Da King's Men - Latest Comments

Re: Weekly Political Wrap-Up

Car wraps San Diego — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:20:12 -0000

Car wraps are the funky advertising you see driving around your city. Car wraps are the manner in which the advertising is affixed to your car. Virtually unknown 10 years ago they are now quite common and very effective way of promoting business ideas. Of course, the wraps are not limited to cars there are truck wraps, trailer wraps, boat wraps, etc etc. However, for the purpose of this article, I will limit myself to car wraps.

Re: Eating The Rich

112012 — Wed, 16 May 2012 03:45:10 -0000

How did we know Saddom had weapons of mass destruction?

Re: Eating The Rich

barackem1 — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:37:15 -0000

test

Re: Bush Did Not Stop Looking For Bin Laden

Andrew — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:46:59 -0000

im an independent btw but more towards the left

Re: Bush Did Not Stop Looking For Bin Laden

Andrew — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:46:15 -0000

think of it as the fall of communist russia regan was at the right place at the right time but it wasnt him that brought it down but the constant fight against communism starting with the first leading all the way to regan all playing a part same story here different target different presidents all played their part all had the same focus dont you think obama would have prosecuted the agents and closed gitmo but he didnt.

Re: Eating The Rich

112012 — Thu, 03 May 2012 00:41:15 -0000

Typing is hardly yelling!!! Obama wishes he was as successful as Reagan!!! Clinton's goodtimes are being bought and paid for by the tax payers now!!! I can't believe your too stupid to see it!!! I don't remember Reagan signing NAFTA or the China free trade agreement either! Our jobs went over seas due to high corporate taxes and high labor costs! Raise taxes on the ritch and more factories will leave!!!!!! I don't remember gas over $4 a Gallon either!!! Gary Gnu your about as informative as Joe Biden!!! The Democrats hate Reagan because he was right!!! Reagan was a Republican last I heard!!!

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:18:26 -0000

Democrats use that point as an excuse to defend Obama. Not me.

The Obama admin is NOT doing it right because far from being a "socialist" or even pragmatic, he's listening to the ghost and economic heirs of Alan Greenspan (Bernanke, Rubin, Summers and Simpson & Bowles) because Obama is a Reagan Democrat and his cabinet is full of Reagan Democrats and the Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC) are all Reagan Democrats.

As Warren Mosler said, a purely FINANCIAL collapse should NEVER have been permitted to bleed over into the REAL economy of production and jobs, and he suggested to both the Tea Party and Occupy a cost-free plan that could restore the economy in a mere 60 Days.

Is is possible to for you to dispense with the partisan bickering and the triple explanation points after every "affirmation" you yell?!!!

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:16:10 -0000

deleted

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:15:55 -0000

I'm "admitting" the Clinton admin is to blame? Gawd, yer such a freak.

Yes, I've been strongly asserting for weeks now that the Clinton administration is to blame.

Can't we have a NORMAL conversation where we talk about FACTS instead of
one where you act as unpaid defender of the Republican Party?

It's not only disgusting, it's Stalinist thinking. TOTAL PARTY LOYALTY and willing to assert any lie.

What is Clinton "to blame" for?

For being a Reagan Democrat. For explicitly promoting a variation of Reaganomics called Rubinomics after Bob Rubin. For keeping Alan Greenspan. For explicitly moving the Democratic Party to the Right to chase Reagan and Big Business. For promoting outsourcing of American JOBS even beyond what Reagan accomplished, and at a different time in a dynamic world. For attacking Labor and workers in general, and attacking the poor, while subsidizing the Super Rich.

Reagan not only did attack American workers, he was *proud* of doing that. Clinton went on a similar rampage, while pretending to be a friend to American workers. (Clinton admin did not hide the fact that NAFTA would include some "winners" and also a lot of "losers". The losers are most American workers. NAFTA was written by Bush Sr.)

WIth regards to the main issue we've been discussing, YES, I am also attacking Clinton for signing ultra-Reaganite legislation to de-regulate Wall Street, which was written by Phil Gramm and two Republican cohorts, shortly before Gramm's wife Wendy got a job working for Kenny Boy Lay at Enron. Gramm left the Senate to lobby for a FOREIGN BANK, which wanted further deregulation, Union Bank of Switzerland, later sued by the United States for fraud or tax evasion.

