Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Monday, July 23, 2012
Friday, June 15, 2012
Friday, May 18, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
Just how stupid does Mitt Romney
think we are? If you’ve been following his campaign from the beginning,
that’s a question you have probably asked many times.
But the question was raised with particular force last week, when Mr.
Romney tried to make a closed drywall factory in Ohio a symbol of the
Obama administration’s economic failure. It was a symbol, all right —
but not in the way he intended.
First of all, many reporters quickly noted a point that Mr. Romney somehow failed to mention: George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, was president when the factory in question was closed. Does the Romney campaign expect Americans to blame President Obama for his predecessor’s policy failure?
Yes, it does. Mr. Romney constantly talks about job losses under Mr.
Obama. Yet all of the net job loss took place in the first few months of
2009, that is, before any of the new administration’s policies had time
to take effect. So the Ohio speech was a perfect illustration of the
way the Romney campaign is banking on amnesia, on the hope that voters
don’t remember that Mr. Obama inherited an economy that was already in
free fall.
Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/opinion/krugman-the-amnesia-candidate.html?_r=1
Monday, April 16, 2012
Bruce Springsteen - Death To My Hometown
LP - Was in Littleton New Hampshire Friday. A woman was setting up a play date for her child with girl friend's child. She had been picking up more hours at Dunkin' Donuts and talking to a friend who was in there and had a week off. She seemed depressed that she was now working full time at a dead end job and said "What do you expect from a mother who is a single parent."
The town appeared run down. There was big box stores on the outskirts of town selling each other things and people who worked for the tourist industry. When you broke it down what did the town now produce: it didn't appear much. It was just people selling each other shit that had originally been made in China. What did America produce now? Not much. There was no more gold rushes and what was left was charlatan feasting off the bones of public education and privatized jails, that's where the real opportunities currently are. It's in these small towns where you see the ache of the American recession.
It reminded me of being in Lubbock Maine a few years back when the sardine industry went out there and people were left with out work. My wife and I were trading money to go into Canada on vacation, and they were desperate to get whatever they could out of the bank so it wouldn't foreclose on their houses. Go to these small towns. Take their temperature and you'll see the overall health of this country. It's something that the Washington politicians can't be bothered to do.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Don’t tell us it’s not a class war - The Globe and Mail
Don’t tell us it’s not a class war - The Globe and Mail
The entire world seems to be one huge advertisement for The Shock Doctrine. Naomi Klein showed in her revelatory book how the corporate-political-military-media complex exploits crises to further impose their harsh right-wing agenda – even when they themselves created the crisis. In a sane world, the economic meltdown and deep recession of the past four years would have led at minimum to stringent regulation of financiers and speculators plus programs to assist their victims. But in this world, you have to be nuts to believe in a sane world.
In reality, everything that’s happened in the past several years has gone to further empower and enrich the 1 per cent (or maybe the 5 per cent) at the expense of the rest of us. Look anywhere you want. What else does the universal demand for austerity programs mean? What else does the sudden concerted attack on public sector workers mean? What else does the intransigent line taken by multinational corporations against their unions mean? What else does the demand for “right-to-work” laws mean? What else does the widespread attack on seniors’ pensions mean?
The entire world seems to be one huge advertisement for The Shock Doctrine. Naomi Klein showed in her revelatory book how the corporate-political-military-media complex exploits crises to further impose their harsh right-wing agenda – even when they themselves created the crisis. In a sane world, the economic meltdown and deep recession of the past four years would have led at minimum to stringent regulation of financiers and speculators plus programs to assist their victims. But in this world, you have to be nuts to believe in a sane world.
In reality, everything that’s happened in the past several years has gone to further empower and enrich the 1 per cent (or maybe the 5 per cent) at the expense of the rest of us. Look anywhere you want. What else does the universal demand for austerity programs mean? What else does the sudden concerted attack on public sector workers mean? What else does the intransigent line taken by multinational corporations against their unions mean? What else does the demand for “right-to-work” laws mean? What else does the widespread attack on seniors’ pensions mean?
Monday, February 13, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
America Isn’t a Corporation - NYTimes.com
America Isn’t a Corporation - NYTimes.com
Why isn’t a national economy like a corporation? For one thing, there’s no simple bottom line. For another, the economy is vastly more complex than even the largest private company...
...Consider what happens when a business engages in ruthless cost-cutting. From the point of view of the firm’s owners (though not its workers), the more costs that are cut, the better. Any dollars taken off the cost side of the balance sheet are added to the bottom line.
But the story is very different when a government slashes spending in the face of a depressed economy. Look at Greece, Spain, and Ireland, all of which have adopted harsh austerity policies. In each case, unemployment soared, because cuts in government spending mainly hit domestic producers. And, in each case, the reduction in budget deficits was much less than expected, because tax receipts fell as output and employment collapsed.
Why isn’t a national economy like a corporation? For one thing, there’s no simple bottom line. For another, the economy is vastly more complex than even the largest private company...
...Consider what happens when a business engages in ruthless cost-cutting. From the point of view of the firm’s owners (though not its workers), the more costs that are cut, the better. Any dollars taken off the cost side of the balance sheet are added to the bottom line.
But the story is very different when a government slashes spending in the face of a depressed economy. Look at Greece, Spain, and Ireland, all of which have adopted harsh austerity policies. In each case, unemployment soared, because cuts in government spending mainly hit domestic producers. And, in each case, the reduction in budget deficits was much less than expected, because tax receipts fell as output and employment collapsed.
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