch of maggots, climbing around on a pile of dead meat.
And if that’s the best of you humans can do and still try to call yourselves humanity, than you really truly do deserve exactly what you’re getting.
Economic Fact Sheet (Current as of March, 2010)
The United States currently has a national debt in excess of $12.5 trillion.
The interest on the national debt is now in excess of $11 trillion.
The operating budget for the United States government is now in excess of $43 trillion.
The members of the United States Congress stole $200 million from the Medicare fund, which was going to go for cost-of-living increases to Medicare recipients, so that the members of Congress could have their paper medical records converted to computerized medical records. The attitude by the members of Congress was that they didn’t care if they murdered American citizens as long as they get the medical protection they wanted.
The Christian conservatives and the Republican Party are taking the stand that they do not want American citizens to have any kind of healthcare the of healthcare is extended to anyone that the Christian conservatives or the Republican Party does not like. And this is based not on constitutional law or the Christian conservatives and the Republican Party being patriots. It’s based upon the Christian conservatives Republican Party demanding that the American government understand that no Christian conservative or Republican Party member will in any way ever support the US Constitution above their Christian religion and above their Christian Bible. And so as a result, their Christian Bible and Christian religion says that healthcare should not go to Hispanic Americans or black Americans or Jews or Muslims or gay Americans or Native Americans or anyone who is an immigrant that the Christian conservatives Republican Party just doesn’t happen to like.
And so as a result, the Christian conservatives Republican Party members are trying to commit mass murder in United States by denying health care to millions of American citizens who are in desperate need of medical attention. But the Christian conservatives Republican Party doesn’t really care about that because as far as they’re concerned if they have to walk through rivers of blood to make sure that their Christian religion and their Christian faith is supported more than the Constitution of these United States and the Christian conservatives will do just that.
The current level of unemployment in the United States is now over 9.7%.
The current cost for liquidating the national debt is now in excess of $40,000 per person, which means that every man woman and child in the United States would have to pay at least $40,000 to be able to liquidate the national debt.
When you look at the history of United States from the American Civil War until present day you find that the Republican Party and Christian conservatives were in total and complete control of the United States government every single time there was a financial crisis from the American Civil War to present day. And that basically means that all the policy decisions that were being made by the American government during these times when these financial catastrophes were taking place were being made strictly by Christian conservatives and the Republican Party . And of course that’s all public record.
As my financial analysis of the global economic system , in my see also section below, clearly shows, it was the Republican Party and the Christian conservatives under President Bush who gave the American banking industry $400 billion of taxpayer money and simply told the banking industry to use the money anyway they wanted to. And the banking industry did just that they use the money to pay for expensive gifts and presents and take vacations. To date, the banking industry has only paid back $30 billion out of the over $500 billion that was given to them by the American taxpayers.
The issues of profitability indexing, pursuant to profit margins and per unit costs and customer bases as they relate to compensation packages throughout the entire corporate sector have not been resolved. That basically means that most businesses are being held hostage by upper level management and executive employees in their own companies who are demanding more and more for their compensation packages. As a result of this most companies are having to readjust their per unit costs for their goods and services in such a way so that what they are doing is pricing their services and their products. So that mostly the upper class and the wealthy will be able to afford them. And this is being done so these companies and corporations can get as much money into their company as possible.
But they are in fact forgetting one of the major factors which is that while most of the money that any company gets comes from the wealthy are customers most of their day-to-day cash flow actually comes from the middle and lower income customers. This is true regardless of where that company exists. So as a result of this most of the companies in the corporate sector are operating on what is known as a cash poor basis. And this basically means that since they are pricing their goods and services in order to get the most money possible they are foregoing pricing their goods and services so they will be more affordable to the middle and lower income customers, which actually provide these companies with their day-to-day cash flow. And so as a result, these companies don’t have enough money to pay for employees or many of the other day-to-day costs that come up.
This factor has not been dealt with in any country in the world at this time. Furthermore, these companies are refusing to be honest about their financial reporting. They are constantly using and accounting,/statistical variance, which is .5%. And .5% variance is such a large variance pursuant to statistical and financial analysis that you can basically drive a moving van through the space. That is allocated for plus or minus error correction in the statistical analyses and financial analyses that are in fact done with .5% variance. This is why I have never used that level of variance statistically or financially. I’ve always used .05% variance because it is such a small variance that the statistical analysis of the profitability analysis cannot be falsified. It is true that using .05% variance does require an additional 100,000 to 200,000 calculations in order to be able to complete the analysis. But when you consider that the final product is incredibly more honest and reliable. It’s worth it.
The banking industry has turned cruel. For example here in Cleveland Ohio Keycorp is taking a lot of pride and threatening senior citizens and kicking them out of their homes so that they can foreclose on the property. This is happening all over Cleveland Ohio and KeyCorp actually is one of the most hated banks in the entire state of Ohio. But KeyCorp is not the only one who’s doing this practice. Because was really happening is that banks all over the United States are basically threatening senior citizens with foreclosure to the point where suicides are now escalating and accelerating at an alarming rate. So badly that the medical community is swamped by the number of suicide calls they are getting. And this is all happening because KeyCorp and other banks like KeyCorp are basically taking the attitude that they don’t care how many men and women and children they have to murder. They just want their money.
When you consider these kinds of factors are going on in the banking industry you realized that the other thing that’s happening is that senior citizens and homeowners are becoming incredibly sick. Do becoming physically ill as a result of the horrible attitude that KeyCorp in other banks like KeyCorp are pushing on the citizens. And there is no help for this at all.
Additionally, the medical community is helping with this because we have a hospital here in Cleveland Ohio called MetroHealth that basically is working hard. Just like KeyCorp to threaten senior citizens and have them thrown out of their homes. So that they can foreclose on the property. And basically kill the individuals. I have been personally threatened by KeyBank and MetroHealth and have recorded conversations proving that.
So MetroHealth does all these commercials where they’re talking about how good a hospital they are and yet they have been sued a number of times for Medicare fraud. They have also been sued by their own employees for unfair business practices. And they have lost doctors so badly because they don’t treat their doctors very well either. Nobody likes MetroHealth.
And for the record, it needs to be understood that my grandfather’s brother, Dr. ally Maschke, was the director of medicine at mount Sinai medical center here in Cleveland Ohio until his death. And my cousin, Dr. Victor Vertese, was also the director of medicine at mount Sinai medical center until his death. Additionally, my grandfather, Maurice Maschke, and his business partner, Mark Hanna, who founded the Hana mining company, which became the 3M company, basically built mount Sinai medical center in Cleveland. And in addition to that, my father, Maurice Maschke Junior, was on the Board of Trustees at Case Western Reserve University, University hospitals of Cleveland, Cleveland clinic, and mount Sinai medical center until his death. And in addition to that, my father, Maurice Maschke Junior, and I., were partners and co-owners of pioneer linen supply company of Cleveland Ohio for 25 years until 1975 when we sold the company.
So given all of the foregoing as actual facts. The only reason that the accelerated growth has taken place is because certain industries in the United States have in fact been making money. Only because their industries are addressing sections of the population who are otherwise disenfranchised by most of the business sector. For example Tyco International is a business that specializes and fire prevention and warning systems and security systems. And of course they’ve done a really good job because people are scared to death and living in their homes and there are so many foreclosures going on that people are having to protect their homes because in most cities the number of police has dropped so badly because most cities are in a huge budget crisis. In Cleveland, Ohio, for example, the city went from 1,500,000 people down to approximately 400,000 people in only a matter of months. And conditions are so bad in Cleveland that Cleveland is now charging nine dollars a month just pick up our garbage.
So given those facts Tyco International for one example is making a lot of money because people are having to protect their homes because they can’t really, the police that much because the number of police has dropped so the greatly because of the budget crisis going on throughout the world and throughout the United States.
Additionally, when you look at a company like Microsoft, who reported a huge profit. This is because Microsoft isn’t doing really well. Because they’re not the only reason Microsoft made this huge profit was because their previous product, Microsoft Windows Vista was actually one of the worst programs and products Microsoft ever created. And so since it did so terribly in the market naturally Microsoft’s increased now is looking fantastic, which is not because if you analyze the overall productivity and effectiveness of Microsoft you will see that they are basically floundering under Steve Ballmer’s direction.
So again, it’s really easy for people to talk about how well the market is doing that the foregoing represents the actual facts of what’s going on in business. And as I said before, I have been studying the stock market since I was six years old. At age 6 I started studied the stock market at Prescott ball and turban here in Cleveland Ohio. With one of the partner broker’s, Bernie Towell, who was a personal friend of mine. And so every day for four hours every day and age 6 until age 16 I studied the stock market and learned economics and financial analysis . At age 16, while working and being a partner and co-owner of pioneer linen spy company in Cleveland, I did my first financial analysis and profitability analysis . It was done on the linen supply company’s of Cleveland Ohio. The analysis was so good that the results were used to program some computers at the time. And in 42 years and having been a financial analyst I’ve never once been wrong in any financial projection I’ve ever done. Not once. Just like I’m not wrong now.