Clinton fought as much as Reagan to "get government off our backs", actually to get government off Wall Street's back, not off the backs of the bottom 99% of Americans.

Following in the footsteps of Reagan, Clinton expanded the domestic fascist police state with ADEPA and other moves. ADEPA was the anti-CONSTITUTIONAL pre-cursor of Bush's PATRIOT Act.

Obama has gone beyond the PATRIOT Act and beyond Bush's global totalitarian DHS (as per Liberty Gun Rights) by signing the horrific National Defense Authorization Act.

WIth the NDAA, Senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and Richard Shelby (and 5 others) gave Barack OBAMA the power to imprison American citizens forever with no trial, and to murder American citizens with no trial.

YOU SAY, Bush "couldn't fix" Clinton's de-regulation frenzy of Wall Street speculation.
BUSH CONTINUED what Clinton began, and added more gasoline. Bush picked Tsy Sec Hank Paulson who is with Goldman Sachs and a close friend of Clinton's guy Robert Rubin. Bush was an extension of Clinton, Obama is an extension of Bush and Clinton, and all of them are a continuation of Reaganomics.

Obama is LIKEWISE a Reagan Democrat, that's what his policies are, The main difference is Obama is doing the mop-up of a debt bubble that is FIFTY TIMES BIGGER than the Great Depression, and attempting to do it within the rules of Reaganomics.

That's why Obama is a failure: Reaganomics.

Even the PhD FOUNDER of Reaganomics says that about both W Bush and Obama.

Now is not the time for Reaganomics, Roberts says, least of all hyper-Reaganomics as a Tea Party religion, because 2011 is not 1981. You might read What is Supply-Side Economics by Paul Craig Roberts, though I doubt you will try.
http://www.counterpunch.org/20...

Roberts problem with the Obama admin is the same as Occupy, same as the original Tea Party before the GOP hijacked it, and even the same as George Soros: BAILOUTS for the Wall Street CEO criminals.

The New Tea Party after the GOP takeover now seems to be in love with Wall Street bonuses paid for by Bailouts.

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Tue, 01 May 2012 03:20:09 -0000

Fiscal and monetary policy in a liquidity trap
http://moslereconomics.com/201...

Mosler: for any reason, if private sector spending falls short of full employment levels, a fiscal adjustment can do the trick.

This raises an interesting question:

Is it ‘better’, for example, to facilitate the increase in spending through a private sector credit expansion [if private debt levels permit that], or through a TAX CUT [on the working class] that allows private sector spending to increase via increased income, or through a government spending increase [which is the same as a tax cut, in aggregate]?

The answer is entirely political. The output gap can be closed with any/some/all of those options. [which form of deficit and stimulus is preferred? a bigger private sector debt to banks, or tax cuts for whom, or increased spending to whom and for what?]

Wolf: there is a danger of what the great American economist, Irving Fisher called “debt deflation”: falling prices raise the real burden of [private] debt, making the economic contraction worse.

Wolf: “Fiscal austerity does not work in a liquidity trap and makes as much sense as putting an anorexic on a diet. Yet ‘diets’ are the very prescriptions that fiscal ‘austerians’ have imposed (or plan to impose) in the US, UK and eurozone. Austerians fail to realise, however, that everyone cannot save at the same time and that, in liquidity traps, the paradox of thrift and depression are fellow travellers that are functionally intertwined.”

[the non-govt sector cannot gain wealth == reduce indebtedness at the same time as the govt sector gains wealth == reduces deficits .. the non-govt vs govt sectors are a mirror of one another]

Mosler: Agreed for floating fx. Fixed fx is another story, where forced deflation via austerity does make the maths work, though most often at an impossible social cost.

["fixed fx" means a govt by fiat order tying money creation to Gold]

[the govt sector i.e. Treasury cannot literally "gain financial wealth" since it does not "have" money or "not have" money, it "issues" money, it is the scorekeeper, not one of the players]

Wolf: Experience over the last four years (not to mention Japan’s experience over the past 20 years) has demonstrated that governments operating with a (floating) currency do not suffer a constraint on their borrowing. The reason is that the private sector does not wish to borrow, but wants to cut its debt, instead. There is no crowding out.

