.. with a 'sting'
-=*=-
Something to start the day with:
September 22, 2008
Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?
The Paulson-Bernacke Bank Bailout Plan
By MICHAEL HUDSON
«... Cities and states vied with each other to slash property taxes, replacing them with income and sales taxes that fall mainly on labor and consumers. The upshot is that wealth has polarized to an unprecedented degree. According to statistics collected by the Congressional Budget Office, the wealthiest 1% now own 57% of the nation’s returns to wealth (interest, dividends and capital gains) and the richest 10% own no less than 77%.»
[counterpunch/hudson]
Dear reader, if you don't read it all, you might as well stop here now, and exit (bye.)
For those still here, this:
Wages share of income slumps to 43-year low
September 3, 2008 - 5:37PM
«... Both small business and wage incomes have declined as a proportion of national income over the past few decades.
Along with rising income tax and interest payments, the proportion decline has been the main reason for the fall in household disposable income from more than 75% of total factor income in the 1960s to 61% at last measure.
Factor income is GDP adjusted for indirect taxes and production subsidies, and shows how much of national income is going to "factors of production'', notably labour and capital.
The compensation of employees - wages and the like - has fallen to 52.4% of factor income, the ABS figures show, its lowest since the March quarter of 1965.
Not surprisingly, household consumption spending has fallen to its lowest since the end of 1974.
At the same time profits, boosted by the resources boom and a subdued labour force, have zoomed to a record 28.4% of factor income, easily eclipsing anything seen in the 49-year history of the national accounts.»
[smh/business]
One more (repeated from the best that money can buy ...):
No longer just goodies for the top 1%
The Trillion Dollar Meltdown - Easy Money, High Rollers and Great Credit Crash by Charles R Morris
Reviewed by Julian Delasantellis
«One of the most striking developments over the past quarter century is the dramatic shift of taxable incomes towards the wealthiest people. Between 1980 and 2005, the top tenth of the population's share of all taxable income went from 34% to 46%, an increase of about a third. The changing distribution within the top 10%, however, is what's truly remarkable. The unlucky folks in the 90th to the 95th percentiles actually lost a little ground, while those in the 95th to 99th gained a little.
Overall, however, income shares in the 90th and 99th percentile were basically flat (24% in 1980 and 26% in 2005). Almost all the top one-tenth's share gains, in other words, went to the top 1%, or the top "centile", who doubled their share of national cash income from 9% to 19%.
Even within the top centile, however, the distribution of gains was radically skewed. Nearly 60% of it went to the top tenth of 1% of the population, and more than a fourth of it to the top one-hundredth of 1% of the population. Overall, the top tenth of 1% more than tripled their share of cash income to about 9%, while the top one-hundredth of 1%, or fewer than 15,000 taxpayers, quadrupled their share to 3.6% of all taxable income. Among those 15,000, the average tax return reported US$26 million of income in 2005, while the take for the entire group was $384 billion.»
[atimes/BOOK REVIEW]
My comment: the rich have become richer, there's some proof, also some hints at by how much.
-=*=-
There has been a take-over by stealth, by a 'system' sometimes referred to as voodoo[1] economics (especially apposite given the next word in my dictionary is voracious[2]). The 'real' name could be neoliberal, neoclassical, Friedman or "Chicago School" economics. Keywords are deregulation, 'user pays,' privatisation, greed.
-=*=-
As for Costello's halving of the CGT and its contribution to doubling Aus' house-prices, voodoo economics could not have more severely ripped us sheople® off, had it been consciously designed with that aim in mind. Ooops! We don't 'believe' in coincidences...
Voodoo economics has recently reached a crescendo, the deregulation and consequent swindles both having accelerated in the GWBush&Co era, so much so that the entire banking system, if not the economy as a whole with it, teeters on the brink.
-=*=-
So we come to my ennui[3], which is not from idleness or lack of interest and nor am I bored, but I despair. Again the next word in my dictionary is apposite: enormity[4], being the qualifier of our calamity.
-=*=-
What the hell went wrong, where are the adults?
-=*end*=-
PS And the sting? If Hudson is correct, we the sheople will pay and pay, not just to keep ourselves alive, but also for Paulson's so-called recovery bailout - actually the next, possibly greatest, rip-off ever. As if the rich were not rich enough already.
How much longer will the non-US adults tolerate such greed and criminality?
-=*=-
Ref(s):
[1] voodoo —n. religious witchcraft as practised esp. in the W. Indies. —v. (-doos, -dooed) affect by voodoo; bewitch. [Dahomey] [POD]
[2] voracious adj. 1 gluttonous, ravenous. 2 very eager (voracious reader). voraciously adv. voracity n. [Latin vorax from voro devour] [ibid.]
[3] ennui n. mental weariness from idleness or lack of interest; boredom. [French: related to *annoy] [ibid.]
[4] enormity n. (pl. -ies) 1 monstrous wickedness; monstrous crime. 2 serious error. 3 great size. [Latin enormitas] [ibid.]
2008/09/23
voodoo economics ...
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4 comments:
G'day Phil, as if you haven't enough to read ...
Glenn Greenwald.