In my financial analysis of the global economic system in my see also section below, I clearly show that the American market system was going to lose $800 trillion of market value in the third business quarter of 2009. I further substantiated this claim last January in January of 2009. When I explained that the American market system was going to take a huge hit in the third quarter and that it would come out to about $800 trillion of market loss. And that this was in fact in line with the Kondratieff wave . And in fact that’s exactly what did happen. Which means the analysts were wrong. And I was right.
So again, if you go ahead and look at all these factors without looking at all of the peripheral details than you are going to be responding to the information in a very symptomatic, or symptomatically oriented manner whereby you will behave to the information in an extremely reactionary way. By the like term, if you look at all of the information regarding economics throughout the entire global economic system in a problematically oriented manner you will be looking at the financial information in a more anticipatory manner. And much more pervasive rather than in a stereotypical or linear manner. And as a result, you will begin to understand that all of these different factors that I have brought forth in this article right now. Actually do justify what I’m saying that the American market system is on the verge of collapse. And that the economic system for Greece is about to go under. And that unemployment in Spain and France and England is running at almost 30%.
These do not make things look like they’re going good in the United States is basically doing nothing but lying about the economic they I went to school with most of the people who run a lot of these companies in the United States and who are working on Wall Street either went to school with them at Case Western Reserve why went to school with them at Fort Lewis college board went to school with them at southern Arizona school in Tucson Arizona. Or, I did business with them throughout my life.
So again, this is a reality check. And all I can say is, if you don’t believe what I’m saying that’s not a problem. Because you haven’t believe me, for 40 years, what I’ve been talking about all of these issues facing the economic system in the United States and the global economic system. So why would you believe me now?
But the fact is that just because you may not believe what I’m saying doesn’t mean that what I’m saying is not true. Simply means you are refusing or are not able to see the veracity in what I’m saying and that’s all it means.
See Also:
The American Civil War
Slavery
The Emancipation Proclamation
Abraham Lincoln
John Wilkes Booth
The Christian Conservatives
World War I
Prohibition
The Great Depression
The Battle of Washington
World War II
The Korean War
The Vietnam War
Richard Nixon
Oliver North
The Iran-Contra Affair
The Gulf War
The Savings-And-Loan Crisis
Bill Clinton
The Balanced Budget Amendment
The Iraq War
The Kondratieff Wave
Profitability Analysis
Financial Analysis
Vance Packard
Laissez-Faire
Capital Punishment
Homophobia
Xenophobia
Racism
Prejudice
Bigotry
Fascism
Eugenics
White Supremacy
Mein Kampf
Adolf Hitler
The Ku Klux Klan
The Army of God
US Domestic Violence Statistics
US Child Abuse Statistics
US Child Mortality Statistics
US Religious Demographic Statistics
Gay-Rights
Transgenderism
Women’s Rights
Pro-Choice
NRA
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The US Constitution
The Bill Of Rights
Recording Telephone Conversations
Treason
Sedition
How The Republicans Use The Constitution To Lie (article 1, section 6, Subsection b) of The US Constitution
My Biographical Profile
My Philosophy Of Life
24 Hour Suicide And Crisis Help Center
For Those Who Said I Never Knew Ronald Reagan, They Lied
My Encounter With Joan Baez
My Time Studying The Anasazi Indians
My 250 Million Variable Characteristic Hieroglyphic Language
My Tribute To Jim Varney
The Pebble And The Penguin
A Diamond On A Sea Of Glass
Regarding Me And My Journal
My Spinal Fusion And Me Doing 250 Situps
An Installment Notation of The Maschke Family History and Legacy
It’s A Crime
Hey God! You There? I’m Tired… Ok?
In The Midst Of Darkness The Smallest Spark Lights My Way…
I Wrote Something A Long Time Ago…
Kmart To Close Five More Ohio Stores
The Vanishing Of America
A Place Called Earth
How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down On The Farm
Sounds
Reality …
Second Gear
My Financial Analysis Of The Global Economic System
Adventures In Technocracy
An Explanation Of Vernacular Dynamics and Sequencing Regarding Various Forms of Advocacy
My Global Warming Research
For the record, I am pro-life. I do not support violence against, or the killing of any human being under any circumstances! And the only way that I ever deviate from that stand is that I do not believe that God has ever given any human the right to dictate to any woman how she is to arbitrate her life with the Almighty, and/or God. Therefore, I believe that all women deserve the right to choose for themselves the fate of their own bodies, pursuant to their relationship with the Almighty, and/or God. For an expanded explanation please see my article entitled: "Second Gear"
On December 14, 2009, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina issued a presidential decree of necessity and urgency to establish a bicentennial fund for debt service, which would be stocked with $6.569 billion of the central bank’s foreign currency reserves. Martin Redrado, the president of the central bank challenged the decree and refused to transfer his bank’s reserves into the bicentennial fund. After Redrado refused to resign, President Fernandez issued a second decree ordering the removal of Redrado. A political scandal ensued, the judiciary stepped in and ruled that the Senate must approve of President Fernandez’ proposed use of the reserves. Feeling he had sufficiently stood up for his economic principles, Mr. Redrado agreed to resign in late January.
Mr. Redrado defended two fundamental economic principles concerning the central bank. The first was that a central bank must remain independent; the second that reserves should be used strictly to ensure monetary and financial stability. He was right to do this and it is unfortunate he lost his job. President Fernandez’ attempted seizure of the central bank’s reserves will likely produce grave consequences for Argentina’s economy. President Fernandez has substantially weakened the central bank’s balance sheet. She has established two harmful institutional precedents: compromising the central banks’ independence and encouraging fiscal irresponsibility. President Fernandez’ ultimate goal of repaying government debt is commendable, however her means for achieving that goal are illegitimate. Rather than slashing spending before looming elections, the President has chosen to indulge her political base, and reject sound economic policies. Mr. Redrado did the right thing.
One of the key principles that Martin Redrado defended was the importance of maintaining an independent central bank. This principle is founded on the economic axiom that in the short-term there is a trade-off between inflation and growth. If politicians control monetary policy, they will likely pursue an expansionary monetary policy, particularly in the run up to elections; typically in a politically sensitive time, governments prefer more employment over less inflation. If non-politicized figures control monetary policy over the long-term, this trade-off need not occur. For this reason Mr. Redrado and most other economists believe a central bank’s independence to be sacrosanct. President Fernandez has breached this inviolable divide.
The second belief that Mr. Redrado upheld was that central bank reserves should be used strictly to ensure monetary and financial stability. Mr. Redrado believes that central banks should serve as an independent institution striving to manage inflationary pressures, maintain a stable currency, and promote a healthy economic environment. Mr. Redrado believes that without these reserves, the central bank’s ability to defend its currency is considerably handicapped. A corollary to this argument is that government debts must instead be paid through instruments within the government’s prerogative such as solid fiscal surpluses.
President Fernandez’ attempt to gain access to Argentina’s foreign currency reserves in order to retire government debt presents severe problems in both the short- and long-term. Most immediately, Fernandez’ actions significantly weaken the central bank’s balance sheet. In exchange for its international currency reserves, which are liquid and high-quality assets, the bank will receive a highly illiquid asset (a non-transferable government bond) and it must absorb a considerable loss to its reserves. As Mr. Redrado has stated, this weakens the central bank’s ability to defend its currency.
The central bank of Argentina currently has $47.8 billion in foreign currency reserves; so the $6.6 billion the President is taking is 14% of the bank’s reserves (Benson, 2009). President Fernandez argues that the reserves she will acquire are “excess” reserves, because the central bank currently holds more reserves than the monetary base. This is the same argument Hugo Chavez used to take more than $20 billion from the central bank of Venezuela since 2005. Economists disagree over the necessary amount of reserves. Many, like Redrado, believe that in a highly dollarized emerging economy like Argentina’s, it is important to have an abundance of U.S. Treasury bonds.
The correct level of “excess” reserves is debatable, but larger, more serious, concerns trump this issue. More significantly, the precedents President Fernandez’ actions set, the likely degradation of Argentina’s financial and governmental institutions, and the illegitimate manner President Fernandez attempted to seize the bank’s currency reserves will be long lasting.