Mosler: Right, because floating fx regimes are by design not liquidity constrained.

Wolf: Moreover, adjustment falls on the currency, not on the long-term rate of interest.

Mosler: Right, and again, unlike fixed fx.

Wolf: In the case of the US, foreigners also want to lend, partly in support of their mercantilist economic policies.

==>> Mosler: Actually, they want to accumulate dollar denominated financial assets, which we call lending.

Mosler: Note that both reserve balances at the Fed and securities account balances at the Fed (treasury securities) are simply dollar deposits at the Fed.
====================

Wolf: we know that recessions cause long-term economic costs. They lower investment dramatically: in the US, the investment rate fell by about 4 per cent of gross domestic product in the wake of the crisis.

Businesses are unwilling to invest, not because of some mystical loss of confidence, but because there is no demand.

Again, we know that high unemployment has a permanent impact on workers, both young and old. The US, in particular, seems to have slipped into European levels of separation from the labor force: that is to say, the unemployment rate is quite low, given the sharp fall in the rate of employment.
Workers have given up.

This is a social catastrophe in a country in which work is effectively the only form of welfare for people of working age.

==>> Mosler: Not to mention the lost real output which over the last decade has to be far HIGHER than the total combined real losses from all the WARS in history.

People who reject free lunches are fools: Liquidity trap – part II
http://moslereconomics.com/201...

====================

The Financial Exchange - WRKO AM Radio

Warren Mosler on the Economy and the FOMC Meeting
(patter before discussion)
http://audio.wrko.com/a/556525...

The German economy is suffering now ironically because of Austerity measures Germany insists on imposing on Greece.

Greece's debt today is largely due to the Greek govt purchasing the output of Germany in the past --- largely military exports --- which it has stopped buying --- causing a downturn in Germany.

Re: Eating The Rich

112012 — Tue, 01 May 2012 00:44:19 -0000

So your admitting that the Clinton administration is to blame! Thanks for proving my point Gary Gnu!!! We all see how really out of touch you are!!! So GWB couldn't fix all of Clinton's screw ups!!! We now know that Obama inherited a Bill Clinton catastrophe and I believe the majority of America sees it!!! As far as China being a Democracy? I think you've been eating too many magic mushrooms!!!

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Tue, 01 May 2012 00:22:44 -0000

Republicans say Hell with the Tea Party and Side with Wall Street Banksters - (2010)

It is now only a matter of time before all the Tea Partiers realize they have been sold down the river by the Republican Party. [some ... others too stupid]

On Friday, in what was one of the cruelest ironies of fate to befall the Republican party, it was revealed that the Republican Party had decided to stand against any Wall Street reform and side with the Wall Street Banksters and an announcement was made that the SEC had leveled massive fraud charges against Goldman Sachs, one of the taxpayer bailout recipients.

Goldman's alleged scheme as described by the SEC was that they created risky mortgage-backed securities with the help of hedge fund manager John A. Paulson and then sold them as Triple-A rated mortgages to investors and at the same time bet against the stability of these mortgage-backed securities which resulted in billions of dollars of profits for Goldman Sach and about 1 billion dollars in losses for Goldman Sach investors.

Hedge fund manager Paulson netted about $5.7 billion between 2007 and 2008 during much of the country's financial collapse.

These two almost simultaneous announcements occurred only days after both Republican minority leaders John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell were caught meeting in secret with 25 multi-billionaire Wall Street executives and hedge fund managers.

Later as if on cue, the strings of Republican Senator Mitch McConnell were pulled by his Wall Street puppet masters and produced a televised press conference warning about the DANGERS OF REGULATING WALL STREET.

After that the Republican Party as a whole announced its intention to vote as a bloc to stop any reform of Wall Street currently being proposed.

Even though much of the current legislation has been proposed and written by Republicans.

http://www.opednews.com/articl...
====================

The Greatest Trade Ever
How hedge fund manager John Paulson bet against
the real estate bubble and made $15 billion in a single year.