On Saturday morning, I noted -- quoting Atrios -- the almost complete lack of debate over the ever-changing dictates issued by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Last week, whatever Paulson said on any given day -- no bailouts; only selected bailouts; massive $700 billion bailout plan -- immediately became the unchallenged conventional wisdom.
That has all changed. Prominent economists, who had previously been defending Paulson for the most part, began voicing serious doubts about his plan. As the AP put it yesterday: "Many of the same economists and opinion-makers who'd provided a bipartisan sheen of consensus to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's previous moves have quickly begun casting doubts on the wisdom of a policy that would allow Treasury to purchase without oversight hundreds of billions of dollars of difficult-to-price assets from financial institutions." Not only Paul Krugman, who was a skeptic from the start, but conservative economic experts have also now expressed opposition, including former Bush and Romney advisor Greg Mankiw and -- in an excellent column on Saturday -- Sebastian Mallaby, who described the rapid move to embrace Paulson's plan as "extremely dangerous."
And now, some of the most rabid ideologues on the Right are voicing increasingly strident opposition as well. At National Review last night, Newt Gingrich wrote that "watching Washington rush to throw taxpayer money at Wall Street has been sobering and a little frightening" and said he "hopes Congress will slow down and have an open debate." Thereafter, NR's Yuval Levin proclaimed that nobody could read through the Paulson proposal "without concluding that everyone in Washington has lost their minds." In The New York Times today, Bill Kristol said he's "doubtful that the only thing standing between us and a financial panic is for Congress to sign this week, on behalf of the American taxpayer, a $700 billion check over to the Treasury," while Michelle Malkin posted a lengthy alarmist screed warning that "Hank Paulson must be contained."
Chris Hedges.
Ed Martin.
DemocracyNow!
And so noone can spoil the party.
A critical - and radical - component of the bailout package proposed by the Bush administration has thus far failed to garner the serious attention of anyone in the press. Section 8 (which ironically reminds one of the popular name of the portion of the 1937 Housing Act that paved the way for subsidized affordable housing ) of this legislation is just a single sentence of thirty-two words, but it represents a significant consolidation of power and an abdication of oversight authority that's so flat-out astounding that it ought to set one's hair on fire. It reads, in its entirety:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
That just tops the swindle off.
And Joshua Holland. Lots of comments ... including a thread picking up Robert Scheer on DemocracyNow! commenting on Mussolini bailing out Italian capitalists ....
there is a practical - and totally bloodless - way out ...
.. the non-US world *must* drop the $US, completely, soonest
-=*=-
We the sheople® the entire world over, have a possibly terminal problem, actually two:
a) The Arctic ice is melting; won't be too long before the Antarctic and Greenland do the same. Our good-times climate could be totally futsch.
b) The so-called 'leader of the free world' is nothing of the sort; worse (worser, worst): the US is a, if not the, major cause of the climate-problem - but refuses point-blank to change course.
If ya can't live with 'em, y've gotta live without 'em.
Nobody - in their right mind - would continue in an abusive relationship - and especially not, after ascertaining that the opposite 'partner' is a lying, thieving, murdering thug.
That's exactly what the US is, I fully determined this, thanks, but "No, thanks!" to GWBush&Co, in my investigations started when the US 1st mooted its illegal invasion of Iraq, now been morphed from illegal invasion into brutal occupation, each more murdering than the other.
The world stayed relatively quiet, apart from us anti-wars and our demonstrations (biggest since quite a while if not ever); but as we can seen from the resulting disaster in Iraq, no effective action was taken to rein the renegade, rogue-state US in. Too bad, because now we have the next crisis; latest stand: $US7-800bio of the sheople's money to be thrown at the very jackals who created the horrendous finance swindle. Great.
It's time to reject all the US's lies, bribes and blackmail; no amount of coercion in the world should stand in the way of the desperately required emergency action against climate-change. No threat, no matter how dire, can ever 'top' the greedastrophe® threat to our once jewel like planet's Oh, so fragile life-support system. There'll simply be no come-back possible - if the critical tipping-point is passed, making a climate-crash inevitable.
Concerted action is needed, but the US sheople won't help, can't help - not only has their democracy been corrupted, but most of the US sheople aren't even listening (they do 'listen' to their TVs, but hear nothing of the real problems); not only do they not listen, they don't even try (Motto: "Der, I didn't think!" What else could explain behemoth SUVs?)
Concerted action could come from a non-US world united to save the planet; the renegade, rogue-state US could hardly bomb everyone at once. And with the $US dumped (then quickly no imported oil), they wouldn't even be able to make the threat.
Fazit: If we can't live with 'em (we can't), we've gotta live without 'em. Dump the $US now!
G'day Phil, a lot of reading today, even two Glenn Greenwald articles. So I'll start there and the first deals with David Brooks and those few special people to call on in a crisis.
Hmmm .. ponders, wonder who he means? It couldn't be ... read on.
The second is about some objecting to the power being given to Paulson. But I what sort of chief executive [power have they supported for all these years?
Getting into some views on the financial situation - Henry C K Liu.
A roundup of some objections and suggestions.
So they've taken over ... and what's in store. Chris Floyd - "Coming Attractions: War Without End, Amen".
"Amen" indeed.
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