In addition to weakening the bank’s balance sheet, President Fernandez’ actions cause other, more serious long-term problems for Argentina’s political economy. First, President Fernandez has set a precedent which compromises the central bank’s independence from the government. President Fernandez has made clear that the executive branch can remove a central banker who opposes the government’s wishes. “The bank’s independence has disappeared,” Abel Viglione, an economist with the Foundation for Latin American Economic Research (FIEL), told BusinessWeek (Raszewski, 2010). In the future, the President of the central bank will understand this precedent and may consider the political and personal implications of monetary policy (i.e. losing one’s job, as Redrado did). A central banker that weighs political ramifications in his or her decision-making process is less likely to produce sound monetary policy. Or, on the flip side, a president who directly influences the central bank’s monetary policy is less likely to attract international investments.
Second, President Fernandez has weakened the incentive for future fiscal responsibility. Anytime a government is in a budgetary bind, it will now be easier for that government to dip into the central bank to stay afloat. This possibility will lead governments to put off tough decisions like cutting expensive, but politically popular programs. Indeed, the postponement of politically thorny decisions is one reason many analysts believe President Fernandez has made this decision. In this way, President Fernandez can pay back maturing bonds, while maintaining her unsustainable spending and indulging her political base.
Third, the manner in which President Fernandez has attempted to seize the central bank’s reserves is dubious and arguably unconstitutional. The central bank’s charter stipulates that if the President wishes to remove a central bank chief, he or she must ask lawmakers for a prior, non-binding recommendation. Ms. Fernandez ignored this specification, and instead tried to fire Mr. Redrado by decree of necessity and urgency. Not only did President Fernandez disregard the central bank’s charter, but also it is unclear if this moment truly merits a decree of necessity and urgency. In fact, Judge María José Sarmiento, the initial appeals judge to hear the dispute, determined in her ruling that it was neither necessary nor urgent to create the Bicentennial Fund with central bank reserves. Moreover, some opposition parties have filed injunctions requesting the courts to rule that President Fernandez’ actions were unconstitutional (Haskel, 2010). To say the least, the legitimacy of President Fernandez’ two decrees are in serious question. While her ostensible goal of paying back bond debts is laudable, her methods are dubious. The end does not justify the means.
Veto player theory applies to President Fernandez’ recent actions as well. Veto player theory argues, “a higher number of veto players lowers the likelihood of change” (Scartascini, 2008). In the case of Argentina’s central bank dispute, Mr. Redrado acted as a veto player: his consent was necessary in order for the government to access the central bank’s reserves. Now that the main veto player, Mr. Redrado, has been removed, it is significantly more likely President Fernandez will be able to use the central bank’s reserves to pay down its debt to bondholders. Congress, consisting of some veto players itself, must still approve President Fernandez’ proposal in a debate next month.
With a key veto player in Mr. Redrado eliminated, President Fernandez has named Mercedes Marcó del Ponte to be his replacement. She is a staunch supporter of the Kirchners, and certainly would not act as a veto player on this issue. As a lawmaker in 2007, Ms. Marcó del Ponte sponsored a bill to change the central bank’s charter. Though her bill failed, the proposed changes would have expanded the central bank’s prerogative to help facilitate growth and job creation (Weber, 2010). This philosophy indicates that Ms. Marcó del Ponte would likely acquiesce to further incursions into the central bank’s reserves. The elimination of veto players regarding monetary policy makes those policies less resolute. This change sends bad signals to investors looking for a stable financial climate.
It appears that President Fernandez has chosen to sacrifice sound economic policy for political gain. It is quite possible that President Fernandez has established control over the central bank in order to monetize her budget deficits, and fund a spending spree before presidential elections in 2011 (Weber, 2010). Luis María Corsiglia, a former director at the central bank of Argentina, also speculated that President Fernandez wants to use the reserves for current spending (Weber, 2010). The problems with this policy are profound; it will weaken the central bank, weaken the Argentine peso, and lead to a spike in inflation. In fact, official inflation in January reached a 22-month high of 1.1%; however private estimates believe the real number is 2% (Brandimarte, 2010). According to the Financial Times, many economists expect inflation to reach 20% this year (Weber, 2010). With the new central bank president a loyal political ally, it seems unlikely that the central bank will raise interest rates in order to combat inflation. This all will have severely detrimental effects on the economy.
Mr. Redrado rightly defended the importance of an independent central bank. He also championed the idea that central bank reserves should be used strictly for maintaining monetary and financial stability. President Fernandez’ actions weaken the central bank’s balance sheet, decreasing its ability to defend its currency. In the long-term, the independence of Argentina’s central bank has been reduced, and will remain a concern for investors. President Fernandez’ actions also weaken the incentive for her and her successors to maintain a balanced budget; the reserves will be there to bail them out. The method which President Fernandez has pursued to repay debt and regain access to international capital markets will likely backfire. Investors’ anxiety will likely continue due to three factors: improvident spending, a compromised central bank, and high inflation. President Fernandez would be more likely to gain investors’ confidence (as well as voters) if she were to restore the bank’s independence, respect Argentine institutions, and repay debt through fiscal surpluses.
Given there is no sign at all that the Conservative’s disastrous 2010 campaign is likely to improve, this question of the economy’s performance with a minority governmetn will continue.
A note from CitiGroup puts the case for the prosecution:
There is no consensus across the parties on fiscal policy, while Lib Dem voters disagree with the Conservatives on fiscal policy and prefer Labour’s policies on most other key political issues. Lib Dem voters would rather go into coalition with Labour than the Conservatives. We suspect that a hung parliament would only be able to implement and sustain major fiscal consolidation if boxed in by a market crisis. Gilts and sterling remain vulnerable.
The author acknowledges Nick Clegg’s recent vow ‘not to take any risk with UK plc’, and suspects that they LibDems will not cooperate unless given the Holy Grail of electoral reform in return. Which the Conservatives will never grant.
Clegg is getting annoyed:
“David Cameron and George Osborne are stoking up fears in the markets, actively trying to destabilise the pound and reduce the government’s ability to borrow. It’s like a protection racket: vote for us or our friends in the City will lay waste to your economy, your savings and your job.”
Too right. Chris Cook in the (you guessed it) FT has a more nuanced summary of how things might pan out:
the threat of the LibDems pulling the plug on a government is overstated. The third party would, very quickly, be seen as co-culprits for the administration’s programme. So the LibDems would be stuck with them. If they then caused the fall of the government, they would be blamed for the chaos that follows … So the path of short-term naked self interest – the most powerful force in politics – would almost always be for the LibDems to back the administration.
The Lib Dems have the most to gain and the most to lose from the hung parliament situation. Their incentives are unambigiously in the direction of fiscal responsibility. No-ones goes around thinking “I can’t vote Lib Dem – they are too serious about the deficit”. A period where the LibDems hold the sensible middle of the debate: between diehard romantic deniers on the Labour benches, and blinkered trapped-in-the-1980s CutNowCutHarders on the other side, could gain them real credibility with a public worried about the difficult, um, balancing act that needs to be performed.
Then I would say that, wouldn’t I?
Jackie Ashley’s column praises Nick’s round-the-country efforts and also holds sensible advice:
They should boldly say they will back whichever party produces an economic plan closest to their own, and will allow that party to produce a budget and essential legislation. But they will not go into coalition. They will keep their integrity, vote on issues according to their principles, and be ready to fight a following election on that record.
This doesn’t mean the choices will be easy. Hey, just look at the horrible alternatives for cutting – which of these seem attractive in a recession? Well, maybe that VAT on finance and the carbon tax …
Carl Ala, a political economist from the University of the Philippines-Manila
The admission of presidential economic adviser and concurrent Albay Gov. Joey Sarte that more Filipinos got poorer since Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came to power in 2001, must have been a punch on the gut of the current occupant in Malacanang and highlights the rift between the two neo-liberal economists.
Though from the stand point of political economy I agree with Salceda in his contention that the rich got richer while the ranks of the poor swelled during the last 9 years, I completely disagree when he said that there were 34 consecutive quarters of progress in the country. Salceda’s point that despite deregulation, privatization and liberalization there are still poor people and that more neo-liberal policies should be done to solve poverty is also way off.
On the contrary, it is these neo-liberal policies themselves that he and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo pushed are among the biggest reasons why many Filipinos now are wallowing in poverty. He should see the Philippine economy the right side up.Data from the National Statistical Coordination Board, which showed that the number of poor Filipinos – five-member families living on barely over P1,200 a month — hit 27.6 million in 2006 from 25.472 million in 2001. Hunger incidence nearly doubled from 11.4 percent in 2000 to 20.3 percent in 2009.
These also are the same policies and laws that big foreign and local businesses used to bleed the economy dry. Salceda even said that profits of the country’s top 1,000 corporations jumped by 21 percent per year while the return on their equity or investments increased by 15 percent per year since the President took power.