In a span of just three years, hedge-fund manager John Paulson went from practically unknown to practically unparalleled. After a series of smart bets against the housing market made Paulson's hedge fund billions of dollars ---- including days where it made more than $1 billion ---- he earned a place alongside George SOROS and Warren BUFFETT as an oracle of investing.

[because he hired Goldman-Sachs to package a bunch of mutts and sell them as thoroughbreds]

And yet he wasn't a mortgage expert, or a real estate expert, and didn't have much background in the derivatives he used to make the bets, like credit-default swaps (CDS).

[when AIG couldn't cover all the CDSs it sold everywhere, its customers were screwed, until BUSH and HANK PAULSON bailed out AIG to "save capitalism with socialism", so John Paulson became a billionaire off WELFARE (wealth-fare?)]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/n...

====================

John Paulson Hedge Fund Sued For Negligence
(he invested in China)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Hedge fund manager John Paulson has been hailed as a finance sage for making billions betting against the subprime mortgages beloved by Wall Street in the run-up to the financial crisis. Lately the accolades have died down. His fund is facing losses and he's now the target of a lawsuit alleging incompetence.

As the Wall Street Journal reported, a lawsuit filed in federal court early Tuesday by Hugh F. Culverhouse ---- who happens to be a former U.S. prosecutor and son of longtime Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Hugh Culverhouse Sr. ----- accuses Paulson of gross negligence for pumping roughly $800 million of investors’ money into a company called the Sino-Forest Corporation -- which operates huge farms in CHINA that grow and harvest trees
[...]
Paulson famously made between $3 and $4 billion in 2007 by betting against the subprime mortgage market at around the same time that fervor for these loans ---- and the fancy bundles of securities that they were converted into by Wall Street banks --- was at its peak.
====================
And because of the unique structure of hedge funds, he'll collect 2%, or $450 million, for managing those assets, despite generating losses.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/1...

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:13:13 -0000

Bush Treasury (Hank Paulson) Overturns State Laws to stop Predatory Subprime Lending in 2004
This was not about the actual mortgages, it was the SECONDARY MORTGAGE market, of private banks.

Does anyone here NOT understand what the SECONDARY MORTGAGE market means? Banks buy, sell, trade "compiled" securitized (not individual) mortgage ASSETS to other banks and firms.

(but Fox News says Bush was the hero who warned Dems about risky lending)

This article is a WEAK criticism of the Bush admin using some archaic rule from the 1800s to block States from halting the financial crisis earlier, vs allowing it to spin out of control for five more years.
--------------------
Unscrupulous lenders could reap the greatest PROFITS by issuing subprime loans packed with unfavorable terms and subject to exorbitant interest rates, and only then SELLING them for cold, hard cash. [PRECISELY what happened.]

A rash of borrowers found themselves saddled with predatory loans they had NO HOPE of paying off.

[this means the owners of these ASSETS had NO HOPE that many of these assets would continue to "perform" ... but were strongly desired by big banks anyhow ... banks were acting like if Best Buy started selling fake knockoff soon-to-break I-pads to unsuspecting customers]

To combat this surge in predatory lending, several state legislatures decided to stanch the flow of easy credit to subprime lenders. In 2002, Georgia became the first state to tell players in the secondary mortgage market that they might be on the hook if they purchased loans deemed "predatory" under state law.

This worked a dramatic change.

That's when the FEDS came in.

Some of the biggest players in the secondary mortgage market are national banks [NOT those GSEs, not Freddie and Fannie], and the states' efforts to curb predatory lending clashed with the banks' fervent desire to KEEP the market in subprime loans ROLLING.

National banks turned to the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

==>> While the banks' legal arguments were THIN, the OCC issued regulations in early 2004 nullifying the state laws as they applied to national banks.

As the then-comptroller explained in a speech to the [right wing] FEDERALIST Society,

"We know that it's possible to deal effectively with predatory lending without putting impediments in the way of those who provide access to legitimate subprime credit."

==>> With the state laws nullified, national banks were free to engage in the sharp practices the states were hoping to stamp out.