“Their total earnings amounted to P3.1 trillion of which P2.1 trillion were pocketed as dividends or earnings of the stockholders and only P1 trillion were re-invested,’’ he added.
So the solution here is obvious, instead of further expanding such neo-liberal policies, these should be scrapped. The next administration should also seriously consider implementing genuine agrarian reform and nationalist industrialization to solve the glaring disparity between the rich and the poor in this country.
The basic problems of Philippine society especially giving land to farmers and secure jobs and wages for workers should be addressed first to uplift the lives of at least 90% of our population. Basic and social services like education and health should be rendered free or at affordable prices so that most Filipinos will benefit from it. Then the next administration should seriously consider formulating a true national economic plan with the primary goal of satisfying the ever-increasing needs of the Filipino people, so that our level of material and cultural life will be raised.
Of course, economists who caused and justified the problems we are encountering now should also be held accountable. In this light I think that Gov. Salceda is also liable, especially with the recent government data saying that Bicol is the “tambay” capital of the country with 37% of its labor force being under-employed and the prices of food, light and water in the region are at its all time high. As the chair of the Regional Development Council (RDC), these falls squarely on Salceda’s lap and now being the top economic adviser no wonder we are in this deep a trouble. # # #
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This is boilerplate American history, and something that Americans — and, in particular, America’s political class — have long taken for granted.
But now things are looking a bit dicey. According to a recent Rasmussen Poll , only 21 percent of American voters believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed. On the other hand, Rasmussen notes, a full 63 percent of the “political class” believe that the government enjoys the consent of the governed.
It’s tempting to stress the disconnect here, and that disconnect is certainly huge. Unsurprisingly, the political class — which talks mostly to itself — thinks that it is far more popular, and legitimate, in the eyes of the country than is in fact the case. In this, as in so many things, America’s political class is out of touch with reality.
But forget the views of America — where, it seems likely, more people believe in alien abductions than in the legitimacy of our rulers — and look just at the more cheerful view of the political class.
Even among the rulers, only 63 percent — triple the fraction of the general populace but still less than two-thirds of the political class — regard the federal government as legitimate by the standards of America’s founding document. The remainder, presumably, are comfortable being tyrants.
These numbers should raise deep worries about the future of our republic. A nation whose government does not rest on the consent of the governed is a nation whose government holds sway only by inertia, or by force.
It is a nation vulnerable to political shocks, usurpation, or perhaps even political collapse or civil war. It is a body politic suffering from a serious illness. Those who care about America should be very worried.
But we’ve had enough political drama in recent years, so I’ll go for a more prosaic comparison: The once-heady brew of American freedom has become watery and unsatisfying.
In fact, when I think of the federal government’s brand now, I think of Schlitz beer. Schlitz was once a top national brew. But, in search of short-term gains, it began gradually reducing its quality in tiny increments to save money, substituting cheaper malt, fewer hops and “accelerated” brewing for its traditional approach.
Each incremental decline was imperceptible to consumers, but after a few years, people suddenly noticed that the beer was no good anymore. Sales collapsed, and a “Taste My Schlitz” campaign designed to lure beer drinkers back failed when the “improved” brew turned out not to be any better. A brand image that had been accumulated over decades was lost in a few years, and it has never recovered.
The federal government, alas, finds itself in much the same position. The political class sold its legitimacy off in drips and drabs. As “smart politics” has come over the past decades to mean not persuasion but the practice of legerdemain, the use of political deals, cover from a friendly press apparat and taking advantage of voters’ rational ignorance, the governing classes have managed to achieve things that would surely have failed had the people known what was going on.
But though each little trick may have slipped by the voters, the voters have nonetheless noticed that the ultimate product isn’t what it used to be. The end result, as with Schlitz, is a tarnished brand. And rescuing tarnished brands is hard.
It gets worse. Not long ago, the federal government enjoyed a stellar reputation for honesty and competence. Now, according to a recent CNN poll, three-quarters of Americans think federal officials aren’t honest . (There’s no separate survey here on what the “political class” thinks, but I suspect that its numbers would be sunnier, but still appalling, as above). So what do we do with a federal government that many voters think is illegitimate and dishonest?
Well, the Declaration of Independence allows for the prospect of altering or abolishing the government we have in order to get a government that’s closer to what we want. That needn’t involve anything as violent as the American Revolution or the Civil War, but the need for change — real, structural change as opposed to campaign-slogan “change” — is becoming more obvious.
In the past, America has managed to reinvent itself without transformations as wrenching as the Civil War or the Revolution. As the legitimacy of our current arrangements becomes increasingly threadbare, it is perhaps worth thinking about how this might be accomplished again. Because when a great beer dies, it’s sad. But when a great nation dies, it’s tragic.
Examiner contributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a law professor at the University of Tennessee. He hosts “Instavision” at PJTV.com, and blogs at Instapundit.com.
These are the key data
Surveys of 1,000 Likely Voters
February 27-March 2, 2010
Issue
Democrats
Republicans
Economy
41%
46%
National Security
37%
47%
Iraq
38%
42%
Health Care
42%
45%
Education
41%
38%
Immigration
34%
39%
Social Security
39%
42%
Taxes
37%
48%
Government Ethics
35%
28%
Abortion
38%
42%
Voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on eight out of 10 key issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports, but the gap between the two parties has grown narrower on several of them.
Although the issue of health care continues to be at the forefront of the national political debate, voters rate health care as number five on the list of 10 important issues. The economy remains the top issue of voter concern as it has been for over two years. The only exception being last September when voters put government ethics and corruption at the top of the list.
Republicans lead Democrats 46% to 41% in terms of voter trust on the economy. In early January 2009, just before President Obama took office, Democrats held a nine-point lead on this issue. More voters who make under $20,000 annually trust Democrats on this issue, but voters in higher income ranges favor Republicans.
Voters trust Democrats more on government ethics and corruption, 35% to 28%. But 27% are not sure who to trust.
(Headline –NYTimes) Rash of Scandals Tests Democrats at Sensitive Time
The NY Times is reporting on a “rash of scandals” – but Chris Matthews last night was all over Rev . Al Sharpton for the Democratic Party problems in NY.
One Democrat Governor (Spitzer) has resigned (prostitute), leaving Paterson, the Lt. Gov. to rise to Governor – but Patterson is under huge pressure to resign (multiple issues – corruption, lying to the FBI, and interference in a criminal matter).
Of course, that is not the whole of it.
There is Democrat Charlie Rangel who has stepped down (temporarily?) over an ethics “admonition” while there is an investigation of not one but TWO unreported bank accounts of $500,000 EACH, use of FOUR rent-controlled apartments simultaneously, failing to report rent for properties in the Caribbean etc. etc.
Then there was the failed appointment of an inarticulate Kennedy to a Senate seat by Patterson, followed by an actual appointment of a replacement who is polling 21%…
That is a surprise, considering OUR Democratic Party problems — which we would hear more of if we had a press corps in Sacramento that was not fully compromised.
Have you read anything about State Senator Pat Wiggins in the press, except for my post yesterday?
Didn’t think so.
The California press is not corrupt — they are lazy and fully accomplished in “go along and get along.”
A strong and relevant article I’ve been mulling over these days:
Oligopoly meets oligopsony: The case of permits
Abstract
This paper derives market equilibria (in demand functions and in bidding strategies) between oligopolists and oligopsonists in a market with intermediates and no competition in final markets. To the best of my knowledge, this theme has not been explored, despite two observations: Firstly, the commonly applied framework of non-competitive and competitive fringe firms has implausible properties for the limit of purely strategic players. Secondly, real world cases correspond at least potentially to such strategic interactions, e.g., non-competitive players selling and buying permits (CO2 and SO2). The major implications are that these non-competitive markets are characterized by a kind of double marginalization (on the demand and the supply side) resulting in too little trade and wrong price signals.
Article available here.
What the author demonstrates mathematically is that markets for ecosystem services, because they are characterized by a very small number of very large players, don’t comply with the competitive market hypothesis – meaning the traded volumes are too small and the prices achieved can either be too low (meaning too much pollution will be emitted) or too high (meaning a sub-optimal level of pollution).
This problem is ever more important when we consider markets, such as biodiversity offsets, where the benefits are not fungible, that is, they are mostly felt on the spot or close by. If the efficiency conditions are not respected, the results are suboptimal – why would we have markets then?
Punchline: markets can work, but what are the appropriate market designs, players and regulations?
Okay, DST will soon be upon us. In case you have been living under a rock for the last 20 years, DST means “Daylight Shifting Time”. This is the twice-yearly folly of changing the time displayed on our clocks in order to provide the illusion that we are actually doing something.
In all honesty, Daylight Saving Time is meant to force people to use less energy. By putting more daylight between the time when people come home from work and sunset, it essentially forces less time between sunset and bedtime, when most people turn off energy-using devices. Thus, energy should be saved.
Except that it’s offset by more lights used in the mornings. And it’s also offset by the extra “things” that we drive to in the summer because there’s more light to do them, like going shopping or driving over to a park so we can exercise. I heard a radio piece (I know, fantastic journalism there, Steve, providing made-up facts without any kind of reference at all…) a couple of years ago talking about the change to extend DST by a month a year. Evidently this was intended to save even more energy than we were saving before. The Federal Government was so sure that this was going to work, the earmarked $100,000,000 to study the effects of this change. Just think – for that amount of money, we could either:
Provide 500,000 laptops to kids in poverty.
Partner with Food for the Hungry and give something like 5,300,000,000 pounds of food to people who need it (that’s 5 pounds a day for 10 years for 290,411 people).
Provide 25,000,000 Bibles through the Bible League.
Give 20,000,000 mosquito nets to protect against disease in Kenya through ProjectMosquitoNet.org.
Support 3,333,333 missionary months with Gospel for Asia. That works out to be 27,778 missionaries for 10 years.
Or, we could study an effect of changing our clocks.
Personally, I think we got ripped off. I want my $0.33 back.
The day after causing a diplomatic crisis with the United Kingdom, Hillary Clinton was in Chile meeting with President Michelle Bachelet. Chile is only now finding out the true extent of the damage from Friday’s 8.8 earthquake, and it is incredible.
Chile is an unusual country by any measure. It is over 2,700 miles long and on average 110 miles wide. There is one major highway down the length of most of the country. To get to much of Patagonia, you have to go through Argentina. Now, that highway has massive craters and rifts that will take months if not years to fix. The infrastructure that the movement of aid is dependent upon has been critically disrupted. Whole towns have been washed away in a series of tidal waves. Cities and towns are cut off and the only access to much of the coast is helicopters.
And our Secretary of State in answer to this crisis brought with her as a sign of the United States commitment and friendship 25 satellite phones. Does this seem just a little bit odd? I think I could have done better running down to the local Best Buy.
Chile has not asked for much. They are a resource rich and proud country that is the envy of much of South America. The rule of law prevails and the trains run on time. But under the circumstances and with such devastation, even the wealthiest of countries can use a helping hand. Heavy lift capacity, water purification, spare parts, and heavy equipment don’t grow on trees and are needed fast. People are sleeping in the open and need shelter and food. Rebuilding will take decades, but there are immediate areas where we can help.
With a diplomatic debacle in Argentina the day before, Ms. Clinton and her boss have gambled on a no win scenario where we have damaged our relationship with our closest ally. The paucity of her gesture to Chile is stunning in comparison. Argentina is a resource rich country that has been mismanaged its economy into the ground repeatedly for over 100 years. The country only became an ally a few months before the end of World War II when the Allied victory was inevitable and then became a haven afterward for Nazi war criminals under the Peron dictatorship. The Peronists still rule there. Chile has only ever asked for free trade.
How can we rationalize these contradictory responses? It doesn’t make sense. There is a cognitive dissonance between the current administration and common sense, it would seem. We are rewarding grifters and ignoring the people who follow the rules and work hard once again. But then, that theme also seems to be running through this administration.
I estimated the revenues generated by the AppStore (considering 30% commission, an avg. price per paid app of US$ 2,89 and 3,37 apps downloaded per month per device – including iPhones, iPod touch and iPad and establishing the 1,9 bn. downloads at September 2009).
To estimate the number of paid apps downloaded I used a figure from AdMob stating 16,3% of downloaded apps are paid by customers.
The results: US$ 103 million in revenues for Apple in the past quarter (vs. US$ 17 million estimated by Morgan Stanely, representing 16,5% of my estimates)
Using Morgan Stanley estimates only 0,8% of total apps downloaded are paid apps…seems bit low to me!
Find attached excel model: AppStore revenues model
Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image David Kidwell/Pocono Record, via Associated Press
Job losses are expected to have accelerated in February, mainly because of snowstorms.
We’re now in the midst of the worst run of economic news in almost a year. Home sales have dropped. So has consumer confidence. Stocks peaked on Jan. 19.
This Friday may well bring the darkest piece of news yet, at least on the surface. Forecasters are predicting that the Labor Department will report that job losses accelerated in February, perhaps back above 100,000. The main reason will be the temporary hit from the big snowstorms last month. Yet there is reason to wonder if the economy also has bigger problems.
The weekly data on jobless benefits are narrower and less consistent than the monthly jobs report, but they have the advantage of being more current. From early January to late February, the number of workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose 15 percent. Over the previous nine months, this number was generally falling.
Economies rarely move in a straight line, and — as the better-than-expected numbers on Tuesday on vehicle sales suggested — the recent run of bad data is probably overstating the troubles. But whatever you thought at the start of the year about the recovery — strong, moderate, fragile — you probably need to be more pessimistic today.
“The strength of data we saw at the end of last year exaggerated the strength of the underlying economy,” Richard Berner of Morgan Stanley, says. “And now we’re seeing some pullback.”
This is especially troubling because the economy is still such a long way from being healthy. Lawrence Katz, the Harvard labor economist, estimates that 10.6 million jobs would need to materialize immediately to return the job market to its condition when the Great Recession began. For it to get there four years from now, the economy would have to add 316,000 jobs a month. That pace would be faster than in any four-year stretch of the 1990s boom.
•
The economy’s biggest problem has not changed. When bubbles pop, they wreak enormous, lasting damage. Credit stays hard to get for years because banks need to rebuild their balance sheets. Families and businesses, whose net worth isn’t what they thought it was, have debts to pay off.
Over the last two years, households have been paying down their debts at a fairly good pace. But they aren’t yet close to being finished.
The average household still has debt — mortgages, credit cards, car loans and the like — that requires payments equal to roughly 17.5 percent of its disposable income. That’s down from a peak of 18.9 percent in 2008. It is still above the 1980-95 average of about 16.6 percent, according to the Federal Reserve. So debt payments will continue to hold down spending in the months ahead.
The economy did so well late last year in large part because companies began building up inventories they had whittled when they cut production during the recession. What worries some forecasters is that this buildup won’t last. Consumer spending, they say, will remain too weak to get companies to keep increasing production and to begin adding workers. “Not too long from now,” says Joshua Shapiro of MFR, a research firm in New York, “you’re going to need other demand to kick in.”
The second problem is that the stimulus program and the Fed’s emergency programs are in the early stages of slowing down.
These programs have done tremendous good, as I’ve written before. The bubbles in housing and stocks over the last decade were far larger than an average bubble, and yet the resulting bust is on pace to be shorter and less severe than the typical one in the wake of a financial crisis no fax payday loans. That’s not an accident. It’s a result of an incredibly aggressive response by the Fed, Congress, the Bush administration and the Obama administration.
Just consider home sales. The stimulus bill last year included a tax credit for first-time home buyers that originally expired on Dec. 1. Like clockwork, home sales fell 16 percent in December. From March to November, sales rose 36 percent.
The credit has since been extended, but if you combine the other fading parts of the stimulus with household debt burdens, you can see why some economists are concerned. Mr. Shapiro predicts monthly job growth will be only 50,000 to 75,000 by the end of this year. To keep up with population growth — to keep unemployment from rising — the economy needs to add more than 100,000 jobs a month.
Recent events in Congress, however, have offered some cause for optimism. Last week, the Senate passed a small-bore $15 billion jobs bill, focused on road building and employer tax credits. But on Monday, Democratic leaders announced a proposal that would do more: a $150 billion bill to extend jobless benefits, Medicaid payments to states and some tax cuts.
Some of the extensions last through the end of the year, rather than for just a few months, as is typical. Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, told me the bill was meant to prevent what he called the “Perils of Pauline” problem — referring to the silent movie serial that placed its heroine in repeated danger.
The most recent extension of jobless benefits expired on Sunday, and Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, has blocked a further 30-day extension. Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, has joined Democrats in trying to pass the temporary measure.
If Congress passed the longer-term extension and possibly added some measures — like more aid to struggling states, maybe the single most effective form of stimulus — it could offset the winding down of other government programs. (Yes, these efforts to prop up the economy will have to end sometime soon, and debt reduction will have to begin. But the main historical lesson of financial crises is that governments are too timid and too quick to step back.)
It’s also possible that Mr. Shapiro and his fellow pessimists are being a bit too dire about the private sector. Inventories are still quite lean, and some restocking is likely to continue. Banks are becoming more willing to lend, Fed surveys show. Strong growth in China and other emerging markets will help American exporters like General Motors and Cargill. To my mind, these forces make a true double dip unlikely.