==>> Subprime lenders have LOBBIED HARD against the state laws, and the incipient legislation could have been strangled in its infancy anyway. But the bottom line is that, had the state laws been permitted to go into effect, investors would now be sitting on fewer subprime loans that will never be repaid. The subprime catastrophe might have been more like a mini-crisis.

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:45:50 -0000

Government policies and the subprime mortgage crisis

Both deregulation, and excess regulation, of financial institutions have been blamed for the late-2000s (decade) subprime mortgage crisis in the United States.

A number of writers have claimed that the financial crisis was caused by too much regulation aimed at increasing home ownership rates for lower income people. They have pointed to two policies in particular: the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which they claim pressured private banks to make risky loans, and HUD affordable housing goals for the Government Sponsored Enterprises ("GSEs"), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which they claim caused the GSEs to purchase risky loans.

[GSE's purchased risky loans FROM BANKS THAT ALREADY ISSUED THE LOANS aka, the Banks already purchased Collateralized Debt Obligations from insolvent people on inflated housing that depended on higher inflation to eat up risks and make them "good"]

However, other researchers have made opposing claims. These researchers present data which suggests that GSE loans were less risky and performed better than loans securitized by more lightly regulated Wall Street banks. They also suggest that CRA loans mandated by the government performed better than subprime loans that were purely market-driven.

They also present data which suggests that

==>> financial firms that LOBBIED the government most AGGRESSIVELY also had the RISKIEST lending practices, and lobbied for relief from REGULATIONS that were LIMITING their ability to take GREATER RISKS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Criticism for blaming Fannie and Freddie

More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages came from private lending institutions in 2006.

The share of subprime loans insured by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac decreased as the bubble got bigger (from a high of insuring 48 percent to insuring 24 percent of all subprime loans in 2006).

Despite conservative criticism for government lending programs as the main cause of the crisis, much of the crisis was INDEPENDENT of government home loan programs.
====================

HAVE A JOYFUL FACT-FREE DAY for the rest of your evening.

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:26:45 -0000

You are really really REALLY Soft on Crime.

The losses from White Collar Crime are bigger than ALL other property crimes combined.

So you are also Anti-Property. You want to protect the property rights of Thieves and Robbers.

Guess what Obama just did?
The JOBS Act protects the property rights of Thieves and Robbers, and guarantees an increase in Thievery and Robbery by CEOs.
It was Bi-Partisan, LOL.

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:12:00 -0000

the Affordable Home Act of 93 that was first introduced in 77

------

I already explained CRA three times.

There WERE NO changes to CRA in 1993. There was in 89, 91, 92, 94, 95, etc

My former bosses at Burt Greenwald Chevy ordered sales staff to sell inexpensive cars to poor people, not cherry pick customers, not abandon poor customers on the sales floor, just because they might miss a spiff or bigger commission on a more expensive car.

But that was IF THE CUSTOMERS WERE QUALIFIED,

Lloyd Bentsen, a Texas conservative friend of Bush and Nixon pushed CRA changes in 94.

READ THIS: Discussing the reasons for the Clinton administration's
proposal to strengthen the CRA and further reduce red-lining, Lloyd Bentsen,
Secretary of the Treasury at that time, affirmed his belief that
availability of credit should not depend on WHERE a person lives,

"The only thing that ought to matter on a loan application is whether or not you can PAY IT BACK, not where you live."

------

That's what Burt Greenwald was doing with the sales team, fighting "red-lining" of automobile customers. Why? BUSINESS POLICY.

RED-LINING in housing was Real Estate city maps with literal RED LINES drawn on areas that banks refused to write any loans at all. (Private Banks are the BIGGEST RECIPIENTS of WELFARE from the GOVERNMENT, according to Murray Rothbard's famous article, so they wanted the benefits of being like a "public service" but they wanted to completely exclude less profitable areas. CRA just added some incentives.)

* Rick and Gretchen were not selling cheap cars for "socialism". Rick and Gretchen were not "concerned" that a poor person couldn't buy a car. They wanted to SELL cars, period, for PROFITS.

* Rick never told sales to sign cars over with no credit check. Rick never authorized Liars Loans, to give cars to people with no money, no jobs, no credit.

* BANKS and mortgage firms DID outright Liars Loans all across America.