Still, the jobs number on Friday will be ugly. Macroeconomic Advisers, a research firm, estimates that the snow kept 150,000 to 220,000 people off a payroll when the government conducted its jobs survey in early February. But most of those jobs will reappear in March — the month when many economists think job growth will, at long last, resume.
Here’s the thing, though. Even the optimists are not very optimistic. Morgan Stanley expects average monthly job growth of just 110,000 this year. The great jobs deficit — 10.6 million and counting — will be with us for years.
So no matter when the recent run of bad news comes to an end, the economy is still going to need help.
E-mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com
Economic Scene: In Tracking Recovery, Jagged Lines
This post was originally published on Think Progress. Over the weekend, approximately 400,000 laid-off workers may have lost their unemployment benefits, COBRA subsidies to help defray health care costs expired, and loans for small businesses ran out of time — all because of Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY). Last week, the House passed an extension of these benefits. Bunning, however, blocked [...]
Thousands Of Federal Workers Are Furloughed Without Pay Today Because Of GOP Obstructionism
Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:27:00 GMT
As I’ve said before, the one thing that you can count on the Christian conservatives to do always is to break as many laws as possible because they don’t really care about the Constitution. And we know that’s true, because I’ve said many times, the battle of Washington took place in 1932 and the battle of Washington was an attempt by the Christian conservatives of these United States to destroy the Constitution and to murder president Hoover. Because the Christian conservatives had gotten the help of some Republicans to ring about insurrection against these United States.
Know my grandfather, Maurice Maschke, was actually one Republicans who was called to Washington in an emergency secret meeting to broker a deal between the Christian conservatives and the majority of the Republican Party and other members of the American government to prevent the political coup and insurrection of the United States that was being orchestrated by Christian conservatives that resulted in the battle of Washington. And of course at the battle of Washington, Douglas MacArthur ended up going on trial because he was seen shooting and killing American veterans and murdering their wives and killing their children and shooting them to death and setting fire to American veterans with flamethrowers.
So when the Republican Party want to talk about how good and patriotic they are the fact is, they are not good and they are not patriotic they are the biggest bunch of liars and some of the worst bloodthirsty killers in the history of these United States. They have never been patriotic girl only been certain members of the Republican Party or certain sections of the Republican Party that have been patriotic. But in actuality the Republican Party began to have problems during the Civil War. It was on the evening prior to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. That is when everything really began to fall part in the Republican Party. The evening before the Emancipation Proclamation was to be signed, a large faction of the Republican Party met in Chicago Illinois with the head of the Christian conservative movement. And an agreement was reached between the two groups. This was done because the Christian conservatives did not want the Emancipation Proclamation to be signed they did not under any circumstances want to give up their right to own black Americans and to treat them is not American citizens but as pieces of property. This of course was a carryover from the signing of the Declaration of Independence when the representative named Rutledge from South Carolina took it upon himself to declare to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson that North and South Carolina made up primarily of fundamentalist white Christians would never under any circumstances looked upon black people as black Americans or even people. Because as far as they were concerned they were nothing but property.
So the upshot of the entire meeting was that in the Republican Party broke into two distinct sections. And the largest majority of the Republican Party basically became subject to the control of the Christian conservative movement. That meeting in Chicago did not stop the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. But what happened was that the register but as and the Republican Party then surreptitiously enlisted the help of other parties, who then presented. John Wilkes booth to Ford’s theater, where Lincoln was murdered. And so it was the Christian conservatives and Republican Party who actually got on Wilkes booth to do that through other groups pursuant to the entire event at Ford’s theater and the reason why that happened was because it wasn’t just how history ports it. Because history ports it like John Wilkes booth with disgruntled and all these other factors will that’s not the whole story. The real story is that Abraham Lincoln was murdered at Ford’s theater. Just 48 hours before he was to sign another legal document. And that is the document that the Christian conservatives and the Republican Party to this very day. Will refuse to ever acknowledge or even to have to be discussed hardly at all in Congress is known as the order of reparation. And the order of reparation was an Executive Order that was going to pay back to let Americans for the despicable treatment that they had suffered as slaves of the white fundamentalist Christians. But because the white fundamentalist Christians and the large section of the Republican Party become so racist. They made sure that order was never signed.
And I know this is true, because as I said before, the Maschke family goes all the way back to the battle of independence and was actually friends with George Washington. In addition to Moses Cleaveland and the Maschke family was actually one of the founding families of the city of Cleveland. And I am one of only three survivors of the original four brothers, who were the children of the ancestor Maschke was friends with general George Washington. So when I talk about American history regarding the Civil War it’s important to understand that I do know what I’m talking about because my grandfather. Not only ran the entire Republican Party for all northeastern Ohio, but was the U.S. Customs inspector for the entire United States under president Harding and his wife my grandmother was born in 1866. And as I was growing up she told me an awful lot about what happened in American history. She told me the real stories not the ones that the Republicans and everyone else is trying to whitewash to revisionism.
And of course, I have documents to certify what I’m talking about, which I’m going to show one of those documents now.
Let this Journal entry show very clearly that Minnie Rice became Minnie Rice Maschke. And of course , Minnie Rice Maschke was the wife of Maurice Maschke was the political boss and Republican Party leader for all northeastern Ohio. And of course the actual Republican who worked with others to stop the battle of Washington and stop the insurrection against United States government by the Christian conservatives.
Let this Journal entry also show that this is a political pass that was given to my grandfather Maurice Maschke, who was the Republican leader for all of the entire Republican Party for all northeastern Ohio, where he was actually the doorkeeper or one of the doorkeepers at the Republican national convention of 1908.
When I talk about what is going on in this country and about the Republican Party Republican Party doesn’t really want to tell all the secrets I know because if I did they would be no Republican Party. I know more about what they have done in history than they ever want me to tell. The fact of the matter is Republican Party has never been patriotic of this country. They been everything but patriotic, and they know what. And I’m serving notice on them, because I am a patriot of these United States and to my dying breath, I will in fact defend the Constitution. I will be a patriot and at the Republican Party doesn’t like me an American Jew from the family of American Jews who go all the way back to the battle of independence. If the Republican Party doesn’t like me being a patriot and defending the Constitution against their act of insurrection and their racism and their bigotry and their supported slavery. The options very simple all Republican Party is to do it on to Cleveland Ohio and kill me. As far as I’m concerned the only way I will allow the Republican Party to destroy the United States with your theocratic fascism is over my dead body and if this stupid bastards of the Republican Party really think they are to destroy this country and if they don’t like the fact that family of Jews was actually part of the founding fathers of this country. Then my message to the Republican Party is very clear. Bring it on.
And this of course is more substantiation while I said. My grandfather was actually everything I am saying. And as I’ve said before, these are the very last years I’m going to live in the world. And I am going to die defending the Constitution of these United States. I am going to die defending women’s rights. I’m going to die, being a patriot of these United States. Just like my father before me was like his father my grandfather was before him. So again, if the Christian conservatives and the Republican Party don’t want me to be a patriot. And they want to continue lying about their patriotism, every time they speak out and try to lie to the people of this country about their patriotism. They are can to find me. And I am a patriot of these United States, and I’m prepared to die for every word I’m writing right now. I’m prepared to die at any given moment in defense of these United States and the Constitution. Unlike the Christian conservatives or the Republican Party. They are prepared to die for this country because they don’t really care about this country older trying to do is destroy this country. Just like they did the battle of Washington, or tried to.
As I said do just above. I’m only getting started Republicans in Christian conservatives I’m only getting started. And it’s just going to get more detail from here and more hot your days at destroying this country and trying to promote your ideology of theocratic fascism is just run into a very large obstacle me and the only way you will stop me to come to Cleveland and kill me and if you Christian conservatives and Republican are the people in Washington anywhere in the country want to come to Cleveland and murder an American Jew who has declared that they are patriot of these United States and whose family goes all the way back to the battle of independence, be my guest. I have a lot of friends who would like to see the headlines the next day. As your Christian conservative movement and Republican Party are shown murdering an American Jew who is declared their patriotism for the Constitution. Because when you do that. You won’t have a political party and you won’t have a religious movement. Because you be shown for exactly the traitors you have always been. And if I have to die in order to make sure that you are shown of the conspirators of treason that you have been all through the history of this country. No problem. Like I’ve said, bring it on.
Economic Fact Sheet (Current as of Jan. 2010)
1. The United States currently has a national debt in excess of $12 trillion.
2. The interest on the national debt is now in excess of $11 trillion.
3. The operating budget for the United States government is now in excess of $43 trillion.
4. The members of the United States Congress stole $200 million from the Medicare fund, which was going to go for cost-of-living increases to Medicare recipients, so that the members of Congress could have their paper medical records converted to computerized medical records. The attitude by the members of Congress was that they didn’t care if they murdered American citizens as long as they get the medical protection they wanted.
5. The Christian conservatives and the Republican Party are taking the stand that they do not want American citizens to have any kind of healthcare the of healthcare is extended to anyone that the Christian conservatives or the Republican Party does not like. And this is based not on constitutional law or the Christian conservatives and the Republican Party being patriots. It’s based upon the Christian conservatives Republican Party demanding that the American government understand that no Christian conservative or Republican Party member will in any way ever support the US Constitution above their Christian religion and above their Christian Bible. And so as a result, their Christian Bible and Christian religion says that healthcare should not go to Hispanic Americans or black Americans or Jews or Muslims or gay Americans or Native Americans or anyone who is an immigrant that the Christian conservatives Republican Party just doesn’t happen to like.
And so as a result, the Christian conservatives Republican Party members are trying to commit mass murder in United States by denying health care to millions of American citizens who are in desperate need of medical attention. But the Christian conservatives Republican Party doesn’t really care about that because as far as they’re concerned if they have to walk through rivers of blood to make sure that their Christian religion and their Christian faith is supported more than the Constitution of these United States and the Christian conservatives will do just that.
6. The current level of unemployment in the United States is now over 10%.
7. The current cost for liquidating the national debt is now in excess of $39,000 per person, which means that every man woman and child in the United States would have to pay at least $39,000 to be able to liquidate the national debt.
8. When you look at the history of United States from the American Civil War until present day you find that the Republican Party and Christian conservatives were in total and complete control of the United States government every single time there was a financial crisis from the American Civil War to present day. And that basically means that all the policy decisions that were being made by the American government during these times when these financial catastrophes were taking place were being made strictly by Christian conservatives and the Republican Party . And of course that’s all public record. And if the Christian conservatives or the Republican party say that these financial catastrophes were not their fault, That would mean that all the public statements that the Christian conservatives and the Republican party, were making during the times when all these financial disasters were taking place, to the news media and the general public were lies. On the other hand if they say that they were not lying then, that means that they are lying now. But either way you look at, the Christian conservatives and the Republican party are being found out for the liars that they have always been, and that they still are today.
9. As my financial analysis of the global economic system , in my see also section below, clearly shows, it was the Republican Party and the Christian conservatives under President Bush who gave the American banking industry $400 billion of taxpayer money and simply told the banking industry to use the money anyway they wanted to. And the banking industry did just that they use the money to pay for expensive gifts and presents and take vacations.
10. To date, the banking industry has only paid back $30 billion out of the over $500 billion that was given to them by the American taxpayers.
11. The issues of profitability indexing, pursuant to profit margins and per unit costs and customer bases as they relate to compensation packages throughout the entire corporate sector have not been resolved. That basically means that most businesses are being held hostage by upper level management and executive employees in their own companies who are demanding more and more for their compensation packages. As a result of this most companies are having to readjust their per unit costs for their goods and services in such a way so that what they are doing is pricing their services and their products. So that mostly the upper class and the wealthy will be able to afford them. And this is being done so these companies and corporations can get as much money into their company as possible.
But they are in fact forgetting one of the major factors which is that while most of the money that any company gets comes from the wealthy are customers most of their day-to-day cash flow actually comes from the middle and lower income customers. This is true regardless of where that company exists. So as a result of this most of the companies in the corporate sector are operating on what is known as a cash poor basis. And this basically means that since they are pricing their goods and services in order to get the most money possible they are foregoing pricing their goods and services so they will be more affordable to the middle and lower income customers, which actually provide these companies with their day-to-day cash flow. And so as a result, these companies don’t have enough money to pay for employees or many of the other day-to-day costs that come up.
This factor has not been dealt with in any country in the world at this time. Furthermore, these companies are refusing to be honest about their financial reporting. They are constantly using and accounting,/statistical variance, which is .5%. And .5% variance is such a large variance pursuant to statistical and financial analysis that you can basically drive a moving van through the space. That is allocated for plus or minus error correction in the statistical analyses and financial analyses that are in fact done with .5% variance. This is why I have never used that level of variance statistically or financially. I’ve always used .05% variance because it is such a small variance that the statistical analysis of the profitability analysis cannot be falsified. It is true that using .05% variance does require an additional 100,000 to 200,000 calculations in order to be able to complete the analysis. But when you consider that the final product is incredibly more honest and reliable. It’s worth it.
12. The banking industry has turned cruel. For example here in Cleveland Ohio Keycorp is taking a lot of pride and threatening senior citizens and kicking them out of their homes so that they can foreclose on the property. This is happening all over Cleveland Ohio and KeyCorp actually is one of the most hated banks in the entire state of Ohio. But KeyCorp is not the only one who’s doing this practice. Because was really happening is that banks all over the United States are basically threatening senior citizens with foreclosure to the point where suicides are now escalating and accelerating at an alarming rate. So badly that the medical community is swamped by the number of suicide calls they are getting. And this is all happening because KeyCorp and other banks like KeyCorp are basically taking the attitude that they don’t care how many men and women and children they have to murder. They just want their money.
When you consider these kinds of factors are going on in the banking industry you realized that the other thing that’s happening is that senior citizens and homeowners are becoming incredibly sick. Do becoming physically ill as a result of the horrible attitude that KeyCorp in other banks like KeyCorp are pushing on the citizens. And there is no help for this at all.
13. Additionally, the medical community is helping with this because we have a hospital here in Cleveland Ohio called MetroHealth that basically is working hard. Just like KeyCorp to threaten senior citizens and have them thrown out of their homes. So that they can foreclose on the property. And basically kill the individuals. I have been personally threatened by KeyBank and MetroHealth and have recorded conversations proving that.
So MetroHealth does all these commercials where they’re talking about how good a hospital they are and yet they have been sued a number of times for Medicare fraud. They have also been sued by their own employees for unfair business practices. And they have lost doctors so badly because they don’t treat their doctors very well either. Nobody likes MetroHealth.
And for the record, it needs to be understood that my grandfather’s brother, Dr. ally Maschke, was the director of medicine at mount Sinai medical center here in Cleveland Ohio until his death. And my cousin, Dr. Victor Vertese, was also the director of medicine at mount Sinai medical center until his death. Additionally, my grandfather, Maurice Maschke, and his business partner, Mark Hanna, who founded the Hana mining company, which became the 3M company, basically built mount Sinai medical center in Cleveland. And in addition to that, my father, Maurice Maschke Junior, was on the Board of Trustees at Case Western Reserve University, University hospitals of Cleveland, Cleveland clinic, and mount Sinai medical center until his death. And in addition to that, my father, Maurice Maschke Junior, and I., were partners and co-owners of pioneer linen supply company of Cleveland Ohio for 25 years until 1975 when we sold the company.
14. So given all of the foregoing as actual facts. The only reason that the accelerated growth has taken place is because certain industries in the United States have in fact been making money. Only because their industries are addressing sections of the population who are otherwise disenfranchised by most of the business sector. For example Tyco International is a business that specializes and fire prevention and warning systems and security systems. And of course they’ve done a really good job because people are scared to death and living in their homes and there are so many foreclosures going on that people are having to protect their homes because in most cities the number of police has dropped so badly because most cities are in a huge budget crisis. In Cleveland, Ohio, for example, the city went from 1,500,000 people down to approximately 400,000 people in only a matter of months. And conditions are so bad in Cleveland that Cleveland is now charging nine dollars a month just pick up our garbage.
15. Furthermore, as I predicted on May 21, 2009, the American market system had already lost approximately $500 trillion of market value. And, in my journal entry (see my LiveJournal entry of May 21 2009). Then on May 22, 2009, I accurately predicted that the American market system would lose approximately $800 trillion of market value. (see LiveJournal entries of May 22, 2009, entry #1, entry #2, and entry #3, ). And the market did lose that much money. So, I was right. As I have always said. In 42 years of being a financial analyst, I have never been wrong on any financial projection I have ever done. Just like I was not wrong in 2009, with the above projections, I am, by the like term, not wrong now.
So again, it’s really easy for people to talk about how well the market is doing that the foregoing represents the actual facts of what’s going on in business.
And as I said before, I have been studying the stock market since I was six years old. At age 6 I started studied the stock market at Prescott ball and turban here in Cleveland Ohio. With one of the partner broker’s, Bernie Towell, who was a personal friend of mine. And so every day for four hours every day and age 6 until age 16 I studied the stock market and learned economics and financial analysis . At age 16, while working and being a partner and co-owner of pioneer linen spy company in Cleveland, I did my first financial analysis and profitability analysis . It was done on the linen supply company’s of Cleveland Ohio. The analysis was so good that the results were used to program some computers at the time. And in 42 years and having been a financial analyst I’ve never once been wrong in any financial projection I’ve ever done. Not once. Just like I’m not wrong now.