* BANKS vastly INCREASED Liars Loans in 2005-2007 after the FBI (2004) and even the Mortgage Bankers Association warned about it. Why? PROFIT.

Congress and CRA aka Affordable Home Act didn't force Liars Loans any more than Rick's orders to sell Chevy Cavaliers.

* READ: credit depends upon whether or not you can PAY IT BACK.

* But banks after 2001 and worse after 2004, DID NOT CARE whether or not customers could PAY IT BACK.

* You even ignored again that ZERO mortgage cos were subject to CRA anyhow.

That's a very stupid talking point. What's more terrible about it is exonerates the guilty based on some stupid spin.

It PRETENDS that "poor people" victimized Banks by causing RECORD WALL STREET PROFITS and giving CEOs RECORD BONUSES for fraudulent operations.

It PRETENDS the blame is all on "poor people" ---- plus sane policies (like not creating expensive ghettos) ---- to white wash what really happened, like Multi-Million Dollar Condos that were Subprime, 2nd Homes for Rentals and Flips, house prices that doubled and then doubled again, and bank collapses on leveraged Derivatives of those original Liars Loans.

------
You should read about the changes instead of after-the-fact talking
points by Hannity, since Fox hailed Bush's "Ownership Society" at the time, which supposedly proved he was "progressive" with minorities, by making them home owners in some kind of anti-Welfare reform.

But Bush added more welfare, free down payments.

Anyhow, Robert Rubin was the Citigroup CEO who was a key architect of the Bubble and De-Regulation, along with Greenspan. He shaped CRA changes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

In July 1993, President Bill Clinton asked regulators to reform the CRA in order to make examinations more consistent, clarify performance standards, and reduce cost and compliance burden.

"reduce cost and compliance burden" MEANS "DE-REGULATION".
"cut back a lot of the paperwork " MEANS cut back on LEGAL requirements., that MEANS "DE-REGULATION", and REDUCE STANDARDS.

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:57:08 -0000

More democracy in China??? Really???
------
I see you don't have the guts to ack that Paul Craig Roberts said that, and who he is.

NO major US business thinks China is Communist, except its population lives under harsh rule.

Nixon and every subsequent US President and Congress and Corporations have whittled away any remaining Communism in China. China is open to "free trade". That's why Corporations go there now. They used to worry that Communists would expropriate their factories. Not any more.

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 18:47:42 -0000

“And so at the end of the day there really are no taxpayer funds at risk here.”

- Republican Senator John Boehner on the $700,000,000,000 bailout.

That’s an exact quote.
http://no-treason.com/?p=17

“Without McCain, they would have run over me like a freight train”
http://hotair.com/archives/200...

====================

What the public wants is called "politically unrealistic." Translated intoEnglish, that means power and privilege are opposed to it.

Re: Eating The Rich

112012 — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:39:57 -0000

I see this presidential election should be entertainment in the very least!!! Obama is in for a real run for his money!!! Lol!!!

Re: Eating The Rich

112012 — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:28:56 -0000

Gary Gnu forgets the Affordable Home Act of 93 that was first introduced in 77!!! He also seems to have watched too much Terminator!!!! More democracy in China??? Really??? Communist China!!! The people in China are still mostly poor!!! China is predicted to impload like Communist Russia! Your way off base Gary Gnu!!!

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 06:35:13 -0000

Co-Founder Of Reaganomics, Paul Craig Roberts, "There Is Probably More Democracy In China Than There Is In The West"
ZeroHedge.com

"The west prides itself that it is the standard for the world, that it is a democracy. But nowehere do you see democratic outcomes: not in Greece, not in Ireland, not in the UK, not here, the outcomes are always to punish the innocent and reward the guilty.

And that's what the Greeks are in the streets, protesting.

We see this all over the west. There is no democracy, there are oligarchies, some of these smaller European countries are not even run by their own governments,

they are run by Wall Street...

There is probably more democracy in China than there is in the west. Revolution is the only answer...

We are confronted with a curious situation. Throughout the west we think we have democracy, we hold ourselves up high, we demonize
China, we talk about the mafia state of Russia, we talk about the Arabs and so on, but where is the democracy here?"

http://www.zerohedge.com/artic...

--------------------

Does anyone find it interesting that the only TV station that will show the Father of Reaganomics is RUSSIA TODAY?

http://goldsilver.com/video/pa...

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 05:31:20 -0000

First you say that Obama is having everyone make the same income.

Then you say everyone who used to be Middle Class techs and managers, with Middle Class houses and Middle Class cars, can get low skilled factory jobs ... for roughly the same pay as McDonalds.

People who made $40k can now make $17k, if they are lucky.

So your plan is the same as the Obama + GOP plan.

I don't recall the name, but I remember some business guy a few years ago who said "Any CEO who is not firing American workers as fast as possible ought to be fired." (He was actually against the idea.)

DON'T YOU KNOW HOW MUCH GOVT INTERVENTION THERE IS TO INCREASE OUTSOURCING AND OFF-SHORING?

this is a libertarian argument FOR free markets, copied from Kevin Carson:

The state also directly subsidizes the offshoring model. The main item financed by foreign aid and by World Bank loans, over the past sixty years, has been the utility and road infrastructure needed to make much offshored production profitable.

You’ve got a corporate culture that obsessively strains with a teaspoon at the alleged costs of “extortionate” union workers, while pouring corporate welfare by the billions of gallons down the swinish gullets of extortionate CEOs and coupon-clippers.

The industrial system we’ve had over the past 150 years hasn’t even remotely resembled a free market. It has been a corporatist system built from the ground up through overwhelming state intervention and massive collusion between big business and big government.

The state has promoted the overaccumulation of capital in mass-production facilities that are only profitable when they can amortize the cost of their expensive specialized machinery by running at full capacity without regard to preexisting demand, and then find some way to dispose of the product.

And the only way to dispose of that full product has been through state-aided planned obsolescence, state-aided expansion into foreign markets, direct state purchases of surplus output and surplus capital, and — as a last resort — massive state destruction of output and capital in war.

In the U.S., certainly, if it weren't for subsidized trucking and subsidized irrigation water in naturally arid country out west, it wouldn't pay to ship vegetables from California to western Massachusetts instead of just growing the stuff near the point of consumption. California agribusiness interests are sucking on a giant welfare teat, otherwise known as the Army Corps of Engineers.
======
comment:
1 barrel of oil is roughly equivalent (in energy terms) to 23,200 hours of human labour.

A little back-of-an-envelope type math suggests, that if we treat that energy as abstract labour, then the current world consumption of ~80 million barrels a day is the equivalent of having 184 billion slaves working a 10 hour shift, each day.

That's one gosh-darn heck of a lot of invisible hands right there, pushing up the standard of living and industrial progress.

From that though, the question would arise, not why we have progressed so much in the last couple of centuries, but why so little?

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 05:21:14 -0000

LOTS of government intervention on the housing bubble. I've explained this over and over. INTENSIVE DE-REGULATION OF RISK and FRAUD. That's govt intervention.

Boehner offered to take Soc Security "off the table" for cuts.

Obama told him "leave it there" to be slashed.

Bad cop, good cop, good cop, bad cop. Like on TV.

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 04:58:01 -0000

112012: America like Russia? Surely your meds must be low!!!
------
Harvard Mafia, Andrei Shleifer and the economic rape of Russia -
http://www.softpanorama.org/Sk...

Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte

A interesting rogues’ gallery of international financial criminals who got their education in Harvard (Harvard mafia in a broad sense) owes its existence to the dissolution of the USSR and subsequent financial crisis. The level of corruption and RENT SEEKING behaviors of those individuals is really breathtaking.

It may be time to look once again at what Larry Summers and his Rubinomics gang did in Russia in the mid-1990s and to Third World countries during his tenure as World Bank economist to see what kind of future is being planned for the U.S. economy over the next few years.

[Larry Summers and Robert Rubin were both Clinton's and Obama's TOP economic advisor. Both obvs big on "free markets". Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke and Bush's other advisors were their close friends. As soon as anyone who knew the players saw Rubin and Summers join Obama, they knew that Obama would be an extension of the Clinton+Bush kleptocracy.]