In my financial analysis of the global economic system in my see also section below, I clearly show that the American market system was going to lose $800 trillion of market value in the third business quarter of 2009. I further substantiated this claim last January in January of 2009. When I explained that the American market system was going to take a huge hit in the third quarter and that it would come out to about $800 trillion of market loss. And that this was in fact in line with the Kondratieff wave . And in fact that’s exactly what did happen. Which means the analysts were wrong. And I was right.
Now, it’s important to remember that anyone can say anything about the market that they want. But being able to back up what they say takes an expert. And someone who understands the science of financial analysis. And that’s something I have been doing for 42 years.
Therefore, if you go ahead and look at all these factors without looking at all of the peripheral details than you are going to be responding to the information in a very symptomatic, or symptomatically oriented manner whereby you will behave to the information in an extremely reactionary way. By the like term, if you look at all of the information regarding economics throughout the entire global economic system in a problematically oriented manner you will be looking at the financial information in a more anticipatory manner. And much more pervasive rather than in a stereotypical or linear manner. And as a result, you will begin to understand that all of these different factors that I have brought forth in this article right now. Actually do justify what I’m saying that the American market system is on the verge of collapse. And that the economic system for Greece is about to go under. And that unemployment in Spain and France and England is running at almost 30%.
These do not make things look like they’re going good in the United States is basically doing nothing but lying about the economic they I went to school with most of the people who run a lot of these companies in the United States and who are working on Wall Street either went to school with them at Case Western Reserve why went to school with them at Fort Lewis college board went to school with them at southern Arizona school in Tucson Arizona. Or, I did business with them throughout my life.
So again, this is a reality check. And all I can say is, if you don’t believe what I’m saying that’s not a problem. Because you haven’t believe me, for 40 years, what I’ve been talking about all of these issues facing the economic system in the United States and the global economic system. So why would you believe me now?
But the fact is that just because you may not believe what I’m saying doesn’t mean that what I’m saying is not true. Simply means you are refusing or are not able to see the veracity in what I’m saying and that’s all it means.
Annotations Regarding Non-Pro-Life Activities Of The Republican Party And The Christian Conservatives And The Catholics Of The United States:
The Christian conservatives and the Catholics don’t ever want to be responsible for the fact that since 78% of the United States is pro-life Christian that basically means that 78% of all the women and children murdered in the United States are killed by pro-life Christians and Catholics. It also means that Christians in United States are demanding that the world understand that to them being pro-life means killing, because while the Christian conservatives and Catholics are demanding that everyone understand they are pro-life. They are with their own actions, supporting a number of forms of killing.
78% of all the women murdered in the United States are killed by pro-life Christians and Catholics.
78% of all the children abused in the United States are abused by pro-life Christians and Catholics.
78% of all the children murdered in the United States are murdered by pro-life Christians and Catholics.
78% of all the murders that take place in the United States are committed by pro-life Christians and Catholics.
78% of all the soldiers in the United States, who go out and kill are pro-life Christians and Catholics.
78% of the membership of the National Rifle Association (The NRA ), which support GUNS THAT KILL are pro-life Christians and Catholics.
Every single white supremacist group in the history of United States has always been white fundamentalist pro-life Christian. And these white supremacist groups are dedicated to killing anyone who is not white and Christian.
The Army of God is a white fundamentalist Christian group who is dedicated to murdering and killing every single nonwhite Christian in the United States.
78% of all the people who favor and support the death penalty meaning killing people for committing crimes are pro-life Christians and Catholics.
78% of all the ministers in the United States who carry firearms to church and are threatening to kill anyone who comes near the church was not white and Christian are pro-life Christians and Catholics.
78% of all the crimes against gay people in the United States are done by pro-life Christians and Catholics.
Every month between one and two transgendered females are murdered and every single one of these killings is done by pro-life Christian.
White fundamentalist Christians were the ones who demand the right to own black Americans and to kill them whenever they wanted to during the signing of the The Declaration of Independence.
White fundamentalist Christians were the ones who took over the Republican Party during the battle of Washington and try to overthrow the United States government under president Hoover at the battle of Washington in 1932.
White fundamentalist Christians were the ones who took over the Republican Party on the evening before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War. And who then used the Republican Party to hire John Wilkes Booth to murder President Abraham Lincoln.
When you have all these forms of killing being supported by pro-life Christians and Catholics it’s easy to understand that the pro-life Christians and Catholics are demanding that everyone else be responsible for their own actions. But the white fundamentalist Christians and Catholics under no circumstances want to be responsible for anything they do because they are demanding that the entire world understand that to them being pro-life means killing, because that’s what they support killing. That’s why that those who claim to be pro-life are now becoming known as nothing more than, “Killers For Christ”. And of course it the white fundamentalist Christians and Catholics don’t like what I’m saying or want to take exception to what I’m saying they need to disprove everything that follows, and every single item in my see also section below.
See Also:
Jesus Christ
The Sermon On The Mount
God The Bible
The Ten Commandments
John The Baptist
The Burning Times
The Crusades
Joan Of Arc
The Children Of Lourdes
The Children of Fatima
The Spanish Inquisition
The Christian Black Code Of 1724
The American Civil War
Slavery
The Emancipation Proclamation
Abraham Lincoln
John Wilkes Booth
World War I
Prohibition
The Great Depression
The Battle of Washington
World War II
The Korean War
The Vietnam War
Richard Nixon
Oliver North
The Iran-Contra Affair
The Gulf War
The Savings-And-Loan Crisis
Bill Clinton
The Balanced Budget Amendment
The Iraq War
The Kondratieff Wave
Profitability Analysis
Financial Analysis
Vance Packard
Laissez-Faire
Better Business Bureau
Department Of Justice
DirecTV
Wal-Mart
KeyCorp
Dell Computers
Lawsuits Against Dell
Capital Punishment
Homophobia
Xenophobia
Racism
Prejudice
Bigotry
Fascism
Eugenics
White Supremacy
Mein Kampf
Adolf Hitler
The Ku Klux Klan
The Army of God
US Domestic Violence Statistics
US Child Abuse Statistics
US Child Mortality Statistics
US Religious Demographic Statistics
US Obesity Statistics
US Caesarean Statistics
US Uninsured Americans Statistics
Insurers Overcharge Medicare
Medicare Ponzi Scheme
US Food Recall Statistics
US Suicide Statistics
Medical Malpractice
Medical Mistakes
Gay Rights
Transgenderism
Women’s Rights
Children’s Rights
Human Rights
Religious Freedom
Pro-Choice
NRA
The Christian Conservatives
Republican Party
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The US Constitution
The Bill Of Rights
Recording Telephone Conversations
Treason
Sedition
How The Republicans Use The Constitution To Lie (article 1, section 6, subsection b) of The US Constitution
My Biographical Profile
My Philosophy of Life
Reality…
For those Who Said I Never Knew Ronald Reagan, They Lied
My Encounter With Joan Baez
My Time Studying The Anasazi Indians
My 250 Million Variable Characteristic Hieroglyphic Language
My Tribute To Jim Varney
The Pebble And The Penguin
A Diamond On A Sea Of Glass
Regarding Me And My Journal
It’s A Crime
My Back And Me Doing 250 Sit Ups
Hey God! You There? I’m Tired… Ok?
In The Midst Of Darkness The Smallest Spark Lights My Way…
I Wrote Something A Long Time Ago…
The Vanishing Of America
Second Gear
Kmart To Close Five More Ohio Stores
Sounds
An Explanation Of Vernacular Dynamics and Sequencing Regarding Various Forms of Advocacy
An Installment Notation Of The Maschke Family History And Legacy
By The Campfire
Playing The Keys Of My Heart
Adventures In Technocracy
My Financial Analysis Of The Global Economic System
My Global Warming Research
For the record, I pro-life. I do not support violence against, or the killing of any human being under any circumstances! And the only way that I ever deviate from that stand is that I do not believe that the Almighty, and/or God has ever given any human the right to dictate to any woman how she is to arbitrate her life with the Almighty, and/or God . Therefore, I am also pro-choice, in that I believe that all women deserve the right to choose for themselves the fate of their souls, and their own bodies, pursuant to their relationship with the Almighty, and/or God . For an expanded explanation please see my article entitled, “Second Gear “
HR 3590 has passed, 219 to 212. Now comes the Motion to Recommit. That’s not expected to derail the process, but might slow it down. And then the vote on the ‘reconciliation’ amendments in HR 4872.