Throughout the Soviet Union the neoliberal model established “equilibrium” in a way that involved demographic collapse: shortening life spans, lower birth rates, alcoholism and drug abuse, psychological depression, suicides, bad health, unemployment and homelessness for the elderly (the neoliberal mode of Social Security reform).
[...]
Under pretext of showing the Russians how to convert command type economy to more market oriented one and how to controls corruption the gang-style rape of the country was inflicted on its unsuspecting citizens with poverty raising from 2% to 40% of the population. World have witnessed Russia losing half of its total output, plunging it into a depression deeper than the U.S. Great Depression.
[...]
After the dissolution of the USSR, there was a vacuum of ideology in Russia and it was filled with Harvard promoted neoliberalism and associated neo-classical economics. The USA essentially forced Russians into so called shock therapy using Harvard academic mafia (plan was authored by Jeffrey Sachs who was lecturer at Harvard and implemented by Larry Summers Russian protege) and internal compradors in Yelstin government as fifth column.

As a result poverty level jumped from 2% to 40%. Everything that can be stolen was stolen by implementation of rapid privatization policy. During the heydays of corrupt Yeltsin regime implementation of SHOCK THERAPY, the Russian GDP dropped 50%.

Suicide rate doubled, life expectancy for males dropped below 60 years (12,8% death rate increase), etc.

"After seven years of economic "reform" financed by billions of dollars in U.S. and other Western aid, subsidized loans and rescheduled debt, the majority of Russian people find themselves worse off economically.

The privatization drive that was supposed to reap the fruits of the free market instead helped to create a system of TYCOON capitalism run for the benefit of a corrupt political oligarchy that has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars of Western aid and plundered Russia's wealth.

Re: Eating The Rich

GaryGoddmn — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 04:12:31 -0000

At least when GWB was president we had jobs to fall back on!!!
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RIGHT. The Housing Bubble that Bush created also created lots of jobs ---- it also offset off-shoring of jobs ---- such as in home construction and plenty of cash floating around that creates even more jobs.

The entire economy was running on bank credit during Bush. Actually since Clinton's "balanced budget" led to a credit bubble. (plus plenty of deficit spending on Iraq and Pharma and more, some of which also propped up the economy a bit, though nothing like WW2)

People were told by the Govt and Experts on TV to re-fi their homes to a bigger loan, to cash out their inflated Home Equity, and GO SHOPPING and TAKE VACATIONS. You could borrow OVER 100% of Loan-to-Value ratio, on inflated appraisals in a fictional bubble market. So if you owed $77k on a $100k house, maybe it had gone up to $150k on your street, you could get it appraised for $200k, and re-fi to the full $200k or more. What a great shopping spree. Thanks Mr. Greenspan.. (that's what everyone said when the Bush bubble was bubbling)

Bush even gave people who had NO MONEY to put down, and no jobs or credit, no future ability to pay, a free down payment.

Bush called this "Ownership Society". Obviously, he meant "Debtor Society".

Bush even used an obscure 1800s law to block Governors of all 50 states from suing to stop "predatory lending". FIFTY Governors vs Bush.

How did that work out?
====================

I'll show you.

The New Road to Serfdom
An illustrated guide to the coming real estate collapse
Originally published May 2006

Never before have so many Americans gone so deeply into debt so willingly.

Housing prices have swollen to the point that we've taken to calling a mortgage -- by far the largest debt most of us will ever incur -- an "investment."

Sure, the thinking goes, $100,000 borrowed today will cost more than $200,000 to pay back over the next thirty years, but land, which they are not making any more of, will appreciate even faster.

In the odd logic of the real estate bubble, debt has come to equal wealth.

And not only wealth but freedom–an even stranger paradox. After all, debt throughout most of history has been little more than a slight variation on slavery.

http://www.itulip.com/forums/s...
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(this is NOT about the "national debt" ... it's about consumer and business debt, including real estate developers)

(You probably read about the expensive Condo in Florida, where after the Crash, out of 402 units, only ONE was occupied by an owner. This became an epidemic. Still is. The real estate developer was not some poor welfare-mama negro in the ghetto. They were speculating on building and then selling out fast for a profit.)